A key provision within the Magna Carta, known as the ‘security clause,’ mandated the formation of a council comprising 25 barons entrusted with monitoring King John’s compliance with the charter. In the event of the king’s failure, this council possessed the authority to seize his castles and lands, effectively ensuring his adherence to the principles outlined within the document.

While the Magna Carta did not initially achieve its intended objective of securing peace between King John and the barons, its profound impact reverberated throughout history. This groundbreaking charter served as a catalyst for transformative events such as the English Civil War and the American War of Independence. Its enduring legacy remains a testament to the tremendous power held within a mere piece of paper, capable of shaping the trajectory of nations and societies.

King John’s woes

Amidst contemporary efforts to revive King John’s image, historical evidence overwhelmingly supports his reign as an unequivocal disaster. By the year 1215, John had already suffered near-total loss of his father’s continental empire to the French. Subsequently, his desperate and financially burdensome endeavours to reclaim these territories proved futile.

King John on a stag hunt, 14th century. Image credit: Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Image Credit: British Library, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

After a particularly crushing defeat to the French at Bouvines in 1214, John was once again humiliated and forced to pay compensation money to his rival across the channel, Philip II.

Under the feudal system at the time, the money and soldiers required for foreign wars came directly from the barons, who each had their own lands and a private army. Having poured large amounts of money into John’s pockets for his unsuccessful military campaigns, they were unimpressed with the lack of return, and after Bouvines began to show serious signs of resentment.

King John, in stark contrast to his valiant and martial older brother Richard the Lionheart, lacked the same robust and warlike demeanour. Furthermore, John’s personal characteristics did not endear him to the majority of the barons. Their leader, Robert FitzWalter, felt deep animosity towards John, having previously accused him of attempting to assault his daughter. In addition, FitzWalter was implicated in a plot to assassinate the king in 1212.

Historical records attest to the unpopularity of King John among the barons, both due to his perceived personal failings and his alleged misconduct. The strained relationship between John and the barons, epitomised by the antagonism towards him by influential figures like Robert FitzWalter, further complicated the political landscape during his reign.

The dispute’s escalation

Throughout the early months of 1215, John’s attempts to get the pope involved – along with his secret hiring of thousands of French mercenaries – only escalated the dispute. After talks held in London failed, the barons renounced their feudal ties to the king in April and began to march on England’s major cities. This included London, which opened its gates to them without a fight.

With Pope Innocent III refusing to get directly involved, the influential Archbishop of Canterbury Stephen Langton – who was respected by both sides – organised official peace talks. These were to take place at Runnymede, a meadow outside London, in June.

This location was considered a safe middle-ground between Royalist Windsor Castle and the rebel fortress at Staines. There, John, Langton and the senior barons met with their foremost supporters, and began the seemingly impossible task of finding a resolution that would suit everyone.

Following intense deliberations and negotiations, the outcome of their efforts materialised into the historic charter of rights known as the Magna Carta.

What the Magna Carta sought to achieve

Disputes between barons and kings were nothing new – and nor were written solutions – but the Magna Carta went beyond individual baronial complaints and began to address the overall powers and responsibilities of the king at any given time.

The concessions made do not read as particularly radical to modern eyes, but the clauses outlining protection from arbitrary imprisonment (albeit for the barons), and of the church from overt royal interference are concepts now enshrined at the heart of the western idea of freedom.

In addition, the charter placed limitations on feudal payments to the monarch.

Limiting the powers of the king in any way was a hugely controversial move at the time, as evidenced by the pope later decrying the Magna Carta as “shameful and demeaning … illegal and unjust”.

With such humiliating and unprecedented checks put upon the king, civil war was always likely – especially after the barons did indeed create a security council to ensure that John kept his word.

The Magna Carta (originally known as the Charter of Liberties) of 1215. Image credit: Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Image Credit: Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Reissues of the Magna Carta

John later reneged on his granting of the Magna Carta, asking Pope Innocent III for permission to reject it on the grounds that he had been forced to sign it. The pontiff agreed and in August declared the charter invalid. This action sparked the outbreak of the First Barons’ War which would last for two years.

When John died in October 1216, his son Henry became king and the Magna Carta was reissued shortly after – though this time with the security clause and other parts omitted. This helped to bring about peace and set the basis for Henry’s continued rule.

Over the next few decades, the struggle between the barons and the monarchy continued and the Magna Carta was reissued several more times.

Indeed, the final reissue of the charter didn’t come about until 1297, by which point Henry’s son Edward I was on the throne. In 1300, sheriffs were then given the responsibility of enforcing the charter across the kingdom.

The charter’s legacy

Over the coming centuries, the Magna Carta waxed and waned in its significance. After becoming something of a relic, the charter saw a resurgence in the 17th century when it was used as inspiration for the Parliamentarians (who had similar complaints to the barons) in their war against King Charles I.

