1216 Death of King John
If there were a vote for England’s Most Unpopular King, the sure winner would be John (1167-1216). Other monarchs of that land have been crueller, more profligate, or unsuccessful, but none have combined high levels of nastiness, pettiness, and bumbling in the fashion of John. He was the youngest son of Henry II, founder of the Angevin empire, and Eleanor of Aquitaine, both significant political figures but failures as parents.
In the constant warfare between his father, brothers, and mother, John remained loyal to Henry who came to consider him his favourite child and who tried to find territory for him to inherit. Late in Henry’s life as the king battled his oldest surviving son Richard Lionheart, John switched sides and betrayed his father.
During the reign of Richard (r. 1189-99), John proved equally duplicitous. While Richard was absent on the Third Crusade, John, who had been bribed into loyalty by Richard’s gift of a wealthy bride and considerable land holdings, quarrelled with royal officials and conspired with the wily Philip Augustus of France. When Richard, on his way home from the crusade, was held for ransom in Germany, John allied himself with the French and rebelled against his brother but was stripped of all his lands by Richard when the king was released.
On Richard’s death in 1199 and after a tussle with his nephew Arthur of Brittany, John assumed the throne of England. He was also ruler of that significant part of France that had been acquired by his father and brother but it required considerable military and diplomatic skills to keep that makeshift empire intact and John conspicuously lacked those abilities. Through a series of defeats in battle and political blunders, John proceeded to lose Normandy, and place the rest of his French holdings in jeopardy. At home, he feuded with the great barons, developing a reputation for lechery, greed, irreligion, and untrustworthiness.
In 1205 he initiated a quarrel with the Church by a disagreement over the choice of the next Archbishop of Canterbury. Innocent III, the most lordly of medieval popes, responded by placing England under the interdict, essentially excommunicating the entire country. Because Innocent had also personally excommunicated John, canon law permitted the pope to declare John deposed and turn the realm over to another Christian king, in this case Philip of France. This encounter ended with John’s surrender, acceptance of the papal candidate, and surrender of his kingdom to Innocent III as a papal fief.
Equally humiliating for John was his forced signature on the Magna Carta, a charter of traditional English rights, presented to him by a coalition of his barons. This 1215 document is seen as the foundation of liberty in the English-speaking world. Though John later repudiated the Magna Carta and continued his war against his own political class, he was unsuccessful at everything in 1216. Dubbed “Lackland” and “Soft Sword”, John was so infamous that no English king in the past 800 years has borne his name.