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The History of Kings, Barons, and the Commons

On its eight-hundredth anniversary, Magna Carta remains one of the most influential documents in history. It is the earliest example of an English monarch accepting the will of his subjects by allowing them to impose limits on his power. The charter presented to King John in Runnymede Meadow in 1215 would go on to become the foundation document for modern systems of democratic governance.

The supporters of Magna Carta, however, would be surprised by its current interpretation. In thirteenth-century England, democracy was synonymous with chaos, society was organized by a strict hierarchy, and the charter was written to bind the king to past precedents rather than new responsibilities.

Early Perceptions of Democracy

The Ancient Greeks practised an early form of direct democracy that inspired modern forms of government. Classical Athenian democracy (from the Greek dēmokratía or rule of the people — as opposed to aristokratia or rule of the elite) emerged in the fifth century B.C.E. Citizens were given the right to address the government and could be chosen by lot to form a ruling council. The definition of citizenship, however, was limited. According to the citizenship law, only sons of an Athenian father and mother were eligible to become citizens themselves. Women, slaves, former slaves, foreigners, and men under the age of twenty were all excluded from the political process.

Despite the exclusivity of Athenian citizenship, prominent Greek philosophers argued that democracy was little better than rule by the mob. Plato, author of The Republic, theorized that the ideal form of government was rule by philosopher kings who loved knowledge

The School of Athens by Raphael (1483–1520). The Athenian philosophers Plato (in purple and red) and Aristotle (in blue and brown) are depicted at the centre of the fresco.

for its own sake. In contrast, he saw democracy as a kind of anarchy where a vast lower class made decisions governed by their baser instincts, most notably the desire for wealth, breaking laws to achieve these goals. Plato’s student, Aristotle, judged democracy to be more moderate but still undesirable because it allowed the poor to rule in the interests of their social station without regard for the wider polity. Classical Athens, the society that invented a form of democracy, had strong doubts about the desirability of this system of government.

The Roman Republic (509–27 B.C.E.) drew upon Athenian political ideals but limited democracy to an even narrower group of people. It was a system designed to maintain the power of landowners over labourers. Membership in the Senate, the advisory body of the republic, was limited by age and property qualifications.

Roman citizens were divided into two classes, one that had the right to marry and accumulate property, and one that could vote and run for political office in addition to these basic rights. As Rome expanded its borders, the two-tiered citizenship structure allowed the elites of new regions to join the Roman political structure gradually without threatening existing interests. The Romans arrived in the British Isles in 43 B.C.E. and ruled much of modern-day England and Wales until 409 C.E., bringing their political traditions with them.

Plato and Aristotle in Discussion by Luca della Robbia, 1437. These two Athenian philosophers were skeptical of democracy as an effective political system.

After the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the fifth century, Germanic tribes from mainland Europe, including the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes, invaded England. They divided the region into seven kingdoms while the Romano-British population largely settled in Wales and Cornwall. The Anglo-Saxons had their own political practices, which included hereditary kings whose decisions were informed by a network of family and tribal advisers. The earliest known law code from Anglo-Saxon England was commissioned by King Ethelbert of Kent around 594. He combined Germanic traditions of financial restitution for crimes with Christian reverence for the primacy of the church in his kingdom.

A scene from the Bayeux Tapestry depicting William of Normandy’s invasion of England in 1066.

Alfred the Great (r. 871–899), king of Wessex, united the English tribes against successive invasions by the Danes, and his grandson, Athelstan, went on to become the first king of all England in 927. By that time the role of king combined the primary roles of military leader and lawgiver. Although democracy did not exist in Anglo-Saxon England, the king’s power was constrained by the Witenagemot, the Assembly of the Wise, which consisted of senior nobles and clergy who ratified treaties and drafted changes to the law. When the succession was in dispute, this assembly selected the next king, passing over women and children in favour of experienced military leaders who were already part of the Anglo-Saxon ruling hierarchy. When King Edward the Confessor died in 1066, the Witenagemot selected his brother-in-law, Harold Godwinson, as his successor over the claims of Edward’s maternal cousin once removed, William, Duke of Normandy. William argued that Harold’s succession was unlawful because Harold had sworn an oath to support William’s claim to the throne. William raised an army in northwestern France and invaded England to seize the throne.

