rons, however, found him out and put it
off. Then, when the Barons desired to see him and tax him with his
treachery, he made numbers of appointments with them, and kept none, and
shifted from place to place, and was constantly sneaking and skulking
about. At last 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 afterward 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
the 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 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 foresworn 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 suspic