1194–1202
In trying to usurp his brother’s throne, John had done terrible damage to his reputation. His failure in Ireland might have been put down to youthful inexperience; his desertion of his dying father explained as unfortunate timing. That men were prepared to overlook these earlier mistakes is suggested by their readiness to rally behind him in 1191 when he challenged the rule of the justiciar William Longchamp. For a moment he had been a popular hero, saving the realm from tyrannical oppression, in return for which he had been recognized as Richard’s rightful heir. But John had gone on to overplay his hand and lost spectacularly. No one could excuse the behaviour of a man who had attempted to seize the kingdom of an imprisoned crusader. By rebelling against Richard, said William of Newburgh, John had simply succeeded in ‘heaping up endless curses on his own perfidious head’. He was a ‘mad-headed youth’ who had broken ‘the laws of nature’, and become ‘nature’s enemy’.1
The damage to his position was equally catastrophic. Within days of Richard’s release from captivity the regency government had stripped John of all his lands and titles in both England and Normandy; Richard, although he subsequently accepted his brother’s submission, refused to reverse this verdict. Apart from his title ‘lord of Ireland’, which appears to have been a empty designation by this point, John had lost everything. His household was deliberately broken up, and those of his followers who had supported his rebellion found themselves similarly deprived of their lands and property.2
Had John also lost his position as heir apparent? In the period 1191–2 the political community in England had repeatedly sworn to recognize him as Richard’s successor. In March 1194, after his brother’s return, John had been warned he would lose all claim to the kingdom if he did not submit within forty days – a deadline he had failed to meet. Nothing official was subsequently said to clarify the issue. Richard’s last known statement on the matter, back in 1190, was that his nephew, Arthur of Brittany, should succeed him. Whether or not that was still his wish is unknown. Richard, now freed from captivity and able to resume conjugal relations with his queen, probably hoped that in due course he would be succeeded by a son of his own. Whatever the king’s intentions were, John’s position with regard to the throne must have seemed very weak in 1194, his future – beyond perhaps a role in Ireland – in grave doubt.3
The only hope of recovery lay in faithful service. Richard’s overriding concern from the spring of 1194 was the recovery of the lands that had been lost during his captivity to Philip Augustus. John, of course, had been the French king’s willing co-conspirator in seizing these lands, and he was able to score an immediate success by returning to Evreux – a town given to him by Philip – and slaughtering the garrison before they realized he had switched sides. Whether this did anything to improve his standing with Richard is unclear, but it compounded his reputation for treachery in France, and provoked an angry response from Philip, who sacked the town in revenge. Late in the summer, while Richard was winning back territory in Touraine and Aquitaine, John was left in Normandy to besiege the French forces occupying Vaudreuil. Philip, beaten by Richard in the south, rushed north to vent his fury on John for a second time, falling on his camp at dawn and forcing him to flee, with the loss of most of his infantry and siege equipment.4
Despite its apparently limited results, John’s military service impressed contemporaries – William of Newburgh commends him for fighting against Philip ‘faithfully and valiantly’ – and eventually caused Richard to soften his stance. In 1195, according to Roger of Howden, the king ‘forgave his brother John all the wrath and displeasure he felt towards him’, and restored some of his lands and titles: the county of Mortain, the earldom of Gloucester and the honour of Eye in Suffolk were all handed back, and John was also promised an annual payment of £2,000. He did not, however, regain custody of any of his castles. Richard’s trust in his younger brother clearly still had its limits.5
With regard to the succession, too, John’s position improved, largely due to Richard’s botched attempt to tighten his grip on Brittany. The Angevins regarded Brittany as a dependency, but the duchy had been left to go its own way since the death of Henry II; in 1196 Richard tried to reassert this traditional mastery by obtaining custody of its young duke, Arthur. His plan miscarried, however, when Arthur’s mother, Constance, was kidnapped en route to the king’s court by her estranged second husband. The nobles of Brittany, suspecting that this was a plot on Richard’s part, refused to hand Arthur over, and appealed for help to Philip Augustus; Richard responded by invading Brittany and crushing all resistance, but failed to apprehend his nephew, who was successfully conveyed to the French king. Clearly there was no way Arthur could be groomed as Richard’s heir if he was Philip’s ally. Moreover, by 1196, it was looking increasingly unlikely that Richard was going to father a son. Two chroniclers accused him of being unfaithful to his queen and neglecting to sleep with her. If only by default, John was once again coming to be regarded as first in line. There was no public avowal of his position, as there had been during Richard’s absence, but in private the king seems to have accepted the fact. Documents drawn up in the autumn of 1197 – one concerning the construction of Château Gaillard – show John guaranteeing to uphold his brother’s agreements.6
And yet, despite his apparent rehabilitation, John’s reputation was such that suspicion could easily be rekindled. Although he appears to have served Richard loyally during 1198, fighting against Philip Augustus when war re-erupted that autumn, relations between the two brothers collapsed early in 1199, when the French king wrote to Richard to inform him that John had once again defected. Whether there was any truth in this is impossible to determine. By this point Arthur had repudiated Philip and returned to Brittany, and the Bretons had returned to Richard’s allegiance. John may well have been alarmed by these developments and sought to counter their implications by plotting with Philip. Roger of Howden dismissed the accusations as a piece of malicious invention on the French king’s part, but admits that Richard believed what he was told and again deprived John of all his lands in both England and Normandy. Two other chroniclers report that John remained dispossessed and out of favour in the spring of 1199, right up to the moment when Richard was hit by a crossbow bolt.7
It happened in Aquitaine, at an obscure little castle called Châlus-Chabrol, about twenty miles south-east of Limoges. Rumour said Richard had gone there to claim some treasure that a peasant had ploughed up in a field, but the real reason was a rebellion by two of his leading vassals in the region, the viscount of Limoges and his half-brother, the count of Angoulême. By 1199 Richard was clearly winning the war against Philip Augustus; he had won back almost all the lost ground in Normandy, and held more territory along the Loire than at the start of his reign. But Philip had struck back by allying with these two southern nobles and encouraging them to revolt. The castle at Châlus belonged to the viscount of Limoges and Richard held it in little regard. He was besieging it when a lone crossbowman, reduced to using a frying pan as a shield, shot him in the shoulder. A surgeon managed to remove the bolt, but butchered the king’s flesh so badly that the wound turned gangrenous. Eleven days later he was dead.8
