Gone Medieval - King John: Worst Medieval Monarch?

Episode Date: January 10, 2025

Nothing good is ever said about King John, a strong contender for the title of Worst Medieval King of England. Was the King who signed Magna Carta - albeit reluctantly - really as bad as history paints him?Matt Lewis sets out to put the record straight with David Carpenter, Professor of Medieval History at King's College London.Gone Medieval is presented by Matt Lewis. The audio editor and producer is Rob Weinberg. The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff.All music used is courtesy of Epidemic Sounds.Gone Medieval is a History Hit podcast.Related episodes:Henry III vs. Simon de Montfort >Magna Carta > 1217: The Year that Forged England >Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. You can take part in our listener survey here: https://uk.surveymonkey.com/r/6FFT7MK Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From long-loss Viking ships and kings buried in unexpected places to tales of murder, power, faith, and the lives of ordinary people across medieval Europe and beyond. Join me, Matt Lewis, Dr. Eleanor Jarniger, and some of the world's leading historians as we bring history's most fascinating stories to life, only on history hit. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries

with a brand-new release every week exploring everything from the ancient world, to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Hello, I'm Matt Lewis. Welcome to Gone Medieval from History Hit, the podcast that delves into the greatest millennium in human history. We've got the most intriguing mysteries, the gobsmacking details and latest groundbreaking research from the Vikings to the printing press, from kings to popes to the crusades. We cross centuries and continents to delve into rebellions, plots and murders to find the stories big and small that tell us how we got here.

Find out who we really were. We've gone medieval. What can I say about the subject of today's episode? At the moment, probably nothing good. Maybe that will change, though. King John is a strong contender for the unwanted title of worst medieval king of England. If that qualified him for the world championships, I reckon he'd place pretty well there too. John is someone we haven't dedicated an episode of Gone Medieval to yet. Well, like all bad smells, we can't ignore him forever. Today's guest is the wonderful David Carpenter,

professor of medieval history at King's College London, who's also the author of a two-volume biography of John's son, Henry III, amongst his other publications. Welcome back to Gone Medieval, David. Thank you for asking me, thank you. I feel like we've kind of lured you here to talk about one of the worst things that anyone could possibly talk about in medieval history, which might be a little bit mean.

John's got that reputation, but I think it's a far more nuanced picture than that. And one has to think through the thickness, the blur of his later reputation to try and get back to the primary sources of the time, which give a far more mixed picture than the picture of popular legend. It's a very able king, I think.

Yeah, well, see how much we can convince people that he doesn't deserve entirely his bad reputation. Okay. But I wonder if we could say, start off with just a little bit of background for anyone who doesn't know who John is, who are his parents, when is he born? Right. John is the youngest son of the king, Henry II, famous for the murder of Beckett, and his glamorous and highly intelligent wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine. And sometimes suggested that he was, quotes, The Spare. He'd got three

elder brothers. He was very much in their shadow, one, of course, Richard the Lionheart, who followed Henry II as king. And John was fobbed off. Even in his own time, he was called John's sinner, without land, John Lackland, because his father had only provided him with the Lordship of Ireland, which John didn't like going to, and was rather contemptuous about the native kings there. He grew up very much in the shadow of his father and his brother. In the end, he rebelled against his father, right at the end of Henry II's reign. There's a famous Victorian pictures of Henry the second lying on his deathbed, groaning as he hears this final blow of the desertion of John. Then, when Richard was away on crusade and in captivity, John rebelled against Richard. In the end,

they were reconciled that the rebellion was snuffed out. So he came to the throne in 1199 with already a mixed reputation, a reputation for treachery, deceit, deceit. and rebellion. Perhaps a bit unfair because both his elder brothers, Richard and Henry, who was the young king, pre-deceased his father, they'd all rebelled against her father too. So John might well have thought that I'm merely doing what my elder brothers have done. Why should I attain this reputation for treachery? They surely well deserve it too. Yeah, just following in the family tradition of rebelling against fathers, is there any truth do you think to the notion that we quite often see reported that John was in some way Henry's favourite child? There is something in that,

yes, but I think that's a slightly mixed picture. Initially, of course, Sinare, Lordship of Ireland, but there is an indication that in the 1180s after the death of the eldest son, who Henry had misguidingly had crowned, Henry the young king, and with the disobedience of Richard, that Henry was thinking of actually making John his heir. And that was what prompted Richard's final. And that was what prompted Richard's final rebellion against his father. He certainly wanted to get Richard out of Aquitaine and give it to John. So there is some reason for thinking that perhaps because John was younger and initially more obedient than the others that Henry was fonder of him and thought he would be more loyal to him than the others, but of course that was proved wrong at the end.

