john of england

John (French: Jean) (December 24, 1166–October 18/19, 1216) reigned as King of England from 1199 to 1216. He succeeded to the throne as the younger brother of King Richard I (known as "Richard the Lionheart"). John acquired the nicknames of "Lackland" (in French, sans terre) and "Soft-sword". John's reign has been traditionally characterized as one of the most disastrous in English history: it began with defeats—he lost Normandy to Philippe Auguste of France in his first five years on the throne—and ended with England torn by civil war and himself on the verge of being forced out of power. In 1213, he made England a papal fief to resolve a conflict with the Church, and his rebellious barons forced him to sign Magna Carta in 1215, the act for which he is best remembered. Some have argued, however, that John ruled no better or worse than his immediate predecessor or his successor. Born at Oxford, John was the fifth son of King Henry II of England and Eleanor of Aquitaine, and was always his father's favourite son, though as the youngest, he could expect no inheritance (hence his nickname, "Lackland"). He was almost certainly born in 1166 instead of 1167, as is sometimes claimed. King Henry and Queen Eleanor were not together nine months prior to December 1167, but they were together in March 1166. Also, John was born at Oxford on or near Christmas, but Eleanor and Henry spent Christmas 1167 in Normandy. The canon of Laon, writing a century later, states John was named after Saint John the Baptist, on whose feast day (December 27) he was born. Ralph of Diceto also states that John was born in 1166, and that Queen Eleanor named him. In 1189 he married Avisa, daughter and heiress of the Earl of Gloucester. (She is given several alternative names by history, including Isabella, Hawise, 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, and she was never acknowledged as queen. (She then married Geoffrey de Mandeville as her second husband and Hubert de Burgh as her third). 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. In 1184, John and Richard both claimed that they were the rightful heir to the Aquitaine, one of many unfriendly encounters between the two. In 1185 though, John became the ruler of Ireland, whose people grew to despise him, causing John to leave after only eight months (see: John's first expedition to Ireland). During Richard's absence on crusade from 1190 to 1194, 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 with 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 did not gain immediate universal recognition as king. Some regarded his young nephew, Arthur of Brittany, the posthumous son of John's brother Geoffrey, as the rightful heir. He and John contested for the throne, but John captured Arthur and his sister Eleanor around 1203. Arthur died, allegedly murdered, about this time and Eleanor remained a prisoner the rest of her life (which ended in 1241); through deeds such as these, John acquired a reputation for ruthlessness. In the meantime, John had remarried, on August 24, 1200, Isabella of Angoulme, who was twenty years his junior. She was the daughter of Aymer Taillefer, Count of Angouleme. John had kidnapped her from her fiancee, Hugh IX de Lusignan. Isabella eventually produced five children, including two sons (Henry and Richard), Joan, Isabella Plantagenet and Eleanor. In 1205 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 could recover his French lands. The French king had declared most of these forfeit in 1204, leaving John only Gascony in the southwest. John had other illegitimate children. By a mistress, the daughter of Hamelin de Warenne and Isabella de Warenne, John had Richard Fitz Roy (or De Warenne or FitzJohn), Baron of Chilham. By another mistress, Hawise, John had Oliver FitzRoy, who accompanied the papal legate Pelayo to Damietta in 1218, and never returned. By unknown mistress (or mistresses) John fathered: Geoffrey FitzRoy, who went on expedition to Poitou in 1205 and died there; John FitzRoy, a clerk in 1201; Henry FitzRoy, who died in 1245; Osbert Gifford, who was given lands in Oxfordshire, Norfolk, Suffolk, and Sussex and is last found alive in 1216; Eudes FitzRoy, who accompanied his half-brother Richard on Crusade and died in the Holy Land in 1241; Bartholomew FitzRoy, a member of the order of Friars Preachers; and Maud FitzRoy, Abbess of Barking, who died in 1252. As far as the administration of his kingdom went, John functioned as quite a just and enlightened ruler, but he won the disapproval of the barons by taxing them. The tax known as scutage, a penalty for those who failed to supply military resources, became particularly unpopular. 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 excommunication. He had much the same kind of dispute with the church as his father had had before him. Unfortunately, his excommunication encouraged 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 defeat at the Battle of Bouvines, 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 he had signed under duress, however, John felt entitled to break his word as soon as hostilities had ceased, provoking the First Barons' War. In the following year, John, retreating from an invasion by Prince Louis of France (whom the majority of the English barons had invited to replace John on the throne), 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 dealt him 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*. Numerous, if fictitious, accounts circulated soon after his death that he had been killed by poisoned ale or poisoned plums. He lies buried in Worcester Cathedral in the city of Worcester. His nine-year-old son succeeded him and became King Henry III of England, and although Louis continued to claim the English throne, the barons switched their allegiance to the new king, forcing Louis to give up his claim and sign the Treaty of Lambeth in 1217. *Footnote: Newark now lies within the County of Nottinghamshire, close to its long boundary with Lincolnshire.

King John's alleged illiteracy

For a long time, school children have learned that King John had to approve Magna Carta by attaching his seal to it because he could not sign it, lacking the ability to read or write. This textbook inaccuracy resembled that of textbooks which claimed that Christopher Columbus wanted to prove the earth was round. Whether the original authors of these errors knew better and oversimplified because they wrote for children, or whether they had been misinformed themselves, as a result generations of adults remembered mainly two things about "wicked King John", both of them wrong. (The other "fact" was that, if Robin Hood had not stepped in, Prince John would have embezzled the money raised to ransom King Richard. The fact is that Prince John did embezzle the ransom money, by creating forged seals, and Robin Hood may or may not have had any historical reality.) In fact, King John did sign the draft of the Charter that the negotiating parties 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 they 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 has used 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 they did so in accordance with current legal practice, not because the bishops could not write their own names. Henry II had at first intended that his son Prince John receive an education 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, talk of making John a churchman ceased. John's parents had both received a good education—Henry II spoke some half dozen languages, and Eleanor of Aquitaine had attended lectures at what would soon become the University of Paris—in addition to what they had learned of law and government, religion, and literature. John himself had received one of the best educations of any king of England. Some of the books the records show he read included: De Sacramentis Christianae Fidei by Hugh of St. Victor, Sentences by Peter Lombard, The Treatise of Origen, and a history of England—potentially Wace's Roman de Brut, based on Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae.

Notes

According to records of payment made to King John's bath attendant, William Aquarius, the king bathed on average about once every three weeks, which cost a considerable sum of 5d to 6d each, suggesting an elaborate and ceremonial affair. Although this may seem barbaric by modern standards, it was civilized compared to monks who were expected to bath three times a year, with the right not to bathe at all if they so chose. By contrast King John dressed very well in coats made of fur from sable and ermine and other exotic furs such as polar bear.

References

King John, by W.L. Warren ISBN 0520036433

External link

Graphic of family tree of the children of John

<< Previous

Word Browser

Next >>

jeroboam ii
joan of arc
johannes nicolaus brnsted
janus kinase
jacob grimm
jamiroquai
john sutter
john coolidge adams
jon voight
john climacus
jerome callet

java coffee
history of java
java (board game)
john radcliffe
jet
joual
joseph lister, 1st baron lister
johann homann
jadavpur university
jewel
james l. jones

james lovelock
john akii bua
joachim von ribbentrop
johan cruijff
jule styne
julia roberts
john sealy hospital
john the evangelist
jack kirby
johnny weissmuller
jean grey

jacques dupuis
jack brabham
jones calculus
josip broz tito
john stauber
james p. hogan (writer)
jeff lynne
judge dredd
james r. flynn
jeannine taylor
john hay