of the English ecclesiastics, would be of small avail against them; and they perceived that the most considerable of the prelates, as well as all the inferior clergy, professed the highest approbation of their cause.  Besides that these men were seized with the national passion for laws and liberty, blessings of which they themselves expected to partake, there concurred very powerful causes to loosen their devoted attachment to the apostolic see.  It appeared, from the late usurpations of the Roman Pontiff, that he intended to reap alone all the advantages accruing from that victory, which under his banners, though at their own peril, they had everywhere obtained over the civil magistrate.

The Pope assumed a despotic power over all the churches; their particular customs, privileges, and immunities were treated with disdain; even the canons of general councils were set aside by his dispensing power; the whole administration of the Church was centred in the court of Rome; all preferments ran, of course, in the same channel; and the provincial clergy saw, at least felt, that there was a necessity for limiting these pretensions.

The legate, Nicholas, in filling those numerous vacancies which had fallen in England during an interdict of six years, had proceeded in the most arbitrary manner; and had paid no regard, in conferring dignities, to personal merit, to rank, to the inclination of the electors, or to the customs of the country.  The English Church was universally disgusted; and Langton himself, though he owed his elevation to an encroachment of the Romish see, was no sooner established in his high office than he became jealous of the privilege annexed to it, and formed attachments with the country subjected to his jurisdiction.  These causes, though they opened slowly the eyes of men, failed not to produce their effect; they set bounds to the usurpations of the papacy; the tide first stopped, and then turned against the sovereign Pontiff; and it is otherwise inconceivable how that age, so prone to superstition, and so sunk in ignorance, or rather so devoted to a spurious erudition, could have escaped falling into an absolute and total slavery under the court of Rome.

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 two thousand knights, besides their retainers and inferior persons without number.  Elated with their power, they 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.