The Demon's Brood (9 page)

The name ‘lion heart' was justified. Richard had become a folk hero for all Western Europe and a demon in Arab legend. The English never forgot him. He really does deserve that statue at Westminster.

a trifler and a coward

Lord Macaulay
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John is arguably the worst king in our entire history. ‘Foul though it is, Hell itself is defouled by the foulness of John,' wrote Matthew Paris.
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Yet, in a negative sense, he is one of the most important. As well as for Magna Carta, he deserves to be remembered for speeding up the Plantagenets' transformation into Englishmen, by losing the empire left by his brother.

The Victorians took a particularly poor view of John, Kate Norgate crediting him with almost superhuman wickedness. Twentieth-century historians differed, and for fifty years it was orthodoxy that the real-life John had not been so bad as he was painted by chroniclers, that closer study showed him as effective and much better-hearted. Recently, however, it has been generally accepted that the chroniclers were telling the truth.
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Despite having named Arthur as his heir when in Sicily, Richard left his throne to John. Archbishop Hubert Walter told William Marshal he thought Arthur should be king, but reluctantly agreed to support John. ‘Marshal, you'll never regret anything in your life so much as you will this,' he warned.
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Meeting at Angers, the barons of Anjou, Maine and Touraine recognized the fifteen-year-old Arthur as their lord, on the grounds that an elder brother's son had a better right than a younger brother, and John narrowly escaped capture at Le Mans. He had no trouble in Normandy, however, where he was invested as duke in April, while in England he was crowned king in May. His mother made sure of Aquitaine. During the ceremony at Rouen some cronies sniggered when the lance (part of the Norman regalia) was placed in his hand and, turning to join in their laughter, he dropped it. Many spectators thought this a bad omen.

Like the Angevins, the Bretons declared for Arthur. (The Barnwell annalist tells us they hoped he would be a second King Arthur and destroy the English.
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) However, when John invaded Maine in September, William des Roches, constable of Anjou, Maine and Touraine, went over to him. At Le Goulet in May 1200 John reached an agreement with Philip II, who, in return for minor territorial concessions and a ‘relief' (inheritance tax) of 20,000 marks, recognized him as heir to all lands once ruled by Henry II.

The agreement earned him the name ‘John Soft Sword'.
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Accepting Philip's feudal overlordship by paying the ‘relief' was an admission of weakness – neither his father nor brother ever paid one – as was abandoning a war Richard had been winning. Another was swearing not to help his nephew Otto of Brunswick or the Count of Flanders or any French lord should they attack Philip, which deprived him of allies.

In 1200 (having divorced his barren wife, Isabella of Gloucester, for consanguinity) John married another Isabella, the Count of Angoulême's twelve-year-old heiress, ignoring her betrothal to Hugh of Lusignan, Count of La Marche, despite the fact that betrothal in thirteenth-century canon law was almost as binding as marriage. This reopened the war for the Plantagenet succession since, instead of compensating Hugh, John confiscated La Marche. Hugh then appealed to their joint overlord, King Philip, who summoned John to Paris to answer a charge of oppression. He declined, so in April 1201 Philip proclaimed him a ‘contumacious vassal', announcing that his lands were forfeit and Arthur was their rightful lord.

Next month, Philip attacked north-eastern Normandy, seizing strongholds along the Seine. Without waiting for the Bretons, Arthur and his ambitious mother joined the Lusignans and invaded Poitou. Learning Queen Eleanor was at the little town of Mirebeau on the Angevin border, they tried to capture the old lady, who took refuge in its minute citadel from where she sent for help to John at Le Mans, 80 miles away. He arrived at dawn, within forty-eight hours. Catching the besiegers off guard, he captured Hugh de Lusignan, together with his brother and over 200 knights.

However, John threw away his victory by the way he treated his prisoners. Although Hugh de Lusignan, the most dangerous, was allowed to ransom himself, the rest were shipped to England, where some were blinded and twenty starved to death, which made bitter enemies among their friends and relatives. At the same time, the king alienated William des Roches by refusing to let him have custody of Arthur.