The sudden death of the great warrior forced the question of who would succeed him. The debates men must have been having in private for years suddenly required urgent resolution. Who had the greater right: John or Arthur? The History of William Marshal relates a splendid scene, clearly much improved with hindsight, in which the Marshal himself learns of Richard’s death four days after the event. He was staying in the castle at Rouen, and about to go to bed, when the news arrived, prompting him to pull his boots back on and seek out the archbishop of Canterbury, Hubert Walter, who was lodged in the nearby priory. After exchanging words of grief, their conversation turned quickly to the succession. Hubert opined that Arthur had the greater right, while the Marshal argued that John was nearest in line. But the reality was that the legal merits of the two claims, being debatable, hardly mattered: fundamentally the question came down to personalities and politics. ‘Arthur has treacherous advisers about him, and he is haughty and overbearing,’ says the Marshal. ‘If we call him to our side he will seek to do us harm and damage, for he does not like those in our realm.’ This was the crux of the matter: whether those who lived under Plantagenet rule wanted to see it endure in its existing form, or some compromised, truncated version. The Marshal speaks as a representative of the Anglo-Norman baronage (‘our side’) who wished to preserve the empire as it was, and with it their own cross-Channel holdings. But there were others – traitors in William Marshal’s view – who would have been more than happy to see that empire broken up: not only the nobles of Brittany, who had long resented Plantagenet overlordship, but also nobles in other regions who had come to resent the rule of Henry II and Richard. There was also, of course, Philip Augustus, who had already indicated his readiness to collaborate with Arthur and to help the Bretons achieve their aim of throwing off the Plantagenet yoke. In addition to all this, there was the simple factor of age: even if Arthur had possessed the willingness to defend Plantagenet power and resist Philip, he was only twelve years old at the time of Richard’s death – no match for the experienced and wily French king. In these circumstances, for those who wished to keep things as they were, the only possible candidate was John. He may have made a poor showing of himself in the past, but he was a grown man, and was also ‘one of us’, who would be committed to maintaining the whole of his inheritance. In The History of William Marshal Hubert Walter eventually defers to the Marshal’s judgement on the matter, but prophesies that John will be a disaster. ‘This much I can tell you,’ he says to the earl, ‘you will never come to regret anything you did as much as what you’re doing now.’9
With opinion divided across the Plantagenet dominions, the struggle between John and Arthur would be decided by how quickly they moved to secure the sinews of power: key castles, important towns, and treasuries. In this respect, one factor in particular counted in John’s favour. According to Roger of Howden, Richard in his final days had named his brother as his heir. There is no way of knowing whether this was true, but it was certainly the case that those around the dying king – his household, comprised chiefly of Anglo-Norman barons – were firmly in favour of John. The same was true of his mother. Eleanor of Aquitaine was one of the few people who had been informed of the king’s injury, and had rushed to Châlus to be with him when he died. Richard’s condition had otherwise been kept secret, and messengers had raced to alert key personnel to an imminent change of leadership. William Marshal, for example, was staying in Rouen Castle because he had received orders to secure it three days before the king’s death.10
The same messengers must have been sent speeding to locate John. The fact that he had fallen out with Richard just a few weeks earlier and withdrawn from his court may have made it difficult to do so. According to Howden he was in Normandy, but Howden may be giving us an airbrushed version of the truth, in keeping with his assertion that the two brothers had been reconciled before Richard met his end. Another source which provides a very detailed account of these days is The Life of St Hugh; its subject, the saintly Bishop Hugh of Lincoln, happened to be travelling to see Richard at this very moment, and was thus a key witness to the ensuing drama. According to Hugh’s testimony, John was actually staying in Brittany at the time of Richard’s death, keeping company with Arthur. If true (and there seems little reason to doubt it) this reinforces the suggestion that John may indeed have been plotting with his brother’s enemies.11
Presumably John was informed in secret of his brother’s fatal injury, made his excuses and departed. He must have been told to make straight for Chinon, the most important castle in Anjou, and the location of the county’s treasury, for when he arrived there on the morning of 14 April his mother and his late brother’s household were already waiting for him. They had come north from Châlus with Richard’s body, and laid the dead king to rest at nearby Fontevraud alongside the bones of his father. John swore an oath to fulfil his brother’s will faithfully – Richard had bequeathed a quarter of his treasure to his servants and the poor – and also promised to preserve the laws and customs of the people he would rule over, in return for which those present recognized him as his brother’s successor.12
It remained to secure the rest of his dominions. From Chinon John headed north-west to the castle of Saumur, pausing en route at Fontevraud to visit his brother’s tomb. By 18 April – Easter Sunday – he had reached the castle of Beaufort-en-Vallée, about fifteen miles east of Angers.13
At this point he realized he was in danger. While had been making his somewhat leisurely progress along the Loire, his enemies had been on the move. News of Richard’s death must have broken at Arthur’s court shortly after John’s departure, and Constance of Brittany and the Breton nobles had immediately set out to advance Arthur’s cause. By Easter Sunday they had already reached Angers, where they were met by a crowd of nobles from Anjou, Maine and Touraine, who all swore allegiance to Arthur as their new ruler.14
