King John: Treachery, Tyranny and the Road to Magna Carta

A FIRST CLASS HISTORIC APPRECIATION OF THE MOST VILE KING OF ENGLAND WE HAVE EVER SEENAn appreciation by Phillip Taylor MBE and Elizabeth Taylor of Richmond Green ChambersMarc Morris comes to this subject with that rare pedigree of excellent story-telling combined with an excellent sense of history and the understanding necessary to appreciate why we needed Magna Carta 800 years ago.During this anniversary year there are many books available on the subject of John and his sealing of the Great Charter at Runnymede. “King John” published by Hutchinson leads the way with an extremely readable account of what happened from the substantial research which Morris has undertaken. The end product is a highly professional statement which we hope will be of great value to anybody who has even a passing interest of those terrible times in the early thirteenth century. The sub-title is “Treachery, tyranny and the road to Magna Carta” which gives the reader a glimpse of how excessive and appalling John really was.For those readers who have never visited the various places referred to, Morris brings them to life both with the importance of castles such as Corfe and Rochester which, even today, are both forbidding and intriguing. But it is of course the story of how John behaved which is the real menace throughout the book.Whilst the title is highly readable, the research conducted and the referencing is magnificent. It is a tribute to Marc Morris that he has spent so much time consulting primary and secondary sources to compile what we feel is a definitive work on this terrible man. It is fair to say that in 2015, even with the behaviour of rogue states and mass murdering psychopaths in some parts of the world today, it is difficult to comprehend what John really did as probably what we do have by way of records only just scratch the surface of the barbarism John inflicted on his people.As with all the other admirable anniversary titles now out to remember the sealing of Magna Carta at Runnymede, “King John” by Marc Morris stands out as one of the best because his use of English describes the tensions of the time without hyperbole but gets to the very meat of the issues between the monarch, the barons and the people. We do not get so worked up about Magna Carta in Britain, probably because of our inherent and somewhat unflappable view of ten centuries of history since the Norman Conquest. The Americans look at it differently and built the main monument at Runnymede… and it is understandable why they did so because of George III.We can away from reading this book with a sense of gratitude for what the barons did, albeit for their own personal reasons, on Runnymede Island. The book ends with a translation of Magna Carta which is the epilogue for this most vile monarch- it is not religious, and it is even more basic than the politics of intrigue: it is the basis of what rights we should have living together as people in our communities- hard fought, cherished and here to stay.

This is a rather good book targeted at the general reader on the reign of the infamous King John. Even if there is nothing really original in its contents and if the presentation is mostly conventional, it goes a good job in showing to what extent this King deserved and lived up to his horrid reputation.First of all, it shows to what extent John’s reputation was already sullied and tarnished even before he became King. He had betrayed both his father Henry II and his brother Richard Lionheart while the later was a prisoner and had attempted to grab the crown from him. Second, it also shows to what extent things became worse with the murder of his nephew Arthur, his botched defence of Anjou, Maine, Touraine and Normandy and his flight back to England even before the fall of Normandy. To all extents and purposes, and by 1204 already, Marc Morris shows very well how John had earned for himself a reputation of being traitorous, cowardly, a poor soldier and an even worse ruler.A further point that is well made is his oppressiveness and cruelty. Marc Morris describes clearly his treatment of prisoners, his taking of hostages from his main barons and his awful and atrocious tendency, even for the times, to starve them to death. Another excellent point which is well made is his financial oppression which started right at the beginning of his reign with increasingly heavy scutages just about every year during the first seven or eight years of his reign. He also required huge and extortionate reliefs to allow heirs and heiresses to come into possession of their lands. He seems to have essentially rendered justice in favour of the highest bidder and also applied arbitrary financial measures to squeeze additional resources out of the Church, keeping sees and abbeys vacant in order to benefit from their revenues.What made things worse was that, unlike his predecessors who also levied heavy and exceptional taxes to finance costly wars, he had little or nothing to show for them. He seems to have largely wasted the huge amounts that he extorted. Further, the book shows that he had somewhat of a talent in alienating just about everyone almost simultaneously, starting with those – his nobles and the church – which he could ill afford to turn against him.The portrait drawn by Marc Morris is rather clear-cut and quite relentless with the author giving at times the impression that he could do no good whatsoever and got it all and increasingly wrong. He became increasingly tyrannical, untrustworthy, paranoid and traitorous over time. This does seem to have largely the case and it is a mark of the author’s talent that it so well described and shown.However, the