Chapter 2
John was in Normandy when he heard of his brother’s death – or perhaps in Brittany. According to the Life of St Hugh, which tells the story of Hugh of Avalon, the saintly bishop of Lincoln, John was in Brittany with his nephew, Arthur. Bishop Hugh was travelling to meet with King Richard at the time, and so may be well-placed to know John’s whereabouts. If true, this would add credence to the accusations that John was yet again plotting against his brother, with Arthur and the king of France.1 Having received a messenger with the news of Richard’s death, John headed for Chinon in Anjou to secure the Treasury; it was at Chinon that he was reunited with his mother, who had ridden there from Richard’s deathbed. Philip Augustus and Arthur were not idle and, having heard of Richard’s death, moved to advance Arthur’s own claims to the Angevin lands. Philip took Evreux as Arthur progressed towards Le Mans, John escaping the city just before his nephew’s arrival. Arthur paid homage to Philip Augustus for Anjou, Maine and Touraine, now lost to John.
John headed north and was welcomed in Normandy, despite their fractious history during Richard’s reign. He was invested as Duke of Normandy in Rouen Cathedral on 25 April, with Walter of Coutances ‘placing a coronet worked with golden roses on the new duke’s head.’2 In the meantime, having heard reports of increasing lawlessness in England, William Marshal and Hubert Walter were despatched there to keep the peace and to receive the oaths of loyalty from the barons and prelates. The time between the death of one king and coronation of the next was always an uneasy period; a new regime invariably brought uncertainty and, quite possibly, a change in fortunes for some. Magnates had started strengthening their fortifications and gathering their men. Many wanted to make their oaths conditional on the king accepting their rights but had to settle for a promise that John would at least give them a hearing.3 John then led a punitive expedition into Anjou, to punish the disloyalty of Le Mans, as his mother did similar in other areas of the region; a demonstration of Angevin might. John and Eleanor then went their separate ways, with Eleanor heading south to secure her own Aquitaine, and John departing for England and his coronation at Westminster Abbey on 27 May, two days after he arrived in England:
On Ascension Day 1199 John, under a canopy held by four barons, was led in procession into Westminster Abbey. On his knees before the high altar he swore, as his brother had ten years earlier, a triple coronation oath: to observe peace, honour and reverence towards god and the Church all the days of his life; to do good justice and equity to the people entrusted with his care; to keep good laws and destroy bad laws and evil customs that had been introduced into the land.4
John was then stripped to his underclothes and anointed with holy oil on his head, chest and hands, before being dressed in royal robes, crowned, given the sceptre and virge (a rod of office) and seated on his throne.5 The ceremony was followed by Mass before John was led out of the abbey to his coronation banquet. One cloud presented itself at John’s coronation, and that was the ambassadors from Scotland, who informed him that King William the Lion would recognise John as king, if John returned the earldom of Northumbria. John offered to meet the king of Scots at Northampton ten days later to discuss the situation. However, King William failed to appear, but sent more ambassadors who issued John with an ultimatum: return Northumbria or William would take it by force. John, however, was keen to get back to Normandy, still under threat from Philip Augustus, and so left William de Stuteville to deal with the defence of the north. On 20 June 1199 he sailed back to Normandy with ‘a mighty English host’.6
John’s strength in Normandy lay in the alliances forged by his brother, Richard, before his death. Thanks to Richard’s help, John’s nephew, Otto of Brunswick was now Holy Roman Emperor, and ready to support his uncle against France. In an assembly at Rouen, held in August 1199, fifteen French counts, led by Flanders and Boulogne, pledged to support John. It was in August, too, that John and Philip met face-to-face on the border between their lands. Philip complained that John had not paid him homage for the French lands held by the English king, he demanded the Vexin and that John relinquish Anjou, Maine and Touraine to Arthur. Anjou, Maine and Touraine were at the centre of the vast Angevin empire and relinquishing them was never an option. According to Gervase of Canterbury, John, with his mighty army and imposing collection of allies ‘made up his mind to resist the French king like a man, and to fight manfully for the peace of his country.’7
By September, John was winning the war. William des Roches, Arthur’s seneschal in Anjou, offered to defect to John. He was bitter that Philip Augustus had destroyed the Angevin fortress of Ballon after capturing it from John, rather than handing it to Arthur. This high-profile defection was followed by the submission of Arthur himself, he and his mother met John at Le Mans. However, they received a warning that the king was planning to arrest and imprison them, and fled Le Mans in the dead of night, making their way to the French court. Whether the intelligence was true or not, John’s past record of betrayal was obviously enough to sew distrust in the minds of Arthur and his mother and make the threat credible. Soon after, despite a truce with Philip Augustus, John’s coalition collapsed; many of his French allies were preparing to go on crusade and news of his proposed betrayal of Arthur saw more deserting his side.
