King John: key dates & facts<\/strong><\/h4>\nBorn:<\/strong> Around Christmas 1166, or possibly 1167<\/p>\nDied:<\/strong> 18\/19 October 1216<\/p>\nReigned:<\/strong> King of England for 17 years, from 27 May 1199 until his death<\/p>\nCoronation:<\/strong> 27 May 1199, Westminster Abbey<\/p>\nParents:<\/strong> Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine<\/p>\nSpouses:<\/strong> Isabella of Gloucester and Isabella of Angoul\u00eame<\/p>\nChildren:<\/strong> Five legitimate children, including Henry III, King of England, Richard of Cornwall and Joan, Queen of Scotland, plus several illegitimate children<\/p>\nSucceeded by:<\/strong> Henry III<\/p>\n <\/p><\/div> <\/section>
How John became \u2018John Lackland\u2019<\/h2>\n
John was born around Christmas 1166, or possibly 1167. The uncertainty exists because he was the youngest of the eight known children of Henry I<\/a>I and Eleanor of Aquitaine<\/a>, and consequently not regarded as all that important. His father was the most powerful ruler in Europe \u2013 King of England, Duke of Normandy and Count of Anjou (all by inheritance), and Duke of Aquitaine thanks to his marriage to Eleanor.<\/p>\nHenry\u2019s intention was that this vast empire would be divided after his death, and he designated each of his three older sons as heirs to its different provinces. There was initially no such provision for John, which led to his contemporary nickname \u2018Lackland\u2019.<\/p>\n
A few years later, when Henry added Ireland to his domains, John was groomed to succeed him there. When the teenaged John finally visited Ireland in 1185, however, he acquitted himself badly, alienating both the native Irish and recent Anglo-Norman settlers.<\/p>\n \u00a0King John in Ireland: the making of a medieval monster<\/a><\/h4>\n\u201cIt was in Ireland that King John revealed himself as a monster,\u201d writes Nicholas Vincent, as he charts the course of the medieval king\u2019s descent into evil\u2026<\/p>\n
<\/p><\/div>
![\""King\"](\""https:\/\/images.immediate.co.uk\/production\/volatile\/sites\/7\/2016\/05\/King-John-112791c.jpg?quality=45&resize=556,556"\" "\\"\"King\\"\/")
<\/div><\/div> <\/div> <\/section>Rebellion against Richard the Lionheart<\/h2>\n
John\u2019s reputation could have recovered from his youthful misadventures in Ireland; it was his behaviour in the decade that followed that did lasting damage.<\/p>\n
By the time Henry II died in 1189, two of his sons had predeceased him, enabling the eldest survivor, Richard, to inherit their father\u2019s empire in its entirety. Richard I<\/a> almost immediately departed on crusade \u2013 earning the nickname \u2018Lionheart\u2019 \u2013 and during his absence, John stirred up discontent in England and conspired with the king of France, Philip Augustus, to attack Richard\u2019s lands on the continent.<\/p>\n- Read more | Your top questions about the crusades \u2013 answered<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>
When John heard the news that his brother had been taken prisoner on his return journey and was being held hostage, he threw caution to the wind and came out in open rebellion, telling people that Richard was dead.<\/p>\n
To attack the lands of an absent crusader was regarded as despicable, and chroniclers at the time were scathing. They condemned John as a \u201clight-minded youth\u201d and branded his alliance with Philip Augustus \u201ca pact from Hell\u201d. In opposing his own brother, said one writer, John had broken \u201cthe laws of nature\u201d and thus became \u201cnature\u2019s enemy\u201d.<\/p>\n
Richard was eventually ransomed and returned in 1194 to crush his brother\u2019s rebellion. In the years that followed, John recovered some of his lands, but his reputation remained permanently tarnished.<\/p>\n Read more about Richard the Lionheart<\/h4>\n- Does Richard I deserve his reputation as a martial genius?<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n
- Richard the Lionheart: king of war<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n
- How did Richard the Lionheart die?<\/strong><\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>
\u00a0<\/p>\n
<\/p><\/div>
![\""King\"](\""https:\/\/images.immediate.co.uk\/production\/volatile\/sites\/7\/2018\/01\/richard-the-lionheart-e884e94.jpg?quality=45&resize=556,556"\" "\\"\"Richard\\"")
