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John of England

(Redirected from John I of England)

John (French: Jean) (December 24, 1166/67 - 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 the 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"). 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 six months.

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.

King John
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King John

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 Angoulême, who was twenty years his junior. She was the daughter of Aimer Taillfer, Count of Angouleme. Isabella eventually produced five children, including two sons (Henry and Richard) and Eleanor of England. Around this time John also married off his illegitimate daughter, Joan, to the Welsh prince Llywelyn the Great, building an alliance in the hope of keeping peace within England and Wales so that he could recover his French lands. The French king had declared most of these forfeit in 1204, leaving John only Gascony in the southwest.

As far as the administration of his kingdom went, John 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. The textbooks that said that resembled the textbooks that said 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": if Robin Hood had not stepped in, Prince John would have embezzled the money raised to ransom King Richard.)

Seal of John of England
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Seal of John of England

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.

See also: Constitutional monarchy, Monarchy, Oligarchy

References

King John, by W.L. Warren ISBN 0520036433


Preceded by:
Richard I
King of England Succeeded by:
Henry III
Duke of Aquitaine
Lord of Ireland


Last updated: 10-24-2004 05:10:45