Yeah, I think I can never work out whether there's anything in the idea of a favourite son or simply the last one to betray his father. So John becomes the only one up until the last minute who hasn't turned against Henry. And is it too much to extrapolate the idea of a favourite son from that? Because all he really is, is the last one to rebel. Yeah, I think that's very well put, Matt, that he's more controllable. And that's one thinks he might be the favourite son. But I think it's very hard to deduce the personal relationships between Henry and his sons. We just got the record. We haven't got personal letters and things like that. We just haven't got the source material.

We have actually later for John, who can in his letters sometimes be shown to express real affection for his servants. You mentioned that John became Lord of Ireland and that he also wasn't particularly fond of going to Ireland. How does that manifest itself? And what does John's time in Ireland tell us about him as a young man? It shows one characteristic, which comes up again and again in the rain. and which was deeply resented by some people.

And that was the way he could mock people. And he particularly mocked one of the native kings for riding bare back on his horse. And also their hairstyle and everything like that, not a very sensible thing to do when you're trying to conciliate the native nobility. Later on, the same characteristic comes out. He mocked his half-brother Geoffrey,

who was Archbishop of York, when Geoffrey flung himself at John's feet in order to beg for pardon for some offence. John mocked him too. He mocked William Marshall, Earl of Pembroke in the 1200s, when William Marshall refused to go on John's 1206 expedition. And all the other John's supporters went off with John, and then only a very small number of people stayed with William Marshall. This is all in an open-air field episode. John laughs at the Marshal. Ah, very few people are standing beside you, aren't they?

That kind of thing. There is a different side. John could also behave extremely well towards people, a very complex character like that. There is also talking the sources, if I'm right, of him sort of pulling the beards out of the Irish when he's over there. So you get that sense of a kind of immature, cruel streak almost. Yeah, that kind of conduct too, yes.

And you can just see him giggling with his entourage as he's. did it. There's another good example of that. When he was invested with the ducal staff of Normandy at Rouen at the very start of the rain, he managed to drop it. And all, of course, his entourage laughed and laughed. But of course, it was not the sort of thing which really is appropriate to happen in a ceremony like that. And of course, later on seemed to foreshadow the loss of Normandy. So I think there was a sniggering, giggling, particularly with the people closest to him, were often, of course, not great nobles, but people he could control.

But like his father could control him, he liked to be surrounded by people whom he could control. And they were often people of much lesser status than him. They were his creatures. And when John begins to turn against Richard, so when his brother Richard becomes king and is famously, you know, away on crusade, captured on his way back home,

John will begin to scheme against Richard. How serious do you think that scheming was? John really aiming to depose Richard at that point? It was in cahoots with Philip Augustus, and they spread the rumour that Richard was dead. To be fair to John here again, Richard had provoked him. Richard had done two stupid things, and here I differ from Richard apologists. On the one hand, he'd given John Great Power in England, because he'd made him, what the chronicler William Mnubra says, made him a tetrarch.

In other words, about a third of the English counties had been placed under John's control at the start of Richard's reign 1189. And they disappear entirely from the financial accounts. All the revenue goes to John. It's as though the whole England has been split up between John and Richard. So we've given John great power. And then he provokes him in the Treaty Messina

making Arthur the air. So John is now feeling, well, I've been cut out of the succession by my brother. So it's not very surprising that John started to discontent, and then in the end, straightforwardly make an alliance with Philip Augustus and rebel against his brother. Of course, they spread the rumour that Richard was dead. Maybe John believed it, but this is out and out rebellion against his brother.

But to some extent, understandable. Richard, I think, behaved very stupidly. But then the thing about Richard is he always regarded John with contempt, my kid brother. And that's why Richard forgave him so easily. Richard once famously said, he's not the man to stir up a successful rebellion. It must be very infuriating for John to be treated like that. But then Richard believed in his start. He was a person of supreme self-confidence.