When the truce ended in January a more permanent peace was agreed, although now balanced heavily in Philip’s favour. John was to cede to Philip the whole of the Vexin and the towns in south-east Normandy that Philip had taken in the wake of Richard’s death. In return, Philip withdrew his support of Arthur, and also persuaded Arthur to withdraw his claims. In addition, Philip recognised John as heir to Anjou, Maine and Touraine while John promised to pay homage to Philip for those territories and Normandy, thus recognising Philip Augustus as his overlord for his French lands. John also granted Philip 30,000 marks (£20,000); he would impose a tax of 3 shillings on each carucate of land in England to make the payment.8 The peace would be sealed with a wedding, that of Philip’s heir Louis with John’s niece, Blanche of Castile. Blanche was the daughter of John’s sister Eleanor and Alfonso VIII, queen and king of Castile. A five-month truce was agreed to give time for the bride to be fetched from Spain. Now in her late seventies, it was John’s mother, Eleanor of Aquitaine, who made the perilous journey across the Pyrenees to select the bride (the choice was originally between Blanche and her sister, Urraca, and it was Eleanor who decided on Blanche) and bring her back to Normandy for the wedding.
Many were satisfied that the war was over, and peace achieved. The chronicler Ralph of Coggeshall praised John as ‘a lover of peace, who intended to live a tranquil life free from wars, understanding how many enemies of the kingdom he faced, and what great misfortunes had befallen his father and brothers and all the kingdom from such wars.’9 However, while the chroniclers, who were invariably monks, were happy at the prospect of peace, John’s more martial subjects thought he had given in too quickly, and it is from this time that he earned the soubriquet ‘Softsword’.
With the truce in place, John returned to England, intending to deal with William the Lion, whose threatened invasion of Northumbria had so far not materialised. John summoned the king of Scots to a meeting at York. William refused to appear, claiming the safe-conduct provided by John was inadequate, and the matter remained unresolved. While in York, however, John was confronted by several Cistercian abbots who, traditionally exempt from taxation, refused to pay the new tax John had imposed to pay King Philip. Ralph of Coggeshall claimed that John ‘wishes to oppress the order with the obligation of the tax.’10 When the abbots refused to pay, John was incensed and ordered that his sheriffs ‘should persecute them, show them no justice in their injuries and lawsuits and not help them in their disputes, but refer everything to the king.’11 Intervention from the archbishop of Canterbury did nothing to placate John, the archbishop ‘reproached the king openly for his great harshness, pronouncing him a persecutor of the Holy Church who presumed to impose such great and so many injustices on these most worthy sons of the Church.’12 The situation remained unresolved as John headed to Normandy once more, having refused a placatory offer of 1,000 marks from the archbishop for being ‘so small’, John ‘crossed the sea, breathing threats and slanders against the disciples of Christ.’13
On 18 May 1200, Philip and John met at the border between the French and Angevin lands. The terms of the January treaty were ratified and four days later, the peace was sealed on the island of Le Goulet, in the middle of the River Seine. John did homage to Philip for his French possessions, Arthur did homage to John for Brittany and Louis and Blanche were married, at Port-Mort, on John’s side of the river as France was at the time under interdict due to Philip’s repudiation of his wife, Ingeborg of Denmark.14
Once the treaty was sealed, John moved south with a large army, to subdue Anjou, Maine and Touraine, the territories that had resisted him for the past year. After a show of force, and taking 150 hostages, he moved further south, into Aquitaine, which had declared for him the previous year, but only after generous concessions had been made to the leading magnates. John now called two of them, the count of Angoulême and viscount of Limoges, to meet with him at the castle of a third, Hugh de Lusignan, Count of La Marche. Hugh and Audemar, Count of Angoulême had been locked in a bitter rivalry for many years, but had recently agreed to put it aside in favour of a marriage between Hugh and Count Audemar’s daughter and heir, Isabelle.
John had divorced Isabella of Gloucester, his wife of ten years, shortly after ascending the throne. He had ensured that Isabella was not crowned with him in 1199 and a year later persuaded the bishops of Normandy to declare the marriage void; this was done with little difficulty, given the dubious legality of the marriage, the archbishop of Canterbury’s objections when John married Isabella, and the lack of papal dispensation. It was also an advantage to John to be rid of an English wife; as king he was now a greater marriage prospect on the international stage and a marriage to a European princess would bring allies and prestige. John was hoping to marry the daughter of the king of Portugal, and in January 1200 he welcomed the Portuguese ambassadors to his court. This idea, however, seems to have fizzled out and by the summer of 1200 John’s marriage plans lay elsewhere – in Angoulême.
The stories of John marrying Isabelle invariably describe a lecherous King John being enchanted by the beauty of 12-year-old Isabelle. However, John’s marriage to Isabelle was a smart political move; it prevented the union of the county of Angoulême with the Lusignan lands, which would have essentially created a powerful political bloc in the middle of Aquitaine. Moreover, it secured the loyalty of Count Audemar, to the English crown, whilst his daughter was queen. Unfortunately, it also served to alienate the powerful Lusignan family and drove Count Hugh into the arms of Philip Augustus of France, which we will explore in more detail in chapter ten. The marriage was celebrated on 24 August at Angoulême and by October the newlyweds were back in England; they were both crowned in Westminster Abbey on 8 October 1200.
