King John and the Road to Magna Carta

by Stephen Church

From a renowned medieval historian comes a new biography of King John, the infamous English king whose reign led to the establishment of the Magna Carta and the birth of constitutional democracy

King John (1166-1216) has long been seen as the epitome of bad kings. The son of the most charismatic couple of the middle ages, Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine, and younger brother of the heroic crusader king, Richard the Lionheart, John lived much of his life in the shadow of his family. When in 1199 he became ruler of his family's lands in England and France, John proved unequal to the task of keeping them together. Early in his reign he lost much of his continental possessions, and over the next decade would come perilously close to losing his English kingdom, too.

In King John, medieval historian Stephen Church argues that John's reign, for all its failings, would prove to be a crucial turning point in English history. Though he was a masterful political manipulator, John's traditional ideas of unchecked sovereign power were becoming increasingly unpopular among his subjects, resulting in frequent confrontations. Nor was he willing to tolerate any challenges to his authority. For six long years, John and the pope struggled over the appointment of the Archbishop of Canterbury, a clash that led to the king's excommunication.

As king of England, John taxed his people heavily to fund his futile attempt to reconquer the lands lost to the king of France. The cost to his people of this failure was great, but it was greater still for John. In 1215, his subjects rose in rebellion against their king and forced upon him a new constitution by which he was to rule. The principles underlying this constitution -- enshrined in the terms of Magna Carta -- would go on to shape democratic constitutions across the globe, including our own.

In this authoritative biography, Church describes how it was that a king famous for his misrule gave rise to Magna Carta, the blueprint for good governance.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Biography, Medieval History, Medieval, British Literature, Historical

328 pages, Hardcover

First published April 7, 2015

About the author

Stephen Church is a writer and professor of medieval history at the University of East Anglia and is regarded as an expert on King John.

Reviews

[Orsolya · Rating 4 out of 5]

King John doesn’t have the best reputation. He is known as the “Bad King”…The bad seed as opposed to his brother, Richard the Lionheart. So ‘bad’ that his actions pushed his subjects and barons to compose the Magna Carta—the predecessor of many modern-day constitutions (so perhaps it is a good thing that John was unqualified!). Stephen Church attempts to explore the foundation building up to the Magna Carta in, “King John: And the Road to the Magna Carta”.

Chruch’s aim with “King John” Is not to rehabilitate John or condone his actions. Rather, the target of the text is to explain the events which led to the Magna Carta and how/why John acted the way he did. “King John” succeeds in this by presenting an even-paced text that is academic but not dry and works as a solid introduction into King John’s reign but with enough detail to satisfy those familiar with the topic. Church’s prose is strong and his writing lacks biases and assumptions making “King John” quite compelling.

There are, however, issues with Church straying from the topic and going into detailed tangents losing his hypothesis begging the reader to ask what he is trying to prove. Sometimes, Church tries too hard to be unbiased and thus “King John” simply reads as a recitation of events a la, “This happened and then that”.

The amount of research is clearly justified in “King John” as Church alludes to documents and household books brimming with detail (although this may be “too much” for some readers). Uniquely, Church stipulates when sources quoted are secondary or written long after the fact which helps the reader gain a well-rounded view but with a grain of salt. Church also employs occasional detective work and cunningly works out how, when, or why an event occurred.

As “King John” progresses, a ‘point’ is seemingly lost as Church does explain events that disgruntled subjects (and thus led to the Magna Carta); but none of this seems dire or that ‘bad’. There have been worse kings before and since King John. Although, perhaps this indication is precisely Church’s goal (even though he says he does not aim to rehabilitate King John). There is also an issue with some repetition and backtracking which momentarily stalls attention.

There is a disconnect between the former portions of “King John” discussing events leading up to the Magna Carta and the sudden jump into exploring the various doctrines. The path is not cohesive and is quite abrupt. This effectively “throws off” the reader in some ways. This can similarly be said about the conclusion of “King John” which lacks emotion even though Church suddenly ties to enforce that John was a tyrant when the entire book never appeared to necessarily agree with that notion.

Some stylistic comments should be noted: “King John” contains various maps; however, they are coded per color shade which is a bit tricky when the map is black-and-white/grayscale. Color plates would also have been welcome (there is an absence of photos). However, the abundance of sources and length of bibliography will satisfy fact-checkers; as will both foot and end notes.

“King John” suffers from some flaws and doesn’t per se achieve Church’s aims. Yet, it is well-researched, detailed, and strong academically while being very readable and not dry. There is ‘something’ about “King John” which makes it quite a good read. “King John” is recommended for all readers interested in English history and I would certainly read more from Church in the future.