King William I of England and his three successors. Clockwise from top: William I, William II, Stephen, Henry I.

William defeated Harold at the Battle of Hastings on October 14, 1066, and was crowned King William I of England. William did not present his claim as an act of conquest, but, rather, as one of lawful succession supported by the papacy. The claim that he was Edward’s legitimate successor bound William and his successors to the legal and administrative framework of Anglo-Saxon England. In 1100, William’s youngest son, Henry, declared on his coronation day that he would follow Anglo-Saxon legal precedents, including the freedom of the church, assessment of just inheritance taxes, and consultation with a council of his barons. Henry I’s coronation charter became known as the Charter of Liberties, and future generations of barons and clergymen expected the king to obey the terms set down in this document.

Henry I’s successors — his nephew, Stephen, and grandson, Henry II — both faced challenges to their claims to the throne. Their coronation charters helped persuade the church and nobility that they would uphold their traditional rights. Henry II, like his predecessors, frequently summoned councils of prominent barons and clergymen to discuss key legislation after he took the throne in 1154. Henry II also dispensed justice in person during his travels around England and his numerous possessions in what is now France. The England inherited by Henry II’s sons, Richard I (r. 1189–1199) and John (r. 1199–1216) did not have a tradition of democracy, a concept that retained its association with social disorder, but there were accepted limits on the monarch’s power. King John’s eventual failure to uphold England’s political and legal customs would become one of the reasons for the drafting of Magna Carta.

King John in Popular Culture

There have been kings who have gone down in history as villains but received sympathetic treatment in modern popular culture. Richard III is both Shakespeare’s villain and the misunderstood hero of numerous modern historical novels. In contrast, popular culture portrayals of King John over the centuries have been remarkably consistent. The king is not only a villain but a snivelling, cowardly, treacherous figure. In Shakespeare’s The Life and Death of King John, the king orders the blinding of his nephew, Arthur, to ensure his grip on power. The 1938 film, The Adventures of Robin Hood, starring Errol Flynn, set the tone for all future Robin Hood films by showing John attempting to seize power through treachery while his brother, Richard, is detained on his way home from crusade. For many children, their first impression of John is the lion without a mane in the Walt Disney Productions 1973 animated film Robin Hood who sucks his thumb and complains that his mother always loved Richard best. Portrayals of John in popular culture are so villainous that they have been the subject of satire. In the 1993 Mel Brooks film Robin Hood: Men in Tights, a triumphant King Richard, standing before a cheering crowd, announces, “Brother, you have surrounded your given name with a foul stench! From this day forth, all the toilets in the kingdom shall be known as . . . johns!”

A medieval harvest field: two women bending forward reap with sickles. On the left is a bound sheaf while a man with a sickle in his belt prepares another for binding.

Life in Thirteenth-Century England

The feudal system governed society during the reigns of King John and his immediate predecessors. The moral authority of the Roman Catholic Church supported this strict social order. The monarch was at the top of secular English society, above the barons who led lesser knights in battle and governed the peasants who worked on their lands. The church possessed its own social hierarchy of archbishops, bishops, parish priests, monks, and nuns, defending its independence from secular control by appealing disputes to the pope. Wealthy merchants and burgesses (townspeople) enjoyed a limited degree of self-government in the towns, as guaranteed by royal charters. There were two classes of peasants: the small percentage of “free” peasants, whose only authority was the king, and the villeins, or serfs, who were accountable to their social superiors, who owned the land that the serfs worked. At the time, English law defined freedom as “the natural power of every man to do as he pleases, unless forbidden by law or force”1 and this freedom was elusive for serfs. Each manor had its own court for hearing disputes among the peasantry, operating as a microcosm of the state. From the reign of Henry II the landed nobility were also expected to attend royal courts as the state assumed more control over the justice system. Knights served as jurors on county courts. This social structure resulted in the entire nobility possessing a working knowledge of common law and customs, which would inform the creation of Magna Carta in 1215.

The ruling Plantagenet dynasty, named for the broom plant (planta genesta) that was the emblem of Henry II’s father, had a greater knowledge of the world outside England than the vast majority of their subjects. Henry II and his sons, Richard I and John, were not only kings of England, they presided over a vast empire that included all of England as well as the northern and western regions of what is now France: Normandy, Anjou, Maine, and Aquitaine. The monarchs moved throughout their empire to dispense justice, command the military, and exert their authority in person. The mobility of the royal court was also dictated by practical considerations. The extensive royal household would exhaust the available food supply surrounding one castle and have to move on to the next residence. The court spoke Norman French, with Latin serving as a common language for Europe’s clergymen, diplomats, lawgivers, and scholars.