<\/div><\/div> <\/div> <\/section>King John\u2019s accession<\/h2>\n
In the spring of 1199, Richard was struck in the shoulder by a crossbow bolt as he besieged the castle at Ch\u00e2lus and died from gangrene<\/a> a few days later. His sudden and unexpected demise triggered a succession crisis, for he had fathered no legitimate children. John was one possible candidate to replace him, but he had a rival in the shape of his nephew, Arthur \u2013 the son of his older brother, Geoffrey, who had died in 1186.<\/p>\nThe barons of England and Normandy favoured John, but those in Brittany and Anjou preferred the 12-year-old Arthur, who also received the backing of Philip Augustus. After a military standoff that lasted several months, the French king agreed to abandon Arthur and acknowledged John\u2019s right to the entire inheritance, although he demanded the recognition of his superior lordship for the continental lands, and payment of 20,000 marks (\u00a313,333).<\/p>\n
King John\u2019s marriages<\/h2>\n
Immediately after making peace with Philip Augustus, John set out to get married for a second time. His first marriage, celebrated at the start of Richard\u2019s reign (and probably at his brother\u2019s insistence) had been to a woman named Isabella of Gloucester, and had not been a success: she was not crowned with him in May 1199 and their marriage had been annulled by the end of the year.<\/p>\n
In the summer of 1200, reportedly at the suggestion of Philip Augustus, John married another Isabella, the daughter and only heir of the count of Angoul\u00eame. The acquisition of her lands promised to strengthen John\u2019s position in Aquitaine, so from that point of view this new match made good sense. Politically, however, it was a disaster, because Isabella was already betrothed to a powerful lord named Hugh de Lusignan.<\/p>\n
![\"""\"]( "\\"\"\"\\"\/")
<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div> Isabella of Angouleme, queen consort of King John (Photo by Getty Images)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/div>\nThe reason their wedding had not been celebrated was probably because Isabella was younger than 12, the minimum age the church would permit. John was apparently not bothered by this prohibition and pinched Hugh\u2019s bride-to-be from under his nose.<\/p>\n
- Read more | Eleanor of Aquitaine: the worst royal mother-in-law?<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>
How King John lost the Angevin empire<\/h2>\n
The consequences of John\u2019s marriage to Isabella were catastrophic. Hugh de Lusignan and his supporters in Aquitaine rebelled against him and then, after John attempted to strike back, appealed for justice to the French king.<\/p>\n
Philip Augustus, delighted for an opportunity to demonstrate the overlordship that his rival had recently admitted, demanded John attend his court in Paris to receive judgement. John refused and the two kings went to war, with Philip again advancing Arthur as John\u2019s replacement.<\/p>\n
John scored an early victory in this renewed struggle in August 1202 by capturing Arthur and many of his supporters at Mirebeau, but he was unable to convert it into a peaceful settlement. The fighting continued and, in desperation, the king tried to solve the problem by making his nephew disappear. Soon after his 16th birthday, at Easter 1203, Arthur vanished from his captivity in Rouen Castle, almost certainly murdered on his uncle\u2019s orders, as contemporaries claimed.<\/p>\n
His death only made matters worse. A few weeks later, Philip Augustus launched a massive invasion of John\u2019s territories. Anjou fell immediately and Normandy surrendered the following summer, along with the northern part of Aquitaine. Apart from a couple of castles that held out until 1205, the entire northern half of John\u2019s continental empire was lost.<\/p>\n
The emergence of \u2018bad King John\u2019<\/h2>\n
John\u2019s treatment of Arthur quickly became notorious because it disregarded a long-established taboo on political killing. In the 12th and 13th centuries, nobles sought to capture their enemies during conflicts, imprisoning them afterwards or releasing them in return for ransom. John, by contrast, repeatedly violated this rule.<\/p>\n
![\"""\"]( "\\"\"\"\\"\/")