[Louise · Rating 4 out of 5]

He had lost all of England’s land in what we now call France. As he died England was in a civil war and fending off a foreign invasion. From the distance of 8 centuries, it may be impossible to determine what went wrong. On the 800th anniversary of the Magna Carta, King John’s accidental achievement, Stephen Church gives us some tools to try.

Church shows the power of a medieval king. John held between 20-33% of the Kingdom’s money and through taxation and confiscation could take more. As is demonstrated in the end, he had the power to disinherit anyone, to take their lands and give them to someone else. He had the power to create what sound like forest preserves, which would render land useless, not only for its owner but all who worked it on his behalf. It was an act of remarkable bravery or foolishness to defy the king.

He lost British lands on the continent, some believed by not showing up. He began a feud with the Pope over an Archbishop appointment and got himself and most of his kingdom excommunicated. He taxed in every way possible way: the 13th tax; tax on movable goods, taxes on the clergy; special taxes on the Jews, and creating forest lands. He took on his own appointees in Ireland and Wales. He brutally killed his nephew and caused terrible suffering for those who's loyalty he questioned.

He was so not trusted by his constituents that they risked all to force the Magna Carta, a document that John set out to destroy, into being.

Since this is about the famous document and the political events leading up to it Church does not explore John and how he came to destroy himself as he did. He does describe the power of the office; Can it be concluded that John saw no limits to his power? There is some reference to his family, but no discussion of how dysfunctional it was how it might have fostered John's distrust as world view.

The book has an abbreviated (but clear) genealogical chart, four abbreviated (somewhat clear) maps and extensive footnotes. There are no plates and the sole illustration is that of an effigy carved shortly after his death.

[Caroline · Rating 3 out of 5]

The reign of King John marks a watershed in English history in more ways than one. Known largely as the 'Bad King John' of Robin Hood fame, whose disastrous kingship gave rise to Magna Carta, John's reign marks the point when the kings of England truly became English, kings only of England. His predecessors spent more time across the Channel in their continental lands than in England, and most did not even speak English - John's son Henry III was the first to speak English fluently, and even then it was not his native tongue. Many of the nobility held lands on both sides of the Channel, and few would have considered themselves English - Anglo-Norman, at best.

Under John's rule the continental empire of the Angevin kings of England that had once stretched from the borders of Scotland to Spain, including more than half of France, was lost - and it was in an effort to regain those lands that John taxed his subjects relentlessly, demanded men and matériel for his army, appropriated Church possessions, and so alienated his barons that they eventually rebelled against him and invited the son of the French king to invade and take the crown. As Stephen Church so ably demonstrates in this book, you cannot separate this period in English history from French history, you cannot look at events in England without reference to the wider context. John's actions in England, so memorably recounted and vilified in Robin Hood stories, were in direct response to events in France, in Wales, in Ireland. His tyranny was prompted by a harried king's desperate need for cash, men and arms to fight for the reconquest of his ancestral lands.

This is a scholarly yet thoroughly readable history, and Church manages to condense a tangled, complex web of conflicting loyalties, politics, betrayal and abuse of power into a clear and comprehensive account. John is one of the most complex and enigmatic of English monarchs, and Church portrays him here with a clear eye and no judgement. As the author himself says, it is important to tell John's life as though we did not already know how it ended. As with Richard III, we tend to let the final outcome colour how we view an entire reign. John was not destined to be a failure, any more than Richard III was destined to be a usurper and lose his kingdom.

John was a product of his place, time and family, and in many respects inherited much of his difficulties from his father and brother. The Angevin empire was never really any such thing, there was never any unity or indeed any real stable overarching authority; it was a collection of independent polities who swore lip-service to the idea of the English king as their overlord, but real authority on the ground remained with the local rulers. Perhaps a more subtle king or a more dominant king may have held them in line, but it is entirely possible that his revered brother, Richard the Lionheart, himself, may have struggled had he lived long enough to reap the consequences, instead of John.

[Julie Yates · Rating 4 out of 5]

Informative and Engaging; Academic without being dry. Read this work for details of King John's battles and kingship (with a very good brief review of King Richard as well), and then
Marc Morris's King John: Treachery and Tyranny in Medieval England: The Road to Magna Carta to hear more about his cruel personality. Together these are the perfect King John Primer.

Looks at the decisions King John made and rational behind them. While not brushing over KJ's ruthless personality, points out that "At each junction in John's life there was the potential for him to succeed."