The wedding was a pleasant interlude for John, but he was soon back to business. By November he was in Lincoln, meeting with William, King of Scots, who finally paid homage to King John, kneeling before him and pledging eternal fidelity on 22 November. The matter of Northumbria, however, went unresolved despite William raising the subject. John decided it was a discussion for another time. While still in England, John’s dispute with the Cistercian order was also resolved; the abbots were granted an audience where they fell at the king’s feet and begged his forgiveness. Much to their surprise, John was inclined to be charitable, cancelled the oppressive edicts and promised his protection in the future. John even went so far as to promise to build a new Cistercian monastery in England, where he hoped he would eventually be buried.15 The initial crises of his reign all resolved, John and Isabelle celebrated Christmas at Guildford knowing his succession had been secured. Ominously, unbeknownst to the king, the dark clouds arising from his humiliation of Hugh de Lusignan were already gathering over Poitou.
In the early months of 1201, Hugh started causing trouble, attacking John’s castles in Aquitaine. Eleanor of Aquitaine, in retirement at Fontevrault Abbey, wrote to John of the deteriorating situation within her domains. In retaliation, John ordered his officials to seize Hugh de Lusignan’s county of La Marche, and the territories of Hugh’s brother, Ralph, despite the fact he had remained loyal to John and was in England in the king’s service at the time of the unrest. War was averted by the intercession of King Philip II Augustus of France, who met John on the Norman-French border to resolve the issue. John promised to restore the Lusignan lands and to give them justice. John’s idea of justice, however, was to charge the Lusignans with treachery and challenge them to a judicial duel, rather than taking them to court, with the best fighters from his dominions to act as his champions. The Lusignans refused the challenge and appealed to Philip Augustus once again. And so started a year of toing and froing between John and Philip, with John refusing to meet the summons of the king of France. When John failed to appear in Paris by 28 April 1202, he was declared a contumacious vassal and his lands forfeit:
At length the French court assembled and judged that the king of England should be deprived of all lands which he and his predecessors had held from the French king, because they had done scarcely any service owed for a long time, and had refused to obey their lord. King Philip, therefore, gladly accepted and approved of the judgement of his court; he gathered his army and immediately attacked the castle of Boutavant, which had been built by King Richard in Normandy, and razed it to the ground. Then he seized all the land of Hugh de Gournay and all the nearby castles. He took the county and castle of Aumâle, the county of Eu and the whole of that land as far as Arques and met with no resistance.16
At this point, King Philip brought his trump card into play: Arthur of Brittany. Now 16 years old, the French king knighted Arthur, invested him with Anjou, Maine, Touraine and Aquitaine, and betrothed him to his infant daughter, Mary.17 A Plantagenet prince, Arthur was the posthumous son of John’s brother Geoffrey, fourth son of Henry II of England, and Constance of Brittany. Geoffrey had died in a tournament in August 1186 and Arthur was born several months later. Used as a foil against his uncle John, at one point Arthur had been recognised by King Richard as his heir. However, when Richard died in 1199, it was John who took the English throne.
Ever eager to meddle in English affairs, Philip II Augustus sought to use Arthur as a weapon against John. He gave the young duke a small force and sent him south into Aquitaine to advance his claims as the rightful heir to the Angevin Empire. He was besieging his grandmother, Eleanor of Aquitaine, at Mirebeau, just north of Poitiers, when John came to his mother’s aid. Taking Arthur’s forces by surprise, John managed to achieve a substantial victory, capturing Arthur in the process. The young duke was imprisoned, first at Falaise and then at Rouen, where he was secretly murdered at Easter 1204, either on John’s orders or at the king’s own hand, though the former is most likely.
Arthur’s mysterious death certainly did nothing to help John’s reputation, nor his situation in France. By the summer of 1203 King Philip was again on the offensive, besieging Château Gaillard, the castle that had been the pride of Richard the Lionheart, in August. After failing to break the siege with both land and water-borne troops, John sailed for England on 5 December, leaving the magnificent castle to its fate. According to Ralph of Coggeshall:
The constable of Chester was in the castle with many famous knights and sergeants, who for a long time strenuously held the castle against the force of the whole army of the French king. But when they urgently needed food supplies they could resist the enemy no longer. King John, indeed, was unwilling to send troops to the besieged because he always feared the treachery of his men, and in the winter in the month of December he crossed to England leaving all the Normans in great worry and fear.18
Back on English soil John ‘truly oppressed England with many demands for money, hoping to raise a great army and exterminate the forces of King Philip.’19 Château Gaillard fell on 6 March 1204. During Lent, John sent a delegation to Philip to negotiate for peace, including William Marshal and the archbishop of Canterbury. Philip, however, probably suspecting – or knowing – that Arthur was dead, made the young duke of Brittany’s release a condition of any peace settlement: ‘For if Arthur was now discovered to be dead, Philip hoped to marry his sister and thus to gain all her continental possessions. King Philip was unwilling to make peace because he was confident that he would soon possess all the lands of the English king.’20 With John still childless, Arthur’s sister was the king of England’s heir: if Philip married Eleanor, there was a chance he could have it all.