And of course, with his military talents and personality, maybe that was justified. It led to his death, of course, when he didn't shield himself properly from that arrow. It must be frustrating for Eleanor of Aquitaine, their mother is still alive at this point. and I imagine if their father was as well, he would have been tearing his hair out, that John ends up falling into that trap that all of his brothers do of being played by the Capetian Kings, because I think this is very much Philip driving a wedge between John and Richard again, isn't it? Yeah, Philip masterminded that and was the great gainer from the rebellion of 1193, 1194.

Partly through the deals he made with John, but partly through military force, he made fundamental inroads at the Norman frontier. And in particular, he took the great castle of Gisor. Now, if you ever been to Gisor, you know how very terrible that was for the defence of Anjavin Normandy. It's an amazing motte with a state-of-the-art keep on the top built by Henry II. Henry II knew how important it was because it guards the whole frontier of the Ept. Now, Philippe Augustus actually took it by treachery of the Castellan,

presumably thought Richard's cause was over, and Richard never got it back. And so the whole of the Norman frontier along the act between the Capitian lands and the Angevin lands was fatally broached during the period of John's rebellion. And to be fair to John, of course, that did make Normandy so much harder to defend. Richard never got it back. And that was why he had to build Chateaer Geyard, because although Shattergard was a base for finally recovering the Gisor and the rest, base for advance, as well as a bastion for defence, nonetheless, Gisor was never recovered. And so John's inherited a much worse situation that Richard inherited in 1189. And it's very important to remember when one thinks about John's failure to defend Normandy.

I was going to say, what do the early years of his reign look like? because we tend to think of his reign being dominated by the later years, the 1210s in particular. When he becomes king, is there any sense of promise? Does he start by doing a good job? Yeah, I think there absolutely is. And it's fascinating to look at the account of the early years of John, given by the chronicer Ralph of Cogershaw, who is the abbot of the Cistercian Abbey of Cogershaw in Essex. Because Cogershaw finishes his account of the early. early years of John, almost straight away. He's writing it about 1201, 1202, with no knowledge of the disasters which are going to come. And it's full of praise of John. The main reason for praise is the

peace with France, the peace with Lagoulet, which Cogeshaw thinks is going to end this hugely, highly expensive war. And I think other sort John is behaving very sensibly in making peace with France, because Coggissel goes on and on about the terrible financial exaction. of Richard to sustain the war. So now we've got peace and there's the hope of stability and much lower financial demands. The other thing Cogishol praised was John's settlement of his quarrel with the Cistercian order. John did quarrel with the Cistercians early in the rain and then changed tack made peace with them, threw himself at the feet of the abbots asking for pardon. And Cogishol in an extraordinary passage said, here is the king whose shoulder is touched.

by the hand of God. So this is the early picture of John. The picture you get of him right at the start of the reign in the mystery written later in view of later events, but the picture in the wonderful life of Hugh Bishop of Lincoln, which has got some graphic images of John right at the start of the rain when Bishop Hugh, who is Bishop of Lincoln, meets John Fontebrough, just after Richard's death. And in an extraordinary episode, so Bishop Hugh gives John this lecture about what good kingship would be. And they're standing under that last judgment at Fontivro over the entrance. Bishop Hugh points up to John and says, look, be very careful. Don't be one of those kings being dragged down into the jaws of hell. And what does John do? He goes over to the

other side, said, don't worry at all. Don't worry. I'm going to be one of those kings going up happily being received by angels into heaven. John behaves completely correctly in those circumstances. Admittedly, there are other things in the life of Bishop Hugh, which show him acting ungraciously in the same period. He tells Bishop Pugh to hurry up with his sermon so he can go and have his breakfast. Because obviously before mass you're not supposed to eat. But John could behave well. And just if you stop the clock in 1201, that sort of time, I think you would have thought John has got off to a really good start in both policy, La Goulet, but also in terms of personal behaviour. We're getting here a different picture of the king.

Yeah, absolutely. And it's interesting to see it unfiltered by knowledge of his later events, someone actually writing and ending their story with John as the promise of a good future. Exactly. Almost. Yeah, Cogershawl, of course, later completely changed his mind. But what's so valuable is that his chronicle is written in phases. So he finishes the account of the start of the reign almost straight away. And given then that we've just seen John say,

I'm not going to be one of those terrible kings that gets in trouble with the church. I'm going to be one of those great kings that will be whisked up to heaven. How is it that a few years into John's reign? We start to see the wheels fall off his relationship with the church and England begin to fall under papal sanctions. Two disastrous things I think blotted John's early reputation so that by 1204-5, before the quarrel with the church, things were looking very different.

