[Illustration: KING JOHN SIGNS THE MAGNA CHARTA.]

It was now decided by the royal subjects that John should be still
further restrained, as he had disgraced his nation and soiled his
ermine. So the barons raised an army, took London, and at Runnymede,
June 15, 1215, compelled John to sign the famous Magna Charta, giving
his subjects many additional rights to the use of the climate, and so
forth, which they had not known before.

Among other things the right of trial by his peers was granted to the
freeman; and so, out of the mental and moral chaos and general
strabismus of royal justice, everlasting truth and human rights arose.

Scarcely was the ink dry on Magna Charta, and hardly had the king
returned his tongue to its place after signing the instrument, when he
began to organize an army of foreign soldiers, with which he laid waste
with fire and sword the better part of "Merrie Englande."

But the barons called on Philip, the general salaried Peacemaker
Plenipotentiary, who sent his son Louis with an army to overtake John
and punish him severely. The king was overtaken by the tide and lost all
his luggage, treasure, hat-box, dress-suit case, return ticket, annual
address, shoot-guns, stab-knives, rolling stock, and catapults,
together with a fine flock of battering-rams.

This loss brought on a fever, of which he died, in 1216 A.D., after
eighteen years of reign and wind.

A good execrator could here pause a few weeks and do well.