John was travelling with only a few attendants. Confrontation was out of the question; capture and indefinite imprisonment were a real possibility. His only hope was to outrun his enemies and reach Normandy before they caught up with him. On the morning of Easter Monday he set out at speed, covering fifty miles to reach Le Mans by nightfall. During his stay in the city, however, he realized that his situation had not improved. By now he must have known that Philip Augustus had invaded Normandy, seizing the town and county of Evreux, and was advancing in the direction of Le Mans. Fearing a trap, John stole away from the city in secret the next morning, disappearing into the predawn darkness. In so doing he managed to escape the pincer just before it closed: a few hours later Arthur and his army attacked and occupied Le Mans, and a short while later they were joined there by the French king, who recognized Arthur’s right to Anjou, Maine and Touraine in return for his homage. Apart from a handful of castles along the Loire Valley, Anjou had been lost.15
Normandy, fortunately, was far more welcoming. The Norman nobility can have had no great love or respect for John, remembering how he had demanded their allegiance when Richard was in captivity and then declined to help defend the duchy against Philip Augustus when that allegiance was refused. Nevertheless, as William Marshal had already recognized, in the ongoing struggle against the French king, John was now their only candidate. On 25 April he was invested as duke in Rouen Cathedral. The archbishop of Rouen, Walter de Coutances, who had opposed John’s attempts to seize power in England, performed the ceremony, placing a coronet worked with golden roses on the new duke’s head.16
England was evidently in John’s thoughts at this time. News of Richard’s death had arrived there by Easter and provoked outbreaks of opportunistic lawlessness. Ralph of Coggeshall reports that the magnates began ‘ravaging like hungry wolves’. Such reports must have reached John in Normandy, for immediately after his investiture as duke he sent Hubert Walter and William Marshal across the Channel to help keep the peace in England until he could come there in person. For the moment, having secured the support of the Normans, John was inclined to attempt the recovery of lost ground in Anjou. Both the Bretons and Philip Augustus had since withdrawn from Le Mans, and John now returned to punish the city for its earlier disloyalty, tearing down its walls and castle and imprisoning many of its leading citizens. He may perhaps have met up with his mother, for Eleanor had embarked on a similar punitive expedition, leading Richard’s mercenaries on a ravaging campaign through the Angevin countryside, demonstrating to local lords the downside of resisting Plantagenet power. Soon afterwards, however, they went their separate ways, Eleanor heading south to secure Aquitaine, John turning north in the direction of England.17
Hubert Walter and William Marshal may have found the situation in England worse than anticipated. The period between the death of one king and the coronation of his replacement was a legal vacuum that always tempted some men to settle old scores with violence, but this was something rather more serious. According to Roger of Howden, Hubert’s and William’s first move had been to administer a general oath of loyalty to John, but there was clearly widespread resistance. All those who held castles, says Howden, both barons and bishops, began strengthening them with men, provisions and arms. The king’s lieutenants responded by calling a meeting to Northampton, summoning ‘those persons of whom they had the greatest doubts’. It was an impressive list: five out of the seven men Howden names are earls, and he adds that there were many others. Most of those named had helped to crush John’s rebellion against Richard and had been rewarded for their loyalty; no doubt they now feared that the sudden change in leadership would bring a sudden reversal in their fortunes. The archbishop and the Marshal, together with the justiciar, Geoffrey fitz Peter, pledged their word that John would give each man his due if they would preserve their fealty and keep the peace. Satisfied with the guarantees of these upright individuals, the magnates complied.18
John’s advance guard must also have been charged with making preparations for his coronation, which was scheduled to take place at Ascension (27 May). John himself landed on the Sussex coast just two days beforehand and hurried to London. The fact that he left it until the very last minute to cross the Channel shows how concerned he must have been about leaving the Continent while his lands there were still being menaced. Ralph of Coggeshall says he departed from Normandy in secret, presumably in the hope of keeping his absence concealed from his enemies.19
John’s coronation was not unusual in being hastily arranged. Ever since 1066, when the Normans had introduced the notion that the ceremony itself made a man a king, contenders for the English crown had held their coronations at the earliest opportunity. They were still solemn and magnificent affairs, with as much pageantry as possible. Ralph of Coggeshall says that John’s coronation was conducted with great pomp, and Gervase of Canterbury says ‘in great glory’, but sadly there is little else in the way of contemporary description.20 Like all coronations since the Conquest it took place in Westminster Abbey, where John was first required to swear a threefold oath, promising to protect and honour the Church, to abolish bad laws and replace them with good ones, and to do good justice to his subjects.21 Afterwards came the king-making moment itself, in which he was anointed on various parts of his body with holy oil. Custom decreed that the oil poured on his head had to remain there for a full seven days, so for the whole week that followed John wore a special coif, with straps tied under his chin, to hold it in place. The new king was then dressed in royal robes and crowned, with a crown so heavy that two earls had to help support it on his head, before finally being seated on the throne while Mass was celebrated. Afterwards the king and his nobles walked the short distance to Westminster Hall for the coronation banquet. Twenty-one fat oxen from Worcestershire and 2,000 yards of table linen had been purchased for the occasion. William Marshal and Geoffrey fitz Peter, who had been officially recognized as earls that day by being girded with their swords of office, served at the king’s table. Archbishop Hubert, who had performed the coronation service, was appointed as chancellor.22
The only discordant note during this otherwise harmonious fanfare was sounded by ambassadors sent by the king of Scots, William the Lion. Almost half a century earlier, when he was just a small boy, William had inherited the earldom of Northumbria (it came to him via his grandfather, David I, who had extorted it from King Stephen). Henry II had subsequently compelled William to return it, but the Scottish king had never abandoned the hope of getting it back. It had prompted his disastrous decision to join the rebellion against Henry in 1173, and had remained a bone of contention with Richard I. Now, with Richard dead and John struggling to secure his inheritance, he saw a golden opportunity. He would agree to recognize John, if John agreed to cede Northumbria. Messengers had already been sent to convey this offer to John before his return to England, but the regents in England had prevented them from crossing the Channel. And so the Scottish ambassadors had returned on the day of the coronation with the same urgent question: would the new king restore Northumbria, or would William be forced to take it?