The first was what should have been John's greatest triumph. And that was Arthur, of course, is in rebellion against him, still making a case to be Duke of Normandy, if not King of England. And John manages to capture him at Miraboe. And it was one of the occasions when John acted very fast, went to Mirabow with a force and has a triumph. Captures not merely Arthur, but all Arthur's allies, particularly the Lucian family. What goes wrong is the murder of Arthur. Arthur is taken off to fillets, Rouen, and disappears. And most people thought rightly, although John never held up his hand and said, I murdered him.

Most people at the time thought John has murdered him, and I think it's completely true. And they're all different accounts of it. One of the best was that John murdered him in a drunken rage personally. And that clearly is way outside the conventions of the age. This isn't an age when you're these sorts of things expect to happen. Look at Henry I first who kept his brother Robert in captivity for virtually the whole of life after you've been captured at Tintrail 1106 but doesn't kill him. Henry the second had forgiven his sons for their rebellion.

For John to actually murder his nephew, I think was a terrible blight on his personality. The other, of course, event which indeed was connected with the murder of Arthur was the loss of Normandy. That is the real watershed in the rain. And in 1204, Philip Augustus invades Normandy. And here John seems totally unlike Richard, not at a loss how to defend it militarily. And so the loss of Normandy is a complete watershed in the rain. It blasts John's reputation. it's a humiliating thing for the Anglo-Norman elite

and then of course it leads in to all the financial exactions of the second half of the reign designed to recover Normandy. But I think we need to remember that defence of Normandy, as I said before, was harder because the frontier along the F had already been breached by the loss of Gisor. There's a big debate about whether John could have done better. I'm sure he could have done far better. It's inconceivable to think of Normandy being lost as it was.

lost under Richard the Lionheart. But nonetheless, I think John could have done far better than he did there. And that showed a sort of weakness, a lack of military skill, temerity too, in loss of nerve, I think, at the last moment. He wasn't even in Normandy when Philip Augustus conquered it. So all this by 1204 is a king who is seen to be a failure and who is also seen to be a murderer. and also seemed to be very cruel.

I think this is another thing which had come out also in that his treatment of some of the prisoners captured at Mirabeau was considered cruel. There were stories that they were being starved to death in the vaults at Corth Castle or at Windsor. And again, this is outside the chivalric conventions of the age in that this isn't an age when the great nobles are executed for political crimes

it's not an age when they're actually killed very much in battle. For John to behave like this seemed, as I say, very different from the behaviour of his father and indeed of the Lionheart and was putting him outside the sort of spectrum of how a king ought to behave. Yeah, it's incredible. And I guess it's a psychological edge to his way of dealing with them as well, that he's willing to put them under this psychological threat of, you know, if you don't do what I want, there will be a worse punishment to come. one amazing letter of John on the treatment of prisoners from Mirabu, which does take you very close to him, I think, to perhaps the sort of suspicious, fearful side of him, but also the way in which he could put pressure, perhaps brutal pressure on great nobles.

And this is an extraordinary letter in which he's dealing with one of the great nobles taken at Mirabot called Geoffrey de Lusin. He's now a prisoner at Falais. So John, first of all, sets up very elaborate precautions so that no one can get in to see Geoffrey without John's permission. The whole point of the letter is to say, look, I'm offering Geoffrey this deal. And if he agrees this deal, what happens?

The fetters can be taken off him, and then he can be moved to another chamber, which is obviously meant to be a more comfortable, chamber, but it's also a chamber with a threat because John says, put him in the chamber where the ring chains are. And these are obviously chains hanging down from the wall. He doesn't say put Jeffrey in the ring chains, but the threat is clearly, Jeffrey's sitting in this chamber, he'll see these chains on the wall. And if he steps out of line, doesn't accept the deal, he may well have his hands put up in these rings. It shows the brutal threats which John could issue,

even to one of really great noble, Geoffrey DeLucin, he's been fettered, he could be put in ring chains. I think that does take us quite close to John's sort of manipulation, threat, suspicion, fear, all in one letter. Extraordinary letter. You do feel you're getting really close to him from a letter like that. And so we seem to have seen then John's early promise evaporate quite quickly and the wheels begin to come off. Yeah. And we will then see his relationship with the church start to fall apart too. How does he end up with this huge rift with the Pope? I've got a lot of sympathy with John here and I'm not sure that Henry II or Richard Larnhardt would have acted differently. So Hubert Walter is the Archbishop of Canterbury but he's been just the kind of Archbishop of