The fall of Château Gaillard had a devastating effect on morale and was the start of a domino-effect of Norman towns opening their gates to Philip, with Rouen capitulating on 24 June 1204. Eleanor of Aquitaine’s death on 1 April 1204 had a similar effect on Poitou, with many Poitevin towns and lords now transferring their homage to Philip; the French king entered Poitiers in triumph in August 1204. To add to John’s woes, his brother-in-law Alfonso VIII, King of Castile, invaded Gascony claiming Henry II had promised it as the dowry of his wife, John’s sister Eleanor, on her mother’s death.21
By the end of 1204 John’s Continental possessions amounted to the ports of the west coast of France, from Bayonne to La Rochelle, and the fortresses of Chinon and Loches.22 Matters were not improved in 1205 when John attempted to mount an expedition to the Continent and recover his losses; he was thwarted by the English barons, whose reluctance to follow him led to the campaign being abandoned. Loches and Chinon surrendered to the French, leaving only the main Gascon towns holding out. Some success was achieved in that the Channel Islands were recovered, and Niort in Poitou. In 1206, John landed at La Rochelle, recovered Saintonge and consolidated his hold on his wife Isabelle’s county of Angoulême, her father having died in 1202. He also managed to drive the last remaining Castilians from Gascony. On hearing that John was sailing with an army, Philip had moved north to defend Normandy, but now headed south, forcing John to abandon his advance on Anjou. A two-year truce was agreed in October, but the great Continental possessions of the Angevin kings were now, effectively, lost forever, with John retaining only Gascony and south-western Poitou out of an empire that had once controlled half of France.23
The loss of Normandy and his vast Continental empire meant that John could concentrate his energies on England, in a way that no king had done since the time of the Norman Conquest of 1066. The next five years saw John raising revenue from taxes and keeping a heavy hand on the administration of the country. His efforts to recover debts and aggressive form of government would see him alienating many of his barons and push the country, inexorably, towards the political crisis that would culminate in Magna Carta. In 1207 he levied a thirteenth, a tax at the rate of 1 shilling raising £57,425, more than twice the usual annual revenue. In the same year he moved against the earl of Leicester, depriving him of his lands for non-payment of debt. In 1208 the lands of William de Braose, once high in royal favour, were confiscated, ostensibly for nonpayment of debts, but we will look into this more in the next chapter. In 1210 a tallage on the Jews raised 66,000 marks; the tallage became increasingly unpopular even outside the Jewish community, as John put pressure on those who were indebted to the Jews to pay back what they owed, so that he could be paid. Annual royal revenues rose dramatically after 1209, so that by 1212 it is estimated that John had 200,000 marks in coin stored in his treasuries at Bristol, Corfe and elsewhere.24
The first crisis following the loss of Normandy was John’s dispute with the pope, Innocent III. As with most rulers of the era, John wanted to have control of church appointments, especially of senior bishops and archbishops. In England, especially, the king’s authority over the church was strong. In 1205 John had arranged the election of Peter des Roches as bishop of Winchester. Following the death of Hubert Walter, Archbishop of Canterbury, the pope annulled the election of John de Gray, bishop of Norwich and John’s candidate as his replacement, as being uncanonical. In his stead, in July 1205, the monks at Canterbury elected the pope’s candidate, Stephen Langton, as their new archbishop. The pope had sanctioned the election and written to John for his approval. John, however, refused to give his consent. Langton’s years in Paris making him unacceptable to the king. Nevertheless, Langton was consecrated archbishop in Rome in June 1207 and on 15 July, John expelled the monks from Canterbury. This act saw an exodus to the Continent of many senior church leaders:
The bishop of London, the bishop of Ely, the bishop of Hereford, the bishop of Chester, the archbishop of York, who was the king’s own brother, and numerous others, rich as well as poor, left England unable to bear the king’s tyranny. There was not one man in the land who could oppose his will … Only the bishop of Winchester remained in the king’s favour.25
Relations with the pope and the church deteriorated further and on 24 March 1208 England was placed under interdict, the church’s greatest weapon:
divine services were suspended throughout England. Great sorrow and anxiety spread throughout the country. Neither Good Friday nor Easter Sunday could be celebrated, but an unheard-of silence was imposed on all the clergy and monks by laymen. The bodies of the dead, whether of the ordinary folk or the religious, could not be buried in consecrated cemeteries, but only in vile and profane places.26
John ordered the seizure of all clerical property in retribution and ordered the arrests of priests’ and clerks’ mistresses – though they were soon allowed to buy their freedom. John was worried that the election, against his wishes, of Langton would set a precedent for future clerical appointments, a stumbling block that would not be overcome in negotiations with the pope; neither would John’s refusal to admit liability and pay compensation. As a consequence, in November 1209, Innocent III excommunicated the king of England. All the bishops of England save Peter des Roches, who stayed in England, and John de Gray, who was despatched to Ireland to act as justiciar, left for exile, leaving seven bishoprics and seventeen abbacies vacant.27 Although negotiations between John and the papacy continued for a while, they were halfhearted and had broken off altogether by 1211, John being less concerned with his excommunication against the revenues he was receiving from the church lands now under his control.