<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div> King John hunting on horseback (Photo by Fine Art Images\/Heritage Images\/Getty Images)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/div>\nIn February 1203, shortly before Arthur\u2019s death, the king had ordered more than 20 of the nobles captured at Mirebeau to be taken to Corfe Castle in Dorset, where they starved to death. Later in his reign, other prisoners suffered the same fate \u2013 most notably Matilda de Briouze, who died of starvation in a royal dungeon along with her son, William. Such incidents explain why multiple chroniclers described the king as cruel. \u201cHe was a very bad man\u201d, wrote the Anonymous of B\u00e9thune, \u201cmore cruel than all others\u201d.<\/p>\n
Contemporaries also condemned John for his lack of mettle. When he made peace with Philip Augustus on disadvantageous terms in 1200, some people took to calling him \u2018Soft-sword\u2019. In 1203, he abandoned Normandy without a fight, and this tendency to run away from danger was a repeated feature throughout his career. \u201cNo man may trust him\u201d, sang the southern troubadour, Bertran de Born, \u201cfor his heart is soft and cowardly\u201d.<\/p>\n
The other main charge levelled against John was lechery \u2013 specifically, that he preyed on the wives and daughters of his barons. While this is more difficult to prove, personal animosities against the king may explain why certain men, who lacked other obvious motives, fought against him with such implacable fury in the later part of his reign.<\/p>\n Was King John a bad king?<\/h4>\n- Graham E Seel | Why \u2018Bad King John\u2019 was actually good<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n
- Marc Morris | Was King John really that bad? Yes!<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>
\u00a0<\/p>\n
<\/p><\/div> <\/section>
King John\u2019s financial extortions<\/h2>\n
The fundamental complaint against John was financial. Having lost his ancestral lands in France, the king laboured furiously to fund a campaign of reconquest. To this end, he taxed previously exempt groups, such as the Cistercians, and demanded massive sums from his nobles in return for having their inheritances.<\/p>\n
He sold justice on an industrial scale, imposing punitive fines for trivial offences, and extracted more money than ever before from his Jewish subjects, imprisoning and torturing them until they paid up.<\/p>\n
When the pope, following a row about the appointment of the Archbishop of Canterbury, placed all of England under interdict, John retaliated by seizing all of the Church\u2019s land. This gave an immense boost to his income, albeit at the spiritual cost of excommunication.<\/p>\n
As a result of all these expedients, the king\u2019s annual income rocketed from around \u00a325,000 at the start of his reign to a peak of \u00a3145,000 in 1211.<\/p>\n
King John\u2019s defeat in France<\/h2>\n
With his war-chests sufficiently full, John launched his continental campaign in early 1214. The king\u2019s own army advanced into French territory from the south, while his allies in the Low Countries \u2013 purchased at great expense \u2013 invaded from the north. The plan was to compel Philip Augustus to divide his forces.<\/p>\n
To that extent, it was successful, as the French king dispatched his son, Louis, to confront John\u2019s army. But as this force approached, John hastily retreated and left the struggle to be decided by his northern allies. In July, Philip clashed with this army at Bouvines, near Lille, and won a great victory. At a stroke, John\u2019s dreams of reconquest were dashed. In October he sailed back to England, his funds exhausted, accompanied by the spectre of defeat.<\/p>\n
John\u2019s financial extortions had generated widespread opposition, and on his return he was confronted with demands for reform. The king dodged and delayed throughout the winter, but in the spring of 1215 his opponents lost patience and rose in arms against him. When they seized London in May, John was forced to negotiate.<\/p>\n
- Read more | King John and the French invasion of England<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>
King John and Magna Carta<\/h2>\n
