during the course of a hundred and fifty years, was governed by an authority unknown in the same degree to all the kingdoms founded by the northern conquerors. Henry I., that he might allure the people to give an exclusion to his elder brother Robert, had granted them a charter favourable in many particulars to their their liberties; Stephen had renewed the grant; Henry II. had confirmed it; but the concessions of all these princes had still remained without effect; and the same unlimited, at least irregular authority, continued to be exercised both by them and their successors. The only happiness was that arms were never yet ravished from the hands of the barons and people; the nation, by a great confederacy, might still vindicate its liberties; and nothing was more likely than the character, conduct, and fortunes of the reigning prince, to produce such a general combination against him. Equally odious and contemptible, both in public and private life, he affronted the barons by his insolence, dishonoured their families by his gallantries, enraged them by his tyranny, and gave discontent to all ranks of men by his endless exactions and impositions. The effect of these lawless practices had already appeared in the general demand made by the barons of a restoration of their privileges; and after he had reconciled himself to the Pope by abandoning the independence of the kingdom, he appeared to all his subjects in so mean a light, that they universally thought they might with safety and honour insist upon their pretensions.

But nothing forwarded this conspiracy so much as the concurrence of Langton, Archbishop of Canterbury; a man whose memory, though he was obtruded on the nation by a palpable encroachment of the see of Rome, ought always to be respected by the English. This prelate, whether he was moved by the generosity of his nature and affection to

public good, or had entertained an animosity against John on account of the long opposition made by that prince to his election, or thought that an acquisition of liberty to the people would serve to increase and secure the privileges of the Church, had formed the plan of reforming the forming the government, and had prepared the way for that great innovation by inserting several exact clauses in the oath which he administered to the king before he would absolve him from the sentence of excommunication. Soon after, in a private meeting of some principal barons at London, he showed them a copy of Henry I.'s charter, which he said he had happily found in a monastery; and he exhorted them to insist on the renewal and observance of it. The barons swore that they would sooner lose their lives than depart from so reasonable a demand. The confederacy began now to spread wider, and to comprehend almost all the barons in England; and a new and more numerous meeting was summoned by Langton at St. Edmondsbury, under colour of devotion. He again produced to the assembly the old charter of Henry; renewed his exhortations of unanimity and vigour in the prosecution of their purpose, and represented in the strongest colours the tyranny to which they had so long been subjected, and from which it now behoved them to free themselves and their posterity. The barons, inflamed by his eloquence, incited by the sense of their own wrongs, and encouraged by the appearance of their power and numbers, solemnly took an oath before the high altar to adhere to each other, to insist on their demands, and to make endless war on the king till he should submit to grant them. The barons agreed that after the festival of Christmas they would prefer in a body their common petition; and in the meantime they separated after mutually engaging that they would put themselves in a posture

of defence, would enlist men and purchase arms, and would supply their castles with the necessary provisions.

The barons appeared in London on the day appointed (Jan. 6, 1215); and demanded of the king, that, in consequence of his own oath before the primate, as well as in deference to their just rights, he should grant them a renewal of Henry's charter, and a confirmation of the laws of St. Edward. The king, alarmed with their zeal and unanimity, as well as with their power, required a delay; promised that, at the festival of Easter, he would give them a positive answer to their petition, and offered them the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bishop of Ely, and the Earl of Pembroke,,the mareschal, as sureties for his fulfilling this engagement. The barons accepted of the terms, and peaceably returned to their castles.

The king, in the meantime, applied to the Pope, and received from him a considerable amount of encouragement.

About the time that the Pope's letters arrived in England, the malcontent barons, on the approach of the festival of Easter, when they were to expect the king's answer to their petition, met by agreement at Stamford; and they assembled a force, consisting of above 2,000 knights, besides their retainers and inferior persons without number. Elated with their power, they (April 27) advanced in a body to Brackley, within fifteen miles of Oxford, the place where the court then resided; and they there received a message from the king, by the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Earl of Pembroke, desiring to know what those liberties were which they so zealously challenged from their sovereign. They delivered to these messengers a schedule, containing the chief articles of their demands; which was no sooner shown to the king, than he burst into a furious passion, and asked, why the barons did not also demand of him his kingdom? swearing that he would never

grant them such liberties as must reduce himself to slavery.

No sooner were the confederated nobles informed of John's reply, than they chose Robert Fitz-Walter their general, whom they called the mareschal of the army of God and of holy Church; and they proceeded without further ceremony to levy war upon the king. They besieged the castle of Northampton during fifteen days, though without success. The gates of Bedford castle were willingly opened to them by William Beauchamp, its owner; they (May 24) advanced to Ware on their way to London, where they held a correspondence with the principal citizens; they were received without opposition into that capital; and finding now the great superiority of their force, they issued proclamations, requiring the other barons to join them; and menacing them, in case of refusal or delay, with committing devastation on their houses and estates. In order to show what might be expected from their prosperous arms, they made incursions from London, and laid waste the king's parks and palaces; and all the barons, who had hitherto carried the semblance of supporting the royal party, were glad of this pretence for openly joining a cause which they always had secretly favoured. The king was left at Odiham, in Hampshire, with a poor retinue of only seven knights; and after trying several expedients to elude the blow, after offering to refer all differences to the Pope alone, or to eight barons, four to be chosen by himself, and four by the confederates, he found himself at last obliged to submit at discretion.