The reigns of Henry II, Richard I, and John saw the formal division of the landed nobility into two distinct classes: there were the barons, some of whom held titles, who served the king directly, owned substantial tracts of land, and acted as military leaders; immediately below the barons were knights, who had the resources to equip themselves and participate in military campaigns or pay “shield money” in lieu of active service.2 Over the course of the twelfth century, there were between seven and thirty “titled barons” — the earls who ranked directly below the king and his sons. The titled barons were the wealthiest of the hundred baronial families. These magnates controlled vast lands with twenty or thirty manors worked by serfs, enjoyed incomes of hundreds of pounds per year, lived in castles, and followed the trends in architecture, cuisine, and fashion set by the royal court.

By the thirteenth century, titled barons demonstrated their wealth and prestige by commissioning stone castles in place of separate timber buildings surrounded by stone walls, which was the predominant style of castle from 1066 until the thirteenth century. The barons enjoyed a diet rich in meats, including beef, mutton, pork, and poultry; Fridays and many Wednesdays were designated fast days on the church calendar when fish, such as sole, herring, or eels might be served. These fast days derived from Old Testament precedents and were intended to demonstrate piety and self-discipline. Raw produce was considered unhealthy, and fruits and vegetables were therefore confined to preserves and stews. The Angevin domains, the enormous collection of territories in western France controlled by the Plantagenet kings in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, included the lucrative wine-producing regions of the Bordeaux and the Loire valleys; young wines stored in wooden casks were the favourite drinks of the aristocracy. John’s wine cellar contained 180,000 gallons in 1201, though Philip II of France mocked John’s inability to distinguish the best wines from inferior vintages.

One of England’s first etiquette manuals was written around 1200. Titled Urbanus Magnus (The Book of the Civilized Man), it is filled with advice for those invited to a banquet in a lord of the manor’s great hall during John’s reign. The book contains many rules that are still recognized today, including instructions to keep elbows off the table and mouths closed while chewing food. The author, Daniel of Beccles, also provides advice that reflected his times, including instructions to look up at the ceiling while belching and to turn around to spit to avoid offending fellow diners. Men and women from baronial families wore floor-length garments to demonstrate that they did not do manual labour, and Henry II’s choice to wear a shorter cloak earned him the nickname curtmantle, meaning “short robe.”

The ruins of Wolvesey Castle in Winchester. The castle was the residence of the powerful bishops of Winchester during the twelfth century.

The medieval gatehouse in the town of Canterbury in Kent, England. Aside from London, most thirteenth-century English towns were small with only a few thousand inhabitants.

As England’s ruling class, the barons fiercely protected their traditional prerogatives, including the right to advise the king at council, govern their lands and peasants without interference, marry exclusively within their own class, and receive justice from their peers. While barons acted as administrators for the entire kingdom, lesser knights participated in the legislative process at a local level, bringing the records of county courts to the king’s court. A recent study placed the number of knights at 3,453 during John’s reign.3 This number dropped over the course of the thirteenth century as inflation and advances in armour and weapons technology increased the cost of knighthood. By 1258, the cost of equipping a knight for battle might be a year’s income from a modest estate; therefore, many poorer families dropped out of the knightly class. In contrast to the wealthy barons, a knight might possess a single fortified manor whose lands and peasant labour produced an income of ten pounds per year. Knighthoods provided a living for the younger sons of the baronial families. Inheritance in thirteenth-century England was governed by the rules of primogeniture, which passed estates intact to the eldest son. Daughters received their share of their family’s wealth through their dowries while younger sons were equipped as knights or joined the clergy. Landless knights could attach themselves to a baronial household and provide military service. Despite the subordinate position of knights within the English ruling class, they were recognized as leaders of their communities. Knights served on juries, acted as county sheriffs, heard the appointments of attorneys, and brought local complaints to the king’s court.