In June, the two sides met at Runnymede, near Windsor, where they thrashed out an agreement. Magna Carta<\/a>, as it soon became known, was a lengthy and wide-ranging promise by John that he and his heirs would rule better in future. Many of its provisions were uncontroversial enough to be included in later reissues, but its original enforcement clause, which effectively allowed the barons to make war on the king if he infringed the charter, was intolerable.<\/p>\n ![\"""\"]( "\\"\"\"\\"\/")
<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div> King John seals Magna Carta at Runnymede in 1215, as his barons watch on (Photo by Getty)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/div>\nJohn probably had no intention of honouring Magna Carta in any case, and secretly asked the pope to annul it. By September 1215, the king and his barons were once again at war.<\/p>\n
The first round of this final war went to John. In the autumn, he pummelled the rebel garrison at Rochester Castle into submission and throughout the winter he burned the estates of his enemies across the country.<\/p>\n Read more about Magna Carta<\/h4>\n- What if Magna Carta hadn\u2019t been written?<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n
- What did Magna Carta mean to the English in 1215?<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n
- Is 15 June 1215 the true date of Magna Carta? Two historians debate<\/strong><\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>
\u00a0<\/p>\n
<\/p><\/div>
![\""Illustration\"](\""https:\/\/images.immediate.co.uk\/production\/volatile\/sites\/7\/2020\/05\/MAGNA_CARTA-5736e75.jpg?quality=45&resize=556,556"\" "\\"\"Illustration\\"\/")
<\/div><\/div> <\/div> <\/section>How did King John die?<\/h2>\n
In the spring of 1216, an army of Frenchmen landed in Kent led by Philip\u2019s son, Louis, whom the rebels had invited to take John\u2019s crown. As with their previous encounter, John responded by running away, leaving Louis and his army to occupy London and the south-east of England.<\/p>\n
The situation was resolved when John died from dysentery at Newark Castle on the night of 18\/19 October 1216. According to the chronicler Ralph of Coggeshall, many people had \u201cdreadful and fantastical visions\u201d of the king that night, the implication being that John had been dragged off to suffer the torments of hell.<\/p>\n
![\"""\"]( "\\"\"\"\\"\/")
<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div> A 13th-century manuscript depicting the rumor that King John had been poisoned (Photo by Getty)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/div>\nJohn was succeeded by his nine-year-old son, Henry III<\/a>, whose regents \u2013 notably William Marshal<\/a> \u2013 defeated Louis\u2019s supporters in battle in battle and persuaded them to depart by paying off the French prince. They also wooed English rebels back into the fold by reissuing Magna Carta, stripped of its more controversial clauses.<\/p>\nIn this way, the great charter became John\u2019s lasting legacy \u2013 a document that ensured his oppressions would not be repeated by future rulers, and which continues to symbolise the rights of the subject against the power of a tyrant.<\/p>\n
Died:<\/strong> 18\/19 October 1216<\/p>\n Reigned:<\/strong> King of England for 17 years, from 27 May 1199 until his death<\/p>\n Coronation:<\/strong> 27 May 1199, Westminster Abbey<\/p>\n Parents:<\/strong> Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine<\/p>\n Spouses:<\/strong> Isabella of Gloucester and Isabella of Angoul\u00eame<\/p>\n Children:<\/strong> Five legitimate children, including Henry III, King of England, Richard of Cornwall and Joan, Queen of Scotland, plus several illegitimate children<\/p>\n Succeeded by:<\/strong> Henry III<\/p>\n <\/p><\/div> <\/section> John was born around Christmas 1166, or possibly 1167. The uncertainty exists because he was the youngest of the eight known children of Henry I<\/a>I and Eleanor of Aquitaine<\/a>, and consequently not regarded as all that important. His father was the most powerful ruler in Europe \u2013 King of England, Duke of Normandy and Count of Anjou (all by inheritance), and Duke of Aquitaine thanks to his marriage to Eleanor.<\/p>\n Henry\u2019s intention was that this vast empire would be divided after his death, and he designated each of his three older sons as heirs to its different provinces. There was initially no such provision for John, which led to his contemporary nickname \u2018Lackland\u2019.