(_b_) _Its Securities._--Such were the provisions of this truly national act, which Englishmen were for ages engaged in maintaining and developing. The immediate question was how to secure what had been gained. The first thing necessary for this purpose was to make the courts of law the arbitrators between the king and his subjects. In a series of articles it was declared that the sworn testimony of a man's peers should be used whenever fines or penalties were imposed, and this insistence on the employment of the jury system as it then existed was emphasised by the strong words to which John placed his seal: "No freeman may be taken, or imprisoned, or disseised, or outlawed, or banished, or in any way destroyed, nor will we go against him, or send against him, except by the lawful judgment of his peers, or by the law of the land. To none will we sell or deny or delay right or justice." It was a good security if it could be maintained, but it would avail nothing against a king who was willing and able to use force to set up the old tyranny once more. In the first place John must dismiss all his foreign mercenaries. So little, however, was John trusted that it was thought necessary in the second place to establish a body of twenty-five--twenty-four barons and the Mayor of London--which was to guard against any attempt of the king to break his word. If John infringed upon any of the articles of the Charter the twenty-five, with the assistance of the whole community of the kingdom, had the right of distraining upon the king's lands till enough was obtained to make up the loss to the person who had suffered wrong. In other words, there was to be a permanent organisation for making war upon the king. 17. =War between John and the Barons. 1215--1216.=--John waited for the moment of vengeance. Not only did he refuse to send his mercenaries away, but he sent to the Continent for large reinforcements. Pope Innocent declared the barons to be wicked rebels, and released John from his oath to the Great Charter. War soon broke out. John's mercenaries were too strong for the barons, and in the beginning of =1216= almost all England with the exception of London had been overrun by them. Though the Pope laid London under an interdict, neither the citizens nor the barons paid any attention to it. They sent to Louis, the eldest son of Philip of France, to invite him to come and be their king in John's stead. Louis was married to John's niece, and might thus be counted as a member of the English royal family. The time had not yet come when a man who spoke French was regarded as quite a foreigner amongst the English barons. On May 21, =1216=, Louis landed with an army in the Isle of Thanet. [Illustration: A silver penny of John, struck at Dublin.]