John’s point of view--only if the friendship could be made something much more close and indissoluble than the ordinary official relation between the Pope and every Christian sovereign. He must bind the Pope to his personal interest by some special tie of such a nature that the interest of the Papacy itself would prevent Innocent from casting it off or breaking it. For a sovereign of John’s character no additional sacrifice would be involved in the device which he actually employed for this purpose. To outward personal humiliation of any kind John was absolutely indifferent, when there was any advantage to be gained by undergoing it. To any humiliation which the Crown or the nation might suffer in his person, he was indifferent under all circumstances. His plighted faith he had never had a moment’s hesitation in breaking, whether it were sworn to his father, his brother, his allies, or his people, and which he would break with equal facility when sworn to the supreme Pontiff; moreover, he took the precaution of inserting in his charter a saving clause which he could easily have interpreted, had occasion ever arisen, so as to reduce the whole transaction to a mere empty form.[805] There seems, in short, to be good reason for believing that John’s homage to the Pope was offered without any pressure from Rome, and on grounds of deliberate policy.[806] How far the credit or discredit--whichever it be--of that policy belongs to John is, however, a question not easily solved. Two years later, the English barons seem to have claimed the credit for themselves. We are told that they besought the Pope, “as he was lord of England,” to take their part against John, “since he well knew that they had at his command boldly opposed the king in behalf of the Church’s liberty, and that the king had granted an annual revenue to Rome, and bestowed other honours on the Pope and the Roman Church, not of his own accord, but only out of fear and under compulsion from them.”[807] This, if correctly reported, is a distinct assertion by the malcontent barons that they had deliberately chosen to set up the Pope as temporal overlord of their country, and that it was pressure from them which had compelled John to do him homage as such. The truth probably lies half-way between this version and that of the king. Whether the “common counsel of the barons” was given spontaneously to John and accepted by him, or whether it was merely a response to a proposal which he had laid before them, there can be little doubt that each party adopted the scheme in the hope of turning it to account against the other party. That on the side of the barons this hope proved utterly delusive, while on the side of John it was completely realized, simply shows once more how far less than a match was the collective sagacity of the barons for the single-handed dexterity of the king.