Relations with the other countries in the British Isles were also deteriorating. In 1209 John, having heard of marriage negotiations between Scotland and France, marched on Scotland. William the Lion, King of Scots was ill and in order to avoid war, was forced to agree to the humiliating Treaty of Norham, in which he promised to pay John 15,000 marks to ensure the king of England’s good will. He also agreed to hand over thirteen hostages and his two eldest daughters, for John to arrange their marriages. To be fair to John, he did indeed extend his good will to Scotland when King William was challenged by a rival to his throne, Guthred Macwilliam, in 1211. John knighted King William’s son, Alexander, in London before sending him north with a band of soldiers from Brabançon and with them, Alexander ‘captured Guthred, called MacWilliam, the leader of the rebels, and hanged him.’28
Campaigns in Wales in 1208, and again in 1211, and in Ireland in 1209–1210 saw some successes for John but alienated more barons. His pursuit and eventual destruction of William de Braose, first in Wales and then in Ireland, demonstrated the extent of John’s animosity towards his enemies and their families. What was to stop him going against any one of his barons in the same relentless manner? He successfully invaded Gwynedd in 1211, forcing its prince, his son-in-law, Llywelyn ap Iorwerth, to surrender the whole of Gwynedd east of Conwy and to promise that all his lands would revert to king John, should he die without issue by his wife Joan, John’s illegitimate daughter.29 In Ireland, John’s whirlwind nine-week campaign in 1210 saw Walter and Hugh de Lacy driven out of Meath and Ulster, the introduction of English laws and currency and an extension of English control. John had little interest in the native Irish lords and kings, and he left Ireland on less-than-friendly terms with the most prominent of Ireland’s kings, Cathal Croibhdhearg and Aodh Ō Nēill. Ō Nēill’s refusal to hand over hostages led to the Inisfallen annalist’s assessment that ‘The king of England came to Ireland and accomplished little.’30 However, on a whole, he left Ireland under greater control of the English government and its justiciar, John de Gray, continued to make some gains, despite being unable to subjugate Aodh Ō Nēill.
John’s successes in Scotland, Wales and Ireland were without precedent, as the Barnwell chronicler noted, there was ‘no one in Ireland, Scotland and Wales who did not obey his nod – something which, as is well-known, none of his predecessors had achieved.’31 However, John’s successes so close to home gave him an optimism that was to lead to the greatest crisis of his reign and, eventually, to Magna Carta. In 1212, John turned his sights to the Continent, and he set about rebuilding the coalition that had dissolved in 1200, supported by Rainauld, Count of Boulogne and German Emperor Otto IV. In July, plans were well in hand and a combined land and naval force was mustering at Portsmouth when they had to be diverted to Chester to deal with another Welsh revolt, united behind Llywelyn ap Iorwerth. In retaliation for the revolt, on 14 August, John hanged twenty-eight Welsh hostages at Nottingham. Although he would have considered the lives of the hostages forfeit, given they were held to guarantee the good behaviour of the Welsh, it is considered one of the cruellest acts of his reign, and one for which he has been judged harshly.
Whilst at Nottingham, John learned of a plot against his life and the two magnates held responsible, Robert Fitzwalter and Eustace de Vescy, fled to France and Scotland, respectively. Eustace de Vescy is said to have had a personal grudge against John as he had tried to seduce de Vescy’s wife. The story goes that ‘the baron had cunningly managed to smuggle a prostitute into the king’s bedchamber instead. The next day John boasted to de Vesci how good the night had been. But the baron immediately confessed to the deception. He had to flee for his life.’32 De Vescy was married to an illegitimate sister of the king of Scots and so fled north to Scotland. Another conspirator, Geoffrey of Norwich, an official of the Exchequer, was apprehended and died in prison. According to the Barnwell Chronicler, this was the catalyst of John’s increasing paranoia; from this point on, he trusted no one and had an armed bodyguard accompany him everywhere he went:
The King John’s heart was troubled, since it was being said, without authority, that rumours had been heard that the barons who had gathered together were conspiring against him, and that in many ears there were tales of letters absolving the barons from John’s allegiance. It was said that another king should be elected in his place and that John should be expelled from the kingdom … the king began to have misgivings and would go nowhere without either being armed or accompanied by a great force of armed men. Having taken captive some who seemed to be too intimate with the rebels, he quickly seized the castles of the earls and barons, so that there was unrest for some time.33
John took hostages and castles from those barons he suspected of disloyalty, being especially thorough in the north. Prophecies, notably by Peter of Wakefield, were predicting John’s downfall, preaching ‘that King John’s reign would not last beyond the next Ascension Day, because it had been revealed to him that King John would reign for fourteen years, and that those things which had begun during those fourteen years would reach a happy conclusion.’34 According to the Barnwell annalist, Peter’s prophecies were added to and distorted in their retelling, and ‘Every day false words of the common people were added to his falsehoods.’35 Peter was arrested and imprisoned; he and his son were hanged on 27 May 1213, four days after Ascension Day and the anniversary of John’s accession. In a bid to increase his popularity across the social spectrum, and especially in the north, John chose this time to tackle the abuses of sheriffs and forest officials. He ordered forest officials to only exact the same amounts as they had under his father and repealed new exactions that had been imposed in the ports. Moreover, he reopened negotiations with Innocent III in November 1212. In a demonstration of his willingness to compromise, John ‘exacted from all the prelates of the Church a confirmation of all that he had taken from them … so that in this way they would greatly modify their claims concerning what he had taken away.’36