<\/p>\n A few years later, when Henry added Ireland to his domains, John was groomed to succeed him there. When the teenaged John finally visited Ireland in 1185, however, he acquitted himself badly, alienating both the native Irish and recent Anglo-Norman settlers.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was in Ireland that King John revealed himself as a monster,\u201d writes Nicholas Vincent, as he charts the course of the medieval king\u2019s descent into evil\u2026<\/p>\n <\/p><\/div> John\u2019s reputation could have recovered from his youthful misadventures in Ireland; it was his behaviour in the decade that followed that did lasting damage.<\/p>\n By the time Henry II died in 1189, two of his sons had predeceased him, enabling the eldest survivor, Richard, to inherit their father\u2019s empire in its entirety. Richard I<\/a> almost immediately departed on crusade \u2013 earning the nickname \u2018Lionheart\u2019 \u2013 and during his absence, John stirred up discontent in England and conspired with the king of France, Philip Augustus, to attack Richard\u2019s lands on the continent.<\/p>\n When John heard the news that his brother had been taken prisoner on his return journey and was being held hostage, he threw caution to the wind and came out in open rebellion, telling people that Richard was dead.<\/p>\n To attack the lands of an absent crusader was regarded as despicable, and chroniclers at the time were scathing. They condemned John as a \u201clight-minded youth\u201d and branded his alliance with Philip Augustus \u201ca pact from Hell\u201d. In opposing his own brother, said one writer, John had broken \u201cthe laws of nature\u201d and thus became \u201cnature\u2019s enemy\u201d.<\/p>\n Richard was eventually ransomed and returned in 1194 to crush his brother\u2019s rebellion. In the years that followed, John recovered some of his lands, but his reputation remained permanently tarnished.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n <\/p><\/div> In the spring of 1199, Richard was struck in the shoulder by a crossbow bolt as he besieged the castle at Ch\u00e2lus and died from gangrene<\/a> a few days later. His sudden and unexpected demise triggered a succession crisis, for he had fathered no legitimate children. John was one possible candidate to replace him, but he had a rival in the shape of his nephew, Arthur \u2013 the son of his older brother, Geoffrey, who had died in 1186.<\/p>\n The barons of England and Normandy favoured John, but those in Brittany and Anjou preferred the 12-year-old Arthur, who also received the backing of Philip Augustus. After a military standoff that lasted several months, the French king agreed to abandon Arthur and acknowledged John\u2019s right to the entire inheritance, although he demanded the recognition of his superior lordship for the continental lands, and payment of 20,000 marks (\u00a313,333).<\/p>\n Immediately after making peace with Philip Augustus, John set out to get married for a second time. His first marriage, celebrated at the start of Richard\u2019s reign (and probably at his brother\u2019s insistence) had been to a woman named Isabella of Gloucester, and had not been a success: she was not crowned with him in May 1199 and their marriage had been annulled by the end of the year.<\/p>\n In the summer of 1200, reportedly at the suggestion of Philip Augustus, John married another Isabella, the daughter and only heir of the count of Angoul\u00eame. The acquisition of her lands promised to strengthen John\u2019s position in Aquitaine, so from that point of view this new match made good sense. Politically, however, it was a disaster, because Isabella was already betrothed to a powerful lord named Hugh de Lusignan.<\/p>\n The reason their wedding had not been celebrated was probably because Isabella was younger than 12, the minimum age the church would permit. John was apparently not bothered by this prohibition and pinched Hugh\u2019s bride-to-be from under his nose.<\/p>\n The consequences of John\u2019s marriage to Isabella were catastrophic. Hugh de Lusignan and his supporters in Aquitaine rebelled against him and then, after John attempted to strike back, appealed for justice to the French king.