In contrast to the itinerant royal household, and those barons and knights who participated in continental military campaigns and crusades, the majority of John’s subjects lived out their lives close to their birthplaces, rarely travelling beyond the nearest market town. As much as 90 percent of England’s population in 1215 lived in the countryside, residing in villages and working on small farms on baronial estates. In contrast to the meaty diet of the nobility, the rural peasantry lived predominantly on black bread, vegetable stews, and weak ale. Those who kept livestock sold most of their eggs and cheese at local markets to buy metal goods and salt. Even the poorest avoided drinking water because it was associated with diseases such as cholera and dysentery. A prosperous yeoman farmer might have a two-room timber-framed farmhouse that he shared with his family and livestock, but the majority of tenant farmers lived in one-room huts that could be moved around their tenements. Like the nobility, the peasantry passed their land holdings through primogeniture, and younger sons of peasant families were most likely to leave manorial farms and seek their freedom and fortune in the towns. A serf who resided in a town for a year and a day without being reclaimed by the lord of the manor became a free burgess. The majority of English towns were small. As late as the reign of John’s grandson, Edward I, five out of six towns contained fewer than two thousand people,4 most of whom lived in timber-framed houses. The exception was London. In 1199, Peter of Blois informed Pope Innocent III that London had 120 churches and forty thousand people, though modern historians place London’s population at closer to half that number.

The temperate climate created by the medieval warm period of circa 900–1300 resulted in ample grain harvests and an expanding population. By the early thirteenth century, England contained just under three million inhabitants, while Scotland and Wales, whose people relied on animal husbandry instead of agriculture, each had a population of under half a million. The high infant mortality rate contributed to low average life expectancies.

King John hunting a stag with hounds. During John’s reign, only the king had the right to hunt deer in England’s forests.

Throughout the medieval period, the average life expectancy was around forty. Those who survived to adulthood could expect to live into their sixties if they did not fall victim to war, childbirth, or infectious disease. Nearly one-third of English land in 1215 consisted of forest where the king enjoyed a monopoly over all management and distribution of resources. Some of this land was forest in the modern sense of the word, including Sherwood Forest, associated with the legends of Robin Hood and his Merry Men, and the New Forest, which remains one of the largest tracts of woodland in England. Other thirteenth-century forests, however, consisted of inhabited countryside with villages and farmland. The rapidly expanding population resulted in demand for new villages and farmland in these regions, conditions that contributed to the reform of forest law in Magna Carta and the Charter of the Forest.

The regulations governing the use of forest land were extensive and arbitrary because the forest was both a hunting ground and a lucrative source of revenue for the king. William I and his descendants enforced a royal monopoly over hunting large animals in the forest. Members of the nobility could petition for a licence to hunt foxes, otters, badgers, and rabbits, but only the king, members of his hunting parties, or his foresters were entitled to hunt deer or wild boar. Penalties for poaching the king’s game were severe. According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, King William I “made many deer-parks; and he established laws therewith; so that whosoever slew a hart, or a hind, should be deprived of his eyesight. As he forbade men to kill the harts, so also the boars . . . His rich men bemoaned it, and the poor men shuddered at it.” By the reign of Richard I, the punishment for killing a deer was blinding and mutilation.

The restrictions imposed by forest law went beyond hunting privileges. Permission from the king’s chief forester was required before forest land could be cleared and cultivated, and the king received rent in perpetuity for these newly developed tracts. The right to pasture animals in the forest was strictly controlled and could be revoked at the king’s discretion. Farmers could only chop down trees for their own use if the removal of a tree did not create waste, which was defined in the reign of Henry II as “If a man standing on the stump of an oak or other tree can see five other trees cut down around him.” If an individual offender could not be identified in the forest courts, the chief forester had the power to impose a fine on the entire community.

“The law of the forest” was unpopular with the nobility, clergy, and peasantry alike because it prevented land development, impeded agriculture, and imposed fines on people of all social backgrounds. In 1209, the knight Roger de Crammaville of Kent was fined twenty marks for owning dogs that did not meet forest regulations, which dictated that three claws of their forepaws be removed to ensure that they were unable to hunt game. That same year, John ordered the destruction of unauthorized ditches and hedges on forest land. This decree resulted in wild animals — including deer, which had little fear of humans because of the harsh poaching laws — destroying crops in fields unprotected by hedges or ditches. In addition to collecting fines and other payments, John also used his forest prerogatives to settle personal scores. In 1200, he expressed his displeasure with the Cistercian Order by forbidding the monks from pasturing their livestock in the forest until twelve abbots begged his forgiveness on their knees.

