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The last of our Dukes of Normandy has often been seen as the worst. This may be, after the death of Roger of Howden in 1201, due to few reliable contemporary chroniclers of his reign and having to rely on later chroniclers such as Roger of Wendover who had a less than generous attitude towards him. His accounts put colour to the King’s personality previously lacking but intersperses it with tales such as the laundress who worked on a Sunday and was sucked dry by a black pig!
But opinion of John is more likely to be coloured by such events as his loss of Normandy together with the three counties of Maine, Anjou and Tourraine, losing his crown jewels in the wash, a strike of the clergy for six years and rebellious barons taking London and forcing him to sign away large areas of his power.
Born on Christmas Eve 1166 the youngest of eight children John was seen as the favourite of his father Henry ii. He wouldn’t have been raised with the view to succeeding his father and as a young man he was seen as spoilt and after a good time. His father lined up an Italian heiress for him in 1172 and when the prospective father-in -law queried what assets John would bring to the marriage Henry quickly arranged to give him the three castles of Chinon, Loudon and Mirebeau. Unfortunately the eldest brother, the young Henry, took exception to this, resulting in civil war between the family. Perhaps not surprisingly the promised marriage didn’t materialise.
John’s prospects improved however. The young Henry died at Martel in 1183, it is said from the wrath of God, after raiding the church at Rocamadour while a second brother Geoffrey died from wounds received from a tournament in Paris.
The remaining brother Richard became Duke in 1189 and was committed to go on a crusade. He hoped to keep John sweet while he was away by marrying him to Isabelle of Gloucester and handing over to John the fief of Lancaster, the revenues from six counties together with Ireland and the title of Count of Mortain. But when Richard was made prisoner in Austria John soon attempted to take the Empire, allying himself with the French King Philip. He received little support amongst the nobility and this duplicity was not to be forgotten, leading to distrust on both sides.
When a crossbow bolt suddenly killed Richard in 1199 people had to make a quick decision on who was to succeed, the choice being between John and his nephew, Arthur of Brittany the son of Geoffrey. To the Normans to have a Breton ruling them would have been even worse than an Angevin and enough support was scraped together to have John crowned Duke at Rouen with a coronet of gold roses.
The nobility of Anjou, Maine and Touraine largely sided with Arthur, with the gates of Le Mans having been closed in John’s face but, however, the Breton commander William des Roches fell out with King Philip over his heavy handed approach to a castle at Ballon and settled with John. By May 1200 the peace treaty of Le Goulet was signed in which Philip received a dowry for John’s niece Blanche of Castile to marry his heir Louis together with 20,000 marks. The feudal links between the Duke and the King of France had become more pronounced and many saw the concessions made as too great, dubbing the Duke John Softsword.
At the end of the Summer John married the 12 year old Isabelle of Angoulême despite having been married to Isabelle of Gloucester for the previous ten years and his new wife being engaged to Hugh Le Brun , Lord of Lusignan one of his more rebellious barons in Poitou. The ensuing discontent and plotting resulted in John charging the Lusig nans with treason. They in turn appealed to Philip who requested three castles from John as security for a fair trial. John ignored him and was ordered to appear before a baronial court in Paris in the Easter of 1202 and when he failed to appear was declared to have forfeited Aquitaine, Anjou and Poitou.
In the fighting that followed John’s mother Eleanor the Duchess of Aquitaine found herself besieged in the castle of Mirebeau. After an eighty mile march taking only 48 hours a force led by William des Roches caught the Arthurian forces unawares and attacking at dawn rescued the Duchess capturing Arthur, Hugh and his brother Geoffrey together with 200 of their knights.
The situation could not have been better for John but he quickly threw any advantage he had. The Lusignans were quickly released on promises that they soon broke. He had promised William a say in the handling of Arthur and when this didn’t occur he immediately lost his most effective commander who had become disgusted with the treatment of Arthur. On 3 April 1203 in a drunken rage after dinner at Rouen castle John killed Arthur with his own hands and tying the body to a stone threw it into the Seine. The following day it was discovered by a fisherman and secretly buried in the priory of Bec. The Bretons would never forgive John.