<\/p>\n Philip Augustus, delighted for an opportunity to demonstrate the overlordship that his rival had recently admitted, demanded John attend his court in Paris to receive judgement. John refused and the two kings went to war, with Philip again advancing Arthur as John\u2019s replacement.<\/p>\n John scored an early victory in this renewed struggle in August 1202 by capturing Arthur and many of his supporters at Mirebeau, but he was unable to convert it into a peaceful settlement. The fighting continued and, in desperation, the king tried to solve the problem by making his nephew disappear. Soon after his 16th birthday, at Easter 1203, Arthur vanished from his captivity in Rouen Castle, almost certainly murdered on his uncle\u2019s orders, as contemporaries claimed.<\/p>\n His death only made matters worse. A few weeks later, Philip Augustus launched a massive invasion of John\u2019s territories. Anjou fell immediately and Normandy surrendered the following summer, along with the northern part of Aquitaine. Apart from a couple of castles that held out until 1205, the entire northern half of John\u2019s continental empire was lost.<\/p>\n John\u2019s treatment of Arthur quickly became notorious because it disregarded a long-established taboo on political killing. In the 12th and 13th centuries, nobles sought to capture their enemies during conflicts, imprisoning them afterwards or releasing them in return for ransom. John, by contrast, repeatedly violated this rule.<\/p>\n In February 1203, shortly before Arthur\u2019s death, the king had ordered more than 20 of the nobles captured at Mirebeau to be taken to Corfe Castle in Dorset, where they starved to death. Later in his reign, other prisoners suffered the same fate \u2013 most notably Matilda de Briouze, who died of starvation in a royal dungeon along with her son, William. Such incidents explain why multiple chroniclers described the king as cruel. \u201cHe was a very bad man\u201d, wrote the Anonymous of B\u00e9thune, \u201cmore cruel than all others\u201d.<\/p>\n Contemporaries also condemned John for his lack of mettle. When he made peace with Philip Augustus on disadvantageous terms in 1200, some people took to calling him \u2018Soft-sword\u2019. In 1203, he abandoned Normandy without a fight, and this tendency to run away from danger was a repeated feature throughout his career. \u201cNo man may trust him\u201d, sang the southern troubadour, Bertran de Born, \u201cfor his heart is soft and cowardly\u201d.<\/p>\n The other main charge levelled against John was lechery \u2013 specifically, that he preyed on the wives and daughters of his barons. While this is more difficult to prove, personal animosities against the king may explain why certain men, who lacked other obvious motives, fought against him with such implacable fury in the later part of his reign.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n <\/p><\/div> <\/section> The fundamental complaint against John was financial. Having lost his ancestral lands in France, the king laboured furiously to fund a campaign of reconquest. To this end, he taxed previously exempt groups, such as the Cistercians, and demanded massive sums from his nobles in return for having their inheritances.<\/p>\n He sold justice on an industrial scale, imposing punitive fines for trivial offences, and extracted more money than ever before from his Jewish subjects, imprisoning and torturing them until they paid up.<\/p>\n When the pope, following a row about the appointment of the Archbishop of Canterbury, placed all of England under interdict, John retaliated by seizing all of the Church\u2019s land. This gave an immense boost to his income, albeit at the spiritual cost of excommunication.<\/p>\n As a result of all these expedients, the king\u2019s annual income rocketed from around \u00a325,000 at the start of his reign to a peak of \u00a3145,000 in 1211.<\/p>\n With his war-chests sufficiently full, John launched his continental campaign in early 1214. The king\u2019s own army advanced into French territory from the south, while his allies in the Low Countries \u2013 purchased at great expense \u2013 invaded from the north. The plan was to compel Philip Augustus to divide his forces.