24 December, 1167.

King John was the last of the Angevin kings. He came to the throne after his brother Richard and his father Henry II.

Length of reign:

17 years and six months.

John married twice in the course of his life. His first wife was Isabella, but the couple were divorced the year that John came to the throne without producing any children. He then married Isabella of Angouleme. The couple had five children; his son Henry succeeded him as king. John also had lots of illegitimate children.

Although the reign of King John is generally looked upon with disfavour, there were perhaps some redeeming features. He was a good administrator and some accounts mention his fair exercising of the law. He often found against the barons in favour of their tenants. He could be a talented soldier as can be seen some succesful campaigns throughout the kingdom. Although he argued with the Pope, he later secured friendship and support from the Papacy in his battles against the barons and the French. 
 

The general perception seems to be of a king who was wicked, cruel, untrustworthy, unpopular with all his subjects, who repeatedly failed to regain the lost French possessions and who quarrelled with the Pope and his own barons, culminating in Magna Carta.

Before coming to the throne, John had quarelled with his brother and his father over the fact that he was given no inheritance in the form of land, which is why he is referred to as Lackland. He had also accepted a role as Lord of Ireland yet succeeded in alienating both his own soldiers and the Irish rulers. While King Richard fought in the crusades, John schemed and plotted to take the throne and ultimately lost the French possessions given to him by the king in the hope of keeping him occupied.

When his brother Richard died in 1199, John was accepted as king in England, but he came across difficulties in the Angevin lands in France. These territories preferred John's nephew, Arthur. At the same time, John quarrelled with the French king, Philippe over his second marriage to Isabella of Angouleme. John was forced to defend his French lands in the face of this opposition, capturing Arthur, who was never seen again. This only served to increase the distrust felt towards John in his French lands. John was forced to streadily withdraw and the rest of his reign was spent in a fruitless attempt to regain lost land at great expense to the kingdom at large.

In matters of religion, John fared little better. He argued with the Pope over the appointment of the archbishop of Canterbury with the result that John was excommunicated from the church. Even worse, the barons in the kingdom were growing restless with the high levels of taxation forced upon them by the king who desperately needed money to fund his campaigns. When John's latest effort to regain his lost French possessions started badly, the barons and the church decided that enough was enough. They forced John to sign a Great Charter, or Magna Carta, in which he conceded certain rights and privileges.

John had no intention of allowing this to stand though, and soon the king was claiming that the document was not legal as he had been forced to sign it against his will. This sparked a civil war. The barons invited King Louis of France to be king of England. The French king landed in England and marched on London; John was forced to retreat. While doing so, he fell ill, lost his crown and treasures in the Wash and died, leaving his nine year old son, Henry, with a decidely tricky situation to unravel.

The signing of the Magna Carta at Runnymede was of great symbolical importance. It was the first time that a monarch had been bound by such an instrument of law, while in making provision for a council of barons to meet to discuss greivances and the like, the foundations for the modern parliamentary system were perhaps laid. Magna Carta remains one of the cornerstones of the constitution in this country. Among its provisions, John recognised the right of the church to make appointments, the right of feudal tenants to consent to high sums of taxation and the right of freemen to be punished only within the context of the common law.

'Both we and the barons have sworn that all this shall be observed in good faith and without deceit. Witness the abovementioned people and many others. Given by our hand in the meadow that is called Runnymede, between Windsor and Staines, on the fifteenth day of June in the seventeenth year of our reign.'

The last sentences of the Magna Carta, signed 1215 by the barons, church leaders and King John.