King Charles I after original by van Dyck. Image credit: Follower of Anthony van Dyck, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Charles ultimately lost that war and was executed. And with him went the last hopes for an absolute monarchy.

A parallel battle against perceived unjust and capricious taxation unfolded in the American colonies of Britain during the following century. The formation of the self-proclaimed United States was heavily influenced by key principles and legal rights established in the Magna Carta.

William the Marshal

Not many knights can claim to have served four consecutive English kings. None could have done so as well as William the Marshal, Earl of Pembroke. He is known for his military strength and his wise royal counsel.

By the age of 24, William had proven himself both a brave and capable knight, and in 1170 he became the guardian of Prince Henry, the eldest son of King Henry II.

Even after the young prince’s death, William continued to service Henry II. He fought alongside him in France, and served him loyally until Henry’s death in 1189.

While his king, Richard I, was off on crusade and then held hostage in Germany, William defended his throne. He helped drive William Longchamp into exile and prevented Richard’s younger brother Prince John from taking the crown.

After the death of Richard I, he then helped John to succeed his brother peacefully.

During his fight against the barons, William helped to counsel King John. He was an effective leader, and well respected. Before his death, John appointed Marshal protector of his nine-year-old son, the future Henry III, as well as regent of the kingdom during Henry’s minority.

This was a wise move on John’s behalf: Marshal was committed to ensuring the stability of the kingdom: he was victorious against a French invasion at Lincoln in 1217, and re-issued Magna Carta in the same year in an attempt to keep the peace between the crown and the barons.

King Arthur

There’s a very good chance you’ve heard of King Arthur, the legendary King of Camelot, and his Knights of the Round Table. His standing as perhaps the most famous knight in the world owes much to folklore of course, but Arthur is believed to be an actual historic figure who probably lived in the 5^th of 6^th century and led a resistance movement against invaders from Northern Europe.

Sadly, many of the details familiar from the myths and legends surrounding his story, much of which derives from Geoffrey of Monmouth’s imaginative History of the Kings of Britain in the 12th century, aren’t supported by evidence.

So we can’t confirm the existence of a magical sword called Excalibur. Sorry.

Richard the Lionheart

Richard I succeeded his father Henry II to become King of England in 1189 but spent only ten months of his decade-long reign in the country. The majority of his time on the throne was spent fighting abroad, most famously in the Third Crusade, where he earned a reputation as a brave and fierce knight and military leader.

Despite numerous famous victories in the Holy Land, Richard was unable to recapture Jerusalem. On his return to England he was captured by the Duke of Austria, who handed him over to the emperor Henry VI who held him for a huge ransom.

Richard spent less than a year of his reign in England, and showed little interest in his kingdom and its welfare: it was simply a source of funding for his crusading expeditions.

Richard spent the final years of his life doing what he most loved, fighting, and was mortally wounded by a crossbow bolt while besieging the castle at Chalus in France.

Edward the Black Prince

Likely named because he favoured black armour, Edward of Woodstock, Prince of Wales, won fame on at the Battle of Crecy, a key battle in the Hundred years War’. Edward led the vanguard despite his tender years – he was just 16-years-old.

An 18th century imagining of Edward III with the Black Prince after the Battle of Crécy. Image credit: Royal Collection / CC.

He rose to fame as one of the original Knights of the Garter and won his most celebrated victory at the Battle of Poitiers (1356), before travelling to Spain where he a series of famous victories restored Peter of Castile to his throne. He also fought in Aquitaine before returning to London in 1371.

Despite his fame Edward never became king. He succumbed to a particularly violent bout of dysentry in 1376 – an ailment which had plagued him for many years. His only remaining son, Richard, became heir apparent to the crown, eventually succeeding his grandfather Edward III in 1377.

John of Gaunt

Despite inciting his son’s accession to the throne in Shakespeare, the real John of Gaunt was much more of a political peacemaker.

His main military experience came during the Hundred Years’ War, where he led troops as a commander in France from 1367-1374.

In 1371, John married Constance of Castile. He tried to exploit his wife’s claim to the kingdoms of Castile and Leon following their marriage: John travelled to Spain in 1386, but failed miserably and renounced his claim.

Following the death of his father, Edward III, John was an extremely influential figure during the minority of his nephew, the new King Richard II, and made significant efforts at keeping the peace between the crown and a group of rebellious nobles, led by the Earl of Gloucester and Henry Bolingbroke, John’s son and heir.

One of the wealthiest and most powerful men of his time, John of Gaunt died in 1399: he is widely regarded by many as the ‘father’ of English kings: descendants from his line ruled England solidly until the Wars of the Roses, and his great-granddaughter was Margaret Beaufort, mother of Henry Tudor.

Henry ‘Hotspur’ Percy

Widely known as Harry Hotspur, Percy’s fame owes much to his inclusion in Shakespeare’s Henry IV and, indirectly, to the football club Tottenham Hotspur, which derives its name from the 14^th century’s most revered knight.