<\/p>\n To that extent, it was successful, as the French king dispatched his son, Louis, to confront John\u2019s army. But as this force approached, John hastily retreated and left the struggle to be decided by his northern allies. In July, Philip clashed with this army at Bouvines, near Lille, and won a great victory. At a stroke, John\u2019s dreams of reconquest were dashed. In October he sailed back to England, his funds exhausted, accompanied by the spectre of defeat.<\/p>\n John\u2019s financial extortions had generated widespread opposition, and on his return he was confronted with demands for reform. The king dodged and delayed throughout the winter, but in the spring of 1215 his opponents lost patience and rose in arms against him. When they seized London in May, John was forced to negotiate.<\/p>\n In June, the two sides met at Runnymede, near Windsor, where they thrashed out an agreement. Magna Carta<\/a>, as it soon became known, was a lengthy and wide-ranging promise by John that he and his heirs would rule better in future. Many of its provisions were uncontroversial enough to be included in later reissues, but its original enforcement clause, which effectively allowed the barons to make war on the king if he infringed the charter, was intolerable.<\/p>\n John probably had no intention of honouring Magna Carta in any case, and secretly asked the pope to annul it. By September 1215, the king and his barons were once again at war.<\/p>\n The first round of this final war went to John. In the autumn, he pummelled the rebel garrison at Rochester Castle into submission and throughout the winter he burned the estates of his enemies across the country.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n <\/p><\/div> In the spring of 1216, an army of Frenchmen landed in Kent led by Philip\u2019s son, Louis, whom the rebels had invited to take John\u2019s crown. As with their previous encounter, John responded by running away, leaving Louis and his army to occupy London and the south-east of England.<\/p>\n The situation was resolved when John died from dysentery at Newark Castle on the night of 18\/19 October 1216. According to the chronicler Ralph of Coggeshall, many people had \u201cdreadful and fantastical visions\u201d of the king that night, the implication being that John had been dragged off to suffer the torments of hell.<\/p>\n John was succeeded by his nine-year-old son, Henry III<\/a>, whose regents \u2013 notably William Marshal<\/a> \u2013 defeated Louis\u2019s supporters in battle in battle and persuaded them to depart by paying off the French prince. They also wooed English rebels back into the fold by reissuing Magna Carta, stripped of its more controversial clauses.<\/p>\n In this way, the great charter became John\u2019s lasting legacy \u2013 a document that ensured his oppressions would not be repeated by future rulers, and which continues to symbolise the rights of the subject against the power of a tyrant.<\/p>\nHow John became \u2018John Lackland\u2019<\/h2>\n
\u00a0King John in Ireland: the making of a medieval monster<\/a><\/h4>\n
<\/div><\/div> <\/div> <\/section>Rebellion against Richard the Lionheart<\/h2>\n
Read more about Richard the Lionheart<\/h4>\n
<\/div><\/div> <\/div> <\/section>King John\u2019s accession<\/h2>\n
King John\u2019s marriages<\/h2>\n
![\"""\"](\""https:\/\/images.immediate.co.uk\/production\/volatile\/sites\/7\/2022\/05\/GettyImages-463963307webready-09ba5da.jpg?quality=90&resize=620%2C413"\" "\\"\"\"\\"\/")
<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div>How King John lost the Angevin empire<\/h2>\n
The emergence of \u2018bad King John\u2019<\/h2>\n
![\"""\"](\""https:\/\/images.immediate.co.uk\/production\/volatile\/sites\/7\/2022\/05\/GettyImages-599958087webready-fc136a3.jpg?quality=90&resize=620%2C413"\" "\\"\"\"\\"\/")
<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div>Was King John a bad king?<\/h4>\n
King John\u2019s financial extortions<\/h2>\n
King John\u2019s defeat in France<\/h2>\n
King John and Magna Carta<\/h2>\n
![\"""\"](\""https:\/\/images.immediate.co.uk\/production\/volatile\/sites\/7\/2022\/05\/GettyImages-463918945webready-c299248.jpg?quality=90&resize=620%2C413"\" "\\"\"\"\\"\/")
<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div>Read more about Magna Carta<\/h4>\n
<\/div><\/div> <\/div> <\/section>How did King John die?<\/h2>\n
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