King John
Article abstract: King John’s poor statesmanship was primarily responsible for the downfall of the Angevin Empire and the decreased power of the English monarch, as reflected in the Magna Carta.
Early Life
John was the youngest son of King Henry II and his queen, Eleanor of Aquitaine, younger by eleven years than Prince Henry, by nine than Richard “Lion Heart,” by eight than Geoffrey. At five feet, five inches tall, he never measured up to his tall elder brothers. The effigy on his tomb at Worcester Cathedral, carved fifteen years after his death, shows a resemblance to those of Henry II and Richard, but with better defined, bonier features. Unlike their father, John and Richard wore mustaches and trimmed beards; John’s hair covered his ears in the thirteenth century style. No physical description survives from John’s lifetime, but fuller archives than for any previous reign preserve many details of his life-style. Even as a child, he had a reputation for luxury rather than knightly valor; as king, he used sugar and spices, wore a dressing gown (a novelty), collected jewels, and read books.
Prejudice against his enemies and the Angevin technique of ruling through fear do not suffice to explain John’s reputation for malignancy. He may not have murdered his nephew Arthur of Brittany in a drunken rage, but it would have been in character. In 1170, partly because of Henry II’s infidelities, Queen Eleanor withdrew to Aquitaine, her own property, to plot against him with Richard, Geoffrey, and her first husband, King Louis VII of France. Richard, already designated heir of Aquitaine, and Geoffrey, married to the heiress of Brittany, were to gain from Prince Henry’s Continental inheritance. Though involved in these conspiracies, John remained with his father and so gained a reputation for deceit.
Henry II called his youngest son “Lackland,” in reference to his small expectations as the youngest heir, and in 1185 he knighted John and sent him to take control of Ireland. John, however, showed himself a paltry statesman and warrior and alienated both Irish and English chieftains. He cut an even more despicable figure early in Richard’s reign (1189-1199). Their brothers’ deaths and Richard’s childlessness now left the succession in dispute between John and Geoffrey’s son Arthur. Before departing on the Third Crusade, Richard granted extensive properties to John, but he recognized Arthur as heir. John challenged Richard’s regent, William Longchamp, Bishop of Ely, and plotted with Philip II, “Augustus,” King of France, to establish his own control. He bowed to the strong will of Dowager Queen Eleanor, however, and even paid to ransom Richard, who had been imprisoned in Germany on his way home from the Crusade. During the last half of Richard’s reign, John fought well and loyally for his brother, and on his deathbed, the king recognized John as heir instead of Arthur.
Life’s Work
John’s underlying problem remained the difficulty of controlling by feudal government the Angevin Empire, stretching from Scotland to Spain. His sovereignty over his French territories depended on the whims of innumerable barons, each of whom could decide not to accept John as his feudal lord. Duchess Constance, mother of twelve-year-old Arthur, gained the support of Philip Augustus for her son’s cause. Dowager Queen Eleanor, however, strengthened John’s position by making him Duke of Aquitaine; Richard had served merely as her coregent. English and Norman barons preferred John to a Breton. William des Roches, the most powerful baron of Anjou and commander of Breton forces, went over to John’s side. The Treaty of Le Goulet on May 22, 1200, settled the succession. Philip and Arthur recognized John’s...
(This entire section contains 2019 words.)
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rights, and John accepted Philip as his overlord in France.
The unstable provinces of Maine, Anjou, and Tourraine, connecting Normandy on the north with Aquitaine, proved the weakest link in John’s empire. To the west lay Arthur’s Brittany; to the east, Philip’s home territory. A strong line of fortresses protected the northern frontier, but the lands of Aquitaine continued the fragmented middle zone. To bolster his strength here, in 1201 John married the young Isabelle of Angoulême, who had been betrothed to Hugh of Lusignan. (The pope annulled his first marriage, to Isabelle of Gloucester). The political advantage of the match could only have enhanced John’s passion for the young girl. John soon turned his advantage into liability. Rather than compensate Hugh for his loss, as was the custom, he challenged him (with professional duelists) for plotting against Richard. The Lusignan family responded by leading the barons of the middle zone into revolt. John demonstrated remarkable heroism, rescuing his mother, besieged at Mirebeau, and, assisted by William des Roches, capturing a party of rebel leaders including his cousin Arthur of Brittany.
Again, however, John’s domineering personality spoiled his triumph. William had demanded a voice in Arthur’s fate, and when he was denied, he turned against John. Arthur’s mysterious disappearance branded his uncle a villain; afterward, Philip would rally French barons by the demand that John free Arthur.
John lost Normandy for various reasons, but it proved the watershed of John’s reign. Himself a conspirator, he now feared hostile conspiracy everywhere. He became cautious in warfare and relied on younger knights, which offended Norman magnates, and on mercenary troops, who plundered Norman populations. The admirable frontier defenses proved vulnerable; the surrender of Château Gaillard in April, 1204, brought the collapse of John’s control over Normandy.
A conflict with Pope Innocent III compounded John’s problems. In 1205, the Canterbury monks asserted their independence by electing their prior as archbishop. Then, under royal pressure, they elected the king’s secretary as archbishop. Thus, two delegations in Rome sought papal confirmation. When a runoff election produced a tie vote, Innocent appointed Cardinal Stephen Langton, an Englishman who was serving in the papal chancery. John rejected the appointment. An eight-year contest of wills followed. At first, Innocent had little success; neither interdict nor excommunication seemed to change John’s position. Only in 1213, with the pope about to depose him and sponsor Philip Augustus’ crusade against him, did John give in. He surrendered dramatically, accepting Langton and turning England and Ireland over to the pope as fiefs. This tribute gained for him Innocent’s firm support.