Hotspur was a member of the powerful Percy family and built his formidable reputation as a fighter from a young age, patrolling the Scottish borders with his father the Earl of Northumberland. He was knighted at just 13 and fought in his first battle a year later.

Hotspur played a significant part in the deposition of Richard II and the ascent to the throne of his replacement Henry IV, before falling out with the new King and taking up arms in rebellion. He died leading his rebel army into battle against royal forces at Shrewsbury at what some would deem the height of his fame. Although the new king Henry wept over his friend’s body, he had Percy posthumously declared a traitor and had his lands forfeited to the crown.

Joan of Arc

At the age of 18, Joan of Arc, the daughter of a poor tenant farmer, Jacques d’ Arc, led the French to a famous victory against the English at Orleans.

Her unlikely ascent to the role of military leader was driven by mystical visions which compelled her to seek an audience with the future Charles VII who, convinced of her holy destiny to expel the English and reclaim France, granted her a horse and armour.

She joined with French forces at the siege of Orleans where, after a long, hard battle they routed the English. It was a decisive victory that led to Charles being crowned King of France on July 18, 1429. Joan was at his side throughout the coronation.

The following year she was captured during a Burgundian assault at Compiègne and tried by a pro-English church court on the charges of witchcraft, heresy and dressing like a man. She was burned at the stake on the morning of May 30, 1431.

A posthumous retrial, ordered by Charles VII in 1456 and supported by Pope Callixtus III, found Joan to be innocent of all charges and declared her a martyr. 500 years later, she was canonised as a Roman Catholic Saint.

A miniature of Joan of Arc. Image credit: Public Domain.

The Angevin Empire

Henry II is widely regarded as the first Plantagenet King of England. Despite this, Henry would himself have instead identified with the House of Anjou. The Angevin Kings of England (Henry and his sons), for the most part did not even reside in the country, but in France instead. However, this is not in reality as confusing as it may first seem.

During the 11th and 12th centuries, there were a series of power struggles amongst noblemen in France. One of these noblemen, Geoffrey of Anjou, diverged to marry Empress Matilda, the last remaining heir of King Henry I of England (following his son, William Adelin’s untimely death in the sinking of the White Ship).

When Henry I died, and Matilda and Geoffrey were away in Anjou, Henry’s cousin Stephen took the opportunity to seize the English throne.  Stephen’s contested accession initiated widespread civil unrest, commonly known as ‘The Anarchy.’ This period was eventually concluded with the Treaty of Wallingford in 1153.

Geoffrey of Anjou is actually where the term Plantagenet derives. His nickname Plantegenest (thought to have originated from the name of the plant, common broom – planta genista in medieval Latin) was later adopted by Richard III, in an attempt to promote his lineage back to the Count of Anjou, and historians coined the term Plantagenet from the 17th century onwards.

The Treaty of Wallingford allowed Stephen to live out the rest of his life as king, however, he was made to name the son of Geoffrey and Matilda, Henry, as his heir. Only a year later, having also recently married Eleanor of Aquitaine, Henry acceeded to the English throne in 1154.

Henry II’s reign was plagued by familial conflict. Despite a tempestuous marriage, Henry and Eleanor would have eight children, two of which would go on to become kings often thought more notable than their father: Richard the Lionheart and King John.

The Angevin Kings would rule what has commonly become known as the ‘Angevin Empire’. This empire would include England, in addition to vast swathes of land in France at its peak. Despite this, there was never a formally recognised and unified Angevin state. Territories would retain their own laws and traditions, so its very existence is contested.

Two separate dynasties?

Some historians have disputed the idea of Henry II being a Plantagenet king in any meaningful sense of the word: instead, they prefer to see the Plantagenet dynasty beginning after the invasion of Louis VIII of France and the death of King John in 1216. The losses suffered by John (including the loss of Anjou) and the instability inherited by his son, Henry III, marked a fundamental shift in European politics and the balance of power.

Portrait of King John by British school, artist unknown. Image credit: National Trust / CC.

Wars of the Roses

Henry of Bolingbrooke (Henry IV) was the first royal representative of the House of Lancaster. Despite the argument that this marks the end of the Plantagenet dynasty, both houses of Lancaster and York were in fact cadet branches of the House Plantagenet.

In comparison to the years before, 15th century England is often characterised by the conflict between the rival houses of Lancaster and York, commonly referred to as The Wars of the Roses.

The House of Lancaster had suffered a bit of a fall from grace following the madness of King Henry VI (Henry of Bolingbrooke’s grandson). The last hope for supporters of the House of Lancaster found itself in Henry Tudor. Despite being the son of a Welsh courtier, his lineage traced back (if not perhaps illegitimately) to Edward III.

The Wars of the Roses culminated in the Battle of Bosworth Field of 1485, in which Henry VII defeated Richard III of York (the last of the Plantagenet dynasty, yet the first to actually adopt the name). When Henry VII went on to marry Elizabeth of York, uniting the two houses, the Wars of the Roses finally came to an end.

