Langton by Wragby

David Crook (left) and David Carpenter (right) at
Langton by Wragby

David Carpenter was in Lincoln last week for the Lincoln Record Society’s conference on Magna Carta. On the evening of 7 April, delegates attended a special service in the church at Langton by Wragby, the village where Stephen Langton – the archbishop of Canterbury who helped to negotiate the Charter in 1215 – grew up. David gave an address at the service and David Crook presented to the church a facsimile of the charter held at the British Library that proves Langton’s association with the site. In the photo here, Davids Carpenter and Crook are standing beside the moat of the manor house where Langton grew up.

The Penitent King: John submits to archbishop Langton, July 1213

King David submits to the reprimand of the prophet Nathan
(BL Royal MS. 2 B VII f.58)

On 16 July 1213, Stephen Langton, archbishop of Canterbury, returned to England. This was a momentous occasion. King John had refused to accept Langton’s appointment as archbishop of Canterbury, precipitating an angry dispute between pope and king and provoking Innocent III to impose an interdict on England. For the past five years, most of the senior clergy had been in exile, while in England the sacraments were forbidden. Langton’s arrival in England didn't signal the beginning of a new era but, rather, the hope that one might be on the horizon. The archbishop had come to make peace.

Langton, together with the bishops of London, Ely, Lincoln and Hereford, met King John at Winchester on 20 July. The choice of time and place was significant. Langton had chosen to cross the Channel on a Tuesday – a special day for anyone who, like Langton, was devoted to St Thomas Becket, because it was that day that famously hosted so many of the important events of Becket’s life. To those watching in 1213, Langton’s return might have looked like an ultimatum to King John: choose the path of your father, Henry II, and let this conflict degenerate or choose the path of peace. It was also important that the meeting took place at Winchester. The feast-day of the city’s patron, St Swithun, fell on 15 July, meaning that the city would still be celebrating. Winchester Cathedral was also the coronation church of the Anglo-Saxon kings, and it was St Edward the Confessor who was held up as the model of good kingship for his Angevin successors.   

The scene, as the bishops met the king, was a dramatic one. King John fell down at the feet of the bishops, weeping profusely, and implored them to have mercy on him and the kingdom of England. The bishops lifted him from the ground and led him into the cathedral. In the chapter house, they sung the fiftieth psalm:

‘Have mercy on me, O God, [and] blot out my iniquity... For I know my iniquity, and my sin is always before me... Deliver me from blood, O God, thou God of my salvation: and my tongue shall extol thy justice.’

John swore, with his hand on the Holy Gospels, to defend the Church and her clergy, to destroy iniquitous laws and revive the good laws of his ancestors, especially those of King Edward, and to provide justice for all his people. He also promised to restore Church property that he had seized during the interdict, and offered fealty to Pope Innocent and his successors. The bishops absolved him and then, after Mass had been celebrated, they all sat down with the assembled magnates to enjoy a feast.

With the benefit of hindsight, we know that John hadn't been reformed in spirit as the bishops had hoped, and that his relationship with his subjects was to deteriorate to the point of civil war.  So it's easy to question John’s sincerity in 1213: was he really sorry for his actions? were his tears genuine? But his meeting with the bishops has to be seen in the context of two, related, traditions. The first was an ancient and widely-used practice that allowed warring groups to make peace through ritual submission, by which one party would publicly humble himself and beg for forgiveness.  The second was a long-held custom that allowed archbishops of Canterbury and their colleagues to reprimand the king when he behaved immorally or illegally. This special power was drawn from the Old Testament prophets, like Samuel and Nathan, who had chastised kings for their wayward behaviour. By such an act, it was hoped, just and equitable rule could be restored to the kingdom and civil war could be prevented.

In this respect, the bishops’ actions in 1213 ultimately failed. But reconciliation with the Church was a vital step towards any future settlement. It allowed Langton and his colleagues to act as peacemakers in 1215, and to help negotiate the terms of peace between the king and his subjects that were embodied in the Charter of Runnymede. Thus the penitence of a king not otherwise known for his humility has a pivotal place in the story of Magna Carta. 

