on his death-bed, bequeathed the kingdom to him, but this nobody believes.

At any rate, John obtained possession of the crown, and he reigned many years. His reign, however, was a very troubled one. His title, indeed, after Arthur's death, was no longer disputed, but he was greatly abhorred and hated for his cruelties and crimes, and at length nearly all the barons of his realm banded themselves together against him, with the view of reducing his power as king within more reasonable bounds.

KING JOHN.

The king fought these rebels, as he called them, for some time, but he was continually beaten, and finally compelled to yield to them. They wrote out their demands in a full and formal manner upon parchment, and compelled the king to sign it. This document was called the Magna Charta, which means the great charter. The signing and delivering this deed is considered one of the most important events in English history. It was the first great covenant that was made between the kings and the people of England, and the stipulations of it have been considered binding to this day, so that it is, in some sense, the original basis and foundation of the civil rights which the British people now enjoy.

The place of assembly where King John came out to sign this covenant was a broad and beautiful meadow on the banks of the Thames, not far from Windsor Castle. The name of the field is Runny Mead. The word mead is a contraction for meadow.

The act of once signing such a compact as this was, however, not sufficient, it seems, to bind the English kings. There were a great many disputes and contests about it afterward between the kings and the barons, as the kings, one after another, refused to adhere to the agreement made by John in their name, on the ground, perhaps, of the deed not being a voluntary one on his part. He was forced to sign it, they said, because the barons were stronger than he was. Of course, when the kings thought that they, in their turn, were stronger than the barons, they were very apt to violate the agreement. One of the kings on one occasion obtained a dispensation from the Pope, absolving him from all obligation to fulfill this compact.

In consequence of this want of good faith on the part of the kings, there arose continually new quarrels, and sometimes new civil wars, between the kings and the barons. In these contests the barons were usually successful in the end, and then they always insisted on the vanquished monarch's ratifying or signing the Magna Charta anew. It is said that in this way it was confirmed and re-established not less than thirty times in the course of four or five reigns, and thus it became at last the settled and unquestioned law of the land. The power of the kings of England has been restricted and controlled by its provisions ever since.

All this took place in the reigns preceding the accession of Richard II.

Besides these contests with the barons, the kings of those times were often engaged in contentions with the people; but the people, having no means of combining together or otherwise organizing their resistance, were almost always compelled to submit. They were often oppressed and maltreated in the most cruel manner. The great object of the government seems to have been to extort money from them in every possible way, and to this end taxes and imposts were levied upon them to such an extent as to leave them enough only for bare subsistence. The most cruel means were often resorted to to compel the payment of these taxes. The unhappy Jews were the special subjects of these extortions. The Jews in Europe were at this time generally excluded from almost every kind of business except buying and selling movable property, and lending money; but by these means many of them became very rich, and their property was of such a nature that it could be easily concealed. This led to a great many cases of cruelty in the treatment of them by the government. The government pretended often that they were richer than they really were, while they themselves pretended that they were poorer than they were, and the government resorted to the most lawless and atrocious measures sometimes to compel them to pay. The following extract from one of the historians of the time gives an example of this cruelty, and, at the same time, furnishes the reader with a specimen of the quaint and curious style of composition and orthography in which the chronicles of those days are written.

The poor Jews were entirely at the mercy of the king in these cases, for they were so much hated and despised by the Christian people of the land that nobody was disposed to defend them, either by word or deed, whatever injustice or cruelty they might suffer. The most absurd and injurious charges were made against them by common rumor, and were generally believed, for there was nobody to defend them. There was a story, for example, that they were accustomed every year to crucify a Christian child. One year a mother, having missed her child, searched every where for him, and at length found him dead in the bottom of a well. It was recollected that a short time before the child disappeared he had been seen playing with some Jewish children before the door of a house where a certain Jew lived, called John Lexinton. The story was immediately circulated that this child had been taken by the Jews and crucified. It was supposed, of course, that John Lexinton was intimately connected with the crime. He was immediately seized by the officers, and he was so terrified by their threats and denunciations that he promised to confess every thing if they would spare his life. This they engaged to do, and he accordingly made what he called his confession. In consequence of this confession a hundred and two Jews were apprehended, and carried to London and