Prince John, having got possession of his fortresses, was about to usurp the throne, and pressing him immediately to return from the Holy Land. He seems to have convinced Richard that he himself had acted as a good and loyal subject, and that his struggle with the Barons was only in the support of the royal authority. To his honour it is recorded that, hearing of Richard's captivity in Germany, he repaired thither, and obtained permission to visit, in prison, that generous master, whom the universe seemed to have abandoned.* Richard received him as a personal friend persecuted in his service, and employed him in repelling the unfounded charge brought against him as a pretext for his detention, and in conducting the negotiations for his liberation. As soon as Longchamp had been subdued and exiled by John and the Barons, the office of Chancellor was restored to Geoffrey Plantagenet, now fully installed in his archbishopric, and he held it till Richard's return to England, when he was finally deprived of it. He experienced clemency to which he was not much entitled, considering his perfidy and breach of oath, and he seems to have employed himself in the discharge of his ecclesiastical duties during the remainder of this reign. It will be convenient that I should here relate what further is known of him as Ex-Chancellor. After the death A of Richard he was no longer suffered to live in [ A. D. [ A. D. 1199. tranquillity. John seized all his goods, and the profits of his archbishopric, and Geoffrey raised a strong party against him. truce was established between them; but this was of short duration. John requiring for his wars, without the consent of the great council of the nation, the tenth shilling of what every body was worth, this tax was resisted as illegal by Geoffrey, who pronounced sentence of excommunication on all within his diocese who should pay it. John vowed a bitter revenge, and was proceeding to such extremities against him that he went into voluntary exile, and died at a distance from his native land before the memorable æra when the Barons at Runnymede obtained security against unlawful taxation, and the tyranny of John was effectually restrained. But we must now return back to Longchamp. No sooner was Richard again in possession of the royal authority, than, disregarding all the charges which were brought against his vicegerent of abuse of authority, he re-instated him in the office of Chancellor. and restored to him all his authority. In 1194 a parliament was called at Nottingham. When it was opened, Hubert, Archbishop of Canterbury, sat on the King's right * Thus the Chancellor is supposed to have serenaded the King : "O Richard, O mon Roy, L'univers t'abandonne, Mais pour moy je garde ma foy, hand, and Geoffrey Archbishop of York, on his left. But Longchamp, the Chancellor, was present, and although only ranking according to the precedence of his see, he guided all their deliberations. The session was about the usual length, viz. four days. On the first day sentence was passed on several rebellious Barons and sheriffs, who were deprived of their castles and jurisdictions. On the second day the King pronounced judgment against his brother John, who was absent, for having, contrary to his oath of fealty, usurped his castles, and entered into a conspiracy with the King of France against him—when he was ordered to appear by a certain day under pain of banishment. On the third day a supply of two shillings on every ploughland was voted to the King; and the last day was spent in hearing and redressing grievances. and resolving that to nullify the King's submission to the Emperor when in captivity, he should be crowned again. This ceremony was actually performed at Winchester. But Longchamp, the Chancellor, had soon to extricate the King from a new perplexity. A calumny was propagated, and generally believed, that while in the East he had murdered the Marquis of Montferrat.* This charge was invented by Philip, King of France, Richard's great rival, with whom he was now at open war, and much damped the zeal of his supporters, both in England and on the Continent. All protestations and reasonable proofs of innocence being vain, the Chancellor forged a supposed autograph letter, professing to have been written by "The Old man of the Mountain," to the Duke of Austria, in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin characters, — of which the following is a translation : "To Leopold, Duke of Austria, and to all princes and people of the Christian faith, greeting. Whereas many Kings in countries beyond the seas impute to Richard, King and Lord of England, the death of the Marquis, I swear by the God who reigns