By 1213 John was planning a new Continental expedition and negotiating with Toulouse and Aragon to open a southern front against King Philip of France. His plans were forestalled, however, when Philip himself announced in April that he was planning to invade England, apparently with encouragement from the pope. John’s position was precarious, to say the least, the loyalty of his barons only maintained by a combination of bribery and intimidation. In response to Philip’s announcement, the army was gathered with John at Dover, with his fleet just off shore. As a consequence, according to the Barnwell annalist, the majority of John’s barons were present to witness John’s surrender of the kingdom to Rome, on 15 May 1213, promising to pay 1,000 marks a year to Rome and swearing ‘liege homage and fealty to Pope Innocent III and to his successors.’37 Although this was a humiliation for John, his hold on his country and people was precarious and he had little choice but to submit to the church; it has been seen as ‘a master stroke of diplomacy’.38
England was now a papal fief, but John was still excommunicate and on 1 July he sent a delegation to Stephen Langton on the Continent, headed by the archbishop of Dublin and the bishop of Norwich, urging the archbishop of Canterbury and his fellow exiles to return to England as quickly as possible. On 20 July, he met the former exiles at Winchester; they led the king to the doors of Winchester Cathedral where, in front of a host of nobles, clergy and commoners, he was absolved. The king swore an oath that he ‘would henceforth love and defend the Church and renew the good laws of his ancestors.’39 The interdict on England would finally be lifted on 2 July 1214, six years, three months and sixteen days after it was imposed.40 Despite the fact compensation payments would take another year to settle, John’s submission to the pope meant that Innocent was now a staunch defender of the king. However, it also meant that John’s enemies, including Robert Fitzwalter and Eustace de Vescy, were now able to return from exile, alongside the abbots and clerics.
King Philip’s fleet was destroyed by John’s half-brother, William Longespée, Earl of Salisbury, on 30 May and in June John ordered his army to sail for Poitou. However, the magnates refused, with the northern barons – ‘the northerners’ – led by Eustace de Vescy, claiming that their conditions of tenure did not require them to serve in Poitou. Stephen Langton, now restored to his see at Canterbury, thwarted John’s attempts to punish the rebels and when the king did finally sail for Poitou in 1214, several barons were absent, including Fitzwalter, Vescy and Geoffrey de Mandeville, the soon-to-be husband of John’s first wife, Isabella of Goucester. A two-pronged attack saw John landing at La Rochelle, while Longespée landed in Flanders, joining Otto of Germany, Rainauld of Boulogne and Count Ferrand of Flanders. The idea was to force Philip to divide his forces.
John sought a reconciliation with the Lusignans, agreeing to grant them Saintes and Oléron and to marry his daughter Joan to Hugh X de Lusignan, the son of Hugh IX de Lusignan, who had been betrothed to John’s wife, Isabelle d’Angoulême. A similar peace offering, of the earldom of Richmond, to Pierre, Duke of Brittany, was less well received and the duke remained aloof. John’s campaign was successful at first, with him entering Angers unopposed before he laid siege to Roche-au-Moine. However, he was forced to retreat on 2 July, with the approach of the army of Prince Louis of France and the refusal of the Poitevins to fight by his side. Although he was able to keep his own army intact, John’s fate was sealed on 27 July when Longespée and the allies faced Philip at the battle of Bouvines and were decisively defeated. Otto IV managed to escape, but William Longespée was captured and taken to Paris, along with the counts of Flanders and Boulogne. With the threat in the north neutralised, Philip was now able to join his army to that of his son, Prince Louis, and challenge John in the south. John had no choice but to seek peace and a five-year truce was agreed on 13 October, with Ralph of Coggeshall reporting rumours that it had cost John 60,000 marks.41 At home, John’s policy of reform of the sheriffs and forest officials in 1212–1213 had resulted in a significant reduction in royal revenue, and the military campaign drained John’s treasury. He was no longer a wealthy king. In October 1214 John returned to England following his defeat by the French at the Battle of Bouvines, which ended the king’s hopes of regaining the lost empire. After his return from this disastrous campaign on the Continent, baronial opposition to John now gathered pace. The refusal to pay scutage of 3 marks on the knights’ fee demonstrating a coordinated effort by the magnates, rather than the individual disobedience that had been seen earlier in the reign. The barons’ objections to John were almost beyond number. He had failed to face the French and had lost not only his family’s Continental possessions, but also those of his barons. Few had forgotten his treachery against his brother in trying to take the throne whilst Richard was on crusade.
Added to these catastrophes was the character and personality of John himself. By nature, John was paranoid, secretive and distrustful and his cruelty is widely known. He is accused of killing his nephew and rival claimant to the English throne; he had hanged twenty-eight Welsh hostages (sons of rebel chieftains); and he had hounded William de Braose and his family all the way to Ireland and back. De Braose’s wife and son died in one of John’s prisons, probably from starvation. The History of William Marshal, a biography of the great knight and statesman, claimed that John treated his prisoners harshly and with such indignity that it was a disgrace to all involved.42 His barons even complained that he forced himself on their wives and daughters. With such military losses, accusations and seemingly acute character flaws stacked against him, it is no wonder England’s king faced opposition by many of the most powerful in his realm.
