large casks of silver – I don’t know how he got so much; I dare say
he screwed it out of the miserable Jews – and put them aboard ship,
and went away himself to carry war into France: accompanied by his
mother and his brother Richard, Earl of Cornwall, who was rich and
clever. But he only got well beaten, and came home.
The good-humour of the Parliament was not restored by this. They
reproached the King with wasting the public money to make greedy
foreigners rich, and were so stern with him, and so determined not
to let him have more of it to waste if they could help it, that he
was at his wit’s end for some, and tried so shamelessly to get all
he could from his subjects, by excuses or by force, that the people
used to say the King was the sturdiest beggar in England. He took
the Cross, thinking to get some money by that means; but, as it was
very well known that he never meant to go on a crusade, he got
none. In all this contention, the Londoners were particularly keen
against the King, and the King hated them warmly in return. Hating
or loving, however, made no difference; he continued in the same
condition for nine or ten years, when at last the Barons said that
if he would solemnly confirm their liberties afresh, the Parliament
would vote him a 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
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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