A genealogical chart depicting Henry II and his eight children. John is in the bottom right corner.

John’s conflict with the Cistercians reflected both his determination to assert the king’s authority over the church and the expansion of religious orders over the course of the twelfth century. The expanding population resulted in more lay brothers available to work on monastery estates. As development of monastic lands increased, the activities of the religious orders came into conflict with forest law.

Everyone in John’s England knew their place in the strict social hierarchy of the time. That included members of the royal household all the way down to the serfs bound to the manors of the landed nobility. The unique political circumstances of John’s reign, including the expanding population and the conflicts between the king and his barons, would disrupt this social structure, culminating in the nobility imposing formal limits on the power of their king through Magna Carta. At the centre of this challenge to the social order was John, who remains one of the most controversial figures in English history.

The Making of King John

There have been recent attempts by historians to present John as an “underrated king.”5 These new interpretations of John’s reign emphasize his attention to detail and energetic devotion to his royal duties. The decision by a group of powerful barons to first limit John’s powers, then attempt to overthrow him when he repudiated Magna Carta, however, demonstrates his failure to fulfill the requirements of medieval kingship, including effective military leadership and consistent enforcement of the traditional laws and customs of his realm. King John’s formative years were defined by the conflicts within his family. As the youngest of the eight children of King Henry II of England and his queen, Eleanor of Aquitaine, John did not grow up expecting to be king. He was born on December 24, 1166, and likely named in honour of the feast day of St. John the Evangelist, which fell three days after his birth. At the time of John’s birth, Eleanor was over forty and his arrival was probably a surprise to his parents, who already had plans to divide their vast Anglo-French Angevin domains between their three elder surviving sons, Henry, Richard, and Geoffrey. The young Henry would receive his father’s inheritance of England, Normandy, and Anjou; Richard would receive his mother’s lands in Aquitaine; and Geoffrey would marry Constance, heiress to Brittany, and gain her lands. From a young age, John was therefore known as Jean sans terre or John Lackland. John and his sister, Joan, spent their early childhood at Fontevraud Abbey in Anjou, and Henry and Eleanor may have initially intended for their landless youngest son to enter the church. After leaving the abbey at age six, John continued his education with tutors in the household of his eldest brother, young Henry. As a result of his education, John was better educated than most laymen of his time; as king it was common for him to travel with a personal library.

Plantagenet family tree.

Fontevraud Abbey, where King John spent his early childhood.

Canterbury Cathedral, the site of Thomas Becket’s murder and Henry II’s penance.

Henry II’s determination to ensure that his youngest son received a share of the Angevin domains, despite the inheritance customs of the time, brought John’s interests into conflict with those of his mother and older brothers from a young age. In the early 1170s, Henry II decided to remove three castles from young Henry’s inheritance and give them to John on the occasion of his betrothal to Alicia of Savoy. At the time of these negotiations, Henry II was extremely unpopular with the barons and clergy because of his conflict with Thomas Becket, the archbishop of Canterbury, which had ended with the archbishop’s murder by four knights in Canterbury Cathedral in 1170. Henry was also in conflict with his family because of his interference in Eleanor’s governance of her domains in Aquitaine and his refusal to allow his three oldest sons to have influence over his administration. In 1173–74, at the age of eighteen, young Henry led the Revolt of the Eaglets against his father, with support from his mother and brothers, senior barons, and the kings of France and Scotland. Henry II’s superior military experience ultimately led to him defeating the uprising.

Chinon Castle was a favourite residence of Henry II, who died there in 1189.

Henry II made efforts to repair his relationship with the church by doing penance for his role in Becket’s death. On July 12, 1174, Henry II walked barefoot to Becket’s tomb in the crypt, receiving lashes from the monks. This act was a public reconciliation of king and church. When the king’s forces captured King William the Lion of Scotland the next day, the victory therefore appeared to be divine providence. Like king and church, Henry II and his sons were publicly reconciled. The revolt was blamed on young Henry’s advisers. John’s mother, Eleanor, however, was not forgiven by her husband for her support of her sons, and she spent the rest of Henry II’s reign imprisoned in a series of castles, playing little part in John’s early life.

