John I Lackland of England my 23 Great Grandfather

John, byname John Lackland, French Jean sans Terre, (born c.1166—died October 18/19, 1216, Newark, Nottinghamshire, England), kingof Englandfrom 1199 to 1216. In a warwith the French king Philip II, he lost Normandyand almost all his other possessions in France. In England, after a revolt of the barons, he was forced to seal the Magna Carta(1215).

John was the youngest son of Henry IIand Eleanor of Aquitaine. Henry’s plan (1173) to assign to John, his favourite son (whom he had nicknamed Lackland), extensive lands upon his marriage with the daughter of Humbert III, count of Maurienne(Savoy), was defeated by the rebellion the proposal provoked among John’s elderbrothers. Various provisions were made for him in England (1174–76), including the succession to the earldom of Gloucester. He was also granted the lordship of Ireland (1177), which he visited from April to late 1185, committing youthful political indiscretions from which he acquired a reputation for reckless irresponsibility. Henry’s continued favour to him contributed to the rebellion of his eldest surviving son, Richard I(later called Coeur de Lion), in June 1189. For obscure reasons, John deserted Henry for Richard.

On Richard’s accession in July 1189, John was made count of Mortain (a title that became his usual style), was confirmed as lord of Ireland, was granted lands and revenues in England worth £6,000 a year, and was married to Isabella, heiress to the earldom of Gloucester. He also had to promise (March 1190) not to enter England during Richard’s absence on his Crusade. But John’s actions were now dominated by the problem of the succession, in which his nephew, the three-year-old Arthur I, duke of Brittany, the son of his deceased elder brother Geoffrey, was his only serious rival. When Richard recognized Arthur as his heir (October 1190), John immediately broke his oath and returned to England, where he led the opposition to Richard’s dictatorial chancellor, William Longchamp.

On receiving the news in January 1193 that Richard, on his way back from the Crusade, had been imprisoned in Germany, John allied himself with King Philip IIAugustus of Franceand attempted unsuccessfully to seize control of England. In April 1193 he was forced to accept a truce but made further arrangements with Philip for the division of Richard’s possessions and for rebellion in England. On Richard’s return, early in 1194, John was banished and deprived of all his lands. He was reconciledto Richard in May and recovered some of his estates, including Mortain and Ireland, in 1195, but his full rehabilitation came only after the Bretons had surrendered Arthur to Philip II in 1196. This led Richard to recognize John as his heir.

In 1199 the doctrine of representative succession, which would have given the throne to Arthur, was not yet generally accepted, and, following Richard’s death in April 1199, John was invested as duke of Normandyand in May was crowned king of England. Arthur, backed by Philip II, was recognized as Richard’s successor in Anjouand Maine, and it was only a year later, in the Treaty of Le Goulet, that John was recognized as successor in all Richard’s French possessions, in return for financial and territorial concessionsto Philip.

The renewal of war in France was triggered by John’s second marriage. His first wife, Isabella of Gloucester, was never crowned, and in 1199 the marriage was dissolved on grounds of consanguinity, both parties being great-grandchildren of Henry I. John then intervened in the stormy politics of his county of Poitouand, while trying to settle the differences between the rival families of Lusignan and Angoulême, himself married Isabella (August1200), the heiress to Angoulême, who had been betrothed to Hugh IX de Lusignan. This politically conceived marriage provoked the Lusignans into rebellion the next year; they appealed to Philip II, who summoned John to appear before his court. In the general war that followed his failure to answer this summons, John had a temporary success at Mirebeau in August 1202, when Arthur of Brittany was captured, but Normandy was quickly lost (1204). By 1206, Anjou, Maine, and parts of Poitou had also gone over to King Philip.

These failures, foreshadowed under Henry II and Richard, were brought about by the superiority of French resources and the increasing strain on those of England and Normandy. Nevertheless, they were a damaging blow to John’s prestige, and, equally important, they meant that John resided now almost permanently in England. This factor, coinciding with the death (1205) of the chancellor and archbishop of Canterbury, Hubert Walter, gave his government a much more personal stamp, which was accentuated by the promotion of members of his household to important office. His determination to reverse the Continental failure bore fruit in ruthlessly efficient financial administration, marked by taxation on revenues, investigations into the royal forests, taxation of the Jews, a great inquiry into feudal tenures, and the increasingly severe exploitation of his feudal prerogatives. These measures provided the material basis for the charges of tyrannylater brought against him.

• James Holt
  Emeritus Professor of Medieval History, University of Cambridge. Author of King John and others.