Canterbury that Henry II and indeed Richard like because he's absolutely ready to double up as Justicia and Chancellor. So he's both running the country. and Archbishop of Canterbury, just what Henry II wanted from Beckett and didn't get. So Hubert Walter dies, and clearly John very reasonably wants a successor who's going to be the same. And it's not just cynicism, it brings together church and state in the sort of harmony. So John had the very man, which was one of his closest servants, who John de Grey, who's Bishop of Norwich. And so he wants the Canterbury monks to elect him. Some of them did, and some of them didn't.

And so the dispute was referred to the Pope, Pope Innocent, who lo and behold simply appoints, without asking John, someone totally different, which was Stephen Lankton. Now, Stephen Lankton was an Englishman, but he had spent many years in Paris, the capital of John's greatest enemy, as one of the great academics, intellectuals of the age. So it was Englishmen. And of course, John didn't know that. University professors didn't sail into John's orbit very often. And he didn't know this one. Bloody hell. I think John was absolutely right to say, really, no, sorry, no.

You've ignored all the convention that the King of English have a say in this very important position. You've foisted Stephen Langton, who I don't know and may well be treacherous on me. I'm not going to allow that. Of course, it all goes from there. John stands firm, and first of all, England is placed under an interdict, and then John is excommunicated. And it's a testament to the strength of English rule government that he's able to sustain that position until 12, 12, 12, 13, when it wasn't in the end, indeed, the threat of the interdict to excommunication, which got him to cave in. It was the threat of French invasion. So I've got a lot of sympathy with John there, and I'm not sure it would have been that different under Henry and Richard.

Later on, Kings of England just did come to accept that they might have Archbishop for Canterbury appointed by the Pope, who they were not their favourite candidate. So there was a paradigm shift. I mean, the only qualification is whether the diplomacy of Richard the Lionheart would have been better, whether he would have handled it with more facility. And I know that has been suggested, but I can imagine Henry II. absolutely getting furious at this degree of interference. But of course, it does blast his reputation with the church, not, I think, with great nobles so much. In the secular account of the reign,

it's a wonderful chronicle written for a great noble, Robert of Bate in that, there's very little there about the interdict, very little about the interdict in the history of William Marshall. I don't think it affected great nobles, but obviously it blasted John's reputation with the church. In the end, of course, John, by brilliant footwork, brings the Pope back on his side. So the Pope was on his side at the time of Magna Carta. The lasting damage to John by that, by the quarrel with the church, in terms of the final rebellion, I don't think it was very great. And during all of this crisis, too, John is focusing on a bit of foreign policy.

So he's quite keen to win back all of those enjaville lands that he's lost. Getting the revenue that should have gone to the church means he's building this really a effective war chest. What should we make of his efforts to regain the lost territory? How much blame, for example, should we give him for the loss at the Battle of Bovine, given that he wasn't even there? Here again, I think John acted effectively. And of course, one of the great alliances which he wants to restore and does is with the Count of Flanders. And there's a fascinating account of that and the negotiations leading to his successful alliance with the counter-flanders in this chronicle written for the Anglo-Flemish noble Robert Abeytoon.

And it shows John acting just right. So the counter-flanders arrives in England and Robert Béthune, who's his sort of envoy with John, says to John, the counter-flans did arrive, you need to meet him. And John, first of all, laughs and said, ha, you Fleming think you're very important, don't you? Robert Baitoon says, yes, we are very important and the count is vital to you. And John then laughs and gets on his horse and gallops so fast to Dover that his entourage can't keep up, goes into the presence of the Count of Flanders, greets him, welcomes him in the appropriate way, invites him to a meal and so on. And the alliance is secured.

That is another example of how difficult it is to assess John or how nuanced it is. He is acting completely properly and sensibly. In the end, of course, he does build up this great continental alliance with Otto, the emperor, with the Count of Flanders, and one might well have thought that, with more luck, that would have resulted in 1214 in a total defeat of Philip Augustus and the recovery of nobody. And don't forget, of course, how is he able to do this? And again, and this is an extraordinary testimony to John's efficiency, and his hands on driving forth the financial affairs of the kingdom, he has become very rich.

