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land. When he realized what had happened, he flew into a rage that drew force from every humilation he had swallowed with seeming patience since the Welsh rebellion. Abandoning all pretense at legal procedures, John ordered those men who remained in camp to march on and attack those who had left. |
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"God help me," Geoffrey wrote bitterly, "which shall I betraymy father or my dear father-by-marriage, my loving begetter or my kind lord? We have reasoned and wept and prayed upon our knees. My father has been struck across the face by the king for only begging that those who left be sent warning and ordered to return and explain themselves. We are all mad here and far too close to you for my liking. Close your gates, my love, and do not open them even if Ian or I should come begging shelter." |
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Joanna's voice faltered and her lips trembled so that she had to stop reading aloud for a moment. The two women clung together, shivering with horror. This was the ultimate disaster, worse than either had feared. Whatever terrors they had conjured up, it had never occurred to them that their husbands could be pitted against each other. |
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In the end the inconceivable did not happen. John had trusted too much to the pope's acceptance of the idea that any act against the king was an act against the Church. The pope was far away, and Stephen Langton was by no means of the same persuasion as his master on this subject. He was a northerner himself and, in spite of being a long-time resident in France and Italy, he was well aware of the notions current in the north. Langton hurried to intercept the king at Northampton and warned him that the arbitrary punishment of the barons without due process of law would violate the oath he had taken when he was absolved. He had sworn then "to judge his subjects according to the just decrees of his courts" and not according to his own whim or temper. |
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This interference was not well received. The king turned angrily on the man he had humbly called "father" only a month earlier and told him he had no business to meddle in the secular affairs of the country, that the king's authority |
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