eternally. and by the law which we follow, that King Richard had no participation in this murder. Done at our castle of Messina, and sealed with our seal, Mid-September, in the year 1503 after Alexander.” This extraordinary missive was formally communicated by the Chancellor to foreign sovereigns, and he likewise sent copies of it to the monks who were known to be employed in compiling the chronicles of the time. Its manifest falsity was not remarked in an age when criticism and a knowledge of eastern manners had made little progress in the north of Europe. It had a sensible effect in weakening the imputations of the King of France among his own subjects, and it greatly encouraged those of the King of England to fight for a master whose character was thus proved to be immaculate. Longchamp soon after resigned the Great Seal; but Richard * See the tale of the "Talisman" by Sir Thomas Scott-Sir Robert Comyn's History of the Western Empire,” ii, 265. made as much use of his counsel as ever to the day of his death. He was, in 1197, together with the [A. D. 1196. Bishop of Durham, sent on an embassy to the Pope, and while still in the public employment, he died at Poictiers in the beginning of the following year. He certainly was a man of great energy and ability, and, tried by the standard of honour and morality which prevailed in the 12th century, he probably is not to be very severely condemned either as a Chancellor or a Bishop. * Richard appointed as his successor, EUSTACE, Bishop of Elyt† who had previously been Vice-chancellor. In this reign we have the earlist distinct evidence of the ex istence of the officer connected with the Great Seal, called indifferently Custos Sigilli," "Sigillifer," and "Vice-cancellarius;" but in all probability the office was long before well known. It has been usual to consider the Great Seal as inseparable from the person of an existing Chancellor, and that the Keeper of the Great Seal, from the remotest antiquity, exercised all the functions of the Chancellor under another title; but, as we shall see, for many ages to come there were often concurrently a Chancellor and Keeper of the Greal Seal. When the King went abroad, sometimes the Chancellor accompanied him with the Great Seal, another seal being delivered to a Vice-chancellor, to be used for the sealing of writs and despatch of ordinary business. At other times the Chancellor remained at home, with the custody of the Great Seal, and a Vice-chancellor attended the King with another seal while he was abroad, and acted as Secretary of State. While the King remained in England, if the Chancellor went abroad, a Vice-chancellor was always appointed to hold the Seal in his absence; and while the King and the Chancellor were both in England, it often happened that, from the sickness of the Chancellor, or his absence from Court on public or private business, or from his being ignorant of law or absorbed in politics, a Vice-chancellor was appointed, who, as deputy, transacted all affairs connected with the Great Seal, the patronage and profits still belonging to the Chancellor. Longchamp, while he held the office of Chancellor, always had Vice-chancellors acting under him, who were intrusted with the custody of the Great Seal. The first of these was John de Alencon, Archdeacon of Lisieux. Then came Roger Malus Catulus. or Malchien. Hoveden relates, that while Longchamp, the Chancellor, remained in England to administer the government, Malchien, as Vice-chancellor, attended Richard in Sicily, on his way to Palestine, and was afterwards drowned near Cyprus, having the Great Seal suspended round his neck. It is said that the King. * See 1 Parl. Hist. 7. † According to Spelmam, Eustace was made Chancellor in 1190, Gloss. 100.. and according to Dugdale, in 1198.-Or. Jur. 5. This occurrence induced Lord Coke to say, that the form of conferring the office on his return, ordered all charters that had been sealed with it to be resealed with another seal, bearing a different impression, made to replace it, upon the suggestion that the lost seal might have been misapplied, and therefore would not properly authenticate the royal grants, this being in reality a device to draw money to his exhausted exchequer. Subsequently, one "Master Bennet" was Vice-chancellor; but he must have been appointed in England by John and the rebellious Barons, or by their Chancellor, for we find him anathematised by Longchamp, who, as Bishop of Ely and Pope's legate, could call in the censures of the Church to aid his temporal authority. In a list of those excommunicated for disobedience to the Chancellor, who represented the King, we find "Etiam denuncicamus excommunicatum Magistrum Benedictum, qui sigillum Domini Regis contra statuta Regis et Regni et contra prohibitionem nostram, ferre præsumpsit."