Stephen Langton and Magna Carta

19th C bronze showing Langton overseeing King John's
issue of Magna Carta

In an article for English Historical Review in 2011, David Carpenter (co-investigator of the Magna Carta Project) set out to reassess the role played by Stephen Langton (archbishop of Canterbury 1207-1226) in the drafting of Magna Carta in 1215, as well as in the Charter's subsequent survival. 

'After King John’s settlement with the pope in 1213, his archbishop of Canterbury, Stephen Langton, was at last able to enter England. That he then played a major part in national affairs is undisputed. What is disputed is his precise contribution to Magna Carta. At one extreme, historians have ascribed to Langton all that was best in the charter: the way it asserts the fundamental principle that the ruler is subject to the law, and the way too it reaches out to a wide constituency and is not just a selfish baronial document. At the other extreme, led by J.C. Holt, they have argued that Langton contributed little to the charter’s fundamentals, and was a mediator and moderator rather than an originator. These divergent views reflect contemporary testimony. In the (often challenged) account of the St Albans abbey chronicler, Roger of Wendover, Langton seems very much the fons et origo of Magna Carta. In the accounts of Ralph of Coggeshall and the Barnwell chronicle, in contrast, he is far less prominent and appears essentially as an intermediary between the sides. This article will seek to reveal a Langtonian role in the shaping and survival of the charter very different from that found in previous accounts; it will relate that role to the archbishop’s doubts about the validity of the 1215 charter, doubts only removed in the final and definitive version of 1225; and, lastly, using evidence hitherto ignored, it will expose the seeming hypocrisy of Langton’s conduct when set against the principles of the charter and the canons of his own academic thought.'

Read a full version of David's article here, via the Oxford Journals website (subscription required)

23 March 1208: an interdict is laid on England

Church bells were silent until
1214 (BL, Royal 14 C VIII, f.94)

On 23 March 1208, English bishops under orders from Pope Innocent III laid a general interdict on England and Wales. The sacraments were forbidden to the entire kingdom: no-one was allowed to attend Mass, receive extreme unction or bury their deceased relatives in consecrated ground with religious ceremony. Only the baptism of infants and the confession of the dying were permitted. This state lasted for over six years, until the interdict was lifted, on 2 July 1214.

The pope resorted to this drastic measure because King John had refused to accept the pope’s candidate for the post of archbishop of Canterbury, Stephen Langton. Langton was a famed scholar of the Bible, who had spent some years at the schools of Paris studying theology. Innocent, who had also studied at Paris, had known Langton for twenty years and the two shared an attachment to St Thomas Becket. When a dispute arose between King John and the monks of Canterbury, in 1206, about who should succeed to the most senior Church office in England, Innocent took the opportunity to establish his own candidate in the see. But a university professor, who had been living abroad for years in the kingdom of John’s rival, was not the sort of archbishop that the king of England had in mind, nor was John impressed by how the pope had undermined the royal right to influence the election. John refused to budge, forcing Innocent’s hand.

What impact did the interdict have on the people of England? The account of Ralph of Coggeshall, the Cistercian chronicler who recorded the results of an interdict placed on France in 1200, suggests that the effects would have been deeply felt:

‘O what a horrible and miserable spectacle it was to see in every city the sealed doors of the churches, Christians shut out from entry as though they were dogs, the cessation of divine office, the withholding of the sacrament of the body and blood of our Lord, the people no longer flocking to the famous celebrations of saints days, the bodies of the dead not given to burial according to Christian rites, of whom the stink infected the air and the horrible sight filled with horror the minds of the living’

Indeed, Ralph’s response to the interdict laid on England was so extreme that, after John’s settlement with the pope, he removed it from his chronicle.

The punishment did little, though, to sway King John. With senior churchmen forced into exile, the king was able to take the profits from Church lands. John pocketed the tidy sum of £100,000 – less than half of which he was ever to pay back. In the end, it was the threat of rebellion at home and invasion from France that forced John to bow to the pope and accept Langton as archbishop of Canterbury.  And the interdict had done nothing to soften John’s reputation for impiety, nor to discourage the king’s subjects from joking, ‘How far that stag has grown without ever attending Mass!’