JOHN, LACKLAND. A.D. 1199--1216.
As a kind of joke, John, King Henry's youngest son, had been called
Lackland, because he had nothing when his brothers each had some great
dukedom. The name suited him only too well before the end of his life.
The English made him king at once. They always did take a grown-up
man for their king, if the last king's son was but a child. Richard
had never had any children, but his brother Geoffrey, who was older
than John, had left a son named Arthur, who was about twelve years
old, and who was rightly the Duke of Normandy and Count of Anjou.
King Philip, who was always glad to vex whoever was king of England,
took Arthur under his protection, and promised to get Normandy out of
John's hands. However, John had a meeting with him and persuaded him
to desert Arthur, and marry his son Louis to John's own niece, Blanche,
who had a chance of being queen of part of Spain. Still Arthur lived
at the French King's court, and when he was sixteen years old, Philip
helped him to raise an army and go to try his fortune against his
uncle. He laid siege to Mirabeau, a town where his grandmother, Queen
Eleanor, was living. John, who was then in Normandy, hurried to her
rescue, beat Arthur's army, made him prisoner and carried him off,
first to Rouen, and then to the strong castle of Falaise. Nobody
quite knows what was done to him there. The governor, Hubert de
Burgh, once found him fighting hard, though with no weapon but a
stool, to defend himself from some ruffians who had been sent to put
out his eyes. Hubert saved him from these men, but shortly after
this good man was sent elsewhere by the king, and John came himself
to Falaise. Arthur was never seen alive again, and it is believed
that John took him out in a boat in the river at night, stabbed him
with his own hand, and threw his body into the river. There was, any
way, no doubt that John was guilty of his nephew's death, and he was
fully known to be one of the most selfish and cruel men who ever
lived; and so lazy, that he let Philip take Normandy from him, without
stirring a finger to save the grand old dukedom of his forefathers; so
that nothing is left of it to us now but the four little islands,
Guernsey, Jersey, Alderney, and Sark.
Matters became much worse in England, when he quarreled with the Pope,
whose name was Innocent, about who should be archbishop of Canterbury.
The Pope wanted a man named Stephen Langton to be archbishop, but the
king swore he should never come into the kingdom. Then the Pope
punished the kingdom, by forbidding all church services in all parish
churches. The was termed putting the kingdom under an interdict.
John was not much distressed by this, though his people were; but when
he found that Innocent was stirring up the King of France to come to
attack him, he thought it time to make his peace with the Pope. So he
not only consented to receive Stephen Langton, but he even knelt down
before the Pope's legate, or messenger, and took off his crown, giving
it up to the legate, in token that he only held the kingdom from the
Pope. It was two or three days before it was given back to him; and
the Pope held himself to be lord of England, and made the king and
people pay him money whenever he demanded it.
All this time John's cruelty and savageness were making the whole
kingdom miserable; and at last the great barons could bear it no
longer. They met together and agreed that they would make John swear
to govern by the good old English laws that had prevailed before the
Normans came. The difficulty was to be sure of what these laws were,
for most of the copies of them had been lost. However, Archbishop
Langton and some of the wisest of the barons put together a set of
laws--some copied, some recollected, some old, some new--but all such
as to give the barons some control of the king, and hinder him from
getting savage soldiers together to frighten people into doing
whatever he chose to make them. These laws they called Magna Carta,
or the great charter; and they all came in armor, and took John
by surprise at Windsor. He came to meet them in a meadow named
Runnymede, on the bank of the Thames, and there they forced him to
sign the charter, for which all Englishmen are grateful to them.
But he did not mean to keep it! No, not he! He had one of his
father's fits of rage when he got back to Windsor Castle--he gnawed
the sticks for rage and swore he was no king. Then he sent for more
of the fierce soldiers, who went about in bands, ready to be hired,
and prepared to take vengeance on the barons. They found themselves
not strong enough to make head against him; so they invited Louis, the
son of Philip of France and husband of John's niece, to come and be
their king. He came, and was received in London, while John and his
bands of soldiers were roaming about the eastern counties, wasting
and burning everywhere till they came to the Wash--that curious bay
between Lincolnshire and Norfolk, where so many rivers run into the
sea. There is a safe way across the sands in this bay when the tide
is low, but when it is coming in and meets the rivers, the waters
rise suddenly into a flood. So it happened to King John; he did get
out himself, but all carts with his goods and treasures were lost,
and many of his men. He was full of rage and grief, but he went on
to the abbey where he meant to sleep. He supped on peaches and new
ale, and soon after became very ill. He died in a few days, a
miserable, disgraced man, with half his people fighting against him
and London in the hands of his worst enemy.