This was why Philip’s policy had been consistently focused on control of the Vexin: he was determined to wrest Normandy from the control of the Angevins, and this brings us back not to the marriage of John and Isabella of Angoulême and the subsequent feud with Hugh le Brun, but to the Norman Vexin and to the Treaty of Le Goulet. Those who criticized John for conceding its terms were right in one very important regard: when he conceded that he held the Vexin from Philip he conceded too much. Hugh le Brun’s rebellion gave Philip the key that would unlock John’s hold on Normandy.

John acted in such a high-handed manner that he “lost the affection of the barons of the land before he had crossed to England.” Even the most exalted of the prisoners were treated shamefully, kept in chains like common criminals. By these actions, John lost the support of all those whose allegiance was crucial if he were to hold on to his lands. In his moment of triumph, John forgot to be magnanimous to exactly the men on whom his control of Anjou and Poitou rested.

The capture of Normandy had been Philip’s unwavering objective since the 1180s. If he could destabilize matters in Anjou, Touraine and Poitou sufficiently to make John take his eye off Normandy, then Philip would be able to seize the main prize. That aim was at the heart of everything that Philip undertook.

Men must have looked askance at Arthur’s behavior: he was wilfully playing into the hands of a French monarch who was no friend of his family and who, by his every action, seemed determined to drive out that family from the lands it had occupied for generations. From the perspective of John and his advisors, therefore, Arthur was acting treacherously, and so posed a severe threat to the stability of the Angevin position on the continent.

And while Arthur’s fate made no difference to Philip’s determination to take Normandy, it did take from John any moral high ground that he might have enjoyed.

It is impossible to gauge the significance of Arthur’s death for the large numbers of Normans who deserted John’s cause after the events of Easter 1203. Philip was pressing Normandy hard, and it may be that these men took the view that John’s cause was lost and that they had better be seen to join the winning side before that side won. But even if Arthur’s death did not cause desertion and the eventual loss of Normandy, it was part of the picture of collapse that helped them make the decision about which way to jump

In the autumn of 1203, John decided to return to England. We do not know why. There has been much speculation from his own day to this about his motives for leaving Normandy while it was under such extreme threat from Philip. If Normandy were to remain under Angevin control, it needed the presence of its duke, and yet John retreated to England. But there is little doubt that John’s desertion of Normandy was a mistake: and a mistake that it is hard to imagine either his brother or his father would have made. Those he left behind to defend the duchy felt his absence sorely, and said as much.

We do not know what transpired at Northampton, but the muster at Porchester was an unmitigated disaster. The English army was gathered ready to embark, at which point the expedition was cancelled and the attack on Poitou was abandoned after much had been spent on organizing the army. The king has lost the confidence of his men.

In 1207, therefore, John was going out on a limb, and he had failed to take the great men of the realm with him ... If these were the men who made up the “council” that conceded the Thirteenth, then they were certainly not representative of the baronial or ecclesiastical elite of the kingdom ... The demand for the Thirteenth was an arbitrary act of taxation, carried out without the consent of the bishops, and the language of contemporary documents suggests that the secular magnates were also equivocal about

After the experience of the Poitevin campaign, John had returned to England not a conciliator and a seeker of consensus amongst his ecclesiastical and secular magnates, but a man who was coming to see them as a problem getting in the way of his right to pursue his inheritance; those who opposed him were to be bullied, threatened and browbeaten into submission.

That John had been unable to carry his bishops with him in his attempt to levy a tax on the Church is striking. ... In the main, one did not become a bishop unless one was known to the king and had served his administration loyally. The refusal of the bishops to bow to John’s demands for the Thirteenth meant that he had lost their support,

It is not unreasonable to suggest, therefore, that the winter of 1206 to 1207 marks one point in John’s reign during which he had lost the confidence of the good and the great of the realm, and turned ever more inward to counsel he could trust to give him the answers he sought.

The demands for money made by John of his subjects were to have a profound effect on the economy and society of England and, in the end, it was these demands for money, ruthlessly pursued, that alienated John from his nobility. But it was more than just the demand for taxation that caused a rift between the king and his major subjects; it was also the fact that the money he collected was either transported abroad for the furtherance of the king’s continental ambitions or it was tied up in a series of castle treasuries dotted around England.

The John Langston Problem: AT THE BEGINNING OF June 1207, as the Thirteenth was gathered and as John and his magnates were beginning to rebuild their relationship, Pope Innocent III decided that now was the moment to force John’s hand regarding the appointment of the archbishop of Canterbury

Ireland and William de Briouze John was resolute in his attempts to increase his royal prerogative in Ireland even if it meant doing so at the expense of his baronial elite, and even if the members of that elite had served him with the utmost loyalty, as William de Briouze and William Marshal had done.