picture, as the author seems to recognise himself at times, is perhaps a bit one-side and there may be one – slight – problem with this book. This is largely the price that the author has had to pay for adopting a chronological narrative of this King’s reign. Such a narrative, backed up by a clear story written in plain and easy to understand English and well supported by maps and illustrations makes this book very accessible and informative. However, the lack of thematic analyses means that his (wasted) achievements, although mentioned, get drowned in an ocean of reckless, tyrannical and arbitrary measures and decisions that keep back-firing on him. Some points could perhaps have been treated separately and more thoroughly.One is that John was essentially “the runt of the litter” and must have felt it every day. He was treated as such by his whole family – his parents and his brothers, but also his enemies (starting with the King of France). In other words, he was not respected and despised by all before he became King. A typical example is Richards’ very condescending attitude and mercy towards him after he had been freed and had reconquered his kingdom. This obvious lack of self-confidence at a time when the King’s personal leadership and charisma was so important certainly had some very unfortunate consequences and made him appear as hesitant, weak, indecisive, incapable and cowardly. The impact of his vassals seems to have been quite disastrous. Some of them, for instance the Lusignans in Poitou, could feel that they could rebel against him, play him off against the King of France, and get away with it. Others increasingly refused to provide him with the feudal military service that he was owed under various pretexts, especially after the loss of the French provinces.This was one of the major causes of John’s inability to launch the many expeditions that he planned and organised to reconquer lost territory for a decade (between 1204 and 1214). In turn, such defiance shown to him must have increased his paranoia, leading him to take measures, such as taking hostages from his own magnates or relying on a small number of favourites and on mercenaries who only served him because he could pay them. This would further increase his immediate financial needs and lead him to more extortionate measures to obtain such resources.The main problem that King John seems to have had was his total inability to generate goodwill and trust at a time where both were so necessary.This is perhaps another point which, while mentioned in the book, could have done with more emphasis.Interestingly, and while he is often portrayed as a poor ruler and a poor soldier, he did have successes in both areas. For the latter, his victory at Mirebeau and his successful siege of Rochester could have turned the tables on his enemies if they had been properly exploited. The same goes for his two remarkable diplomatic triumphs – his alliance with Innocent III, which allowed him to turn the tables on his own church and secure the pope’s lasting support, and the alliance he managed to cement with the Emperor Otho IV and the Counts of Boulogne and Flanders, which allowed for the invasion of France on two fronts. Here again, however, he was unable or incapable to fully benefit from the advantages that he had secured.The dual disasters in France in 1214 showed once again that he was incapable of reconquering his French heritage. To some extent, Magna Carta, which Marc Morris presents in its real context, was a consequence of these and of all of his reckless and tyrannical behaviours over the past decade and a half. However, one can only agree with the author’s conclusion that “perhaps the most clinching argument for the personal nature of John’s failure and the loathing he inspired is the speed with which the situation in England was retrieved once he was gone.” Even the most sympathetic biographer can only view him and his reign as an utter failure…Five stars

I own and have thoroughly enjoyed Marc Morris' previous books as good examples of well written and readable histories so was looking forward to reading this one. Unfortunately he has broken with the previous clear, linear narrative he has used in his other books and opened this one with a battle in 1203, when John was 37 years old. This was both confusing and unenlightening. (Like many people who enjoy reading history for pleasure I had been looking forward to getting a clear picture of a monarch who I had little real knowledge of, unless you view films and television as reliable sources.)So one is catapulted into the middle of a reign and empire without any background information. This is not only confusing but also seems to contradict Morris' own take on history - that events have to be seen in the context of the past to be fully understood.The timeline continues to be broken up, not returning to the death of Henry Ii until the fourth chapter and finally addressing his family history and how a youngest son came to be monarch and continues to dot back and forth throughout.I found the structure of this book so infuriating that it took away any pleasure in reading it. The author says in the introduction that he has decided to use a flashback approach but seems to have completely forgotten that to use this effectively the average reader needs a firm grasp of when and where they are to understand it. One could uncharitably assume that this may have been done to disguise the sketchy nature of the writing covering most of John's life when compared to the detailed half of the book covering the eight years around Magna Carta. I found this book neither gave me a clear idea of who King John was nor provided a pleasurable read. To be avoided.