The reason for John’s temper was that the war had been turning against him. In the Autumn of 1202 the Bretons had seized Angers and Philip had sailed down the Loire as far as Saumur effectively cutting off Normandy from Aquitaine. While nobles such as the Duke of Alencon turned to Philip, the French King concentrated on chipping away at the castles that defended Normandy, taking Conches and Vaudreuil. In August 1203 he laid siege to Richard’s ‘saucy castle’ the main defensive castle on the Seine, Chateau Gaillard., defended by Roger Lacy. John tried a combined operation to relieve the castle by rowing 70 supply ships down the river while being supported on land by William Marshall. They attacked at dawn but the current delayed the rowers and they arrived too late resulting in the river turning red with their blood.
To divert the French John attacked Dol in Brittany which resulted in the cathedral being burned otherwise he did little which led to rumours that he preferred to lay in bed all morning with his young wife. Mutual distrust grew between the Duke and the local nobles with the only places to remain loyal being those held by his English captains or mercenary routiers such as Lupescar. On 5 December 1203 John sailed from Barfleur to spend Christmas in England and raise forces for a counter attack. He was never to return to Normandy.
Chateau Gaillard had one weakness a spur of rock over the moat which gave protection to the French sappers mining underneath the castle walls. In the first week of March the wall fell, heavy fighting and the surrender of the castle followed. On hearing of the fall of the castle Queen Eleanor died.
The way to Rouen was open to the French much quicker than John had been expecting. Philip, though only two years older than John, had a great deal more experience of leadership. He was seen as tactically very conservative and John hoped he would be delayed long enough beseiging Rouen for a fresh English army to come across and counterattack from Western Normandy. But rather than head North Philip’s army hooked left up the Risle valley, crossed the Tongues and down the Orne capturing Argentan. The resistance was minimal and within a week Lupescar had handed over Falaise and Caen also soon surrendered. In support the Bretons captured Mont St Michel and Avranches before marching up the Bessin to join Philip at Caen.
Rouen was now isolated and the city’s civic liberties were threatened to be taken away unless they surrendered. The Castellan Peter de Préaux agreed to surrender within thirty days from 1 June if help had not arrived from England and by the 24th all hope of help was lost and the gates were opened.
John gathered an enormous fleet, some said of as many as 1,500 ships, the following Summer in a bid to retake Normandy, but his leading nobles, such as William Marshall, were more interested in protecting their French lands by doing homage to Philip than fighting him. A year later John finally did sail for France but his destination was La Rochelle in Poitou rather than Normandy and his objectives were limited to raids until Philip arrived with an army and a two year truce was signed on 23 October 1206.
In 1212 John gathered another large fleet to invade Normandy but in August due to lack of support from the barons he changed his mind and his army was sent North to Chester to attack the rebellious Llywelyn of Wales. When plans were revealed that nobles planned to kill John during the confusion of battle the Welsh campaign was called off as well.
Meanwhile Philip was assembling a fleet himself to invade and give England to his son Louis. This son had, however, alienated Ferrard the Count of Flanders by seizing St Omer and war broke out in the Low countries. While the French were besieging Ghent in August 1213 an English fleet of 500 ships under the Earl of Salisbury sailed up the river Zym and caught the French fleet at Damme harbour. Over 400 French ships were captured and ‘never had so much treasure come to England since the days of King Arthur’.
Within months John was back in La Rochelle this time with a more effective force which defeated the Lusignans, who did homage and signalled that Poitou was now back under his control. The Count of Brittany, Peter de Dreux was captured at Nantes and Angers soon opened it’s gates. William des Roches was then besieged but just as the war looked to have turned Louis appeared with a relief force and the ever unreliable Poitevin nobles led by Amoury De Thouars quickly left for home. The Flemish allies attacked too late from the Northeast giving the French enough time to meet and defeat them at the battle of Bouvines on 27 July 1214. With rapidly dwindling support John had no choice but to head for La Rochelle and England.