And by 1213, 1214, he's probably got a treasure of about £130,000. When you think that's about three or four times the annual revenue, it's a gigantic sum of money which he's been put together. And he does, with the help of that money, get this great continental alliance together in the north. And then, of course, in 1214, he invades in the south. It was a very sensible strategy.

And, of course, it all disastrously ended at the Battle of Bouvine. It did all turn on that one battle, if it had gone the other way. And Philip Augustus had been captured, rather than John's own captain, William Longspay Earl of Salisbury, the whole history of 13th century Europe might have been different. Yeah, and following on from Bouvine, the crisis really does build quickly for John, doesn't it? How much of that invasion of England by France and ultimately the imposition of Magna Carta on John, should we lay entirely at John's feet?

Were there other factors at play that might excuse him a little bit? Yeah. This is, of course, a favourite topic for undergraduate essays. Is it the Andrewan system of government as a whole? How far is John's personality and policies to blame? And as so often that not always, I think it's, one has to weigh these things up. By 1199, there were already deep resentment in England about the nature of Andrewin government. Richard's exaction, so to sustain his position in Normandy and pay the ransom, 1194, 1199. So Cogershaw, writing 1199, says, no king, however long he'd reign, had taken so much money from the kingdom as Richard did, 1194-9. And then in the sort of ultimate backhanded,

compliment. He says, in view of Richard's earlier good deeds, God actually decided to kill him off so that he wouldn't become even worse and have to spend a longer time in purgatory. I think there's also deep resentment against some of the arbitrary nature of Angeman government. I recently did a study of Richard and Henry's treatment of the Earls of Arundel, and it's extraordinary the way both those kings simply set at naught charters granting them the honour of Arundel. in hereditary right, this completely lawless treatment, and also took huge sums of money from them for what the Earls must have thought they were entitled to already. So by 1199, there's also already a great deal of resentment. I think another important factor to is that the one area which

everybody liked about Anjavine kingship, or not everyone, but free men, knights, particularly, was the development of the common law, these new legal procedures. It's one thing Magna Carter says, yes, please, let's have more of them. Let's make them more available. But they, of course, taught that you should not act in an arbitrary fashion. What the jury had to decide, has someone been deprived of property unlawfully and without judgment? So that principle is being told to the kingdom by the king, and in the end, the kingdom turns around and says, well, you must obey your own rules. You've told us we can't deprive people of property unlawfully in that judgment, but you're doing it all the time. So all the time.

things are building up. But on the other hand, it gets ever so much worse under John. I think I've written somewhere under Richard, the Pips squeaked under John. They screamed, because clearly he triples his revenue between 1204, 1214. And then, of course, the other factor is John's personality. John Gillingham famously said on one occasion that John is a shit. And that's certainly how he was regarded by a lot of the great nobles, not just by churchmen. This chronicle written for Robert of Baton is so interesting because on the one hand, yes, it shows John acting very well in the episode of the Count of Flanders. And on other occasions as well, John could act really well in an appropriate fashion, sensible, calculating.

And yet on the other hand, this chronicle also pervades all these rumours and stories about John, the murder of Matilda de Brayos, a terribly graphic, a count. of that, which must be what lots of great barons believe, because this is written for a great baron. He was a bad man. He was cruel. He was deceitful. He loved to set discord between his nobles. That's there. And it does show what people thought of him. So although if you're with John, he can be welcoming, charming even, you always thought as he puts his arm round your shoulder. He was about to stab you in the back. It doesn't explain the detail of my own. Magna Carta, but it explains why there was the rebellion. I think the hatred and loathing of