The conclusion of this conflict would also see the final conclusion of the Plantagenet dynasty. Following on from them, the Tudors would go on to become one of the most famous royal families (at least in part due to Henry’s son of the same name, Henry VIII) in English history.

Plantagenet legacies

Although Henry VII had a relatively strong claim to the throne, the Plantagenet dynasty had produced at least 16 other members who had an equally strong, if not greater claim to the throne by this point.

Throughout the first half of the 16th century, families such as the Poles, Staffords, Percys and Nevilles, all Plantagenet descendants, remained powerful and influential, and there was a certain amount of mistrust between Henry and his nobles. Marriage proved a particular sticking point as Henry was keen these families should not bolster claims to the throne through marriage.

What the nickname “Bad King John” lacks in originality, it makes up for in accuracy. For that one word best sums up how John’s life and reign panned out: bad.

A troubled start

When we examine the bare bones of John’s biography, this is hardly a surprise. The youngest son of Henry II, he caused plenty of trouble before going anywhere near his father’s crown. He was known in his youth as Jean sans Terre (or “John Lackland”) on account of his want of a landed inheritance.

Henry’s attempt to carve out something for John to govern in central France was the cause of armed warfare between father and sons.

John’s poor behaviour was evident when he was sent to Ireland to enforce English royal prerogatives. Upon his arrival, he provoked the locals by needlessly mocking them and – according to one chronicler – tugging their beards.

It was during his brother Richard the Lionheart’s reign that John’s behaviour became actively perfidious, however. Barred from England during Richard’s absence on the Third Crusade, John nevertheless interfered in the politics of the realm.

When Richard was captured and held for ransom on his way home from the Holy Land, John negotiated with his brother’s captors to keep Richard in prison, giving away lands in Normandy that his father and brother had fought hard to win and keep.

In 1194, Richard was released from prison and John was fortunate that the Lionheart decided to pardon him out of piteous contempt rather than ruin him, as would have been quite justifiable.

The Lionheart’s death

Richard I was the foremost soldier of his generation.

Richard’s sudden death during a minor siege in 1199 put John in contention for the Plantagenet crown. But although he seized power successfully, he never held it securely.

While Henry II and Richard I were the foremost soldiers of their generations, John was a middling commander at best and had the rare ability not only to alienate his allies but also to drive his enemies into one another’s arms.

Within five years of becoming king, John had lost Normandy – the bedrock of his family’s sprawling continental empire – and this disaster defined the rest of his reign.

His hapless and dizzyingly expensive attempts to regain his lost French possessions put an intolerable fiscal and military burden on English subjects, especially those in the north. These subjects had no sense of personal investment in winning back what the king had lost through his own ineptitude and they felt increasing resentment at having to bear the cost.

Meanwhile, John’s desperate need to fill his war-chest also contributed to a long and damaging dispute with Pope Innocent III.

A regrettably present king

King John granted the Magna Carta on 15 June 1215, only to renege on its terms shortly after. This romanticised 19th century painting shows the king ‘signing’ the Charter – which never actually happened.

Not helping matters was the fact that John’s permanent presence in England (after more than a century of more or less absentee kingship since the Norman Conquest) exposed English barons to the full and disagreeable force of his personality.

The king was described by contemporaries as an unchivalrous, cruel and mean-spirited cheapskate. These traits would have been tolerable in a monarch who protected his greatest subjects and their property and provided evenhanded justice to those who sought it. But John, alas, did quite the opposite.

He persecuted those closest to him and starved their wives to death. He murdered his own nephew. He managed to upset those whom he needed in a bewildering variety of ways.

It was no surprise in 1214 when defeat at the calamitous battle of Bouvines was followed by rebellion at home. And it was no surprise in 1215 when John, having granted the Magna Carta, proved himself as faithless as ever and reneged on its terms.

When the king succumbed to dysentery during the civil war he had helped create it was taken as read that he had gone to Hell – where he belonged.

From time to time it becomes fashionable for historians to try and rehabilitate John – on the grounds that he inherited a nightmarish task in keeping together the territories his overachieving father and brother had united; that he has been wrongly defamed on the evidence of uptight monastic chronicles whose authors disapproved of his abuses of the English church; and that he was a decent accountant and administrator.

These arguments almost always ignore the loud and near-universal judgment of contemporaries who thought him an appalling man and, more importantly, a lamentable king. Bad he was, and bad should John remain.

Dan Jones is the author of Magna Carta: The Making and Legacy of the Great Charter, published by Head of Zeus and available to buy from Amazon and all good book shops.

From then on, if the king or queen wanted money or men for war or whatever, they had to summon assemblies of barons and clergy and ask them for a tax.

The first king to rule under this new arrangement was Henry III.

Henry III’s grave in Westminster Abbey. Image Credit: Valerie McGlinchey / Commons.