A conference between the king and the barons was appointed (June 15) at Runnemede, between Windsor and Staines; a place which has ever since been extremely celebrated on account of this great event. The two parties encamped apart, like open enemies; and after a debate of a few days, the king,

with a facility somewhat suspicious (June 19), signed and sealed the charter which was required of him. This famous deed, commonly called the Magna Charta (Great Charter), either granted or secured very important liberties and privileges to every order of men in the kingdom; to the clergy, to the barons, and to the people.

The most popular provisions of the Great Charter were these:-One weight and one measure shall be established throughout the kingdom. Merchants shall be allowed to transact all business, without being exposed to any arbitrary tolls and impositions; they and all freemen shall be allowed to go out of the kingdom and return to it at pleasure; London, and all cities and burghs, shall preserve their ancient liberties, immunities, and free customs; aids shall not be required of them but by the consent of the great council; no towns or individuals shall be obliged to make or support bridges but by ancient custom; the goods of every freeman shall be disposed of according to his will; if he die intestate, his heirs shall succeed to them. No officer of the crown shall take any horses, carts, or wood, without the consent of the owner. The king's courts of justice shall be stationary, and shall no longer follow his person; they shall be open to every one; and justice shall no longer be sold, refused, or delayed by them. Circuits shall be regularly held every year; the inferior tribunals of justice, the county court, sheriff's turn, and court-leet, shall meet at their appointed time and place; the sheriffs shall be incapacitated to hold pleas of the crown; and shall not put any person upon his trial, from rumour or suspicion alone, but upon the evidence of lawful witnesses. No freeman shall be taken or imprisoned, or dispossessed of his free tenement and liberties, or outlawed, or banished, or anywise hurt or injured, unless by the legal judgment of his peers, or by the law of the land;

and all who suffered otherwise, in this or the two former reigns, shall be restored to their rights and possessions. Every freeman shall be fined in proportion to his fault; and no fine shall be levied on him to his utter ruin; even a villain or rustic shall not, by any fine, be bereaved of his carts, ploughs, and implements of husbandry. This was the only article calculated for the interests of this body of men, probably at that time the most numerous in the kingdom.

It must be confessed, that the former articles of the Great Charter contain such mitigations and explanations of the feudal law as are reasonable and equitable; and that the latter involve all the chief outlines of a legal government, and provide for the equal distribution of justice, and free enjoyment of property; the great objects for which political society was at first founded by men, which the people have a perpetual and unalienable right to recall, and which no time, nor precedent, nor statute, nor positive institution, ought to deter them from keeping ever uppermost in their thoughts and attention. Though the provisions made by this charter might, conformably to the genius of the age, be esteemed too concise, and too bare of circumstances, to maintain the execution of its articles, in opposition to the chicanery of lawyers, supported by the violence of power; time gradually ascertained the sense of all the ambiguous expressions; and those generous barons, who first extorted this concession, still held their swords in their hands, and could turn them against those who dared, on any pretence, to depart from the original spirit and meaning of the grant. We may now, from the tenor of this charter, conjecture what those laws were of King Edward, which the English nation, during so many generations, still desired, with such an obstinate perseverance, to have recalled and established. They were chiefly these latter articles of

Magna Charta; and the barons, who, at the beginning of these commotions, demanded the revival of the Saxon laws, undoubtedly thought that they had sufficiently satisfied the people by procuring them this concession, which comprehended the principal objects to which they had so long aspired. But what we are most to admire, is the prudence and moderation of those haughty nobles themselves, who were enraged by injuries, inflamed by opposition, and elated by a total victory over their sovereign. They were content, even in this plenitude of power, to depart from some articles of Henry I.'s charter, which they made the foundation of their demands, particularly from the abolition of ward

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ships, a matter of the greatest importance; and they seem to have been sufficiently careful not to diminish too far the power and revenue of the crown. If they appear, therefore, to to have carried other demands to too great a height, it can be ascribed only to the faithless and tyrannical character of the king himself, of which they had long had experience, and which, they foresaw, would, if they provided no further security, lead him soon to infringe their new liberties, and revoke his own concessions. This alone

gave birth to those other articles, seemingly exorbitant, which were added as a rampart for the safeguard of the Great Charter, and which indeed proved to be so in the future.

HERE is a soul of goodness in things evil," says Shakespeare. True, indeed, it is that in the midst of the worst deeds, we find some bright act that serves to relieve the horror. Our illustration exhibits one of such acts, and we now proceed, following Scott's graphic narrative, to give some account of it. In the February of 1437, King James I. of Scotland was at Perth; and a band of conspirators, chief among them Sir Robert Graham, determined to kill him. They were urged to this crime, partly by real or supposed private wrongs, and partly by their rage at the many changes, on the whole very beneficial, which James had introduced into the government of Scotland. The king was living in the abbey of the Black Friars, and spent his last earthly day, unconious of his doom, in sport and feasting.

The conspirators spent that day in preparing for their enterprise. They had destroyed the locks of the doors of the apartment, so that the keys could not be turned; and they had taken away the bars with which the gates were secured, and had provided planks by way of bridges, on which to cross the ditch which surrounded the monastery. At length, on the 20th February 1437, all was prepared for carrying their treasonable purpose into execution, and Graham came from his hiding-place in the neighbouring mountains, with a party of nigh three hundred men, and entered the gardens of the convent.

The king was in his night-gown and slippers. He had passed the evening gaily with the nobles and ladies of his court, in reading romances, and in singing and music, or playing at chess and tables. The Earl of Athole, and his son Sir Robert Stewart, who expected to succeed James on the throne, were among the last courtiers who retired. At this time James remained standing before the