So it turns out the original tales of Robin Hood originate in the 14th Century and have nothing to do with John's attempt to usurp Richard's throne! There goes my childhood up in flames along with the other vague notions I had of John and his subsequent reign. It's not going to stop me enjoying watching Errol Flynn on a Sunday afternoon or Peter Ustinov in Disney's 1973 animated re-telling of the Robin Hood myth.But it's good to put all those childish notions to one side and understand the real story of John's reign.Marc's biography was enjoyable, informative, and very readable. His narrative proceeds at a break-neck speed - understandable given the events of John's reign and the fact the man himself never lingered in the same spot for very long; constantly running from his own shadow. But one editorial choice I cannot fathom is the shuttling backwards and forwards in time. I cannot see how it served any useful purpose. Better to have kept the story linear. That said, I really appreciated the translations of original documents into modern-day English. While I have no objection to authors quoting chroniclers and parliament rolls verbatim, the medieval language gap can often kill the momentum and stop the narrative in its tracks. Marc does the translating for us, and it made for a very welcome change.But despite Marc's best efforts, John's story does have one deficit which (unfortunately) did lessen my enjoyment - the lack of a sympathetic protagonist. I completely appreciate that this is a biography and not some romantic historical novel. And I understand that medieval England doesn't owe me a nice, wholesome, downtrodden Disney hero to make the events more palatable. But nevertheless, in all the other biographies I've read of England's kings, there was always a character I had sympathy for - quite often the king himself. John is hardly what you'd call a sympathetic character, but nor is anyone round about him either.I'm not suggesting this is any fault of Marc's. But there is nothing redeeming in John's story. He even tried his best to wriggle out of Magna Carta immediately after signing it. And as for offering England as a fiefdom to Pope Innocent III - I mean, how traitorous can you get?Ooft, John was cruel, cold, calculating, predatory, avaricious, and deceitful - a thoroughly nasty piece of work. And despite the fact the Angevin Empire was on its knees before he succeeded to the throne, I came away with zero sympathy for him or the crises which befell him. And having read biographies of every king from Stephen through to Henry VIII, this is the first time I came away feeling - yep, you deserved everything you got!

This book has all the marks of having being cobbled together to tie in with the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta in 2015, and while it is well told and fast paced, it has nothing new to say and is somewhat old fashioned in its approach. The narrative is non-linear and disjointed in the early part, cutting back and forth in time between chapters for the history before 1208, and this, despite Marc Morris' attempts to link events and people across these differing times, is unnecessarily confusing.The way Morris tackles the reign of King John is overwhelmingly political, and while he nods to modern scholarship at times and socio-economic assessments of the reign, he is unashamedly traditional, save in regard to chronology, in placing John the person at the centre of his explanations for the failures of his government of England, 1199-1216, and the loss of Normandy, Maine, and Anjou in 1204. What he does not do is properly place the Angevin empire within the strategic context of its time, particularly in regard to the resurgence of France and the ability of Philip Augustus to better mobilise his resources against John, and therefore fails to properly address the question as to whether the loss of most of the Angevin continental possessions was unavoidable, and part of a historical process by which both France and England were coalescing into, if not nation states, national polities. Morris, suggests that John failed where Richard I would have succeeded, but this is mere conjecture, and fails to acknowledge not only that Richard died defending his Angevin lands - surely death is the ultimate failure for a king at war? - but also that his successes relied upon him spending most of his reign outside of England, while exploiting the realm to fund his adventures across the channel and on crusade. What Morris does not consider is whether rather than John succeeding to a strong inheritance, what John actually received from his brother in 1199 was an empire that was overstretched and under financed and a baronage exhausted by the costs of financing Richard's crusading and his ransom. The Angevin dominions were defensible under Henry II and Richard I, although they required increasing resources and time spent upon them, but it remains moot as to how much that was due to the weakness of the French, a weakness, relative and absolute, which had evaporated by the time John became king.Similarly, dismissing the effects of the inflation of 1180-1220, in one paragraph, Morris totally ignores the fact that while John's financial impositions were much higher than those of his father and brother in aggregate, so also were the costs he incurred, at a time when incomes and payments were mostly paid in fixed values and the concept of inflation was unknown, much greater. Yes, John's financial exploitation was excessive compared to his predecessors, but his costs and the demands he faced from an aggressive French king, and in Scotland, Ireland, and Wales were considerably greater too.If we accept that John's