The first meetings of parliament

In January 1236, he summoned such an assembly to Westminster, first to witness his wedding to Eleanor of Provence, and second to discuss the affairs of the realm. Heavy rains flooded out Westminster, so the assembly met at Merton Priory, close to Wimbledon today.

At the top of the agenda was a new codification of the kingdom’s laws.

By discussing and passing new statutes, this assembly became the first parliament in the sense of acting as a legislative body. It was no coincidence that in the same year the word ‘parliament’, meaning ‘to discuss’, was first used to describe these assemblies.

The next year, in 1237, Henry summoned parliament to London to ask for a tax. He needed money to pay for his wedding and various debts he had accumulated. Parliament grudgingly agreed, but tacked on conditions for how the money was to be collected and spent.

It was the last tax Henry got from parliament for decades.

Every time he asked, he found their conditions more intrusive and ebbing away at his authority.

In 1248 he had to remind his barons and clergy that they lived in a feudal state. They could no more expect to tell him what to do while denying the same voice to their own subjects and communities.

Eleanor widens representation

By this point the concerns of ‘the little guy’ – knights, farmers, townsfolk – started resonating in national politics. They wanted protection from their lords and more efficient justice. They believed that Magna Carta should apply to all people in power, not just the king, and Henry agreed.

In 1253, Henry went to Gascony to put down a revolt against the governor he had appointed there, Simon de Montfort.

War seemed imminent, so he asked his regent to summon parliament to ask for a special tax. The regent was the queen, Eleanor of Provence.

Eleanor (far left) and Henry III (right with the crown) shown crossing the Channel to England.

She was pregnant when Henry left and gave birth to a girl. Receiving her husband’s instructions a month later, she convened parliament, the first woman to do so.

Parliament met as summoned and although the barons and clergy said they would like to help, they could not speak for the little guy. So Eleanor decided to reach out to them.

On 14 February 1254, she ordered the sheriffs to have two knights elected in each county and sent to Westminster to discuss the tax and other local matters with her and her advisers.

It was a groundbreaking parliament, the first time the assembly met with a democratic mandate, and not everyone was happy about it. The start was delayed, rather prorogued, because some of the senior lords were late in arriving.

The tax was not approved because Simon de Montfort, who was still angry at the king over his recall as governor, told the assembly he did not know of any war in Gascony.

The origins of democratic rule

In 1258, Henry was massively in debt and gave in to parliament’s demands that the kingdom undergo reforms.

A constitution was devised, the Provisions of Oxford, under which parliament was made an official institution of state. It would meet every year at regular intervals and have a standing committee working together with the king’s council.

Two years later relations broke down between Henry and radical reformers led by de Montfort. The battleground was parliament and whether it was a royal prerogative or instrument of republican government. Henry came out on top, but in 1264 de Montfort led and won a rebellion.

Simon de Montfort, c. 1250.

He turned England into a constitutional monarchy with the king as a figurehead.

In January 1265, de Montfort summoned parliament and, for the first time on record, the towns were invited to send representatives. This was Simon’s acknowledgment of their political support, but because England was in a revolutionary state, governed by an authority other than the monarch.

Eleanor is erased from history

Later historians in the Victorian era decided this was the starting point of democracy. Here was a glimpse at the future House of Commons, they touted. The three decades of parliamentary evolution before that were conveniently ignored, in particular Eleanor of Provence’s contribution.

The reason was clear enough: the Victorians were looking for a distinctly English stamp on the history of democracy to rival the French and their revolution of 1789.

Unlike Simon, Eleanor had no ties to England before her marriage. Since the strength of his rebellion was due in large part to anti-foreigner sentiment, she too was subjected to the violence that helped propel him to power.

The Victorians, who rolled their eyes at the excesses of the French Revolution, decided the less press she got the better.

Darren Baker took his degree in modern and classical languages at the University of Connecticut. He lives today with his wife and children in in the Czech Republic, where he writes and translates. The Two Eleanors of Henry III is his latest book, and will be published by Pen and Sword on 30 October 2019.

This article is an edited transcript of The Unknown Invasion of England with Marc Morris on Dan Snow’s History Hit, first broadcast 21 May 2016. You can listen to the full episode below or to the full podcast for free on Acast.

By the end of the summer of 1215 Magna Carta, the charter that was created in an attempt to make peace between King John and a group of rebel barons, was as good as dead. It had been quashed by the pope and John had never had any interest in sticking to it.

So the barons came up with a much simpler solution – get rid of John.

By September 1215 they were at war with the king of England.

Being at war with his own subjects, John found himself trying to get foreign mercenaries from the continent, while the barons had found an alternative candidate in Louis, the son of the king of France. Both sides were looking to the continent for support.

Consequently, the south-east of England became the crucial theatre for the conflict.

King John in battle with the Francs (left), and Prince Louis of France on the march (right).

The war started with a spectacular siege of Rochester Castle in Kent, the tallest castle tower and secular building in Europe.

