History of the English People, Volume II | Page 8

the influence of the
Friars told most directly, were steady supporters of freedom throughout
the Barons' Wars.
[Sidenote: Its Political Influence]
Politically indeed the teaching of the schoolmen was of immense value,
for it set on a religious basis and gave an intellectual form to the
constitutional theory of the relations between king and people which
was slowly emerging from the struggle with the Crown. In assuming
the responsibility of a Christian king to God for the good government
of his realm, in surrounding the pledges whether of ruler or ruled with
religious sanctions, the mediæval Church entered its protest against any
personal despotism. The schoolmen pushed further still to the doctrine
of a contract between king and people; and their trenchant logic made
short work of the royal claims to irresponsible power and
unquestioning obedience. "He who would be in truth a king," ran a
poem which embodies their teaching at this time in pungent verse--"he
is a 'free king' indeed if he rightly rule himself and his realm. All things
are lawful to him for the government of his realm, but nothing is lawful
to him for its destruction. It is one thing to rule according to a king's
duty, another to destroy a kingdom by resisting the law." "Let the
community of the realm advise, and let it be known what the generality,
to whom their laws are best known, think on the matter. They who are
ruled by the laws know those laws best; they who make daily trial of
them are best acquainted with them; and since it is their own affairs
which are at stake they will take the more care and will act with an eye
to their own peace." "It concerns the community to see what sort of
men ought justly to be chosen for the weal of the realm." The
constitutional restrictions on the royal authority, the right of the whole
nation to deliberate and decide on its own affairs and to have a voice in
the selection of the administrators of government, had never been so
clearly stated before. But the importance of the Friar's work lay in this,
that the work of the scholar was supplemented by that of the popular
preacher. The theory of government wrought out in cell and
lecture-room was carried over the length and breadth of the land by the

mendicant brother, begging his way from town to town, chatting with
farmer or housewife at the cottage door, and setting up his portable
pulpit in village green or market-place. His open-air sermons, ranging
from impassioned devotion to coarse story and homely mother wit,
became the journals as well as the homilies of the day; political and
social questions found place in them side by side with spiritual matters;
and the rudest countryman learned his tale of a king's oppression or a
patriot's hopes as he listened to the rambling, passionate, humorous
discourse of the begging friar.
[Sidenote: Henry the Third]
Never had there been more need of such a political education of the
whole people than at the moment we have reached. For the triumph of
the Charter, the constitutional government of Governor and Justiciar,
had rested mainly on the helplessness of the king. As boy or youth,
Henry the Third had bowed to the control of William Marshal or
Langton or Hubert de Burgh. But he was now grown to manhood, and
his character was from this hour to tell on the events of his reign. From
the cruelty, the lust, the impiety of his father the young king was
absolutely free. There was a geniality, a vivacity, a refinement in his
temper which won a personal affection for him even in his worst days
from some who bitterly censured his rule. The Abbey-church of
Westminster, with which he replaced the ruder minster of the Confessor,
remains a monument of his artistic taste. He was a patron and friend of
men of letters, and himself skilled in the "gay science" of the
troubadour. But of the political capacity which was the characteristic of
his house he had little or none. Profuse, changeable, false from sheer
meanness of spirit, impulsive alike in good and ill, unbridled in temper
and tongue, reckless in insult and wit, Henry's delight was in the
display of an empty and prodigal magnificence, his one notion of
government was a dream of arbitrary power. But frivolous as the king's
mood was, he clung with a weak man's obstinacy to a distinct line of
policy; and this was the policy not of Hubert or Langton but of John.
He cherished the hope of recovering his heritage across the sea. He
believed in the absolute power of the Crown; and looked on the pledges
of the Great Charter as promises which force had wrested