and destroyed the castle of Boutavant. It is clear that the details of the trial did not interest them. Just as they do not speak of the dilatory pleas put forward by John, of which Ralph of Coggeshall informs us,2 they have omitted to relate that a condemnation by default had been pronounced; was not this condemnation a matter of course, and why should the court of Philip Augustus have abstained from passing this sentence the necessity of which was self-evident? The event was so natural that there was hardly need to describe it.

As for the letter addressed by Innocent III. to John Lackland on the 31st of October, 1203, a year and a half

Innocent III's letter proves it

after these events and seven months after the death of Arthur, it appears to us not only to be reconcilable with the statements of Ralph of Coggeshall, but to absolutely corroborate them, and this document, in which Miss Norgate seeks her most decisive arguments, appears to be the one which definitively rebuts her thesis.

3

In this celebrated letter, the Pope communicates to the king of England the reasons which Philip Augustus has placed before the Holy See, "per suas literas et nuntios,' to justify his conduct. Evidently, Innocent III., being impartial, must have faithfully reproduced these reasons. Now the justification put forward by the king of France, as the Pope summarizes it, confirms the narrative of Ralph de Coggeshall almost word for word, even on the precise point under discussion in Miss Norgate's article;

1. This was a castle which John had promised to deliver up as a pledge of his appearance at the court of Philip Augustus; he had refused to fulfil his promise (Guillaume le Breton, ed Delaborde, i, pp. 207, 209, 210). The destruction of the castle of Boutavant was therefore a logical consequence of the condemnation; and we may even say that it implies it. Ralph of Coggeshall says with the precision which distinguishes his whole narrative: "Hoc igitur curiae suae judicium rex Philippus gratanter acceptans et approbans, coadunato exercitu, confestim invasit castellum Butavant" (Ed. Stevenson, p. 136).

2. Guillaume le Breton gives them only a single word, "post multos defectus."

3. Potthast, Regesta Pontificorum Romanorum, No. 2013. Miss Norgate dates it by mistake the 29th October.

and it is curious that that scholar was not struck by the singular agreement of the two documents. In both we see that it is on an appeal of vassals that Philip Augustus acted; that he first repeatedly required King John to make peace with his vassals; that, not being able to get any satisfaction, he cited him before his court, with his barons' concurrence. From this point the two narratives differ somewhat; Ralph of Coggeshall insists on the privilege alleged by the King of England, who claimed to have the right not to appear at Paris, while Philip Augustus, in the letter summarized by Innocent III., insists on his attempts at accommodation. But Miss Norgate failed to see, and I do not know whether anybody has yet observed, that the bull of Innocent III. contains a clear allusion to the condemnation: Although the king of France, writes the Pope, had defied you (diffidasset) by the counsel of his barons and his men and war had broken out, he sent you again four of his knights, charged to ascertain whether you were willing to repair the wrongs committed towards him, and to cause you to know that in the contrary case he would henceforth conclude alliance against you with your men, wherever he could. And you have The "defiance" avoided those who sought you. proves previous The term diffidare has here evidently its full and formal sense: it is the solemn rupture of the feudal relationship; now, as M. Luchaire says in his Manuel d'Institutions,1 "defiance can only take place between suzerain and vassal after the suzerain has summoned his feudatory to appear before his court and has had him condemned there, either present or by default." The moment that Philip declares he has defied John Lackland there is proof that the court has previously given its sentence.2

sentence

1. Manuel d'Institutions françaises (1892), p. 230.

2. The pope adds that Philip Augustus acknowledges having, after these events, received the homage of certain vassals of the king of England, "quod contumaciae tuae asserit imputandum."

H

It is not surprising that Philip Augustus did not give the Pope circumstantial details respecting the condemnation by default and the text of the

The letter

to the Norman bishops

sentence.

It was not his interest to do this

in a letter in which he strove above everything to convince the Pope of his conciliatory spirit; and he contented himself therefore with telling the Pope that by the counsel of his barons and his men, de baronum et hominum suorum consilio, he had broken the feudal tie which bound him to John, diffidasset. This is why, in his letter of the 7th of March, 1205, to the Norman bishops 1 a letter on which Miss Norgate has no right to found an argument, Innocent III., ill-informed upon the trial of 1202, maintains an attitude of reserve. Philip Augustus is requiring the bishops to swear fealty to him because he has acquired Normandy upon a sentence of his court: asserens quod, justitia praeeunte, per sententiam curiae suae Normanniam acquisivit; the Pope, consulted by the bishops as to what they ought to do, cannot give them an answer in default of sufficient information: quia vero nec de jure, nec de consuetudine nobis constat, utpote qui causam, modum et ordinem, aliasque circumstantias ignoramus. He does not say that he has never heard of this condemnation of 1202; but he is ignorant of its precise tenour and the circumstances, and he is not well acquainted with the custom of France.

The letter of the 31st October, 1203, is in short the most important text which we possess for the solution of the problem of the two trials of John Lackland. By the absolute silence it maintains respecting the death of Arthur it proves convincingly that seven months after John's alleged condemnation by the peers of France as the murderer of his nephew, nothing was known at Rome either of the death of the young prince or of the 1, Potthast, op cit., No. 2434.

condemnation which was its supposed consequence. By the summary which it gives of the apology which the King of France had made for his conduct, it confirms the assertions of the very exact Ralph de Coggeshall.

M. Bémont's conclusions then still hold the field. John Lackland was not condemned to death by the court of France as murderer of Arthur in 1203, but he was condemned in 1202 by default, to the loss of his French fief, for disobedience and refusal of service to his

M. Bémont's conclusions hold their ground

suzerain.

The appeal of the Poitevin barons, a fine opportunity for preparing annexations, eagerly seized by Philip Augustus, was thus the indirect cause of the Constitutional separation of Normandy and England; an importance of the question event of immense importance for the English constitution as well as for French policy; for the monarchy of the Plantagenets was suddenly detached from a province from which it had derived a part of its institutions and its administrative staff, and, on the other hand, as Stubbs says, the king found himself face to face with the English people."

History of "unknown

THERE exists in our Trésor des Chartes a list of concessions of King John " to his barons, which was printed as early as 1863 by Teulet, in his Layettes.1 This document had completely charter" escaped scholars working upon English history until the moment at which it was "discovered by Mr. Round in a copy forming part of the Rymer Transcripts, and published by him in the English It is celebrated now under the Historical Review.2 name, inaccurate it will be seen, which Mr. Round has given to it of the "Unknown Charter of Liberties." As this so-called "Unknown Charter of English Liberties," certainly interesting, has only been studied since 1893, as Stubbs does not quote a single line of it, as he did not insert it in the last edition of his Select Charters, and as it is not to be found correctly transcribed in any of the books which French libraries usually possess, we reproduce it here.3

Copy of the charter of Henry I

The manuscript, the writing of which is French and dates from the first quarter of the thirteenth century, contains, first, a copy of the charter of Henry I., preceded by these words: "Charta quam Henricus, communi baronum consilio rex coronatus, eisdem et prelatis regni Angliae 1. Layettes du Trésor des Chartes, publ. par A. Teulet, i, 1863, p. 423.

2. J. H. Round, An unknown Charter of Liberties, English Histor. Review, viii, 1893, pp. 288 sqq.

3. We shall follow the text given by Mr. MacKechnie, Magna Carta, pp. 569-570.