* When Longchamp was again Chancellor, he had for his Vicechancellor one Eustace, styled "Sigillifer," Dean of Salisbury, who succeeded him as Chancellor, and as Bishop of Ely. Eustace likewise had a Vice-chancellor, Warine, Prior of Loches. Eustace and Warine remained in their respective offices without any thing memorable occurring to them, till the Lion-hearted Richard, who had gained such remown by his prodigies of valour in the East, fell ingloriously before the little castle of Chalos; and, as might have been expected, they were immediately dismissed by his successor, who had been at constant enmity with him during his life, and even hated his memory. We have one remarkable juridical monument of his reign- the laws of Oleron, the foundation of the maritime jurisprudence of modern Europe, and cited as authority at the present day on both sides of the Atlantic. The Code is said to have been framed by Richard himself, when on a visit to his continental dominions, but was probably the work of Vice-chancellor Malchien, or some lawyer who had accompanied him.† of Chancellor was by suspending the Great Seal round the neck of the person appointed.-4 Inst. 87. *Hoved. P. ii. p. 707. n. 30. † Some are now disposed to ascribe the Law of Oleron to a different author and to a later age. Luder's Essay; Hallam's Middle Ages; Penny Cyclopædia, tit. Oleron, Laws of. But I do not think that their arguments outweigh the record in the Tower of London, and the authority of Coke, Selden, Hale, Prynne, and Blackstone. No doubt the Code is a collection of rules and customs which had gradually sprung up, but I see no sufficient reason to doubt that it was compiled and published to the word under the authority of Richard. CHAPTER VI. OF THE CHANCELLORS DURING THE REIGN OF KING JOHN. We have now materials for an exact history of the Great Seal. From the beginning of the reign of King John to the present time, it has seldom been placed in the custo[A. D. 1199. dy of any person, even for a single day, without a memorandum of the transfer being entered in records still extant. This, the most worthless of English sovereigns, having usurped the throne in derogation of the rights of Arthur, the unfortunate son of Geoffrey his elder brother, was anxious to prop up his defective title by the support of the Church; and, with that view. he appointed as his Chancellor WALTER HUBERT, Archbishop of Canterbury, who had been for a short time Chief Justiciar, during the stormy period of the preceding reign.* While he held this office, the monks of Canterbury had complained to the Pope that, contrary to the canons of the church, their archbishop was a judge in causes of blood, and that, being involved in secular affairs, he neglected his ecclesiastical duties. The Pope, therefore, sent a paternal remonstrance to the King, requiring him to remove the Archbishop from all lay employments and, for the future, not to admit him, or any priest, into any secular office. Hubert, however, without hesitation, accepted the offer of the Chancellorship from John, and was in the habit of boasting of its power and emoluments. It is related that, when he was stating how much this office was to be preferred to any other, he was thus rebuked by Hugh Bardolfe, an unlettered baron," My Lord, with your good leave, if you would well consider the great power and dignity of your spiritual function, you would not undertake the yoke of lay servitude." The office was too lucrative to be abandoned for such a gibe, and the Archbishop, on the contrary, immediately obtained a charter from the King which, under pretence of regulating, increased the fees to be taken by him and his officers.‡ * Spel. Gloss. 100. Or. Jur. 5. + Hoveden, 451. The reader may be amused by a translation of this curious document. "Ordinance of the King concerning the Fees of the Great Seal of England. John, by the grace of God King of England, Lord of Ireland, Duke of Normandy, Aquitain, and Earl of Anjou, to his archbishops, bishops, abbots, earls. barons, justiciaries, sheriffs, provosts, and all bailiffs and faithful people, greeting. Forasmuch as divine mercy has called us to the government of the kingdom of England, which belongs to us of hereditary right, and under the unanimous assent and favour of the clergy and people, has most mercifully exalted us to be king; we desire with great desire, as indeed we ought, to provide fully for the liberty and freedom of the clergy and people; and for the honour of God and the holy church, and the peace and tranquillity of the clergy and people, to entirely abolish bad |