Round One went to John, who broke Rochester Castle – which had previously been captured by baronial forces – in a seven-week siege, famously collapsing the tower.

It was one of the few sieges that saw room-to-room fighting in the keep and must be regarded as one of the most spectacular medieval sieges.

Most sieges tended to end with a negotiated surrender or starvation, but Rochester was the scene of a truly spectacular conclusion. John’s men collapsed a quarter of the tower but because the tower had an internal cross wall, the baronial troops fought on for a short time using it as a second or final line of defence.

The Barnwell chronicler remarked:

“Our age has not known a siege so hard pressed nor so strongly resisted”.

But in the end, when the keep was broached, that was it, the game was up. The baronial forces ultimately surrendered.

It was looking quite glum for the barons by the end of 1215, but in May 1216, when Louis landed on English shores, the advantage moved to the barons.

Rochester Castle, the scene of one of the most spectacular medieval sieges.

Louis invades

Louis landed at Sandwich in Kent, where John was waiting to confront him. But, true to form, John, who had a reputation for fleeing, watched Louis land, thought about fighting him and then ran away.

He fled to Winchester, leaving Louis free to occupy all of south-eastern England.

Louis took Kent and Canterbury before arriving in London, where he was received by cheering crowds because the barons had held London since May 1215.

The French prince was acclaimed as a king, but never crowned.

Was Louis the king of England?

There are examples in history of uncrowned English kings, but in this period coronation was necessary before you could really claim the throne.

There was a window before the Norman conquest when all you needed was acclamation.

People could get together and acclaim the new king, get them to swear an oath and then they could just be crowned whenever they liked.

If you take Edward the Confessor, the penultimate king of Anglo-Saxon England, he was sworn in in June 1042, but not crowned until Easter 1043.

The Normans, however, had a different take on it – you only became king when the holy oil, the chrism, was poured on your head during a coronation service.

Richard the Lionheart is a good example, being the first king for whom we have an accurate coronation description. The chronicler refers to him as the duke up to the moment of his anointing.

What that means, of course, is that there was potential for a period of lawlessness between one monarch’s death and the next monarch’s coronation.

When Henry III died in 1272, his son, Edward I, was out of the country on crusade. It was decided that the country couldn’t wait for months and years without a king. So, before Edward went on crusade, his rule was proclaimed – it would start immediately when Henry died.

Consequently, after 200 years the possibility of an uncrowned king returned to England. But you couldn’t be an uncrowned king in 1216.

This article is an edited transcript of The Unknown Invasion of England with Marc Morris on Dan Snow’s History Hit, first broadcast 21 May 2016. You can listen to the full episode below or to the full podcast for free on Acast.

In September 1216, King John was running out of places to hide. Louis had attacked, immediately putting John on the back foot, and the emboldened English barons were claiming back their castles.

W. L. Warren’s biography has a wonderfully evocative line. He talks about John being like a rabbit caught on a patch of grass that a mower is steadily reducing.

John was essentially down to the West Midlands after the Scots invaded Yorkshire, and was running out of places to hide.

King John, depicted in the illuminated manuscript De Rege Johanne.

John’s final days were miserable. Things had been going badly for many years, but the last week of his life was especially disastrous.

At King’s Lynn, he became badly ill. There are reports that he overindulged, but more sober chroniclers mention dysentery.

Whatever his illness was, it’s safe to say he was exhausted. His itinerary shows that he’d been covering 30 miles a day on horseback for weeks – he was losing a civil war and had to keep moving around just to stay in the game.

King John’s lost treasure

Then, as if things weren’t already bad enough, John lost his treasure while crossing the Wash, a huge tidal estuary with vast mud flats on the east coast of England.

For some reason, bad planning or not having the right guides, perhaps, his baggage train was sucked down into the quicksand.

The scale of the incident isn’t certain.

Roger of Wendover’s account reads like the sinking of the Titanic, with men and horses being sucked into the abyss. But Ralph of Coggeshall’s description is more sober, suggesting that John lost some bits of his chapel.

Interestingly, when Henry III was crowned a few weeks later, it wasn’t with any of the old crowns. Instead it was with a circlet borrowed from his mother. It’s also noteworthy that John’s crowns don’t show up in the early inventories of the treasure in Henry III’s reign. It seems quite likely that John lost at least one crown in the accident.

To see his crown being lost to the depths of the Wash must surely have felt to King John like a final divine judgement of his widely criticised reign. Three or four days later he was dead.

How John’s death saved his dynasty

Perversely, dying was probably the best thing John could have done to protect the Plantagenet’s position in England.

The oldest of John’s two sons, Henry, was only nine when he died.

Had he been 19 and involved in that civil war then he would likely have been tarred with the same brush and disposed of. But being nine was very useful because it meant he was blameless and innocent.

Indeed, the writs that he initially put out talk about him being nothing to do with the arguments of his father’s reign.

The effigy of William Marshal, who became head of Henry III’s regency government, in Temple Church, London.