inheritance was not as golden as it seems superficially and that there were structural pressures that made the task of ruling the Angevin empire harder than for his predecessors, there is still no doubt that John's political failures made that hard task even harder, and in this, Morris is on firmer ground. John's cruelty and untrustworthiness are well attested and were counterproductive, turning potential allies against him, and alienating through his carnal demands and brutality many of the barons and greater landholders whose support he needed if he was, first, to defend Normandy and the other lands, and then, once, they were lost, win them back. Philip's victories in 1204 and 1214 were not inevitable, although the strategic balance was moving in his favour, but John's inability to engender the affection and respect in his noble subjects that Richard inspired by his character were significant factors in John's failures. However, in 1208-14, it is still unlikely that his English barons, however charming and liked he might have been, would have been willing to serve and pay for campaigning in Poitou. And, this brings the question back to the structural dispensation, and whether the Anglo-Norman nobility was becoming more English in outlook and therefore unprepared to fight for continental possessions in which they had little interest, excepting a few greater magnates. Even if Richard was the greater military leader, it is still that he might have found the English barons becoming less enthusiastic about fighting to defend the Angevin inheritance, and that faced by the particular circumstances encountered by John, he too would have been unsuccessful. Philip II had been wearing down the Angevin domains since the latter part of Henry II's reign, and it is likely that, whatever the conjectures, he or his successor would have succeeded one way or another in capturing Normandy, Anjou, and Maine, because of structural reasons no king of England could address regardless of his abilities or personality, and because increasingly the nobility of these lands were looking to the French king for lordship which he could better provide being closer at hand than his English counterpart with his increasing commitments within the British Isles.There is no doubt that John's reign was a failure and that John's political ability was significantly less than that of his predecessors since 1066, but he did face increasing problems and demands that would have stretched even a William I or Henry II, while, whatever the administrative sophistication of the English exchequer, the huge monies demanded by Richard I had stretched the kingdom's financial resources as far as they could go. What England needed after Richard was a period of consolidation and recovery, but instead it was immediately drawn into financing the defence of Normandy against Philip. John could not be regarded as his own worst enemy while Philip Augustus was around.Morris property contextualises Magna Carta within the situation provided after the defeat of the emperor Otto IV at Bouvines, as it was this which destroyed John's hopes of regaining his continental lands. Philip had split his army, sending the dauphin Louis south to watch John's forces, and when he encountered Otto at the bridge at Bouvines he gambled by giving battle before the imperial forces could bring their resources, particularly the cavalry, to bear against him. Had Philip been defeated, it is possible John would have been able to roll up the forces arraigned against him and re-entered his lost territories, as Louis drew back towards Paris to rejoin his father in face of Otto's advance. John was unlucky as it was a battle lost in which he did not fight which determined his final continental defeat, and provided the political dynamic which led to Runnymede. If Otto had won at Bouvines and John had regained Anjou and Normandy, Magna Carta would not have happened.The Great Charter is the defining event of John's kingship, serving as the epitome of evidence of his failures, but it was particular to the situation in 1214 when the nobility would no longer support a king whose yearly extortions and exploitations had resulted in defeat. After Bouvines, John was at his weakest, even more than during the Interdict, and his barons took their opportunity. Morris rightly makes no constitutional claims about Magna Carta, letting the events leading up to its sealing and then repudiation by John tell their own story. In this, his political approach is justified, but unfortunately that same focus limits his ability to properly contextualise it and explain a reign in which a poor king failed to meet challenges probably beyond any king. John failed in his particular way because of his own faults, but ultimately the Angevin empire in the face of an emboldened France under a strong monarch may have already reached its limits and been in structural decline before his accession, although John by his failures of governance and political incompetence certainly speeded up its demise. Morris has successfully recapitulated the case against Bad King John, but in doing so he has failed to adequately provide the structural and contextual evidence, which while not mitigating his failures, explains why a king such as John was probably unlikely to succeed even with the best of intentions. John does not require a defence from the historian - such would not acquit him of the charges he faced from contemporaries and since, particularly regarding the murder of Geoffrey of Brittany and the starvation of Matilda de Briouze and her son - but he does deserve greater understanding and explanatory sophistication than this book, rushed out for 2015, can furnish.