John responded by inviting William to come and discuss the matter in person at Northampton in ten days’ time, and duly set off in that direction soon after his coronation, visiting the shrines at St Albans and Bury St Edmunds on the way. But after waiting at Northampton for several days he was met by more Scottish ambassadors, who explained that their king would not be coming. Instead they delivered a more precise threat. Northumbria must be returned at once, or else William would take it by force. John was given forty days to make his mind up, during which time the king of Scots would be raising an army.
The new king of England had no intention of surrendering Northumbria or of waiting forty days in order to defend it. He too was busy raising an army, but it was to fight a far more formidable opponent. Delegating the problem of protecting northern England to William de Stuteville, John set out in the direction of the south coast, leaving the Scottish envoys trailing in his wake. On 20 June, less than four weeks since his arrival, he set sail from Shoreham, taking with him what Ralph of Coggeshall describes as ‘a mighty English host’.23
Normandy seems not to have suffered from any new assaults during John’s absence. It probably helped that on 23 May, just two days before he had left for England, the leading nobles of Poitou, rallied by his mother, had launched an attack on Tours, where Arthur of Brittany was known to be staying. This was unsuccessful in that Arthur escaped, but it did succeed in drawing the fire of Philip Augustus, who was forced to send some of his troops south. When John landed at Dieppe with his great English army on 20 June, he found the situation encouraging. A few days later a multitude of Norman knights and infantry flocked to Rouen to join their ranks. For the same reason, the French king decided to put out peace feelers, and so a truce was agreed, set to last a little under two months.24
During this truce John spent much of his time visiting the towns and castles along Normandy’s southern and eastern borders, no doubt shoring up their defences against future attack. He also set about strengthening his position by securing an impressive list of allies. In the last year of his life Richard had assembled a formidable coalition against Philip Augustus, wooing to his side most of the counts and dukes who were notionally subject to the French king. John now succeeded in confirming these alliances. On 13 August the count of Flanders did homage to him in Rouen, along with many others (fifteen counts in total, according to a local chronicler). All of them swore an oath against King Philip.25
Thus by the time the truce expired on 16 August John was in a very strong position with regard to his rival. On that day the two kings travelled to the border to discuss their differences, meeting on a stretch of the Seine between Les Andelys and Vernon that had become the norm for such conferences since the completion of Château Gaillard.26 After two days of communicating through intermediaries, they at last came face to face. John, says Howden, asked why Philip held him in such hatred, asserting that he had never done him any harm. Philip replied that John had taken possession of Normandy and other territories without first obtaining the necessary permission; he should have come to Philip first and done homage. He then outlined the territorial settlement he had in mind. John was to hand over the whole of the Vexin to Philip, and to relinquish his claim to Anjou, Maine and Touraine, which rightly belonged to Arthur.
John had no hesitation in rejecting these demands. Philip’s view of his rights as overlord, John might have pointed out, was over-exalted. The kings of France had always liked to think of the Plantagenets as their vassals, and Henry II had encouraged this belief by having his sons do homage from time to time. As king of England, however, Henry had long resisted the suggestion that he should do homage in person. Only once, in 1183, had he done so, at a time when his bargaining power was weak. The very fact that the kings of France came to negotiate with their Plantagenet neighbours on the frontier of their respective territories, sometimes on islands in the middle of the Seine (or once, in Richard’s case, shouting from a boat) indicates that, from the Plantagenet point of view at least, this was a relationship of equals. John had readily done homage to Philip in 1193, but then he had been a desperate rebel; he had no intention of repeating the performance now he was king of England.27
As for Philip’s demand that John surrender Anjou, Maine and Touraine to Arthur, these territories sat at the centre of John’s continental dominions. To cede them would be to rip the heart out of the Angevin Empire, severing communication between its northern and southern parts. Fortunately, John did not have to entertain such outrageous proposals. He still had his mighty English army, bolstered by the military support of Normandy, and he also had his impressive array of allies from elsewhere in France. On 18 August, as talks with Philip Augustus broke up without agreement, the count of Boulogne joined John’s alliance. The English king, says Gervase of Canterbury, ‘made up his mind to resist the French king like a man, and to fight manfully for the peace of his country’.28
And so hostilities resumed. Philip may have struck the first blow, augmenting his existing gains in south-east Normandy by seizing the castle at Conches, but it quickly became clear that the momentum was with John. In the second week of September he advanced from southern Normandy into Maine, drawing the French king south. Around the middle of the month, Philip besieged and destroyed the castle at Ballon, a few miles north of Le Mans.29
