Here and there the barons had struck against some act of personal injury, and the northern barons had been conspicuous in their resentment, refusing to follow John as their liege lord in his expeditions to France. But there was neither cohesion nor any sense of national injury amongst the barons until Stephen Langton, with a full sense of the responsibility laid on the successor of Lanfranc and Anselm, of Theobald and Thomas, took the lead, and by strong, courageous effort sought to end for all time in England such tyranny as the country had endured under John’s rule. To Langton this was no mere struggle between a despotic king and a set of turbulent nobles. It was a struggle to win recognition of law for _all_ men, and to restore some measure of justice and the enjoyment of fair liberty throughout the land. The people had neither spokesman nor champion, and no man heeded their wrongs save Langton. More than 150 years were to pass before John Ball and Wat Tyler would appear at the head of a peasant army in revolt. In the reign of John, yeomen, peasant and artizan were dumb. It was Langton who saw that the barons fighting for their own rights could be made to fight for all England. In November the barons came together at St. Edmundsbury, and in the abbey church “they swore on the high altar that if the king sought to evade their demand for the laws and liberties of the charter of King Henry I., they would make war upon him and withdraw from fealty to him till he should by a charter furnished with his seal confirm to them all that they demanded. They also agreed that after Christmas they would go all together to the king and ask him for a confirmation of these liberties, and that meanwhile they would so provide themselves with horses and arms that if the king should seek to break his oath, they might, by seizing his castles, compel him to make satisfaction. And when these things were done every man returned to his own home.” (Roger of Wendover.)