It's a difficult review to write. The reign of King John -which ran from 1199- 1216- is well chronicled and this biography is by a highly esteemed historian of this period.In 1199 the Angevin empire stretched from Northumberland to the Pyrenees, taking huge swathes of what is now western and northern France. When he died , the French possession were gone, large parts of England were in the hands of rebel barons and French invader,s with a ghastly civil war ranging.The books is based on sections which aren't in strictly linear order which is not to every read tastes. One sees how John's reputation is well deserved. His cruelty to opponents and their families,, his avarice, his endless betrayals, relentless taxation, murder of his nephew, ,come over very well in the book. Along with lesser known aspects such as his ill treatment of the Jewish population. The Magna Carta is translated as an appendix , and the attempt to put this document in wider context from looking at the laws and customs of the reign of Henry I onward is very helpful.The only drawback is the author's lack of analysis of the papal interdict's impact on England, in an age where religious faith was so powerful. Also a little more about how the collapse of the Angevin empire led to the rise of Medieval France would have been useful. But I read the book twice already, and will be coming back to it.

This is a riveting account of King John's life-journey to the throne and, unintentionally, to Magna Carta, which is now seen as the defining event of his reign.Dr. Marc Morris' fascinating biography of John is an exciting story told dynamically; thought-provoking and rich in information, always very readable and presented in a way which makes the events of eight centuries ago seem fresh and immediate.It begins (in chronological terms) with the death at sea in 1120 of William, heir to Henry I (John's great-grandfather), and the family wars, rebellions, deaths and empire building in France that followed under Henry II. By 1189 we see John, the little-regarded "eighth or ninth child" of Henry and Eleanor of Aquitaine, now a rebellious younger son allied with his equally rebellious brother Richard and, on their father's death, just one step away from the throne.For the years before 1208, the book is written in chapters alternating between charting John's rise from being a youngest son, not expected to inherit, to become "the ruler of a vast international empire", and the later collapse of that empire through misjudgement and rivalry with Philip II of France. This energizing `flashback' approach highlights how important the loss of John's empire was in determining his later conduct and how the manner of his path to the crown helped make him treacherous by instinct and habit.John's vendetta against the family of William de Briouze is explored in revealing detail, showing that for all John's crimes against that family (which were deemed horrific even by the standards of the time), de Briouze was (as one of the king's advisers) probably implicated in John's decision to murder his nephew and rival Arthur. However, the later destruction of de Briouze and his family (simply by the vindictive will of the king) is shown as a prime example of what Magna Carta sought to prevent, not only for the nobility but "for the humblest freeman."The book takes a directly chronological approach from 1208 onwards, as we clearly see how John's determination to regain his lost empire drove him to first crush opposition at home and then to raise money for his foreign campaign by any means possible. `Justice' was routinely sold and huge sums were demanded for families to regain the king's `goodwill' and their arbitrarily confiscated lands, a fortune was brutally extorted from the Jews and some orders of the Christian clergy were also driven to ruin.John's campaign in France is told here in an immediate style with pace and many quotations from contemporary documents and eye-witnesses. After some initial success, it was a disaster and the year following John's return to England is shown to be a period of growing discontent and (rejected) demands for change, leading to open rebellion by the barons, the fall of London to their cause and the negotiations that resulted in Magna Carta.What happened next is less often told and the chapter `Fire and Sword' describes almost immediate bad faith on both sides leading to further rebellion and (a part of the British story of Magna Carta that is less well known in popular memory) the invasion by invitation of Louis, heir to Philip of France - before John's sudden death.This extremely readable book is rounded off by the final Conclusion, which makes a powerful case to back up the verdict on John of most near-contemporary chroniclers. In the words of one, known as the Anonymous of Bethune: "He was a very bad man, more cruel than all others." Dr. Morris points out how swiftly the position improved once John was dead, underlining John himself as the problem. The accession of the nine-year-old Henry III enabled the English royalists, under William Marshal, to effectively fight back against the rebels and to make concessions for peace - including upholding Magna Carta.(Also included are the text of Magna Carta in English translation, notes for each chapter, a list of abbreviations, the bibliography and index. There are eight pages of 16 colour photographs, mostly of key castles and tomb effigies, John's family tree and maps of France, England and Wales and Ireland.)