to the Annals of Margam, a historical chronicle maintained by the Cistercian monks of Margam Abbey in Wales, “After King John had captured Arthur and kept him alive in prison for some time, at length, in the castle of Rouen, after dinner on the Thursday before Easter, when he was drunk and possessed by the devil, he slew him with his own hand, and tying a heavy stone to the body cast it into the river Seine.”7 There was no official announcement regarding Arthur’s fate. He simply disappeared, allowing rumours of John’s involvement to spread widely throughout his domains. John’s assumed involvement in the disappearance of his nephew was a grave transgression, which cast a shadow over the king’s reputation for the rest of his reign.
John’s reputation deteriorated further when he was excommunicated from the Roman Catholic Church in 1209. John’s predecessors, Henry I, Stephen, and Henry II, all experienced jurisdictional conflicts with the church, but John’s inability to make peace with the papacy until the very end of his reign cemented a reputation for both villainy and arbitrary rule. The trouble began when the archbishop of Canterbury died in 1205. John seized the opportunity to appoint one of his staunch supporters, John de Gray, the bishop of Norwich, as the new archbishop of Canterbury. The Chapter of Canterbury Cathedral — the clerics who advised the late archbishop — however, claimed it was their right to elect the successor, which was accorded to the church by Henry I’s Charter of Liberties. The chapter elected as archbishop one of their sub-priors, Reginald, who travelled to Rome for confirmation of his new position over John’s objections.
The pope settled the dispute by advancing Stephen Langton, one of the eventual authors of Magna Carta, as his own candidate, dismissing the claims of the candidates chosen by both John and the chapter. John objected to Langton, both personally, because of his connections to Philip II’s court in Paris, and because of the process by which he was chosen as archbishop. When John refused to allow Langton to enter England, let alone take up the role of archbishop of Canterbury, the pope placed England under interdict, forbidding most religious ceremonies to be performed throughout John’s kingdom. John treated the interdict as a papal declaration of war and began confiscating lands from clergymen and religious communities who obeyed the pope over the king, circumstances that contributed to his eventual excommunication.
In addition to his treatment of his nephew and conflict with the church, John acquired a reputation for erratic treatment of his barons and personal villainy. John’s second wife, Isabelle of Angouleme, was betrothed to one of his vassals, Hugh de Lusignan, before the king decided to marry the twelve-year-old heiress himself. John levied extraordinary taxes and demands for military service in his campaigns against Philip II to preserve his continental empire. Widows and orphans of barons were married against their will to John’s closest allies.
While previous kings had taken mistresses, John became notorious for targeting the wives and daughters of his barons, in violation of his responsibilities as liege lord to the nobility. One monastic chronicler accused John of neglecting the affairs of state to remain in bed until noon with his young queen. The king developed a reputation for choosing pleasure over statecraft, an image bolstered by his love of fine clothes and jewels.
All of John’s political, religious, and personal transgressions might have been tolerated by his subjects if he had achieved military victories that brought wealth and prestige to his barons and knights. Instead, John lived up to his childhood nickname of Lackland by losing most of his continental lands to Philip II. Philip seized Anjou in 1203 when John refused to accept the king of France as liege lord for the county. After Eleanor of Aquitaine died in 1204, one of her sons-in-law, King Alfonso VIII of Castile, took the opportunity to occupy part of her lands in the duchy of Aquitaine. In July 1214, the year before Magna Carta, John lost a pair of decisive battles that cost him most of his empire on the continent. After these defeats, John had to recognize Philip’s territorial gains, agree to a six-year truce, and pay compensation. Barons who owned estates in both England and Normandy lost lands, and merchants engaged in continental trade found their ships seized by the French.
Nineteenth-century French illustration of the Battle of Bouvines in 1214, which cost King John much of his territory in what is now France.
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