In January 1215 John arranged to meet with his challengers in London to hear their demands, and it was agreed that they would reconvene at Northampton on 26 April to hear the king’s response. The disaffected barons demanded reform and the confirmation of the coronation charter of King Henry I, in which the king promised; ‘Know that by the mercy of God and by the common counsel of the barons of England I have been crowned king of this realm. And because the kingdom has been oppressed by unjust exactions, being moved by reverence towards God and by the love I bear you all, I make free the Church of God … I abolish all the evil customs by which the kingdom of England has been unjustly oppressed.’43 Although many of the clauses of this charter, also referred to as the Charter of Liberties, were now outdated, several still resonated with the barons, including that a baron’s widow would not be married without her consent, that an heiress would not be married without the consent of her relatives and that, on the death of a baron, his heir would only pay a relief that was ‘just and lawful.’44 Whilst John was ruminating on these demands, both sides were preparing for war. John borrowed from the Templars to pay his mercenaries and on 4 March he took the cross. This latter move was seen as being highly cynical and no one seems to have believed that John would actually go on crusade. His purpose for doing so was political: a crusader’s lands and properties were protected by the church and this action firmly identified the king’s opponents as the ‘bad guys’.
John failed to appear at Northampton. He did, however, send messages to the rebels. According to the Barnwell annalist the king ‘tried to win them back through many emissaries, and there was much discussion amongst them, the archbishop, bishops and other barons acting as intermediaries, the king himself staying at Oxford.’45 On 5 May the rebels formally renounced their fealty. John retained the support of some magnates, such as William Marshal and William de Warenne, but the majority were now standing against him. As was London, which opened its gates to the rebels on 17 May, despite John’s granting the city the right to elect its mayor only eight days before. In the Welsh Marches the Braose family had allied with Llywelyn ap Iorwerth and had taken Shrewsbury. The rebels were ready to fight. After occupying London, they made one final attempt to prevent war, presenting the king with a list of their demands.
John had no choice but to make concessions and on 10 June agreed to further discussions of the rebels’ terms. Following these negotiations, a long, detailed document was produced, dealing with particular grievances of the time and with injustices in general. It touched on the whole system of royal government. And it was granted to ‘all free men of the realm and their heirs forever’.46 Of its sixty-three clauses (see Appendix A) some terms were asking for immediate remedies, such as the removal of corrupt administrators and the sending home of foreign mercenaries. The clause stating that fighting outside of the kingdom could not be imposed by the king was a reaction to John’s recent attempts to force his English barons to help him recover his Continental domains. Others had long-term aims. The document sought to guarantee the privileges of the church and the City of London. Restrictions were placed on the powers of regional officials, such as sheriffs, to prevent abuses. The royal court was fixed at Westminster, for justice to be obtainable by all, and royal judges were to visit each county regularly. Taxes could no longer be levied without the consent of the church and the barons.
Clauses included the fixing of inheritance charges and protection from exploitation for under-age heirs; the king was to take only what was reasonable from an estate (although ‘reasonable’ remained undefined). From henceforth a widow was to be free to choose whether or not to remarry and her marriage portion (dowry) would be made available to her immediately on her husband’s death. Another clause sought to prevent the seizure of land from Jews and the king’s debtors. Magna Carta even went so far as to regulate weights and measures. It also reduced the size of the king’s forests and limited the powers of forest justices. Although most of the sixty-three clauses of Magna Carta are now defunct, three still remain as major tenets of British law, including ‘to no one will we sell, to no one will we deny or delay right or justice.’ That no person would be imprisoned, outlawed or deprived of his lands except by judgement of his peers and the law of the land has remained the cornerstone of the English legal system ever since.
Magna Carta was sealed at Runnymede, Berkshire, on 15 June 1215. John ordered that the charter be circulated around the towns and villages, throughout the realm. As a peace agreement between the king and his rebellious barons, however, it failed miserably. By July John was appealing to the pope for help. Pope Innocent III’s response arrived in England in September. The treaty was declared null and void; according to Innocent, Magna Carta was:
not only shameful and base but also illegal and unjust. We refuse to overlook such shameless presumption which dishonours the Apostolic See, injures the king’s right, shames the English nation, and endangers the crusade. Since the whole crusade would be undermined if concessions of this sort were extorted from a great prince who had taken the cross, we, on behalf of Almighty God, Father, Son and Holy Ghost, and by the authority of Saints Peter and Paul His apostles, utterly reject and condemn this settlement. Under threat of excommunication we order that the king should not dare to observe and the barons and their associates should not insist on it being observed. The charter with all its undertakings and guarantees we declare to be null and void of all validity for ever.47
The letter was accompanied by more papal letters, excommunicating rebels, including nine barons and the Londoners. However, by the time the letters arrived in England, the dispute had already erupted into the Barons’ War. John laid siege to Rochester Castle with his mercenaries and the castle surrendered on 30 November, after a seven-week siege. Deciding they could no longer deal with John’s perfidy, the rebel barons had invited the King of France, Philip II Augustus, to claim the throne. Philip’s son and heir, the future Louis VIII, accepted the offer. He sent an advanced guard, which arrived in December of 1215. Louis himself would arrive in the spring of 1216. He landed on the south coast and marched for London, where he was proclaimed King of England on 2 June 1216. In the meantime, while waiting for the French to arrive, the rebels and their allies were not inactive. Following a judgement in his favour from the Twenty-Five barons appointed to oversee the enforcement of Magna Carta, Alexander II, King of Scots, was awarded Northumberland, Cumberland and Westmorland and received the homage of the Northerners. In Wales, eleven Welsh princes united under Llywelyn ap Iorwerth, establishing him as de facto prince of Wales and in three weeks they captured seven castles, including Cardigan and Carmarthen.
