Among the witnesses to that signature was Pandulph, the haughty legate. He saw it was a deadly blow to the papal power in England. Innocent was soon in possession of the startling news. His infallibility shuddered with alarm; he raged, he swore, as his manner was; he knit his brow, as the historian says, and broke out into the language of astonishment. "What! have the barons of England presumed to dethrone a king who has taken the cross, and placed himself under the protection of the apostolic See? Do they transfer to others the patrimony of the Church of Rome? By St. Peter we cannot leave such a crime unpunished." The great charter was declared null and void, the King forbidden under pain of excommunication to respect the oath which he had taken or the liberties he had confirmed. But the spiritual censures, the annulling edicts, were now received by the barons with utter disregard.
War broke out; and to the still deeper disgrace of John, who had no army of his own, he brought over from the continent bands of adventurers and freebooters promising them the estates of the English barons as rewards of valor. At the head of these mercenary troops, with the aid of two warlike bishops, Worcester and Norwich, he traversed the whole country from the channel to the Forth. He let loose his ferocious hordes like wild beasts upon his unhappy realm. The barons had made no preparations for war, not suspecting the introduction of a foreign army. Here again we see the depths of Satan; he is ever ready to give to another what power he has over the nations, provided he to whom he gives it subjects himself entirely to his will. "All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me." (Matt. 4:8, 9.) It was much the same to John whether he became a vassal of the pope, Mahomet, or Satan. For a short time he was undisputed master of the field. The whole land was wasted with fire and sword. Plunder, murder, torture, raged without control. Nothing was sacred, nothing was safe. Nobles and peasants fled with their wives and families when it was possible. The blood-stained assassins of the King and the pope passed through the country with the sword in one hand and the torch in the other; when a cry rose to heaven, "Oh, unhappy England! Oh, unhappy country! May God have mercy on us, and may His judgments fall on the King and the pope."
The judgment was not long delayed. Neither heaven nor earth could tolerate their cruelties and tyrannies any longer. The pope died on July 16th, 1216, at the age of fifty-five; just a year, a month, and a day, after the signing of Magna Charta. John survived him only a few months. He died on the 12th of October, 1216, in the forty-ninth year of his age, and the seventeenth of his reign. It is supposed that he died from fright accompanied by drunkenness. As he was returning from one of his scenes of slaughter, the royal wagons were crossing the sands of the Wash, from Norfolk into Lincolnshire, when the tide rose suddenly and all sank in the abyss. The accident filled the King with terror; he felt as if the earth was about to open and swallow him alive. He drank copiously of cider, which, with fear and remorse, closed the days of the meanest and most despicable tyrant that has ever sat on the throne of England. The names of other kings, whose vices are black enough to call forth the execrations of posterity, are often surrounded with such a halo of talent, either in the senate or the field, as to mitigate the severity of the sentence. But King John dies: his character stands before us unredeemed by one solitary virtue.
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