From the first, John had showed more interest than any predecessor in traveling throughout England, participating in local courts. Barons resented this interference, and John, because of his firsthand acquaintance with local government and because of the desertions he had suffered in Normandy, distrusted the barons. Yet during his quarrel with the pope, the king strengthened his position in England. He not only definitively established royal supremacy in Ireland, brought King William “the Lion” of Scotland to heel, and pacified Wales, but also developed a naval defense system. In 1212, at Damme, an English fleet crippled a French invasion fleet of seventeen hundred ships. In 1214, with British frontiers secured, at peace with Rome, John sought revenge for his defeat a decade earlier. He and his nephew, the German emperor Otto of Brunswick, planned a combined war operation. Though John had success at Poitou, Otto’s decisive defeat by Philip Augustus at Bouvines frustrated their strategy, and John returned to England with nothing gained.
A triumph in 1214 might have brightened John’s tarnished reputation. English barons had paid heavily for his wars: eleven scutages in sixteen years, compared to three in Richard’s ten-year reign, and many barons had lost estates in Normandy. Reconciliation with the Church brought home troublesome exiles, and Langton proved a capable spokesman for the barons. Faced with unified baronial opposition, John signed the Great Charter, or Magna Carta, and, at least temporarily, agreed that even the king was subordinate to the “law of the land.”
In 1215, England’s barons divided: London, the north, and some of the west in revolt; the Midlands and south still supporting the king. Though many baronial leaders, such as Robert Fitzwalter, were merely self-seeking, the men who framed the Charter, Langton and William Marshal, both recently at odds with John, now were committed royalists. The Charter emerged, therefore, a compromise document, aiming for efficient functioning of the king’s courts, not for destruction of his power. It limited the king by law, but only according to specific grievances and not in principle. The irrelevance of any compromise to the forces contending in 1215-1216 soon became clear. After signing the Charter at Runnymede on June 19, 1215, John appealed to the pope to annul it. Innocent complied: He decreed excommunicate anyone who revolted against John and suspended Langton from office. On the other side, Fitzwalter’s “Army of God” never disbanded. Yet, although two-thirds of the barons now accepted Prince Louis, son of Philip Augustus, as king of England, one-third still remained irrevocably loyal. John established himself in the north, but misfortune ended his reign. A storm hurt his new fleet, enabling the French to land, and he died of dysentery while campaigning against them.
Summary
King John’s reign marks a turning point in English historiography. Richard I’s reputation lives on, glorified by legend and chronicle. John’s rule was documented by an unprecedented supply of government documents and the writings of his clerical enemies, such as Roger of Wendover. If the loss of Normandy hurt John’s reputation, it forced his vassals to choose to be English or Norman-French and thus began the great expansion of the French national monarchy, which ended only with the Hundred Years’ War. John’s legend belongs to the seventeenth century when historians such as Edward Coke misread the Great Charter as a monument to traditional English freedom against Continental despotism. In fact, only in its last clause did the Charter reject monarchical control, establishing a council of barons to guarantee the king’s adherence. Periodically, in various transmutations, this conciliar ideal kept England in disorder for two hundred years and helped bring about its final defeat by France. The rallying of barons behind nine-year-old Henry III stands as a fitting epitaph for his father’s preservation of the monarchical center of English government.
Bibliography
Holt, James Clarke. Magna Carta. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1965. Updates the classic study by William Sharp McKechnie (1914). Concentrates on the political context of 1215 but follows through to the Charter’s influence in later centuries.
Holt, James Clarke. The Northerners: A Study in the Reign of King John. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1961. A detailed look at politics from 1212 to 1216 and at the formation of something like a political party based on geography and opposition to royal policies. Like all recent scholars, Holt does not treat John merely as a villain and the barons as heroes.
Kelly, Amy. Eleanor of Aquitaine and the Four Kings. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1950. Interpretive biography of King John’s mother, a strong influence on his reign until her death in 1204. The kings are Louis VII of France, Henry II, Richard I, and John.
Painter, Sidney. The Reign of King John. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1949. The best history of the whole reign. Unlike Holt, Painter analyzes the baronial group through family connections, property claims, and personalities.
Painter, Sidney. William Marshal, Knight-Errant, Baron and Regent of England. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1933. Painter describes the British perspective, as opposed to Eleanor’s and Langton’s Continental view. Marshal served before and after John’s reign.
Powicke, Frederick Maurice. The Loss of Normandy, 1189-1204. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1913. Powicke’s work offers background in Richard’s reign and points up John’s problems and weaknesses.
Powicke, Frederick Maurice. Stephen Langton. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1928. At the heart of the controversies of the reign, Langton had his own viewpoint on church-state relations.
Turner, Ralph Vernon. The King and His Courts: The Role of John and Henry III in Administration and Justice, 1199-1240. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1968. A constitutional history showing John’s best facet.
Warren, Wilfred Lewis. King John. London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1961. The best biography, offering balanced judgment not only on John but also on various scholarly puzzles of his reign.