Instead, the anticipated tsunami of popular and learned articles collectively assert, inter alia, that John was at once cruel and coercive, treacherous and tyrannical, pusillanimous and pitiful, lazy and lackluster. You're now subscribed to our newsletter. During John’s reign the finger of suspicion was pointed more firmly at the king himself, with some contemporaries alleging that he murdered his nephew with his own hand. Like William I, King John is one of the more controversial monarchs of Medieval England and is most associated with the signing of the Magna Carta in 1215. Even John’s much-criticised twin-pronged invasion of France in 1214 (which culminated in the disastrous battle of Bouvines on 27 July 1214) achieved its basic aim of dividing the Capetian forces. Nor was King Harold, but he at least engaged his enemies when they landed on the shores of England and went down fighting alongside his men. Dysentery was his one and only enemy! He is the author of King John: An Underrated King (Anthem Press, 2012). He has recently released ‘King John’, an app version of the book available on iPad. He visited every part of his Kingdom and made sure that laws were kept properly wherever he went. Plenty of laymen put pen to parchment during the Middle Ages, and John’s reign is no exception. KING JOHN IS NO MORE! His reign was not the most righteous reign, as many citizens thought that he was a disbeliever, then other people thought he was a wasted more money than ever before. My main reason for saying this is that it seems that his subjects never really supported him. No medieval monarch could have accepted for any length of time the Magna Carta of 1215, for it clearly rendered the king a phantom of a monarch. King John was not a good man, He had his little ways. Graham Seel is head of history at St Paul’s School in London. Bad he was, and bad should John remain. Here, writing for History Extra, author Graham E Seel considers John's governance, and asks whether it is time to change our opinions of him. In fact, he would have been quite good as a King if it weren’t for his poor skills in the battlefield. Pupils then use cards to identify evidence that John was good and bad. Robin Hood is an animated film produced by the Walt Disney Studios, first released in the United States on November 8, 1973. His reign was not the most righteous reign, as many citizens thought that he was a disbeliever, then other people thought he was a wasted more money than ever before. Contemporaries also regarded him as treacherous, remembering in particular his attempt to seize the throne for himself while his brother Richard was in captivity. His father, Henry II of England, had inherited significant territories along the Atlantic seaboard – Anjou, Normandy and England – and expanded his empire by conquering Brittany. Those who go in search of the real John therefore tend to suppose that he must have been unfairly maligned, and suspect that in reality he was not nearly as bad as legend maintains. He was considered a weak king who was managed by others like the barons and the Pope. King John then was definitely, as the old history books would put it, not just a bad king but a very bad king. When the French finally invaded England in the spring of 1216, John watched them disembark on the beaches of Kent, briefly considered fighting them, then rode off in the opposite direction. The race for vaccines: lessons from history, The race for a cure: how we found vaccines for 4 of history’s most dangerous diseases, Mourning Martin Luther King Jr: the life and legacy of the civil rights leader, King John and the French invasion of England, The real King John and the BBC in World War Two, Magna Carta: A turning point in English history. The evidence does not permit John to be charged definitively with killing his nephew, Arthur, but the king nevertheless had arguably legitimate reasons to undertake such an act since Arthur (a 16-year-old boy) had put himself at the head of a rebellion sponsored by Philip Augustus. Popular representations of events at Runnymede in June 1215 would also have us believe that leading rebel barons such as Eustace de Vesci and Robert Fitzwalter were revered freedom fighters. They also complained that he forced himself on the wives and daughters of his barons. John is often viewed as having been a cruel King and this is supported with evidence from a recent history book which says “John was a thoroughly bad lot. Cruelty and cowardice were two of John’s most notable faults, but he had plenty of others besides. In fact, they are better understood as tight-knuckled, low browed feudal reactionaries kicking against John’s increasingly efficacious administration. Modern attempts to rehabilitate him require us to ignore this chorus of disapproval from his contemporaries as well as his own nefarious acts. If you subscribe to BBC History Magazine Print or Digital Editions then you can unlock 10 years’ worth of archived history material fully searchable by Topic, Location, Period and Person. King John gets a bad rap. However, the Magna Carta that John chose to ignore did not purport to be a constitutional document adumbrating and guaranteeing liberties to all English