Born at Oxford, he was the fifth son of King Henry II of England and Eleanor of Aquitaine, and was always his father's favourite son, though, being the youngest, he could expect no inheritance (hence his nickname, "Lackland"). In 1189, he married Isabel, daughter of the Earl of Gloucester. (She is given several alternative names by history, including Hawise (or Avice), Joan, and Eleanor.) They had no children, and John had their marriage annulled on the grounds of consanguinity, some time before or shortly after his accession to the throne, which took place on April 6, 1199. (She then married Hubert de Burgh.)
Before his accession, John had already acquired a reputation for treachery, having conspired sometimes with and sometimes against his elder brothers, Henry, Geoffrey and Richard. During Richard's absence on crusade, John attempted to overthrow his designated regent, despite having been forbidden by his brother to leave France. This was one reason the older legend of Hereward the Wake was updated to King Richard's reign, with "Prince John" as the ultimate villain and the hero now called "Robin Hood". However, on his return to England in 1194, Richard forgave John and named him as his heir.
On Richard's death, John was not universally recognised as king. His young nephew, Arthur of Brittany, the posthumous son of his brother Geoffrey, was regarded by some as the rightful heir, and John eventually disposed of him around 1203, thus adding to his reputation for ruthlessness. In the meantime, he had married, on August 24, 1200, Isabella of Angouleme, who was twenty years his junior. Isabella eventually produced five children, including two sons (Henry and Richard). At around this time John also married off his illegitimate daughter, Joan, to the Welsh prince, Llywelyn the Great, building an alliance in the hope of keeping peace within England and Wales so that he would be free to recover his French lands. The French king had declared most of these forfeit in 1204, leaving John only Gascony in the southwest.
As far as the administration of his kingdom went, John was quite a just and enlightened ruler, but he won the disapproval of the barons by taxing them. Particularly unpopular was the tax known as scutage, which was a penalty for those who failed to supply military resources. He also fell out with the Pope by rejecting Stephen Langton, the official candidate for the position of Archbishop of Canterbury. This resulted in John's being excommunicated. He was having much the same kind of dispute with the church as his father had had before him. Unfortunately, his excommunication was an encouragement to his political rivals to rise against him. Having successfully put down the Welsh uprising of 1211, he turned his attentions back to his overseas interests and regained the approval of Pope Innocent III.
The European wars culminated in a defeat which forced the king to accept an unfavourable peace with France. This finally turned the barons against him, and he met their leaders at Runnymede, near London, on June 15, 1215, to sign the Great Charter called, in Latin, Magna Carta. Because it had been signed under duress, however, John felt entitled to break it as soon as hostilities had ceased. It was the following year that John, retreating from a threatened French invasion, crossed the marshy area known as The Wash in East Anglia and lost his most valuable treasures, including the Crown Jewels, as a result of the unexpected incoming tide. This was a terrible blow, which affected his health and state of mind, and he succumbed to dysentery, dying on October 18 or October 19, 1216, at Newark in Lincolnshire*, and is buried at Worcester. He was succeeded by his nine-year-old son as King Henry III of England.
- Footnote: Newark is now within the County of Nottinghamshire, close to its long boundary with Lincolnshire.
Was King John illiterate?
For a long time, school children have been taught that King John had to approve the Magna Carta by attaching his seal to it because he could not sign it, being unable to read or write. The textbooks that said that were the same kind that said Christopher Columbus wanted to prove the earth was round. Whether the original authors of these errors knew better and oversimplified because they were writing for children, or whether they had been misinformed themselves, the result was generations of adults who remembered mainly two things about "wicked King John," and both of them wrong. (The other one being that if Robin Hood had not stepped in, Prince John would have embezzled the money raised to ransom King Richard.)
In fact, King John did sign the draft of the Charter that was hammered out in the tent on Charter Island at Runnymede on 15 - 18 June 1215, but it took the clerks and scribes working in the royal offices some time after everyone went home to prepare the final copies, which were then sealed and delivered to the appropriate officials. In those days, legal documents were sealed to make them official, not signed. (Even today, many legal documents are not considered effective without the seal of a notary public or corporate official, and printed legal forms such as deeds say "L.S." next to the signature lines. That stands for the Latin locus signilli ("place of the seal"), signifying that the signer is using a signature as a substitute for a seal.) When William the Conqueror (and his wife) signed the Accord of Winchester (Image) in 1072, for example, they and all the bishops signed with crosses, as illiterate people would later do, but it was because it was the legal practice, not because the bishops could not write their own names.
Henry II had at first intended for his son Prince John to be educated to go into the Church, which would have meant Henry did not have to give him any land, but in 1171 Henry began negotiations to betroth John to the daughter of Count Humbert III of Maurienne-Savoy (who had no son yet and so wanted a son-in-law), and after that there was no more talk of making John a churchman. John's parents were both well educated -- Henry II spoke some half dozen languages, and Eleanor of Aquitaine had attended lectures at what was about to become the University of Paris, in addition to what they had been taught of law and government, religion, and literature -- and John was one of the best educated kings England ever had. Some of the books the records show he read were: De Sacramentis Christianae Fidei by Hugh of St. Victor, Sentences by Peter Lombard, The Treatise of Origen, and a history of England that was probably Robert Wace's Roman de Brut, based on Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae.
