If, however, this conflict gives an honourable prominence to the sterner qualities of Innocent, its sequel no less illustrates the weakness which seemed inseparable from the Papal policy, even when it was embodied in a lofty character. Pandolpho behaved so wantonly in resettling the clergy that he presently fell foul of the high-minded Langton: John behaved with a ferocity which drove nobles and commoners to the step of rebellion. Yet Innocent maintained his mischievous Legate against Langton, and laid a Papal malediction on the just aspirations of the people. He rebuked the barons for their "nefarious presumption" in taking arms against a vassal of the Roman See; he denounced Magna Charta as a devil-inspired document, and forbade "his vassal" to accede to its unjust demands. He excommunicated the barons when they refused to lay down their arms, and suspended Langton when that prelate refused, on the ground that it was dictated by false representations, to promulgate his sentence. When the barons offered the crown to Louis, son of Philip of France, he issued an anathema against Louis; and in 1216 he issued a sentence of excommunication against Philip himself for encouraging his son. He died before his sombre use of his spiritual weapons, in a carnal cause, was completed. He had, within ten years, raised Papal power in England to its supreme height and then dealt it a blow from which it would never recover. It is futile to plead that he was ill informed on the situation. He knew John, and he knew Langton; he ought to have known Pandolpho. In point of fact, there is no reason to think that he was radically misinformed. His whole action is plainly inspired by the interest, as he conceived it, of the Papacy.[250] I must dismiss very briefly his relations with other Christian countries. Philip of France had, like John of England, discarded his wife and married a woman he loved. But the Papal microscope refused, in his case, to discover the remote affinity which, Philip said, made his first marriage void, and an interdict was laid on his kingdom. The terrified priests and people tore Philip from the arms of Agnes de Meran, the mother of three of his children, and forced him to submit. Only under the later pressure of his conflicts with Otto and John did Innocent discover that there was sufficient _prima facie_ evidence to spend several years in negotiation about a divorce, and, by an extraordinary use of his high powers, he declared the children of Agnes legitimate.