large sum.

As he readily consented, there was a great meeting held in Westminster
Hall, one pleasant day in May, when all the clergy, dressed in their
robes and holding every one of them a burning candle in his hand, stood
up (the Barons being also there) while the Archbishop of Canterbury read
the sentence of excommunication against any man, and all men, who should
henceforth, in any way, infringe the Great Charter of the Kingdom. When
he had done, they all put out their burning candles with a curse upon the
soul of any one, and every one, who should merit that sentence. The King
concluded with an oath to keep the Charter, 'As I am a man, as I am a
Christian, as I am a Knight, as I am a King!'

It was easy to make oaths, and easy to break them; and the King did both,
as his father had done before him. He took to his old courses again when
he was supplied with money, and soon cured of their weakness the few who
had ever really trusted him. When his money was gone, and he was once
more borrowing and begging everywhere with a meanness worthy of his
nature, he got into a difficulty with the Pope respecting the Crown of
Sicily, which the Pope said he had a right to give away, and which he
offered to King Henry for his second son, PRINCE EDMUND. But, if you or
I give away what we have not got, and what belongs to somebody else, it
is likely that the person to whom we give it, will have some trouble in
taking it. It was exactly so in this case. It was necessary to conquer
the Sicilian Crown before it could be put upon young Edmund's head. It
could not be conquered without money. The Pope ordered the clergy to
raise money. The clergy, however, were not so obedient to him as usual;
they had been disputing with him for some time about his unjust
preference of Italian Priests in England; and they had begun to doubt
whether the King's chaplain, whom he allowed to be paid for preaching in
seven hundred churches, could possibly be, even by the Pope's favour, in
seven hundred places at once. 'The Pope and the King together,' said the
Bishop of London, 'may take the mitre off my head; but, if they do, they
will find that I shall put on a soldier's helmet. I pay nothing.' The
Bishop of Worcester was as bold as the Bishop of London, and would pay
nothing either. Such sums as the more timid or more helpless of the
clergy did raise were squandered away, without doing any good to the
King, or bringing the Sicilian Crown an i