King John I of England was born in Oxford, England on December 24, 1164. He was the son of Eleanor of Aquitaine and King Henry II of England. As the youngest of seven children, and in accordance with traditional English feudal customs, he was not given lands or castles due to his rank of birth. Therefore he lacked power and consequently earned the nickname of “John Lackland.” As a result, John had to take advantage of any opportunity he could to gain the power he possessed. He even supported his infamous brother, Richard the Lionheart against their father, King Henry II, in a struggle for the throne that Richard eventually won.
Richard however, was an absentee monarch, spending much of his time on crusade and this gave John ample time and freedom to commit mischief by attempting to depose Richard and take over the regency of England. Richard would eventually forgive John’s attempts to gain the throne dismissing John as a child who had listened to bad counsel.
Richard I died in 1194 while fighting on French soil. He was accidentally felled by an arrow from one of his own English bowmen. Having no child from his marriage to Berengaria of Navarre, the question of succession was up in the air. The only two legitimate claimants to the British throne were John and his nephew Arthur, Duke of Brittany. John had to move quickly to secure his claim to the throne, and he captured Arthur and imprisoned him for three years. Arthur was murdered reportedly by John’s own hand.
John returned to England and was crowed King on May 17, 1199. He was married to Isabelle of Angouleme and had several children, many illegitimate from his constant dalliances with mistresses. John inherited an England in political, economic, and financial turmoil. However, John was energetic and enthusiastic about making government reforms. He set about restructuring his administration and reforming accounting practices. His main goal was to increase the crown treasury that had been depleted from Richard’s reign due to constant warfare.
John also had another problem that would involve the baronial class. As a result of the two previous king’s frequent absences from England, the English barons basically has unlimited power and freedom to do as they wished. When John began to reform and tighten controls on taxes and fees, the barons resented his monetary policies. John recognized that he had to curb the power of the barons and clergy in order to retain the power of the crown.
John set on a course to generate revenue for the crown by ignoring traditional English feudal customs and levying new taxes and fines at his whim. He would also arbitrarily seize lands, titles, and castles from his nobles for the slightest infractions, making them pay heavy fines in order to regain their lost lands as well as the king’s favor. He would also sell forfeited lands and royal wards and widows to the highest bidder, disregarding age-old feudal customs in the process. As a result, John began to alienate the barons of England and his power began to erode.
John also quarreled with the clergy over retaining the rights of the crown to make ecclesiastic appointments. This would lead to a serious incident involving Pope Innocent III and John.
Upon the death of Hubert Walter, Archbishop of Canterbury, John exercised his right as king to make his own appointment to fill the vacant See of Canterbury. Rome however, had different ideas. Pope Innocent III declared Bishop Stephen of Langton the new Archbishop of Canterbury and John flatly refused his appointment. As a result, England was placed under Interdict and John was excommunicated. John took his vengeful fury out on the monks of Canterbury by expelling them from England. He then set about making life miserable for those who opposed him. He had a fearful temper and a long memory, and his insatiable quest for money and power, combined with his jealous nature, caused irreparable damage to John’s regency and reputation. Revenge became a game for John and he exacted his pound of flesh from those who crossed him at any cost.
Eventually, John found out that King Philip Augustus of France was plotting to invade England. Realizing that he needed money and military aid he decided to turn to the pope as a penitent soul and accept Innocent’s appointment of Langton to the See of Canterbury. John then placed England in the hands of Innocent making England a papal fief and as a result, gained much needed military and financial aid to defend England against her enemies and regain his lost Angevin holdings in France. It would be this very campaign in France that caused the barons to revolt. John asked for military service from his barons who refused to fight on foreign soil. He then levied a heavy tillage on the barons who refused to provide service. John had to hire a mercenary army and while he was away in France, the barons banded together to decide what to do about John’s arbitrary style of rule. They drafted the “Unknown Charter of Liberties” and the “Articles of the Barons” and these documents were actually first drafts of Magna Carta.
John returned from France defeated and bitter. As he realized his barons were plotting against him, he began to fortify his personal holdings and this in turn alarmed the barons. As a result, the barons seized London on May 17, 1215. Recognizing the seriousness of the situation, John agreed to accept an offer by Langton to mediate the dispute between the barons and the crown. A series of meetings were set up at Runnymeade in June of 1215. The barons presented John with Magna Carta on June 15, 1215 and the document was basically a list of grievances the barons had against their king. Magna Carta was never signed and in fact was only a verbal agreement between John and the barons.
Image links
There are no pages that link to this image.
All Wikipedia text
is available under the
terms of the GNU Free Documentation License