A worse mistake was murdering his nephew. John offered to let Arthur go if he would abandon Philip, but he told his uncle to hand over England to him, with all Richard's other territories. Angrily, the king sent him to Rouen under close guard and ‘shortly after, the said Arthur disappeared'.
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Everyone in France thought John had killed him with his own hands. Probably he
did so when drunk, throwing the body into the Seine, weighted with a heavy stone. (One source claims he grabbed the boy by his hair and drove a sword into him.) By April 1203 Arthur was known to have vanished. Brittany rose in revolt at the news, accusing his uncle of murder, and King Philip again summoned John to Paris for trial.

Philip invaded eastern Normandy again in 1203, as in feudal law John had forfeited the duchy by refusing to answer the charges, and a Breton army attacked from the south-west. Besieging a town or a castle, Philip invited its defenders to accept him as lord or be hanged or flayed alive, one defiant castellan being dragged to execution at a horse's tail. Garrisons gave in without putting up even token resistance. Few Norman barons would fight for John. Those in the east had flirted with Philip II's overtures for years while John had antagonized many in the south by his treatment of their kinsmen captured at Mirebeau. Now he alienated those in the centre by employing mercenaries who plundered the property of local knights and raped their wives.
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In any case, he was crippled by lack of money, able to extract only half the taxes that the duchy had paid his brother.

Throughout, John showed pathological inertia, spending Christmas 1203 at Caen where he feasted daily with his queen and slept until long after everybody else had risen. If told a town or fortress had fallen to Philip, the king muttered, ‘Whatever he captures now, I'll get back tomorrow.' Some said a spell had been cast on him.
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In August he found the energy to besiege Alençon, but he retreated as soon as Philip's troops appeared. At the end of the month he sent boats along the Seine to revictual the great castle of Château Gaillard, to be thwarted by adverse river tides. (He had not led the flotilla in person, remaining safely at Rouen.)

Warned that the Normans planned to hand him over to King Philip, who would punish him for Arthur's murder, John's paranoia became so intense that he travelled by night, and Ralph of Coggeshall heard he was ‘incapable of relieving the besieged,
terrified his own subjects might betray him'.
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The only troops with whom he felt safe were his bodyguard or his mercenaries. More Normans deserted every day, despite the barrels of silver coin he spent on trying to buy their loyalty; the French telling beleaguered castellans they had been abandoned and that Philip was a better ruler. In December, John left for England, with only the Cotentin, Mortain, Rouen and a few castles still holding out for him. In March 1204 Château Gaillard surrendered, no further attempt having been made to relieve it. In June Philip rode into Rouen. He had conquered the entire duchy of Normandy.

When Queen Eleanor died in April many Poitevins went over to Philip, who entered Poitiers in August 1204. Led by William des Roches, the barons of Anjou, Maine and Touraine followed suit. That winter, Philip even threatened to invade England. In January 1205 a terrified John ordered every male over twelve to swear to defend the realm, under the command of shire, hundred and parish constables, or a specially appointed ‘city constable' – anyone failing to do so would be proclaimed a public enemy. Forty-five galleys were hired to guard the south coast and East Anglia, from whose ports no ship could sail without the king's written permission.

In an astonishing mood swing, John suddenly regained his nerve, convinced he could not only defeat a French invasion but reconquer his lands in France. He began assembling an army and an armada, and in March held a council at Oxford, demanding oaths of loyalty from his barons, whom he insisted must join the expedition. They joined very half-heartedly, after making him swear to respect their rights.
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Although Chinon's surrender at Easter 1205 meant he had lost his last foothold in Anjou, John went on with plans to invade Normandy and Poitou. After six months of preparation,
14,000 men assembled at Portsmouth in June, ready to go on board 1,500 ships. At the last moment Archbishop Hubert and William Marshal begged John to call off the expedition, saying he would be outnumbered and that, because of his performance in Normandy, his barons would not fight.

