♂John of England

John of England (27 December 1166 – 19 October 1216), King John, nicknamed Lackland, was King of England from 1199 until his death, the king who lost Normandy to France and who was forced by his barons to agree to Magna Carta at Runnymede on 19 June 1215. He was the twenty-fourth great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through his son Henry of England (1207–1272).

The youngest son

John was born at Oxford, the youngest son of King Henry II of England and Eleanor of Aquitaine. As a child he was promised to Alice of Maurienne, a daughter of the Count of Maurienne, but the match failed in 1173 when his older brother Henry refused to give up the castles their father meant for John. In 1177 his father declared him King of Ireland, and in March 1185 knighted him at Windsor and sent him to govern the island. John treated the Irish with such insolence that they deserted the English cause, and he was recalled that September.

Henry II’s continued favor to John helped drive his older brother Richard into rebellion, yet at the end of the reign John deserted his father for Richard. When Richard became king in 1189 he made John Count of Mortain^W in Normandy and gave him a great spread of castles, honors and counties in England. On 29 August 1189, at Marlborough in Wiltshire, John married his first wife, Isabel of Gloucester^W, a co-heiress of the Earl of Gloucester. The Archbishop of Canterbury protested because the two were related in the third degree of kindred, and they had no children.

While Richard was away on crusade, John broke his promise to stay out of England, and on hearing that his brother was a prisoner in Germany he tried, and failed, to seize control of the kingdom. On Richard’s return in 1193 John lost his English lands and was excommunicated, but their mother reconciled the brothers that May, and in 1195 Richard granted him the county of Mortain, the honor of Eye and the earldom of Gloucester. As Richard lay dying in April 1199 he named John his successor.

King of England

John was crowned at Westminster Abbey on 27 May 1199, and that same year he obtained a divorce from Isabel of Gloucester on the grounds of their kinship. On 24 August 1200, at Bordeaux, John married Isabel of Angouleme, the daughter and heiress of the Count of Angoulême, who had already been promised to Hugues IX le Brun, Count of La Marche^W and lord of Lusignan. She was crowned queen on 8 October 1200. War with France followed when John refused to appear in 1202 before King Philippe Auguste^W to answer the grievance of the Lusignans, the family of her former betrothed. He captured his nephew Arthur of Brittany^W in August 1202, but in 1204 he lost Normandy, Anjou, Maine and Touraine to the French king.

For the next ten years John lived almost entirely in England, the first king of his family to do so, and raised money for a new war by heavy taxation and the full use of his feudal rights, which later earned him the charge of tyranny. In 1205 he refused to accept the choice of Pope Innocent III^W, Stephen Langton^W, as Archbishop of Canterbury, and in 1208 the Pope laid England under an interdict^W, suspending all church services, and excommunicated the king. In 1210 John campaigned in Ireland and in 1211 in North Wales. In 1213 he agreed to become a vassal of the Pope, paying a yearly tribute of a thousand marks in return for his absolution and the lifting of the interdict.

Magna Carta and death

In 1214 John went back to France and suffered a disastrous defeat at the Battle of Bouvines^W. His barons used the defeat to rise against him and forced him to agree to Magna Carta at Runnymede, near Windsor, on 19 June 1215, a charter setting out the rights of the Church, the barons and the people. John soon repudiated it, saying he had acted under duress, and civil war followed^W. In the middle of that war he made a will and died suddenly at the Bishop of Lincoln’s castle at Newark on 19 October 1216, and he was buried at Worcester Cathedral.

John and Isabel had five children. Their eldest son, Henry, was nine when his father died and came to the throne that same day as King Henry III. John also had a large number of children by various mistresses.

Notes

Sources

John’s birth, both marriages, his career before and after his accession, his death and burial and his children are from Douglas Richardson, Plantagenet Ancestry (2nd ed., 2011), vol. I, ENGLAND 3, pp. 23–28, a printed genealogy of the medieval royal family and nobility that cites the chronicles, the royal rolls, John’s will and the modern histories of the reign. Burke’s Peerage (1869) agrees that John married Isabel of Gloucester first and Isabel of Angouleme second, and that he died at Newark Castle on 19 October 1216.

His birth date

Richardson gives the birth as “about 27 Dec. 1166” and cites a 2003 study of Eleanor of Aquitaine that revises the earlier accepted date. Burke’s Peerage (1869) gives 24 December 1166.