In December John headed north and chased the Yorkshire rebels all the way to Scotland, where he captured Berwick on 13 January 1216. He then raided the Scottish Lowlands and set fire to Berwick before turning back south and heading for East Anglia in March 1216. While John appears to have held the initiative with his military successes, and he was able to win some rebels over to his side, the leaders remained firmly against him. His failure to take London and prevent the landing of Prince Louis at Sandwich in the spring, was a major setback. John spent the summer campaigning in the west of England as Louis was proclaimed king in the capital, captured Winchester and laid siege to Dover, Windsor and Lincoln, the three strongholds which still held out for King John. By autumn 1216, John was at his lowest point as the earls of Arundel, Warenne and Salisbury (John’s own brother) submitted to Louis. Alexander II of Scotland met the French prince at Canterbury and paid him homage for the lands he held from the English crown. Two-thirds of his magnates had abandoned John, as had one third of his household knights.48
At Lynn, on the evening of 9 October, John suffered an attack of dysentery. His health deteriorated as he made his way west until he reached Newark. He died there on the night of 18-19 October 1216 and was buried at Worcester Cathedral, ‘not because he had asked to be buried there but because that place at that time seemed a safe one where his supporters could gather to deliberate on what was to be done next.’49
John was lamented by few, especially among the clergy, who firmly believed he was going to Hell. As Matthew Paris commented, ‘Foul as it is, Hell itself is made fouler by the presence of John.’50 Ralph of Coggeshall was more generous, stating:
John was indeed a great prince but scarcely a happy one and, like Marius, he experienced the ups and downs of fortune. He was munificent and liberal to outsiders but a plunderer to his own people, trusting strangers rather than his subjects, wherefore he was eventually deserted by his own men and, in the end, little mourned.51
John’s fortuitous death at Newark in October 1216 turned the tide against Louis and the rebels. The highly respected knight and statesman, William Marshal, Earl of Pembroke, was appointed regent for John’s 9-year-old son, Henry III. Marshal’s staunch loyalty was renowned throughout Europe; he was the embodiment of the chivalric code. Many barons who had previously sided with Louis saw the opportunity to come back from the brink, and rally around the young king.
Marshal reissued Magna Carta in November 1216, then faced and defeated the joint French and rebel army at Lincoln on 20 May 1217. A naval battle off Sandwich on 24 August 1217 saw the English ships under Hubert de Burgh defeat the French fleet and capture their flagship and thus consolidate the Royalist victory over the rebels and their French allies. As a consequence, the English were able to dictate terms to Louis. Peace was signed at Kinston Upon Thames on 12 September and the French went home. Magna Carta was issued a third time, along with a new charter, the Charter of the Forest, issued for the first time (see Appendix C). A newer version of Magna Carta was issued in 1225, on Henry III attaining his majority, and it is this 1225 Magna Carta which made it onto the statute books.
Although John faced the fallout of Magna Carta, many of the injustices targeted by the barons can be seen in the reigns of his predecessors. Heavy taxes, arbitrary fines and the exploitation of wardships were long-established royal revenue earners. However, where Henry and Richard had a whole empire to exploit, John’s need for money had to be met by England alone. Even John’s disagreement with the church parallels the reign of Henry II and his clashes with Thomas Becket. As we have seen, John opposed the election of Stephen Langton as archbishop of Canterbury and refused to allow his consecration. Pope Innocent III placed England under interdict and excommunicated John himself; in 1213 Philip II Augustus of France was even invited, by the papacy, to depose him.
It is hard to overstate the enduring significance of Magna Carta. Although it was initially a document conceived by rebel barons, the regents of Henry III exploited Magna Carta as a Royalist device to recover their loyalty. However, once it was issued it was used as a curb to all regal excesses and in 1265 it was invoked to create the first parliament. By the late 1200s Magna Carta was regarded as a fundamental statement of English liberties. Although a failure in the short term, in the long term, Magna Carta established defined limitations to royal rights, laying down that standard to be observed by the crown and its agents.
The drawing up and issuing of Magna Carta in June 1215 was only the start of its journey and while its influence and impact on the country in general, and the barons who forced it on John in particular, is widely known, the charter’s effect on the lives of the women who were associated with its creation, or affected by its clauses and implementation, has been largely ignored. It is now time to redress that imbalance and examine how this great charter, Magna Carta, influenced and impacted the women of the thirteenth century, who lived through the conflict and the unsettled years which followed.