John personally, distrust of him, is a hugely important factor. And that wouldn't have operated in the same way under Henry or Richard. You might fear Richard, you might think he was abrasive, tyrannical even, but God, you jolly well respected him. This is his great warrior, a crusade, everything like that. I think a rebellion in the same way under Richard, almost inconceivable. I could imagine under Richard demands being put to him, especially if he'd gone on ruling that he couldn't make peace with France, his own financial exactions increased. You could imagine under Richard a series of demands not so different from Magna Carta, but it's difficult to envisage a rebellion in quite the same way against him personally. One of the outcomes of all of this problem with

the French invasion, the barons rebelling, is that John settles his quarrel with the church, in quite a novel and unusual way? Yeah, this was again John's brilliance. This is amazing footwork. He first of all decides because of the threat in French invasion that he needs to settle with the church. And of course, John also took the cross and became a crusader. So the Pope says, from a son of iniquity,

he has become a sort of favourite son of the church. And throughout 1215, innocent is on John's side and is quite prepared to quash Magna Carta boy. So from that point of view, John's footwork there was absolutely brilliant. Yeah, it's striking how Mirabot and odd occasions, you do see him doing something that's verging on brilliant. It's his lack of ability at other times that really seems to hold him back. He could be really good, but he could make horrible mistakes.

On the one hand, you find him very highly hands-on micromanagement, but also acting just as a good king ought to act. But there was some sort of devil in it. I think, which he liked to mock. And of course, the womanising, which the Baton Chronicle mentions, he shamed the high men of his land for lusting after their wives and daughters. And some of those stories seem to have some kind of truth in them. Those sorts of accusations, they were never made against Richard the Lionheart,

a little bit perhaps against Henry II. But that was another aspect of him. And so when we get to that famous scene at Roney Meade in 12th, 15, why does John allow himself to be forced to seal Magna Carta, even if he didn't mean to abide by it? Why does he allow himself to get into that position? Yeah. The answer to that is that there is this very large rebellion against him. And after the fall of London in May 1215, John can't see any way of defeating his opponents. So what he thought was, look, I'll make peace and I'll agree to their terms.

But that was a clever thing to do in a way for two reasons. First of all, he's agreeing terms without actually having been defeated in the field. His own army is still in place. He's still in charge of all his castles, the counties and so on. In some ways, he's making peace from a position of strength, which he's not losing. Now, you might say he's losing it because of all the restrictions placed on him in the Charter. But there John was very clever too, because his view was, yes, as a gracious king, I am making these concessions. They'll all now go home and there'll be peace. Of course,

they'll never get around to actually enforcing them. So I think it's wrong to think that John actually was going to renege on the Charter straight away. His calculation was that the rebel barons would never actually manage to enforce it. And also that probably while everyone knew that he granted the charter, no one would know what was in it. Because actually getting copies of the charter out of John was like drawing teeth. I mean, he was very resistant to actually having it circulated. And he'd also done one very clever thing,

in that, of course, the most radical and revolutionary part of the charter was the security clause when 25 barons were appointed in order to basically force the king to keep it, and they were empowered with a commune of all the land to seize John's lands and castles if he tried to break it. But John had managed to keep the names of the 25 barons out of the charter. So how do the security clause works? If you think the charter's being broken,

you have to go to the 25 and complain. But no one from the charter knew who the 25 were. And that was, thanks to John's brilliant footwork, issuing the charter before the barons had time to choose the 25. It was a supreme piece of skill. So when John leaves Rani Mead, he's very hopeful that there'll be peace and people will know a gracious king has granted these liberties, but no one will know what's in the charter and it'll never be enforced. Now, of course, there he would prove totally wrong because the barons got their act together and they started to enforce the charter to the letter and beyond.

And also they humiliated him. Again, there's this amazing account in, again, this Baton chronicle, of the 25 barons at work in John's presence. So 25 say, we're going to issue a judgment, and we want you present, John, when we judge it, probably of judgment to return lands to some, which John had taken away unlawfully. And so John says, look, I'm in a lot of pain.

I've got gout and I'm in bed, will you come to me and make your judgment by presence? So they said, no, that's beneath our dignity. We're not coming to see you. And so John has to be carried on a litter into their presence. And then they refuse to stand up when he's brought in. And so they're humiliating John. They're basically saying our status is just as high as yours. It was probably just after this that John said that enough's enough.

