the Pope; and to hold it, ever
afterward, by the Pope's leave, on payment of an annual sum of money. To
this shameful contract he publicly bound himself in the church of the
Knights Templars at Dover: where he laid at the legate's feet a part of
the tribute, which the legate haughtily trampled upon. But they _do_ say,
that this was merely a genteel flourish, and that he was afterward seen to
pick it up and pocket it.

There was an unfortunate prophet, of the name of Peter, who had greatly
increased King John's terrors by predicting that he would be unknighted
(which the King supposed to signify that he would die) before the Feast of
Ascension should be past. That was the day after this humiliation. When
the next morning came, and the King, who had been trembling all night,
found himself alive and safe, he ordered the prophet--and his son too--to be
dragged through the streets at the tails of horses, and then hanged, for
having frightened him.

As King John had now submitted, the Pope, to King Philip's great
astonishment, took him under his protection, and informed King Philip that
he found he could not give him leave to invade England. The angry Philip
resolved to do it without his leave; but, he gained nothing and lost much;
for, the English, commanded by the Earl of Salisbury, went over, in five
hundred ships, to the French coast, before the French fleet had sailed
away from it, and utterly defeated the whole.

The Pope then took off his three sentences, one after another, and
empowered Stephen Langton publicly to receive King John into the favor of
the church again, and to ask him to dinner. The King, who hated Langton
with all his might and main--and with reason too, for he was a great and a
good man, with whom such a King could have no sympathy--pretended to cry
and to be very grateful. There was a little difficulty about settling how
much the King should pay, as a recompense to the clergy for the losses he
had caused them; but, the end of it was, that the superior clergy got a
good deal, and the inferior clergy got little or nothing--which has also
happened since King John's time, I believe.

When all these matters were arranged, the King in his triumph became more
fierce, and false, and insolent to all around him than he had ever been.
An alliance of sovereigns against King Philip, gave him an opportunity of
landing an army in France; with which he even took a town! But, on the
French King's gaining a great v