The constant equipping of prospective invasion fleets was an expensive affair which John had funded in a variety of ways. The traditional method of scutage whereby barons paid up to 3 marks plus a ‘fine’ for each Knight they were due to supply to the king was used 11 times in the 16 years of the reign. In comparison his father used it 8 times in 34 years his brother 3 in ten years.
To supplement this amercements were paid for a variety of misdemeanors and John toured the country looking out for them. In Cumberland in 1210 Robert de Vaux had to pay five palfreys to the King ‘to keep quiet about the wife of Henry Pinel’
He tried to sell his first wife for 20,000 marks while the wife of Hugh Neville, his chief Forester, had to promise John 200 chickens to ‘lie one night with her husband’.
He even turned the dispute with the pope over who should succeed as Archbishop of Canterbury to his financial advantage. When in 1208 John would not accept the pope’s choice of Stephen Langton an interdict was issued whereby the clergy were to be on strike for the next six years and nobody could attend the altar to be married or buried. John banished the clerics from their property and promptly for a fee effectively sold it back to them while at the same time ransoming their womenfolk.
John also had the habit of attempting to seduce the wives of his leading nobles, the emnity of Eustace de Vesci is said to date back to when this baron felt the need after an evening in John’s company to substitute his wife, Margaret, in her chamber ‘for a common woman’. It is not recorded whether John noticed the difference.
In May of 1215 Eustace together with Robert Fitzwalter, a notoriously violent man, led 40 Barons from the North and West for the first time in England in forty years in a rebellion, capturing London which was used as their base. John brought over Flemish mercenaries led by the Earl of Salisbury to assist his forces while the majority of the Barons stayed on the fence a stalemate ensued.
The Archbishop of Canterbury, Stephen Langton, who had instigated much of the ill feeling by drawing attention to Henry I’s charter of privileges in 1100, was now instrumental in leading a party of compromise which encouraged the King to negotiate. This resulted in the drawing up, it is presumed mainly by Stephen, of the ‘Articles of the Barons’ on 10 June whose first ten articles was seen as protecting the rights of the upper classes while others were tacked on to widen it’s range of popularity throughout the country. This ‘charter of liberties’ was signed by John at Runnymede and was immediately repudiated by the pope who would ‘utterly reject and condemn this settlement, … declare it null and void’ and threatened to excommunicate anyone following it.
Two years later the clauses dealing with Forest law were shown separately while the larger element, with some of the more contentious elements removed, was from the middle of the century to be known as the Magna Carta. Although it stayed on the statute book it was only to gain large significance from the 17th century when it was interpreted into trial by jury and no taxation without representation and was to become the corner stone of the American declaration of independence.
Within two months the Charter was ignored and another civil war began. After a seven week siege John captured Rochester castle and while leaving Salisbury to keep an eye on London took an army up to the North, butchering the inhabitants of Berwick while in pursuit of the Scots king Alexander.
Meanwhile Louis had been ferrying French troops into London to support the rebels and in May 1216, after a gale had scattered the English navy, he arrived with his invasion fleet at Pegwell Bay. By the end of the summer two thirds of the Barons were in support of the French prince who was in control of Southeast England.
In an attempt to cut the French off from the barons in the North John headed for Norfolk where at Lynn over feasting is said to have brought on Dysentery. On the 12 October 1216 while trying to get across the river Wellstream in the Wash, a little too early for the tide, he lost much of his baggage train. The inventory of his son Henry iii’s coronation indicates that relics lost included the sword of Tristram and a gold dove on a wand together with the old Empresse’s imperial regalia, though looters may have been to blame when he died at Newark six days later.
With John’s death the main source of grievance was gone, he was succeeded by his nine year old son Henry who few felt like fighting against and peace was restored in 1217 when Louis finally gave up and returned to France. Ironically the woman whose marriage was to cause the dispute which led to the loss of Normany, Isabelle of Angoulême, was to return to France and marry Hugh Lusignan the son of her former fiancée Hugh Le Brun.
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