ast he appeared at Dover, to join his foreign soldiers, of
whom numbers came into his pay; and with them he besieged and took
Rochester Castle, which was occupied by knights and soldiers of the
Barons. He would have hanged them every one; but the leader of the
foreign soldiers, fearful of what the English people might afterwards do
to him, interfered to save the knights; therefore the King was fain to
satisfy his vengeance with the death of all the common men. Then, he
sent the Earl of Salisbury, with one portion of his army, to ravage the
eastern part of his own dominions, while he carried fire and slaughter
into the northern part; torturing, plundering, killing, and inflicting
every possible cruelty upon the people; and, every morning, setting a
worthy example to his men by setting fire, with his own monster-hands, to
the house where he had slept last night. Nor was this all; for the Pope,
coming to the aid of his precious friend, laid the kingdom under an
Interdict again, because the people took part with the Barons. It did
not much matter, for the people had grown so used to it now, that they
had begun to think nothing about it. It occurred to them--perhaps to
Stephen Langton too--that they could keep their churches open, and ring
their bells, without the Pope's permission as well as with it. So, they
tried the experiment--and found that it succeeded perfectly.

It being now impossible to bear the country, as a wilderness of cruelty,
or longer to hold any terms with such a forsworn outlaw of a King, the
Barons sent to Louis, son of the French monarch, to offer him the English
crown. Caring as little for the Pope's excommunication of him if he
accepted the offer, as it is possible his father may have cared for the
Pope's forgiveness of his sins, he landed at Sandwich (King John
immediately running away from Dover, where he happened to be), and went
on to London. The Scottish King, with whom many of the Northern English
Lords had taken refuge; numbers of the foreign soldiers, numbers of the
Barons, and numbers of the people went over to him every day;--King John,
the while, continually running away in all directions.

The career of Louis was checked however, by the suspicions of the Barons,
founded on the dying declaration of a French Lord, that when the kingdom
was conquered he was sworn to banish them as traitors, and to give their
estates to some of his own Nobles. Rather than suffer this, some of the
Baro