The reconciliation of Henry II and his sons in 1174, and the death of Alicia of Savoy in 1178, meant that a new role had to be found for John. When young Henry died of dysentery in 1183, the king expected Richard, now heir to the English throne, to cede Aquitaine to John. Richard refused, prompting John’s first military campaign, an invasion of Aquitaine with the support of his father and brother, Geoffrey, that ended in a stalemate in 1184. With John’s prospects in Aquitaine uncertain, Henry II decided that Ireland would be the place where his youngest son would make his fortune and wield political influence. John travelled there as Lord of Ireland in April 1185 at the age of nineteen. From the moment of his arrival in Waterford, however, John made a poor impression on the local Irish leaders.

The Wider World in 1215

The known world for the English in 1215 was certainly not the entire world. In central Asia, Genghis Khan was building a vast Mongol Empire. The same year as Magna Carta, Genghis captured modern-day Beijing in the Battle of Zhongdu, following a two-year siege, gaining control of northern China. Contact between Western Europe and the Mongol Empire would not occur until the reign of John’s son, Henry III, when the papacy unsuccessfully called for the Mongols to convert to Christianity and devote their military might to the crusades.

The possibility of lands across the Atlantic Ocean or south of the equator had been a subject of speculation by European scholars and clergymen since the eleventh century. German missionaries who travelled north to Scandinavia to convert the Vikings heard sagas of past expeditions to Vinland (modern-day Newfoundland). The eleventh-century German chronicler Adam of Bremen believed that Vinland was the only land to the west, across the Atlantic. “[V]ines producing excellent wine grow wild,” he observed, “but beyond that island no habitable land is found in the ocean, every place beyond it is full of impenetrable ice and intense darkness.” Europeans were unaware of the other lands and civilizations in the Americas, including the Mayan Empire, which was in decline after an eleventh-century period of drought, and the Mexica, who founded Tenochtitlan on the site of what is now Mexico City around the year 1200.

The English scholar Alexander of Neckam, whose mother, Hodierna, had nursed the future king Richard, speculated that there might be Antipodean people living “beneath our feet.” Alexander was pessimistic about Europeans ever contacting these people because Aristotle believed that ships could not sail across the equator due to his belief that the intense heat of this region would make travel from the northern to southern hemisphere impossible.

Statue of John’s elder brother, Richard I “the Lionhearted,” outside the Houses of Parliament, Westminster.

The young Lord of Ireland mocked the appearance and customs of the Gaelic chieftains, pulled their beards, and showed himself to be “a mere youth, with an entourage composed only of youths, a stripling who listened only to youthful advice.”6 John’s frivolity and disrespect attracted criticism as he travelled from Waterford to Dublin. He proved a poor administrator. He may have spent funds provided by Henry for military campaigns on lavish entertainments for his household. John demonstrated some interest in fulfilling his duties as Lord of Ireland, establishing several castles and providing land grants for royal administrators, but his administration there was judged to be a failure by his contemporaries and subsequent historians because of his reckless spending and poor relations with the local elites.

The royal party departed for England in December 1185 after only eight months in Ireland. Despite John’s failures in Ireland, there is circumstantial evidence that Henry considered leaving the Angevin domains to him instead of Richard, who represented Eleanor’s interests. The uncertainty Henry introduced into the succession may have been an attempt to control his eldest surviving son, who remained in conflict with his father. When it became clear in 1189 that Henry was dying and that Richard would be his undisputed successor, John joined forces with his elder brother against his father to gain the favour of the next king. John acquired a reputation for disloyalty by leaving his father’s deathbed. Henry II died on July 6, 1189, at the fortified château de Chinon in Anjou in western France, cursing the faithlessness of his sons.

