There have been 40 monarchs since William, Duke of Normandy, seized the English throne at the Battle of Hastings in 1066. King John, who reigned from 1199-1216, must be one of the worst – and that’s taking into account some pretty stiff competition among his successors. Richard III murdered his nephews, Charles I sparked a full-scale civil war by raising illegal taxation, Henry VI lost all his continental lands, George III did likewise with the American colonies (both of whom suffered from bouts of insanity), George IV and Charles II were serial womanisers, and Richard II’s authoritarian regime triggered revolt and rebellion. Remarkably, John managed to cram all of the above, and more, into his 17 eventful years. No wonder the medieval chronicler Matthew Paris wrote: “Foul as it is, Hell is made fouler by the presence of John.”
With the passing of time, it’s very easy to write simplistic caricatures of long-dead historical figures such as John, portraying them as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ according to our own biases and standards. Nothing is ever that simple. As with most people, John was a complex personality, the product not only of his dysfunctional, over-powering Angevin family but also the bellicose era into which he was born at Beaumont Palace, Oxfordshire, on Christmas Eve 1166. Most 13th century writers uniformly condemned John as a man, as well as a king. Chief among them was Paris, who created the enduring image that John was: “A tyrant not a king, a destroyer instead of a governor, crushing his own people and favouring aliens, a lion to his subjects but a lamb to foreigners and rebels… He was an insatiable extorter of money; he invaded and destroyed his subjects’ property… He himself was envious of many of his barons and kinsfolk and seduced their more attractive daughters and sisters.”
“WITH THE PASSING OF TIME, IT’S VERY EASY TO WRITE SIMPLISTIC CARICATURES OF LONG-DEAD HISTORICAL FIGURES SUCH AS JOHN”
There is plenty of evidence to give a slightly more balanced and rounded view of John as a person, someone who could be witty and charming, generous and considerate, shrewd and tactical, and