However, after he had approached each magnate personally, with threats or bribes, some agreed to come with him, and in June 1206 he and his fleet sailed into La Rochelle, which was still loyal. Nearly all Poitou had gone over to Philip, but John did recover the south-west. Marching into Anjou, he occupied Angers for a week before striking north towards Maine, devastating the lands of Angevin barons who had deserted him, but retreating when he heard that Philip was coming. In October both kings agreed to accept the status quo: John keeping Gascony, southern Poitou, the Angoumois and the Saintonge (a small, seaboard province beyond the Garonne). Given his supine performance three years before, it was a surprising achievement, largely due to Savari de Mauléon and the Archbishop of Bordeaux, Hélie de Malemort.

One factor had been the area's commercial interdependence, based on rivers and the sea. Moreover, John had retained La Rochelle, Bordeaux and Bayonne, ports that, with the Channel Islands, formed a sea lane to England. The campaign confirmed his interest in shipping, as a defence against invasion as well as a link with Poitou and Gascony. By 1208 he had created an organization that amounted to an admiralty. In 1209–12 twenty galleys and thirty-four other vessels would be launched for the king; if he did not make England a maritime power, he certainly gave her a navy.
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The impact of losing Normandy on the greater English magnates cannot be exaggerated. In 1204 there were over a hundred tenants-in-chief in England with manors in Normandy,
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who now had to choose between an English or a French king, losing lands and castles in one or other country – they could not pay homage in both.

Born at Oxford at Christmas 1166, John bore no resemblance to Richard, being swarthy if high-coloured and only 5ft 5ins tall (a reasonable height in the twelfth century), while in middle age he grew fat and lost his reddish hair. Because of his childhood in Poitou, he was most at home with Poitevins, neither liking nor trusting Englishmen. As a youth, he possessed all Melusine's diabolical charm: his parents were devoted to him. Richard, although with few illusions about his brother's capacity, made him his heir: ‘My brother John is not the man to conquer a country if anybody puts up the slightest resistance', he had commented on hearing of his revolt in 1193.
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In those days John had been alarming in his drunken rages, his face distorted and dark red, foaming at the mouth, eyes blazing. Now, he was terrifying – there is a wolfish quality in his face on the effigy at Worcester Cathedral. His mental health was unsound and throughout his career he showed pathological lack of selfcontrol, as he did during the fall of Normandy. When Archbishop Geoffrey of York visited him in 1207 to appeal against a heavy new tax, Geoffrey threw himself at his feet, imploring him to have mercy. In response, John threw himself at the archbishop's feet and cried mockingly, ‘Look, Lord Archbishop, I'm doing just what you did!' Then, sniggering, he sent him away. That is not the conduct of a man who was wholly sane.
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Although highly intelligent and often hard-working, he was also gluttonous, and would, besides, drink to excess. He kept numerous mistresses and begot five known bastards, and his predatory attitude towards his barons' wives and daughters was notorious – he was infuriated when Eustace de Vesci put a common woman in the royal bed instead of his wife. A note on the royal expenses for 1204 states, ‘The wife of Hugh de Neville promises the lord king two hundred chickens if she is allowed to spend one night with her husband.'
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Matthew Paris alleges that Isabella of Angoulême, eighteen
years younger, was as lustful as her husband, ‘an incestuous and depraved woman, so often guilty of adultery that the king gave orders for her lovers to be throttled on her bed'.
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While there is no evidence of her infidelity, she was undoubtedly arrogant. Even so, between 1207 and 1215 she gave the king three sons and three daughters who reached maturity. If he gave her a lavish dress allowance, she was treated meanly, deprived of her revenues. In 1208 she was placed in close custody at Corfe Castle, while on several occasions she was left at Marlborough Castle with Hugh de Neville, husband of John's mistress. One shudders to think how someone as formidable as Isabella reacted. ‘The wives of Plantagenet kings may have been quick tempered and hell to live with,' writes Nicholas Vincent. ‘Dull they never were.'
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