John was not of a character to resist the temptation of having the life of his rival in his hands. All historians are as fully agreed that he murdered his nephew as they differ in the means by which he accomplished that crime. But the report was soon spread abroad, variously heightened in the circumstances by the obscurity of the fact, which left all men at liberty to imagine and invent, and excited all those sentiments of pity and indignation which a very young prince of great hopes, cruelly murdered by his uncle, naturally inspire. Philip had never missed an occasion of endeavoring to ruin the King of England: and having now acquired an opportunity of accomplishing that by justice which he had in vain sought by ambition, he filled every place with complaints of the cruelty of John, whom, as a vassal to the crown of France, the king accused of the murder of another vassal, and summoned him to Paris to be tried by his peers. It was by no means consistent either with the dignity or safety of John to appear to this summons. He had the argument of kings to justify what he had done. But as in all great crimes there is something of a latent weakness, and in a vicious caution something material is ever neglected, John, satisfied with removing his rival, took no thought about his enemy; but whilst he saw himself sentenced for non-appearance in the Court of Peers, whilst he saw the King of France entering Normandy with a vast army in consequence of this sentence, and place after place, castle after castle, falling before him, he passed his time at Rouen in the profoundest tranquillity, indulging himself in indolent amusements, and satisfied with vain threatenings and boasts, which only added greater shame to his inactivity. The English barons who had attended him in this expedition, disaffected from the beginning, and now wearied with being so long witnesses to the ignominy of their sovereign, retired to their own country, and there spread the report of his unaccountable sloth and cowardice. John quickly followed them; and returning into his kingdom, polluted with the charge of so heavy a crime, and disgraced by so many follies, instead of aiming by popular acts to reestablish his character, he exacted a seventh of their movables from the barons, on pretence that they had deserted his service. He laid the same imposition on the clergy, without giving himself the trouble of seeking for a pretext. He made no proper use of these great supplies, but saw the great city of Rouen, always faithful to its sovereigns, and now exerting the most strenuous efforts in his favor, obliged at length to surrender, without the least attempt to relieve it Thus the whole Duchy of Normandy, originally acquired by the valor of his ancestors, and the source from which the greatness of his family had been derived, after being supported against all shocks for three hundred years, was torn forever from the stock of Rollo, and reunited to the crown of France.