It was at this moment that John received an unexpected visit from William des Roches. William was one of the most powerful barons in Maine and Anjou, thanks to his marriage to a rich heiress some ten years earlier. Now in his mid-forties, he had a strong track record of loyalty to the Plantagenets, remaining with Henry II up to his death and accompanying Richard on crusade. In April 1199, however, he had decided to back Arthur rather than John. His reasons for doing so are unknown. He may have felt, like other Angevin nobles, that Arthur simply had the better claim. He must have been induced by a promise of increased power, for Arthur had immediately appointed him as seneschal of Anjou. But by September William had come to rue this decision. His specific reason, reported by several chroniclers, was Philip’s behaviour at the siege of Ballon; William argued that the castle ought to have been handed over to Arthur, but the French king had haughtily dismissed his objections and burnt it to the ground. Behind this, his broader reason must surely have been that by September John was clearly winning the war. During the summer all the other powerful men in France had given him their backing, and he was now advancing confidently into Arthur’s supposed area of authority. William must have feared that he was going to end up with nothing. And so, with the two armies not far apart, he secretly slipped away from Philip’s side and came at night to John’s camp. In the course of a personal interview with the king, he explained that he was ready to defect. But that was not all. He also assured John that, if he promised to act on his advice, he would arrange to bring in Arthur and his mother Constance. John’s rival for power was ready to submit.30
John readily agreed. On 18 September he promised, in writing, to abide by whatever peace terms William arranged between himself and his ‘very dear nephew, Arthur’. Then, emboldened by the prospect of success, he went on the offensive, surprising Philip Augustus as he was laying siege to the castle of Lavardin, twenty-five miles north-west of Le Mans.31 Philip retreated into the city, but Le Mans, thanks to John’s destruction of its walls and castle earlier in the year, was no longer defensible. With his enemies still in pursuit, the French king fled once again, this time withdrawing from Maine altogether. At some point before his departure he had agreed to place Arthur and his mother in the keeping of William des Roches, wrongly assuming that the seneschal of Anjou was still on his side. On 22 September William, who had been left in charge of Le Mans, welcomed John into the city and presented him with his nephew, just as he had promised. This was a moment of triumph. John, barely a fortnight into his campaign, had driven the king of France from the field, and – much more importantly – obtained the submission of Arthur.32
And yet it was only a fleeting moment, for within just a few hours John’s victory was undone. As Roger of Howden explains, on the same day that Arthur submitted at Le Mans, he was warned that his uncle ‘intended to take him and throw him in prison’. In the case of other rulers, such a warning would have been hard to believe. John, after all, had sworn to abide by the counsel of William des Roches, and had agreed (according to The History of William Marshal) that he, William and Arthur ‘would all be good friends’; the letters issued by the king himself use phrases like ‘firmly promised’ and ‘in good faith’. But John’s catalogue of earlier betrayals clearly limited the value of such promises, and made rumours of impending treachery seem all too credible. The night after his submission, Arthur slipped away from his uncle’s court, along with his mother and many others, and fled to Angers, which was still being held by his supporters. John, who had moved south to Chinon, rushed back to Le Mans, but the horse had already bolted. A week later he went south again, this time to Saumur, perhaps trying to intercept Arthur or prevent him moving eastward along the Loire, but if so without success. Arthur managed to travel from Angers to Tours, where he was received once more by Philip Augustus.33
Having let his nephew slip through his fingers, and with no other obvious enemies to fight, John returned to Normandy in the second week of October. Soon afterwards, at the urgings of a papal legate, both sides agreed to a truce that would last until early January. John must have been kicking himself at having so carelessly dropped his trump card. Ralph of Diceto commented that, in losing Arthur, the king had acted ‘less than cautiously’, and others appear to have arrived at similar negative conclusions. During the truce, many of the French nobles who had sworn oaths to fight with John took the cross and prepared to go on crusade. Had they been exasperated by his ineptitude, or perhaps shocked by his alleged plan to betray his nephew and throw him into prison? Whatever their reasons, by Christmas John’s coalition against Philip Augustus had completely collapsed.34
This collapse was reflected in the peace terms that were agreed when the two kings met in January. In contrast to his determination not to give ground the previous year, John now made considerable territorial concessions, ceding to Philip all of the Vexin as well as all the towns and castles the French king had seized in south-east Normandy in the wake of Richard’s death. Philip in return promised to stop supporting Arthur’s claim, and induced Arthur himself to do the same; John was recognized as the rightful heir to Anjou, Maine and Touraine. Significantly, however, John accepted that he ought to do homage to Philip for these territories, as well as for Normandy, admitting the French king’s superior lordship in a way that he and his ancestors had previously sought to resist. In recognition of this new dependency, he took the unprecedented step of promising to pay a relief of 20,000 marks.