William Marshal became head of Henry III’s regency government, and his first significant act was to reissue Magna Carta, albeit with the clauses that were most damaging to the crown stripped out.

Even with the omissions, two-thirds of Magna Carta was intact, so a lot of the things that the rebels had been complaining about and lobbying John for were reissued in good faith. A good move on the regency government’s part.

Marshal was also a very experienced warrior and in prosecuting the war now he was prepared to make bold moves of the kind that John always ran away from.

In spring 1217 his Royalists defeated Louis’ French and baronial forces at Lincoln. It was a widely celebrated and decisive victory that went a long way towards re-establishing the Royalists’ power.

A combination of pledging Magna Carta in good faith, having a blameless monarch, and being able to win military victories – all the things that John had failed to deliver – meant that within a year of his death, the civil war that John had created was over.

This article is an edited transcript of Magna Carta with Marc Morris on Dan Snow’s History Hit, first broadcast 24 January 2017. You can listen to the full episode below or to the full podcast for free on Acast.

Some people say Magna Carta is the most important single document in the history of the human race, while others consider it to be little more than a piece of political pragmatism.

So how important is Magna Carta really?

As is so often the case, the truth is probably somewhere in the middle ground.

In the immediate context of 1215, Magna Carta was highly unsuccessful because it was a peace treaty that resulted in war within a few weeks. In its original format, it was unworkable.

Its original format had a clause at the end that allowed England’s barons, who were against King John, to go to war with him if he didn’t stick to the terms of the charter. So, realistically, it was never going to work in the short term.

Crucially, Magna Carta was reissued in 1216, 1217 and 1225 as a somewhat more royalist document.

In the reissues, the important clause that meant the barons could rise up in arms against the king to compel him to adhere to the document was dropped, as were several other clauses which damaged the prerogative of the Crown.

The essential restraints on the money-getting power of the king were preserved, however.

Consequently, Magna Carta had a good, long afterlife in the 13th century when people did appeal to it and did want it reconfirmed.

In 1237 and 1258, as well as in Edward I’s reign, people asked for Magna Carta to be confirmed two or three times. So clearly it was very important in the 13th century.

The iconic power of Magna Carta

Magna Carta was then revived in the 17th century, in the wars between Parliament and the Crown. Thereafter it became iconic, particularly the resonant clauses buried in the middle – 39 and 40.

Those clauses were about justice not being denied, justice not being delayed or sold, and no free man being deprived of his lands or persecuted in any way. They were taken out of their original context somewhat and venerated.

A romanticised 19th-century recreation of King John signing Magna Carta at a meeting with the barons at Runnymede on 15 June 1215. Although this painting shows John using a quill, he actually used the royal seal to confirm it.

It went on to be the foundation of lots of other constitutional documents around the world, including the Declaration of Independence and other constitutions in Australia.

There are only, depending on which version you’re using, three or four clauses of Magna Carta still on the statute book, and they’re there for historic reasons – that the City of London shall have its liberties and that the Church will be free, for instance.

As an emblem, however, Magna Carta continues to be very important, because it says a fundamental thing: that the government will be under the law and that the executive will be under the law.

There had been charters before Magna Carta but none had contained such blanket declarations about the king being under the law and having to abide by the law. In that sense, Magna Carta was innovative and fundamentally important.

This article is an edited transcript of Magna Carta with Marc Morris on Dan Snow’s History Hit, first broadcast 24 January 2017. You can listen to the full episode below or to the full podcast for free on Acast.

There are two clauses in the 1215 draft of Magna Carta that can be seen as crucial to the evolution of parliament. Both clauses relate to the king being required to obtain parliamentary assent for taxation.

It’s likely that something to do with parliamentary representation would have emerged in the absence of Magna Carta. This is simply because war is very expensive and the way forward, given the need to raise taxes for such endeavours, was to ensure that consent was required for tax.

Curiously, these clauses were dropped from the reissues of Magna Carta. But, even so, when later kings broke these clauses, people were up in arms.

In 1297, Edward I was waging wars on several fronts – he was fighting wars against the Welsh, the Scots and against the French. In so doing he had to take vast sums of money out of the country with more and more taxation.

A chronicler reported on parliament voting on one of Edward’s taxes, noting, disparagingly, that, “It was just the people stood about in his chamber.”

There was a sense that this was out of order, that parliament had to be everybody. It had to be representatives from the shires, it has to be all of the magnate class, not just the king’s mates nodding it through.

Did Magna Carta lead to the development of a parliament in England?

It’s not unreasonable to think of Magna Carta as the crucial first step towards the development of a parliament. If we look at the 1215 draft, clauses 12 and 14 establish a new principle – that you have to summon everybody in order to get consent for a tax.

Before that point, there was only really talk of great councils.

The first official reference to parliament is in the 1230s. They clearly thought there was something new going on and it wasn’t just a change of nomenclature. The change was representation.

