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Good King John | History Today
For centuries King John has been regarded as the embodiment of an evil ruler. But, says Graham E. Seel, this image is largely the creation of monastic chroniclers with an axe to grind. A close examination of contemporary records reveals a more nuanced character.
Everyone knows that King John (r. 1199-1216) was bad. In 2009 listeners to Melvyn Bragg's BBC Radio 4 programme In Our Time were told by the medieval historian Nicholas Vincent that 'John really was an absolute rotter through and through; the worst king in English history.' Here is a monarch, it is argued, whose character was so ill-suited to the delivery of effective governance that it was inevitable that his reign should be one of misdeeds and failures. The loss of Normandy; the marriage to Isabella of Angoulême; the murder of Richard I's designated heir Arthur; the prolonged contest with Pope Innocent III; the acts of cruelty against Jews and other members of the political nation; and John's lustfulness towards the wives of his barons – all are perceived as wayside markers pointing to the inevitable climax of the reign: baronial revolt and Magna Carta. Since his own day – apart from a period in the 16th century when he was temporarily rehabilitated by the Tudors because of his resistance to Innocent III and some revisionism undertaken in the 20th century – it has been commonplace to portray John as fatally flawed. 'Foul as it is, Hell itself is defouled by the foulness of John', concluded the chronicler Matthew Paris (c. 1200-59). John was literally diabolical.
John's reputation suffered at the hands of chroniclers even before he became king. Among the most important sources for his early years are Richard of Devizes, who ended his Chronicon de rebus gestis Ricardi Primi in 1192, and William of Newburgh, whose Historia rerum Anglicarum ceased at the author's death in 1198. Roger of Howden, author of Gesta Regis Ricardi, and Ralph of Diceto, author of Ymagines Historiarum, ended their chronicles in 1201 and 1202 respectively. All provide devastating early assessments of John. William of Newburgh, for example, commenting upon John's alleged treachery towards his brother while Richard was absent on crusade, concluded that John was 'Nature's Enemy'. Richard of Devizes also pictured John as intent upon seizing the throne from Richard and attributed a fearsome anger to him. At a meeting in 1191 with William Longchamp , Lord Chancellor and Bishop of Ely, Richard of Devizes describes how John flew into a rage and 'became unrecognisable in all his body. Wrath cut across his forehead; his burning eyes shot sparks; rage darkened the ruddy colour of his face … Indignation so swelled in his closed breast that it had either to burst or to vomit its venom somewhere'.
After John became king in 1199 Ralph of Coggeshall (d. 1218), in his Chronicon Anglicanum, evinces a reasonably balanced opinion of him until about 1203. Thereafter he accuses him, among other things, of indecision, duplicity and cowardice. In 1216, when the army of the future king of France, Louis, Count of Artois, threatened Winchester, Ralph says that John 'fled in terror, weeping and lamenting'. In his Gesta Regum Gervase of Canterbury (d. 1210) agrees with these judgements, awarding John the famous epithet of 'Softsword'. Gerald of Wales (d. 1223) believed that John 'could not equal his illustrious brothers and parents in good qualities … [and] being far worse in moroseness of his disposition and in the depravity of his actions, he not only surpassed them in bad qualities but even eclipsed all vicious men in his enormities'. John was, asserted Gerald, a 'tyrannous whelp, who issued from the most bloody tyrants and was the most tyrannous of them all'.
The source most damaging to John's reputation is the chronicle produced by monks at St Albans Abbey, notably Roger Wendover (d. 1236) and Matthew Paris. Wendover began his account of the reign about ten years after John's death in 1216. Bad King John strides across the pages of Wendover's main work, the Flowers of History. Here is the king who, we learn, ordered the crushing to death of Archdeacon Geoffrey under a cope of lead; who threatened to slit the noses and to pluck out the eyes of papal emissaries; who lost Normandy because 'he feasted sumptuously with his queen daily, and prolonged his sleep in the morning'. John is cowardly, cruel, lecherous, tyrannical, duplicitous and irreligious. When Wendover died in 1235 Paris succeeded him in his role as historiographer at St Albans, continuing the chronicle and reworking Wendover's account. Writing with a style and flourish that had eluded Wendover, Paris puts words into the mouths of historical figures who had hitherto remained silent. As the historian W.L. Warren points out, 'the portrait of King John that emerges is … even further removed from reality than that in Wendover, but it is eminently more readable'. Too vivid to forget, it is the John portrayed by Wendover and Paris that has entered the public realm.
Video: Cinematic Portrayals of King John