Despite these substantial concessions, John may have thought that the deal he had achieved was a good one. He and Philip reportedly stood talking for a long time and embraced each other warmly. Others certainly thought it was a good deal, and welcomed the prospect of an end to seven years of almost continuous conflict. Ralph of Coggeshall commented that John ‘was a lover of peace, who intended to live a tranquil life free from wars, understanding how many enemies of the kingdom he faced, and what great misfortunes had befallen his father and brothers and all the kingdom from such frequent wars’. Gervase of Canterbury was similarly pleased. By acting manfully, he thought, John had cowed his opponents, and ‘by prudence more than war he had obtained peace everywhere’. But Gervase also noted that not everyone was impressed by the king’s performance. Some people, ‘malevolent and envious’, were calling him ‘Softsword’. In other words, the monks commended John’s peace; the military men thought he ought to have put up more of a fight.35
The peace drawn up in January 1200 was for the moment agreed only in principle. To seal it permanently, and to give Philip’s territorial gains the appearance of a freely conceded gift, there was to be a royal wedding. Philip’s eldest son Louis would marry John’s niece, Blanche – the daughter of his sister Eleanor and her husband, Alfonso VIII of Castile. This meant that the bride would have to be fetched from Spain, and so a further five-month truce was put in place to enable this. Eleanor of Aquitaine, by this point in her mid-seventies, set out across the Pyrenees to collect her granddaughter.36
John in the meantime crossed the Channel to England, arriving in Portsmouth at the end of February. To the dismay of Ralph of Coggeshall, he immediately proved that peace could be as expensive as war by imposing a heavy tax to raise his 20,000-mark relief. As Coggeshall explained, this new demand, coming as it did after the scutage to finance the previous year’s military campaign, ‘very much weakened the people of the land’. John also intended during this visit to deal with the king of Scots. Despite his earlier threats, William the Lion had not raised an army or attempted to take Northumbria. John summoned him to York and travelled there in expectation of a meeting at the end of March. By this stage, however, William’s courage had completely deserted him. The confrontational stance he had adopted in 1199 had been based on the assumption that the new king of England would be distracted by his problems on the Continent; there is some evidence to suggest he was acting in concert with Philip Augustus. But now that John and Philip had all but settled their differences, William was isolated, and must have feared retribution. Claiming that John’s assurance of safe conduct was inadequate, he again declined to appear.37
The Scottish king’s repeated failure to present himself must have angered John, but not as much as the appearance at York of several Cistercian abbots, who had been summoned to the city to discuss their contribution to the recent tax. The Cistercians had always been exempt from taxation, but when they pointed this out and refused to pay, the king exploded. In ‘anger and fury’, according to Ralph of Coggeshall, he ordered his sheriffs to persecute the Cistercians by all possible means, and to take no action against those who harmed them. The abbots complained about these ‘cruel edicts’ to the archbishop of Canterbury, who in turn ‘freely rebuked the king for such great cruelty, denouncing him as a persecutor of the holy Church’. But despite this and subsequent attempts to placate him, John refused to be pacified, and sailed for Normandy at the end of April, ‘breathing fire and slaughter against the followers of Christ’.38
By the time John recrossed the Channel, his mother had returned from her trip to Spain, bringing with her the bride-to-be, Blanche of Castile. Eleanor was too exhausted to travel any further than Bordeaux, so it fell to the city’s archbishop to escort Blanche on the final stage of her journey to Normandy, where she was at last delivered to her waiting uncle. On 18 May John and Philip met at the border and the terms they had agreed in January were confirmed. Four days later, on an island in the middle of the Seine called Le Goulet, the peace was sealed. John did homage to Philip for his continental possessions, Arthur did homage to John for Brittany, and Blanche was married to Philip’s son, Louis. The war of succession to the Angevin Empire was finally over.39
A fortnight after the peace was sealed, John set out south, to take possession of those territories that had spent the previous year resisting him: Maine, Anjou and Touraine. In expectation of continued resistance, he took no chances and advanced at the head of a large army, passing in turn through the cities of Le Mans, Angers and Tours. At Angers he stayed for four nights and took 150 hostages.40
In July he moved further south into Aquitaine. The great southern duchy had been secured for him the previous year by his mother, but only by making generous concessions to its leading nobles, granting them lands and castles in order to persuade them to stay loyal. Such was the way Aquitaine had to be governed, for ducal authority there had always been weak. Like his predecessors, John had little land of his own in the duchy and very few castles. To rule effectively it was necessary to work with the local aristocracy, sometimes appeasing them, sometimes playing them off against each other. Politics were thus naturally fractious, and rebellions more frequent than elsewhere in the Angevin Empire. It had been in Aquitaine that Richard had met his end, trying to suppress the rebellion of the viscount of Limoges and the count of Angoulême. As John prepared to advance into the duchy, he summoned both these men to come and do homage to him at Lusignan on 5 July. The choice of location was significant: the lord of Lusignan, Hugh le Brun, had been a rival of the count of Angoulême for many years, but lately they had agreed to bury the hatchet, and Hugh had agreed to marry the count’s only daughter and heir.41
John had been giving much thought to his own marriage in recent months. As we have seen, his wedding to Isabella of Gloucester in 1189 was probably a forced affair, performed at Richard’s insistence. With Richard gone, John was at last free to please himself. His intention to divorce Isabella must have been apparent from the very start of his reign, for she was not crowned with him in May 1199, and later that year he persuaded the bishops of Normandy to declare their marriage void. Other churchmen disapproved. The dean of St Paul’s, Ralph of Diceto, thought that John had acted ‘on the advice of evil men’, and claimed that the king’s actions had angered the pope. But John had good political reasons for wanting a divorce at this point, for he was recruiting allies against Philip Augustus, and was hoping to marry the daughter of the king of Portugal. In January 1200 Portuguese ambassadors had been received at his court.42
