He agreed to receive Pandulf, the Papal legate; to acknowledge Stephen; make good the damage done to the Church, and, in addition, voluntarily ("of our own good free will and by the common counsel of our barons") surrendered "to God and to the Holy Mother Church of Rome, and to Pope Innocent and his Catholic successors," the whole realm of England and Ireland, "with all rights thereunto appertaining, to receive them back and hold them thenceforth as a feudatory of God and the Roman Church." He swore fealty to the Pope for both realms, and promised a yearly tribute of 1,000 marks. This abject submission to the Pope was a matter of policy. John cared nothing for any appearance of personal or national humiliation, and as he had broken faith with all in England, so, if it should suit his purpose, would he as readily break faith with Rome. But the immediate advantage of having the Pope for his protector seemed considerable. "For when once he had put himself under apostolical protection and made his realms a part of the patrimony of St. Peter, there was not in the Roman world a sovereign who durst attack him or would invade his lands, in such awe was Pope Innocent held above all his predecessors for many years past."[10] Stephen landed in June, 1213, and at Winchester John was formally absolved and the coronation oaths were renewed. It was very soon seen what manner of man the Archbishop was. In August a great gathering of the barons took place in St. Paul's, and there Langton recited the coronation charter of Henry I., and told all those assembled that these rights and liberties were to be recovered; and "the barons swore they would fight for these liberties, even unto death if it were needful, and the Archbishop promised that he would help with all his might." The weakness of the barons hitherto had been their want of cohesion, their endless personal feuds, and the lack of any feeling of national responsibility. Langton laboured to create a national party and to win recognition of law and justice for all in England; and the Great Charter was the issue of his work. The state of things was intolerable. The whole administration of justice was corrupt. The decisions of the King's courts were as arbitrary as the methods employed to enforce sentence. Free men were arrested, evicted, exiled, and outlawed without even legal warrant or the semblance of a fair trial. All the machinery of government set up by the Norman kings, and developed under Henry II., had, in John's hands, become a mere instrument of despotic extortion, to be used against anybody and everybody, from earl to villein, who could be fleeced by the King's servants.