A.i). 1212.] JOHN DEPOSED. pliccy. This declaration of tlio liermit was soon spread abroad even to the most remote provinces, so that almost all who heard it put faith in his words as though his prediction fiad been declared from heaven. There were at this time in the kingdom of England many nobles, whose wives and daughters the king had violated to the indignation of their husbands and fathers ; others whom he had by unjust exactions reduced to the extreme of poverty; some whose parents and kindred he had exiled, converting their inheritances to his own uses; thus the said king's enemies were as numerous as his nobles. Therefore at this crisis, on learning that they were absolved from their allegiance to John, they were much pleased, and, if report is to be credited, they sent a paper, sealed with the seals of each of the said nobles, to the king of the French, telling him that he might safely come to England, take possession of the kingdom, and be crowned with all honour and dignity. How sentence of deposition was passed upon king John, About this time Stephen archbishop of Canterbury, and the bishops William of London, and Eustace of Ely, went to Rome and informed the pope of the divers rebellions and enormities perpetrated by the king of England from the time of the interdict up to the present time, by unceasingly laying the hands of rage and cruelty on the holy church in opposition to the Lord; and they therefore humbly supplicated the pope in his pious compassion to assist the church of England, now labouring as it were in its last extremities. The pope then being deeply grieved for the desolation of the kingdom of England, by the advice of his cardinals, bishops, and other wise men, definitively decreed that John king of England should be deposed from the throne of that kingdom, and that another, more worthy than he, to be chosen by the pope, should succeed him. In pursuance of this his decree, our lord the pope wrote to the most potent Philip, king ol' the French, ordering him, in remission of all his faults, to undertake this business, and declaring that, after he bad expelled the English king from the throne of that kingdom, he and his successors should hold possession of the kingdom of England for ever. Besides this, be wrote to all the nobles knights, and other warlike men throughout thcditler s2