Everyone thinks representation started in 1265 with Simon de Montfort, but it was clearly already going on. There were the knightly reps from the 1250s and townsmen who were present, according to chronicle descriptions, in the 1240s and 1250s.

In which case, de Montfort wasn’t doing anything new in January 1265 and Magna Carta can be considered a much more important marker post in terms of the history of the development of parliament.

Did King John’s dysentery save his dynasty?

King John died of dysentery in 1216 and one could convincingly argue that, in doing so, he saved Britain for the Plantagenets and Magna Carta from being vetoed.

John himself had rejected Magna Carta, while Louis VIII, who had been offered the English throne by the rebel barons, showed no sign of wanting to uphold it.

Henry III, who was nine and entirely blameless, succeeded John and, within a year, Louis VIII’s invading French forces had been defeated.

Did King John’s death save Magna Carta?

Magna Carta was reissued within a few weeks of John’s death, in good faith, by Henry’s regents.

Had John lived and gone on fighting he would most likely have lost and it’s doubtful that Magna Carta would have been revived in anything like the form it took.

Louis talked about giving people their good laws and customs, but there was were never any specific references to Magna Carta in anything he said.

As a result of that twist of fate, Magna Carta has gone on to inspire reformers and radicals and people all around the world, largely due to this central idea that no-one is above the rule of law, even the king.

We might think it all belongs to the distant past but that central tenet is as vital as ever. It’s why people are fighting wars across the globe – to make sure that even leaders have to obey the law.

The Magna Carta

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Originally issued as a practical solution to the political crisis King John faced in 1215, the Magna Carta established for the first time the principle that everybody, including the king, was subject to the law.

Although nearly a third of the text was deleted or substantially rewritten within 10 years, it became a cornerstone of the British constitution and paved the way for subjects interrogating royal rule.

The charter attempted to provide protection of Church rights, defence for the barons from illegal imprisonment, faster access to justice and it placed a limit on feudal payments demanded by the crown. It was to be implemented by 25 barons who formed a council for its administration.

Calls were made for more radical reform

Although the Magna Carta had regulated the operation of royal government, in the reign of Henry III there were calls for more radical reform.

Henry III was criticised for being too generous to his close friends and family, handing out important jobs to them and protecting them from the law.

King John signs the Magna Carta James William Edmund Doyle, 1864.

The idea grew up after Magna Carta that the king could only gain extra taxes by asking the barons first. As the king needed money, he called the barons to parliament much more frequently than ever before.

In return for giving taxes, the barons asked for reforms in government in return. In particular, they wanted to be able to choose the king’s ministers for him, and they wanted him to follow their advice, which he did not agree to.

Desire for further reform

Tensions between factions at the royal court, widespread famine, military failure in Wales, and enormous debts the king had accrued with the Pope by agreeing – privately and without consent of parliament – to pay for an army to conquer Sicily resulted in urgent desires for further reforms.

A group of leading barons, including Richard de Clare, earl of Gloucester, Roger Bigod, earl of Norfolk and Simon de Montfort, earl of Leicester, acted jointly to force reform on the king.

The Provisions of Oxford

Castles were a symbol of power for barons during the Middle Ages. Peter Snow discovered the history of Dover Castle. Watch the documentary Peter Snow’s Dover Castle With English Heritage on HistoryHit.TV.Watch Now

The Provisions of Oxford placed the king under the authority of a Council of Fifteen, to be chosen by 24 men made up of 12 nominees of the king, and 12 nominees of the reformers.

The chief ministers – the Justiciar and Chancellor – were to be chosen by and responsible to the Council of Fifteen, and ultimately to the community of the realm at regular parliaments to be held 3 times a year.

This was revolutionary. It was the most radical scheme of reform undertaken before the arrest and execution of King Charles I in the 1640s.

Responses to the Provisions

By 1261, the king had regained power and had the Provisions of Oxford condemned by the Pope. He had regained power by exploiting divisions in the reforming group of earls. Montfort withdrew to France, but by 1263 other barons had become disaffected and they called Montfort back to England.

In January 1264, King Louis, having heard the cases of both sides, quashed the Provisions of Oxford completely, perhaps having realised the revolutionary implications they could have for all monarchs.

Simon de Montfort and his allies refused to accept King Louis’s judgement and a civil war began. In May 1264 his army captured the King, and Montfort started ruling in the king’s name.

The death of Simon de Montfort.

Simon de Montfort’s parliament

Simon de Montfort held two parliaments during his time in power.

The second of these took place at Westminster between January and March 1265, and was the first parliament at which representatives of the cities and boroughs were present alongside knights representing their counties to discuss matters of national concern as opposed to granting taxation.

Montfort would eventually be overthrown by Henry’s son, Edward, at the Battle of Evesham on 4 August 1265. But his rulership had a lasting impact. It formed the basis of a more representative democracy – something that foreshadowed the House of Commons’s formation in the 14th century.