It is obvious, therefore, that what was actually at stake was the expansion of royal rule in Ireland, which John’s colonial barons were seeking to limit. William de Briouze was the most famous victim of John’s determination to strengthen his grip on Ireland

To his subjects, John now appeared to be a king who was prepared to pursue his ambitions ruthlessly even to the destruction of those closest to him. It was a chilling prospect.

1212 Failure of Poitio due to Plots to kill King John
t was as if John had woken up to the fact that he needed friends amongst the magnates; up until this point, he had seen them only as a source of revenue and of irritation. Now, at last, he seemed to understand that he needed them on his side.

IT WAS ALSO AT this juncture that John decided that he also needed the Church. Being an excommunicate left him vulnerable, friendless in a world in which the friendless man was potential prey to his enemies.

It was a remarkable volte-face, and testimony to the shock that had struck at the very core of John’s regime by the plot of 1212.

1213 and the battle of Bouvines
As yet there was no concerted opposition to him, but there was undoubtedly a general reluctance to be drawn into agreeing to go abroad on campaign, whether it be from financial exhaustion, a reluctance to follow a king who had, until July 20, been excommunicate, or a firmly held belief that service overseas was not part of the contract by which the tenants-in-chief held their lands of the king of England. If John were to go to Poitou, he needed to win the hearts and minds of his baronial elite, especially those in the north who seemed especially keen to bring their king to the negotiating table before they would consent to serve in his army.

In short, all hardship, all misery, all sacrifice had been focused on this one moment: John’s return to the continent. Were it anything but triumphant, the opposition, much of which waited at home in the north of England, would be out in force.

JOHN’S FUTURE WAS DETERMINED not in Poitou but in Flanders. It was the most significant moment of his life and he was not there.


With hindsight, it seems clear that Normandy was the lynchpin of the empire, and that control of Normandy, and especially the Vexin, was crucial to the maintenance of Angevin rule. But for John, Poitou was the key to victory. This is the only possible explanation for the years that he devoted to securing the loyalty of the Poitevin aristocracy or suppressing those families whose loyalty he could not procure, and the only thing that can explain John’s unwillingness to go to Normandy both in 1206 and in 1214 to confront Philip

BY OCTOBER 18, 1214, John was at Corfe. In exactly two years’ time he would be dead, his barons would be in revolt, a foreign prince would be stalking his land and his kingdom would be in ruins. All this was a consequence of his ambition to reestablish his rule on the continent. John’ s single-minded determination had brought the realm of England to the very brink of disaster.
Had his allies won at Bouvines, his return to England would have been met with rejoicing; as it was, John’s return was met with outright rebellion.

[Kara · Rating 5 out of 5]

The thing about John of England is he is so relatability human.

He tries – and he fails, more often than not, like so many of the rest of us. And he keeps trying, because he wants to show he is just as good as the rest of his family. And he fails, spectacularly, but by God, he never stopped trying to live up to the legend of his parents and brother.

John was a man of many, many insecurities, with a lot of blame that can be laid on Eleanor and Henry more concerned with each other and their kingdoms than any of their children, but even when John was the last of that insane, blazing, dramatic family left, he had an almost uncanny knack for doing the exact right thing to make as many people as possible mad at him.

This book exams John’s life thought the lens of how all his actions lead up to the Magna Carta, showing how John’s insecure ego accidently created one of the building blocks of modern government.

[Susan Jo Grassi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Most of us are familiar with King John and the Magna Carta, the beginning of democracy. The book is an historical biography of King John and his efforts to retain his lands in France, which he lost, and his endeavors to hold on to the throne of England in the face of civil war due his incompetence, greed, and treachery. He had angered the Church of Rome to the point of being excommunicated, later to be reinstated, and treated his barons and subjects with such disdain as to create rebellion. Truly the prime example of a bad ruler.

History books can be very dry and good for insomniacs but I do have to confess that, for the most part, it moved along very nicely and added a lot of information of which I had been previous unaware.

[Brian DiPaolo · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was 4/5 stars. John on the other hand, was a 1/5 star king 🥲

[Lois · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is incredibly well rounded. Definitely the definitive biography, balanced and fair.
Still this is long, detailed and if you're looking for something shorter I'd recommend John: An Evil King by Nicholas Vincent. This is a better more thorough historical biography though.

[Rosa · Rating 4 out of 5]

OMG. SO.MUCH.INFORMATION. It was a lot of fun to read, especially since what little medieval history I read in college was by Geraldus Cambrensis, who was one of the official chroniclers from the early years of King John (specifically, of his journeys in his youth to Ireland, of which he was a lord.) I knew a few of the falsities that Church was trying to disabuse his readers of beforehand (most of which are spurious judgments brought about by common mis-telling of the Robin of the Wood folk story.) Some of this information was 100% new to me though, which made for a fascinating read. I would recommend it to any person with an interest in medieval English history (especially if you're into pre-Hundred Years War land entailment rights/the relationship between royalty and baronships/lordships.)