And he gets the Pope to quash the charter. So, I mean, that again, one has some sympathy with John. I think that obviously it's fault on both sides. John didn't want the charter obeyed. The barons are enforcing it beyond the letter in a humiliating way. The only person who was really struggled in an even-handed way to maintain the Magna Carta peace was Stephen Langton, the Archbishop of Canterbury. Well, I think in a very noble way, did genuinely try and give something to one side,

give something to the other, and try and hold it. the balance between them, but you just couldn't be done. We know then that John will get caught up in this French invasion, the rebellion of his barons, tearing around his country, he will fall ill and pass away. What would you say is the kind of immediate impact of John's death? Yeah. It basically saved the dynasty, and it saved the monarchy, because, of course, he leaves a nine-year-old son, Henry III, and the small group of a clear group of a clear.

and nobles who remain loyal to him and carry on his government, headed by William Marshall Earl of Pembroke and the Papal Legate Gwala, they realise that the only future is a complete change of policy. One of the most amazing shifts of policy in English history, which still live with the consequences, a huge impact on the future. because what they did almost straight away was issue a new version of Magna Carta. It's not called Magna Carta yet, but that's what they do. And I think that, and also the fact that, of course, John's malevolent personality has been removed and you've got a nine-year-old, innocent son, changed the situation. Now, it didn't lead to any immediate desertions to the young king. And Louis, I think, was very uproval.

remarkable person who was able to still retain the loyalty of the English barons in rebellion. But what happened was that at the very decisive Battle of Lincoln in May 1217 when William Marshall defeated the Anglo-French forces and the great majority of the English barons were there at the Battle of Lincoln, the English barons in rebellion did not fight very hard. None of them were killed. They all seem to have struck token blows and then surrendered. And of course, they surrender, I think, because they feel their cause is won. John has gone, young and the St. King, and above all, they know a Magna Carta is going to be, or in some form, is going to be accepted. And of course, the terms which ended the war, another version of Magna Carta this time with a Forest Charter was issued.

So the impact of John's death was to save the dynasty. Louis is defeated, goes back to France, abandons his claims, and the impact is Magna Carta. If John had continued, he's difficult to know what would have happened on that front. I think it's quite a sad indictment of John that the best we can say about him is that he died early enough not to have left too much of a crisis behind him that it was still salvageable. You're right. John's death doesn't bring an end to the war, but it prepares the way for the victory of his son and the survival of the dynasty. It prepares the way for Magna Carta. Yes, John's death was a very good thing.

It's an extraordinary unsuccessful reign, isn't it, when you think that he begins as Lord of Ireland, King of England, Duke of Normandy, Count of Anjou, Duke of Aquitaine. By the end of the reign, he's lost half of England. Ireland is the only place where rebellion against him has no footing. Normandy, he's lost enjou, he's lost part of Poitou, and he's had to concede, although he reneges on it, fundamental restrictions on the operations of royal government. It is extraordinary. And of course, where he actually was after his death, there were all signs of lurid tales of his sufferings in purgatory. But at least he was in purgatory rather than actually already in hell. It's been absolutely fascinating to try and get to know John a little bit.

better. I think I've always viewed his real fatal character flaw. I mean, he had so many flaws, but I think I've always viewed the fatal one as his unpredictability that nobody quite knew what John was going to do. And that's not a great position for a king to be in, for your nobles to be nervous and frightened. As you said, when you come over and reach an arm round, is he going to put an arm round your shoulder or stick a knife in your back? But it's been interesting to get a slightly more nuanced view of John and an understanding of why some of those things happened. And also a sense that There was some promise there that was never quite realised. I think he was a very clever, highly intelligent person

who was thinking round all the angles all the time. He knew how to use patronage, makes William Marshall Earl of Pembro at the start of the rain. He knows about the carrot and the stick. But there was, as I said before, just this sort of devil in him, in which the mocking, the tampering with the wives and daughters of barons, the cruelty, all those things bring him down in the end. Well, thank you so much for joining us, and I'm very much looking forward to speaking to you soon about Magna Carta too.

So thank you for joining us, David. Sam, I, Matt. It's always a pleasure. You can grab both volumes of David's magisterial biography of John's son, Henry III, right now, wherever you get your books from. If you've enjoyed this episode, you might like to hear more from David in his previous episodes on Henry III and on Magna Carta. For more of the crisis around the French invasion at this time, there's a great episode with

Kath Hanley on her book, 1217. There are new installments of Gone Medieval every Tuesday and Friday, so please come back to join Eleanor and I for more from the greatest millennium in human history. Don't forget to also subscribe or follow us on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts and tell all of your friends and family that you've gone medieval. You can listen to us and all of History Hits podcasts and ad free and watch hundreds of TV documentaries when you subscribe at historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Anyway, I better let you go. I've been Matt Lewis and we've just gone

medieval with history hit.