Whether John was still thinking about a Portuguese marriage by the summer of 1200 is altogether more doubtful. His first reported act on reaching Aquitaine was to ask the local bishops to confirm his divorce, and on 10 July he did send ambassadors to Portugal. But the suspicion is that this last act was a smokescreen to conceal his real intentions, for by this stage the king was secretly planning to marry elsewhere. In late July and early August, as he toured the south of the duchy, shock news arrived at court: the count of Angoulême had abducted his daughter from the custody of her fiancé, Hugh de Lusignan. According to The History of William Marshal, Hugh was travelling with John’s court, and departed in anger, knowing that this was part of a plot. And he was undoubtedly right: on 24 August, John came to Angoulême and married the girl himself.43
According to Roger of Howden, the motivation was ‘affection’: the king had simply taken a fancy to the count’s daughter and acted on impulse. This is, of course, possible, but not very likely. John’s new wife – who, like his old wife, was named Isabella – was very young. Although he subsequently persuaded half a dozen bishops to attest that their union was legitimate, she may have been under the minimum age set by the Church, which was twelve; had she been any older, it is difficult to explain why she had not already been married to her betrothed, Hugh de Lusignan.44
The more likely (and, indeed, more charitable) explanation is that John married Isabella for political reasons. In 1200 Hugh de Lusignan was a man who was growing too powerful for comfort. One factor, for example, which had for a long time kept him and the count of Angoulême in check was their competition for the county of La Marche. But in the wake of Richard’s death Hugh had obtained La Marche from Eleanor of Aquitaine (in one account, by kidnapping the queen and extorting it from her); at the start of 1200, John had been obliged to recognize Hugh’s possession of the county as a fait accompli. Had his marriage to Isabella gone ahead as planned, Hugh would also have been set to inherit all of Angoulême. Together, these new acquisitions would have placed him in control of a huge power bloc, covering an area greater than Normandy, and cutting communication between the northern and southern parts of the Angevin Empire. By marrying Isabella, John had nipped this prospect in the bud, and secured Angoulême for himself. From a strategic point of view, this was a masterstroke.45
From a political point of view it was a disaster. ‘This did not have a favourable outcome,’ says The History of William Marshal, ‘for the count of La Marche [i.e. Hugh de Lusignan] and his men left with anger in their hearts. They did not feel it was right that the girl had been abducted’ Not for the first time, John had sought to achieve desirable ends by resorting to underhand methods, only to find that his scheme had backfired. It was perhaps unlikely that Hugh would have responded favourably to any candid, upfront suggestions that he break off an engagement which promised to increase his power so substantially, but in any case John made no attempt to placate him or offer anything by way of compensation. According to two contemporaries, the idea of marrying Isabella had been planted in the king’s head by Philip Augustus. If that really was the case, then John ought to have been more circumspect, for the resulting ill will worked greatly to the French king’s advantage.46
As soon as his wedding had been celebrated, John and Isabella set out in the direction of England. In early October they crossed the Channel and on 8 October they were both crowned in Westminster Abbey. (Ralph of Coggeshall, recording the event, charitably remarked that the new queen looked ‘about twelve’.) Immediately after the ceremony, John summoned the king of Scots for a third time, sending a powerful delegation (one bishop, three earls and four barons) to give him the desired safe conduct. William must have realized he could put the matter off no longer; regardless of his claim to Northumbria, he held lands from the English king that he could not expect to retain if he failed to acknowledge John as his lord. The two kings met in Lincoln on 21 November. The following day, on top of a lofty hill outside the city, surrounded by a vast crowd of people from England, Scotland and Normandy, William did homage to John, kneeling before him and swearing eternal fidelity. William then raised the subject of Northumbria but discovered that, alas, John did not think much of his claim. The matter was postponed.47
A few days later, John also settled his row with the Cistercians. He had returned to England in no mood for compromise – on the day of Isabella’s coronation he had increased their persecution by issuing more ‘cruel edicts’ – but at length his heart softened. The Cistercian abbots had gathered in Lincoln to seek his mercy at the suggestion of the archbishop of Canterbury who, after several days of patient cajoling, persuaded the king to grant them an audience. They fell down at his feet and begged forgiveness, and he, to their surprise, responded in kind, tearfully cancelling his earlier oppressions and promising in future to be their protector. He also proclaimed his wish to build a new Cistercian monastery for the good of his soul and the souls of his parents, where he intended one day to be buried.48
Thus, by Christmas, which was spent at Guildford, John could feel that all his major problems had been solved. His war against Philip Augustus and Arthur of Brittany was over, his succession to the Angevin Empire secure. His superiority to the king of Scots had been ritually established, and his rift with the Cistercians healed. He had divorced his older, unwanted first wife, and replaced her with a young, attractive and politically useful new queen. Soon into the new year 1201 he and Isabella set out on a tour of northern England.49
But in Poitou, the king’s success was starting to unravel, precisely because of his second marriage. In the early months of 1201 Hugh de Lusignan, still chafing at his humiliation, rebelled against John’s authority and began attacking the king’s castles in Aquitaine. He was joined by his uncle, Geoffrey de Lusignan, a former crusader famous for his military prowess, and many other men besides. According to the Anonymous of Béthune, the whole nobility of Poitou was up in arms on account of what they regarded as the shabby treatment of Hugh. Eleanor of Aquitaine, who had retired to spend her final days at Fontevraud, sent panicked letters to her son in England, spelling out his deteriorating fortunes.50
John, returning from his tour of the north, responded in the early spring, ordering his officials to seize the county of La Marche from Hugh de Lusignan. He also struck at Hugh’s brother, Ralph, who held the county of Eu in Normandy, instructing his deputies in the duchy to seize all Ralph’s territories. This was more controversial, because Ralph had seemingly not participated in his brother’s rebellion; indeed, according to one chronicler, he was in John’s service in England when the king ordered the attack on his estates. John was apparently bent on crushing the entire Lusignan clan, and not paying much attention to individual culpability. Shortly after Easter he ordered his English nobles to muster at Portsmouth in May, ready to engage his continental enemies.51