people. Was 'Bad King John', as he has been famously nicknamed, really as 'bad' as history has made him out to be? Famously, he arranged the ‘disappearance’ of his nephew and rival, Arthur of Brittany, who contested the king’s claim to his inheritance until John captured him in 1202. Bad kings like John were always accused of taking ‘evil counsel’, which meant relying on a clique of advisors. Using youtube clip, pupils then decide whether the Disney film portrays John as good or bad. Indeed, so extreme was this impact that it is not beyond sensible contemplation that the ambition of the rebel barons was not to obtain a lasting peace, but instead absolutely to provoke John to break the newly agreed terms so that they could seize his largesse. Bad/Good/Important? Somewhere near here in 1216, ‘Bad King John’ – a monarch so incompetent and evil that his name is still preserved in folklore, films and nursery rhymes – was running from his enemies. You will shortly receive a receipt for your purchase via email. Indeed, King Stephen was seen as weak for refusing to hang the son of Marshal when the latter broke the terms of an agreement with the king. The author of The History of William Marshal was also a layman, and repeatedly blames the disasters of John’s reign on the king’s own personality. He returned to the continent in 1206 and 1214 to try to regain lost ground, but on each occasion withdrew rapidly when told that his enemies were approaching. King John was very unlucky, he says, but he also made his own bad luck. John was not as bad as legend made out – he was worse Those who go in search of the real John therefore tend to suppose that he must have been unfairly maligned, and suspect that in reality he was not nearly as bad as legend maintains. John was very active in hearing court cases, but his motivation was the money he could raise by imposing punitive fines. Medieval monarchs were expected to be fierce, and John fulfilled those expectations. One of the few positive statements made about King John was that there was always plenty to eat and drink in his hall, and that he distributed robes to his men on a regular basis. He united into one mass of wickedness their insolence, their selfishness, their unbridled lust, their cruelty and tyranny, their shamelessness, their superstition, their cynical indifference to honor or truth” And sometimes no one spoke to him For days and days and days. Whenever he could he told lies rather than the truth… He was brim-full of evil qualities.”. By entering your details, you are agreeing to HistoryExtra terms and conditions and privacy policy. Nobles were killed in great numbers in Anglo-Saxon England and again in the later Middle Ages, but between 1076 and 1306 not one English earl was executed. But the assertion that all medieval chroniclers were churchmen is a fallacy. John was born on 24 December 1166. King John was not a good man— He had his little ways. Thanks! On the other hand some people have pointed to the many probems that he faced and claim that he was quite good at coping with these. It is a commonplace defence of John, still advanced in school textbooks, that contemporary opinion of him is not to be trusted, because all chroniclers were churchmen, who were biased against the king because he had attacked the church. Some kings were extremely pious in their own devotions, such as the French king Louis IX. Whether by summoning great councils or later parliaments, successful medieval rulers took steps to consult their more important subjects, noting their views, winning them round and channelling their ambitions. So successful was this rehabilitation that, in the popular imagination, John is now often seen as being the victim of a posthumous smear campaign, a king no worse than most others – misreported and misunderstood. Maintaining yourself in government involves a simple trick – make sure more people want you to remain in power than want you out. Similarly, it is not proven that John starved Matilda de Braose and her son to death in Corfe Castle, but if he did so it was because of her refusal to offer her sons as hostages in order to trim the rebellious behaviour of their father. His reluctance to commit to pitched battles was entirely conventional in an age when all leaders preferred to avoid them – John’s arch-enemy, Philip Augustus, King of France (r1180–1223) shied away from a setpiece battle at least as frequently as his protagonist. Most kings were capable of behaving badly from time to time. King John seems to have been reasonably observant, but his attack on the church led to him being written up as irreligious after his death. And men who came across him, When walking in the town, Gave him a supercilious stare, Or passed with noses in the air— And bad King John stood dumbly there, Blushing beneath his crown. He drove the monks of Canterbury into exile and eventually seized the lands of all the English clergy – moves that led to England being laid under interdict and the king himself being excommunicated. Ironically, the very fact that John faced rebellion in 1215 is itself indicative of the fact that his government had bite as well as bark. 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