“Why speak you not?” asked John, sternly. “I want to hear what you would counsel me to do.”
“Sire,” replied Neville, frankly, “I was thinking that, if any quality would stand you in good stead in the present situation of affairs, it would be that which the Arabs say is the price of all felicity--I mean patience.”
John’s brow darkened, and his lip curled. It was not the advice which he wished his minister to give, and, being against the grain, was not well taken.
It was Friday, the 15th of June, 1215, a week before Midsummer Eve, or the vigil of John the Baptist, and the sun shone fair on Runnymede--a large green meadow on the margin of the Thames, midway between Windsor and Staines--when thither came King John and the Anglo-Norman barons (the King from Windsor, and the barons from Staines) to bring their fierce dispute to a close, and give peace and security to England, by putting their signatures and the great seal of the realm to that important document since known as Magna Charta, and regarded with veneration as the foundation of England’s laws and liberties.
Runnymede was not unworthy of being the scene of a ceremony so memorable in the annals of a nation which clung tenaciously to its old history and traditions, and which forced even the iron-handed, iron-clad, and strong-willed heirs of the Norman conquerors--the grandsons of the men who had fought under the banner of Duke William at Hastings--to treat the history and traditions with respect, and demand a restoration of the laws of Edward the Confessor, the last of the old royal line. In earlier days, when the Saxon kings had a palace at Old Windsor, Runnymede had been celebrated as a place where the people assembled to discuss public questions of great moment; and where now cattle graze and wild flowers spring, grew a gigantic oak, under the shade of which Alfred or Athelstane, perhaps, had occupied a throne of stone, and sat in royal state, when rallying their subjects to their standard to resist the inroads of the Danes.
It was around this oak, which the English regarded with a superstitious veneration, the origin of which might have been traced back to the time when the Druids performed their mysterious rites, and sacrificed and feasted under the shelter of its spreading branches, that the king and the barons met--John, who was attired in a gorgeous style, being attended by the Earl of Pembroke, Hugh Neville, Keeper of the Great Seal, the papal legate and eight bishops, and seventy knights--Fitzwalter and his confederates, who were in chain-mail, with long swords at their sides, having an array of fighting men which fully proved the mighty feudal power they possessed, and one sight of which must have convinced their sovereign that, on that day at least, they were masters, and that he was there simply to do their bidding.