John’s decision to wage indiscriminate war against Hugh and his family would have mattered less had he not recognized Philip Augustus as his overlord the previous year. As it was, his enemies were able to complain to the French king that they were being unjustly persecuted. Philip responded by acting as peacemaker, persuading the Lusignans to stop their attacks in Poitou, and arranging to meet John on the Norman–French border. The two kings renewed their commitment to the peace they had sealed twelve months earlier, and John ordered the restoration of Ralph de Lusignan’s estates. Afterwards John accompanied Philip to Paris, where he was lodged in the royal palace and entertained lavishly (though laughed at after his departure, when it was discovered his men had drunk all the bad wines and left the good ones). In the course of this visit, John promised to give the Lusignans justice, and Philip agreed not to press the matter further.52
It soon became apparent, however, that John had a particularly rough form of justice in mind. Once he had returned to his own lands, he charged the Lusignans with treachery, and challenged them to a judicial duel. There was nothing illegal in this, but it was a decidedly old-fashioned way to proceed in an age that was increasingly reliant on settling such matters in court. John, moreover, set about ensuring his victory by recruiting the best fighting men he could find across all his dominions to act as his champions. This was effectively war by other means. Unsurprisingly the Lusignans refused to answer his summons, saying that they would only accept trial by their peers, and once again appealed to Philip Augustus.53
Philip intervened once more, and insisted that the Lusignans be given a fair hearing. John agreed, but began dragging his heels, refusing to set a date or to grant the Lusignans safe conduct. In the autumn Philip tried to apply some pressure, demanding that John guarantee his word by handing over the castles of Falaise, Arques and Château Gaillard. But since these were three of the most important fortresses in Normandy, John naturally refused, sending the archbishop of Canterbury to the French king’s court to tender his excuses.54
By the start of 1202 patience was wearing thin on both sides. A conference was arranged for 25 March between the two kings, but they did not meet in person, communicating only through proxies. Philip insisted that John should come to Paris and stand trial for his contempt; John, perhaps belatedly realizing the negative connotations of his trip to Paris the previous year, countered that the dukes of Normandy had always been accustomed to meet the kings of France at the frontier. John was not being summoned as the duke of Normandy, replied Philip, but as the duke of Aquitaine and count of Anjou, territories for which he had lately done homage. And so their arguments went on from day to day, says Ralph of Coggeshall, and their hostility began to increase. The meeting apparently concluded with a climbdown by John, who promised to appear in Paris on 28 April to answer for his contempt, and to surrender two castles as security. But in the event he did neither, and so on that date Philip’s court found against him. John was declared to be a contumacious vassal, and all his lands were deemed forfeit.55
At once Philip set about putting the sentence into effect, launching an attack on Normandy and taking Boutavant, one of the two castles John had promised as security, which he then razed to the ground. The French king had evidently been preparing his assault for many weeks in advance, for in the month that followed many other fortresses along the Norman border also fell. John lurked nearby but put up no resistance; only when Philip moved to besiege the castle at Radepont, ten miles south-east of Rouen, did his opponent move towards him, forcing him into a temporary retreat.56
By this point, the French king was ready to open up another front, using a pawn that had been out of play for over a year. In early July he had knighted Arthur of Brittany and betrothed him to his infant daughter, Mary. At the same time, he had invested Arthur with Anjou, Maine, Touraine and Aquitaine – all the territories that John was deemed to have forfeited, except Normandy, which Philip was determined to keep for himself. Arthur was now fifteen years of age, and his knighting signified that he was considered old enough to fight for his inheritance. The French king immediately sent him south with 200 knights to join forces with the Lusignans, to escalate the war against John in Aquitaine.57
When Arthur and his army met up with the Lusignans and their supporters in Tours towards the end of July, they had exciting news. Eleanor of Aquitaine, who was still regarded as one of the most important pieces on the board, had left Fontevraud, where she would obviously have been an easy target, and was heading in the direction of Poitiers. This was too good an opportunity to miss. Ignoring Arthur’s suggestion that they wait for the troops he had summoned from Brittany, they set off at once, and caught up with Eleanor at Mirebeau, fifteen miles north of Poitiers. The queen and her household retreated into the castle, but managed to dispatch a messenger to her son, warning him that she was in imminent danger of being taken prisoner.58
John, knowing that Arthur had set out to meet the Lusignans, had already started to head in the same direction. He was at Le Mans when his mother’s messenger reached him on 30 July. The situation must have seemed hopeless, for Mirebeau and Le Mans are almost a hundred miles apart, but John nevertheless set off at once. Taking a detachment of his army, he rode south at a gallop, covering the whole distance in under forty-eight hours.59
At dawn on 1 August the king and his knights fell upon their unsuspecting enemies. Arthur and the Lusignans had already taken the town of Mirebeau and occupied the outer ward of the castle, forcing Eleanor and her followers to retreat into the keep. They were enjoying a leisurely breakfast – Geoffrey de Lusignan was having pigeons – when the king’s men rushed into the town, storming the one gate that had not been blocked. Fierce fighting followed in the streets – ‘many a helmet was staved in’, says The History of William Marshal – but in a short while John’s troops were completely victorious. All of those who had been besieging his mother were taken prisoner, including Hugh de Lusignan, Geoffrey de Lusignan, and – most importantly – Arthur. Altogether, the king calculated that he and his men had captured half a dozen barons, 200 knights and innumerable infantry. It was a greater and more decisive victory than had ever been won by his father or brother. John sent a jubilant letter to his regents in England, describing his triumph in detail, and concluding with the words ‘God be praised for our happy success!’60