nobles. The Normans who had settled in the island became sharply
divided from those who remained in France, and Saxons and
English-Normans became firmly welded into a united race. This is what
England owes to John.

Moreover his tyranny and falsehood led the lower classes in his realm
to unite with the nobility against him. Thus the deepset class
distinction of feudal times between lord and serf, the owner and the
owned, became less marked in England than elsewhere in Europe. The
vast threefold struggle which had everywhere to be fought out between
kings, nobles, and commons was in England decided against the kings by
the union of the other two.

Their combined strength forced from John the Magna Charta, or Great
Charter, the foundation of modern government in England, though the
celebrated document granted no new privilege to lord or citizen or
peasant. It only confirmed on parchment the rights which John would
have denied them. So this also, the corner-stone of liberty, the
beginning of constitutional progress, does England owe to her
oppressor. Never perhaps has any man devoted to evil done unwittingly
so much of good as he.[6]

Thus the English nation grew united, while the French provinces were
brought into closer dependence on their own king. In fact, Philip
Augustus, by clever use now of the commons, now of the nobles,
succeeded in dominating both. Following his example his successors
managed for many centuries to remain "lords of France" with a security
and absoluteness of power which no English king, no German emperor,
was ever again to attain.