John, twenty-three at the time of Richard’s ascen­sion to the English throne, was nine years his brother’s junior and only five feet, five inches tall. In contrast, Richard, at six-five, towered over his unimposing younger brother. John resembled his father, Henry II, in both appearance and temperament. He had curly red hair and a barrel-chested physique that became overweight as he grew older. Also like his father and numerous other members of the Plantagenet dynasty, he was prone to sudden changes in mood. Contemporaries observed that John could change from generous, hospitable, and good-natured to angry and vengeful in an instant, erupting into violent rages similar to those of Henry II. While Richard was a formidable soldier, John had neglected the martial training that was an essential part of any young nobleman’s education, preferring hunting, hawking, music, and gambling. John also took unusual care with his appearance, enjoying sumptuous clothing and jewels, especially gold. In an era when rules for monastic orders prescribed two to four baths per year for monks and even the rich viewed bathing as a rare luxury, John took a bath every three weeks. John’s formative experiences in a family where his parents and brothers were frequently at war with each other appear to have made him secretive, and he became skilled at dissimulation.

Despite their differences, the two brothers presented a united front during the early months of Richard I’s reign. Richard released their mother, Eleanor, from confinement and she became a familiar and prominent figure at his court. John accompanied Richard to England for his coronation in August 1189 and was showered with lands, wealth, and honours. On August 29, John married Isabelle of Gloucester, whose married elder sisters were conveniently disinherited by the crown so that the earldom of Gloucester would pass to the king’s brother. Richard named John the Count of Mortain, Normandy. The new king also confirmed John’s right to the English castles that he had been granted by Henry II and bestowed new honours upon him, including the earldom of Cornwall. The revenues from John’s six English shires alone provided him with an independent annual income of £4,000, making him one of the wealthiest men in England, and he maintained a large household in his capacity as Lord of Ireland.

Richard’s accession brought John astonishing new wealth and prestige, but the king was careful to exclude him from any real position of power. There is evidence that Richard was well aware of his younger brother’s limitations as a soldier and statesman, commenting to Roger of Howden in 1193, “My brother John is not the man to conquer a country if there is a single person able to make the slightest resistance to his attempts.”

Richard departed his domains for the Third Crusade in 1190 and, as the only other adult male member of the ruling dynasty, John may have expected to be entrusted with a senior role in the governance of the Angevin domains. Instead, Richard entrusted England to his chief minister, Guillaume de Longchamp, and insisted that John swear an oath to stay away from the kingdom for three years. Eleanor of Aquitaine, who exerted far more political influence during Richard’s reign than John, modified the oath to place John’s exile from England at Longchamp’s discretion, but the existence of any limits on his movements demonstrated the distrust behind the public expressions of unity. Richard also refused to choose John as his successor, instead naming their nephew, Arthur of Brittany, son of their late brother, Geoffrey, as heir to the throne.

Richard was captured by Duke Leopold of Austria on his way home from the crusade in 1192 because of his rumoured involvement in the murder of Leopold’s cousin, Conrad of Montferrat. The duke presented his captive to Holy Roman Emperor Henry VI, who held him for ransom. John seized the opportunity to assert his authority over Richard’s domains. While Eleanor raised the ransom for Richard’s release, John swore fealty to Philip II for Richard’s French domains and offered Henry VI a substantial sum to keep Richard in captivity. Eleanor’s interests prevailed over those of her youngest son, and Richard returned to England in March 1194. In May, the two brothers were publicly reconciled, though Richard displayed his contempt for his brother by forgiving John with the words, “Do not be afraid, John. You are a child; you have got into bad company.” Despite Richard’s condescending attitude, the prospect of being named heir to the throne instead of his young nephew, Arthur, ensured John’s loyalty for the remainder of his brother’s reign. On his deathbed, following a crossbow wound to the shoulder he received while besieging a castle held by a rebel baron in Aquitaine in 1199, Richard acknowledged his brother, John, as heir to all the Angevin domains. Finally — and improbably — the youngest and oft-ignored son once known as John Lackland had begun his controversial reign as king of England.

John’s upbringing and rivalry with Richard are crucial to understanding his conflicts with his barons and the church during his reign, circumstances that precipitated Magna Carta. From a young age, John became skilled in dissimulation and exploiting conflict within the ruling family for his own personal gain. During Richard’s reign, John was quick to betray his brother or reconcile with him according to his self-interest. John’s dissimulation continued after he became king. By 1215, the year of Magna Carta, a significant proportion of John’s barons came to the conclusion that the king could not be trusted to keep his word and observe the customs of the realm outlined in the coronation charters of previous monarchs. The solution was Magna Carta, a formal charter of liberties imposed on the king by his subjects.

Nineteenth-century engraving depicting King John refusing to accept the Magna Carta when it was first presented to him by his rebel barons.