Richard’s accession brought John astonishing new wealth and prestige, but the king was careful to exclude him from any real position of power. There is evidence that Richard was well aware of his younger brother’s limitations as a soldier and statesman, commenting to Roger of Howden in 1193, “My brother John is not the man to conquer a country if there is a single person able to make the slightest resistance to his attempts.”
Richard departed his domains for the Third Crusade in 1190 and, as the only other adult male member of the ruling dynasty, John may have expected to be entrusted with a senior role in the governance of the Angevin domains. Instead, Richard entrusted England to his chief minister, Guillaume de Longchamp, and insisted that John swear an oath to stay away from the kingdom for three years. Eleanor of Aquitaine, who exerted far more political influence during Richard’s reign than John, modified the oath to place John’s exile from England at Longchamp’s discretion, but the existence of any limits on his movements demonstrated the distrust behind the public expressions of unity. Richard also refused to choose John as his successor, instead naming their nephew, Arthur of Brittany, son of their late brother, Geoffrey, as heir to the throne.
Richard was captured by Duke Leopold of Austria on his way home from the crusade in 1192 because of his rumoured involvement in the murder of Leopold’s cousin, Conrad of Montferrat. The duke presented his captive to Holy Roman Emperor Henry VI, who held him for ransom. John seized the opportunity to assert his authority over Richard’s domains. While Eleanor raised the ransom for Richard’s release, John swore fealty to Philip II for Richard’s French domains and offered Henry VI a substantial sum to keep Richard in captivity. Eleanor’s interests prevailed over those of her youngest son, and Richard returned to England in March 1194. In May, the two brothers were publicly reconciled, though Richard displayed his contempt for his brother by forgiving John with the words, “Do not be afraid, John. You are a child; you have got into bad company.” Despite Richard’s condescending attitude, the prospect of being named heir to the throne instead of his young nephew, Arthur, ensured John’s loyalty for the remainder of his brother’s reign. On his deathbed, following a crossbow wound to the shoulder he received while besieging a castle held by a rebel baron in Aquitaine in 1199, Richard acknowledged his brother, John, as heir to all the Angevin domains. Finally — and improbably — the youngest and oft-ignored son once known as John Lackland had begun his controversial reign as king of England.
John’s upbringing and rivalry with Richard are crucial to understanding his conflicts with his barons and the church during his reign, circumstances that precipitated Magna Carta. From a young age, John became skilled in dissimulation and exploiting conflict within the ruling family for his own personal gain. During Richard’s reign, John was quick to betray his brother or reconcile with him according to his self-interest. John’s dissimulation continued after he became king. By 1215, the year of Magna Carta, a significant proportion of John’s barons came to the conclusion that the king could not be trusted to keep his word and observe the customs of the realm outlined in the coronation charters of previous monarchs. The solution was Magna Carta, a formal charter of liberties imposed on the king by his subjects.
Nineteenth-century engraving depicting King John refusing to accept the Magna Carta when it was first presented to him by his rebel barons.
Nineteenth-century engraving depicting King John.
Part 2
Magna Carta and the Charter of the Forest
Magna Carta and the subsequent Charter of the Forest (Carta de Foresta) were responses to the unique political, social, and economic circumstances that emerged during the reigns of King John and his son, King Henry III, including military defeats that ended Angevin control of western France, a multi-year break with the papacy and arbitrary treatment of influential barons. In 1215, neither John nor his barons expected the terms of Magna Carta to be respected for long. John repudiated the document within weeks and went to war with his barons. Only John’s untimely death in 1216 provided the opportunity for the terms of Magna Carta to be entrenched and expanded through additional charters such as the Charter of the Forest during the reign of his son. Like John, Henry III had experienced military defeats and treated his barons arbitrarily, demonstrating the need for further charters and institutions to ensure the monarch followed the accepted law of the land. In the reign of Henry III, Magna Carta informed the emergence of parliamentary government.
The Reign of King John and the Coming of Magna Carta
Like those of many of his predecessors, John’s accession to the English throne was contested. Although Richard apparently acknowledged John as his successor to all his territories on his deathbed, the new king faced an immediate challenge from supporters of his twelve-year-old nephew, Arthur of Brittany. Anjou, Maine, Touraine, and Brittany supported Arthur as Richard’s rightful heir to the Angevin domains; John had the support of England and Normandy. Arthur also had a powerful supporter in King Philip II of France.
Despite John’s reputation for political and military incompetence, which dated from his time in Ireland and attempts to rebel against Richard, he began his reign with victories. When the teenage Arthur besieged his grandmother, Eleanor of Aquitaine, in the château de Mirebeau in 1202, John took decisive action to relieve the siege and defeat Arthur’s forces. Arthur was captured by John’s barons on August 1, 1202, and imprisoned in the château de Falaise under the guardianship of William de Braose.
The interior of Bordeaux Cathedral where King John married his second wife, Isabelle of Angouleme, in 1200.
For John’s barons, the existence of an alternate claimant to the throne was advantageous because they could threaten to shift their allegiance if the king disregarded the laws and customs of the kingdom. The barons expected John to come to terms with the captured Arthur as Henry II had come to terms with his three elder sons in 1174. Instead, John had the young man killed, and may even have done the deed himself. According to the Annals of Margam, a historical chronicle maintained by the Cistercian monks of Margam Abbey in Wales, “After King John had captured Arthur and kept him alive in prison for some time, at length, in the castle of Rouen, after dinner on the Thursday before Easter, when he was drunk and possessed by the devil, he slew him with his own hand, and tying a heavy stone to the body cast it into the river Seine.”7 There was no official announcement regarding Arthur’s fate. He simply disappeared, allowing rumours of John’s involvement to spread widely throughout his domains. John’s assumed involvement in the disappearance of his nephew was a grave transgression, which cast a shadow over the king’s reputation for the rest of his reign.
John’s reputation deteriorated further when he was excommunicated from the Roman Catholic Church in 1209. John’s predecessors, Henry I, Stephen, and Henry II, all experienced jurisdictional conflicts with the church, but John’s inability to make peace with the papacy until the very end of his reign cemented a reputation for both villainy and arbitrary rule. The trouble began when the archbishop of Canterbury died in 1205. John seized the opportunity to appoint one of his staunch supporters, John de Gray, the bishop of Norwich, as the new archbishop of Canterbury. The Chapter of Canterbury Cathedral — the clerics who advised the late archbishop — however, claimed it was their right to elect the successor, which was accorded to the church by Henry I’s Charter of Liberties. The chapter elected as archbishop one of their sub-priors, Reginald, who travelled to Rome for confirmation of his new position over John’s objections.
The pope settled the dispute by advancing Stephen Langton, one of the eventual authors of Magna Carta, as his own candidate, dismissing the claims of the candidates chosen by both John and the chapter. John objected to Langton, both personally, because of his connections