King John of England

King John ruled England from 1199 to 1216 and is remembered above all for two outcomes of his reign: the loss of Normandy and most of the family's French lands to Philip II of France, and Magna Carta, the charter forced on him by rebel barons in 1215. Contemporaries judged him harshly; modern historians credit his energy as an administrator while still pointing to a suspicious, vindictive and cruel temperament.

John was born in England around Christmas 1166 or 1167; historians still debate the year. He was the youngest son of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine, whose combined lands stretched from England through Normandy and Anjou to the Pyrenees. With little prospect of an inheritance he was nicknamed Lackland, yet he became his father's favourite. Henry made him Lord of Ireland in 1177, but John's first visit there in 1185 went badly. When his brother Richard I left on the Third Crusade, John set himself up as an alternative ruler and, after Richard's capture in 1192, allied with the French king against him. Richard returned in 1194 and forgave him.

On Richard's death in April 1199 John claimed the throne against his nephew Arthur of Brittany, and the Treaty of Le Goulet in 1200 secured French recognition. Peace collapsed after John married the very young Isabella of Angoulême, who was already betrothed to Hugh of Lusignan. Hugh appealed to Philip II, who declared John's French fiefs forfeit in 1202. John won at Mirebeau that year and captured Arthur, but his harsh treatment of prisoners drove away allies, and Arthur disappeared in captivity; most modern historians believe John had him killed. Château Gaillard fell in March 1204, and by August Philip held Normandy, Anjou and Poitou. Only Aquitaine remained.

John spent the next decade trying to win his lands back. He was an unusually hands-on ruler who spent long periods in England, heard legal cases himself and extended royal justice. To pay for war he squeezed every source of revenue: he levied scutage eleven times in seventeen years, charged heavy inheritance fees, took £44,000 from England's Jews in 1210 and introduced a tax on income and goods in 1207. Barons who fell from favour, such as William de Braose, whose wife and son died in John's prisons, could be ruined.

When John refused to accept Stephen Langton as Archbishop of Canterbury, Pope Innocent III placed England under an interdict in 1208 and excommunicated the king in 1209. John seized church revenues in response. Fearing a French invasion, he submitted in 1213 and made England a papal fief, after which the pope became his firm ally.

In 1214 John attacked from Poitou while his allies, led by Emperor Otto IV, advanced from Flanders, but Philip's victory at Bouvines ended his hopes. Rebel barons, many of them in debt to the crown, took London in 1215. On 15 June John met them at Runnymede and agreed the charter later called Magna Carta, which limited arbitrary taxation and imprisonment. Neither side honoured it, the pope annulled it, and civil war followed. The rebels invited Prince Louis of France, who landed unopposed in 1216.

Campaigning in eastern England, John caught dysentery at Lynn, reportedly lost part of his baggage in the Wash, and died at Newark on the night of 18–19 October 1216. He was buried at Worcester. His nine-year-old son Henry III's regents defeated Louis in 1217 and reissued the charter, which became a foundation of English constitutional history.

Our 1200 map shows the Kingdom of England and the Angevin lands in France at John's accession, shortly before most of them passed to the Kingdom of France.