However, be prepared for a lot of French (as the Angevin kings are from the line of Norman succession, so they are of French descent and owned significant lands there). And be prepared for a lot of backstabbing/bribery. It's a lot like Game of Thrones, to be honest. Only better, because it actually happened.

[Tim · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I began the book, it felt like it was going to be an attempt to rehabilitate the history of King John, who is roundly considered one of the worst English lords of all time. But it really isn't that, and it does do a good job of providing a bit more context into his reign than most general histories do.

Basically, John took over in 1199 after his brother Richard and father H2 had taken over much of continental France. But by 1204, he had lost Normandy, and from there it was a struggle to hold on to even Anjou, which was the Plantagenet homeland. King Philip basically ate his lunch and had him on the defensive continually.

As a result, he had to campaign a lot. And as a result of that, he had to raise funds a lot. And this put him in a bad way back home. He was also in dutch with Pope Innocent III for much of his reign, which is a recurring theme in medieval English history (I3 wanted one Archbishop Canterbury, he and the monks two others, etc). Eventually, he paid fief to Innocent just before Magna Carta, getting back into his good graces but doing little to save himself at home.

Of course, one of the main reasons John has such a bad reputation is his supposed murder of his nephew, Arthur of Brittany. And though Church does sugarcoat the actual incident a bit -- the prevailing story is that John got drunk and threw him into the Seine River b/c he was considered a threat to his own kingship -- he suggests it was more strategic than that, given it happened in 1203 as Philip was pressing hard for Normandy. Arthur had thrown in his lot with the French king, and was thus considered a threat by John. So he decided to have him killed. Which, if it happened this way and for these reasons, is not an outlier in medieval politics. But it backfired on him, as the young prince's death was quickly was attributed to him and may have actually rallied others to the French cause.

Magna Carta happens in 1215, and there is a school of thought that gives John some credit for this. I tend to agree. John was definitely running out of ammo at this time, and he probably didn't have much choice, but he did sit down with his barons and grant them this now famous charter.

Like most contemporaries of his time, John died relatively young (just shy of 50), catching dysentery on campaign in 1216.

Of course, I am no expert. But I do feel that John wasn't the overt, bumbling tyrant that Jones and some others have made him out to be after reading this book. John "Lackland" or "Softsword" -- sure, I get those monikers. He clearly wasn't a great militarist as with his closest relatives. But perhaps he was't quite as terrible as everyone says.

From the book, after the loss of Normandy and other lands in 1204: "Queen Eleanor had been dead for just five months. Even her mortal remains, and those of her husband, son and daughter, which lay in the family mausoleum at Fontevraud, were under Philip's control. Gascony remained for John and the port of La Rochelle stayed local, too. For John, it was a sorry picture. But for Philip of France, 1204 marked the moment of triumph for the Capetian dynasty, the moment at which he fulfilled the hopes that had been placed in him. To the monk-chronicler Rigord, he was Philip Augustus (imbued with imperial overtones given its Roman antecedents), and to the royal chaplain, William the Breton, he was Philip Magnanimous (the great souled). He was indeed the savior of the French nation and the French monarchy."

[Michael Bully · Rating 3 out of 5]

I know that people who have researched the life of King John have not necessarily taken to this biography, but as someone who isn't quite so well informed, found the biography helpful. Essentially the author's case is that king John may have been able to have retained the Angevin empire that he inherited, but failed time and time again. Losing territory , not taking military initiative, increasing taxes such as scutage to punitive levels. refusing to cultivate enough support from the barons to make his reign viable, getting into conflict with the Papacy, John's reign ended in rebellion, French invasion, whole swathes realm were no longer in his hands. All this is recounted well. And it is encouraging to have a historian who is prepared to look at the consequence of the interdict between 1209-1213 which saw John excommunicated, in some detail.
But felt that the book became a bit rushed towards the end. The impact for European History of John's defeat at the Battle of Bouvines in 1214 - effectively seeing the rise of France in Western Europe- are understated. Magna Carta itself is not gone into enough detail compared with the title. Stephen Church looks at other treaties made between king and barons, pointed out that concluding Magna Carta was a brief truce and civil war soon resumed. By comparison Marc Morris' 'King John -Treachery, Tyranny and the Road to Magna Carta ' offers far more analysis. Mr Church also plays down the amount of treasure actually lost at The Wash in 1216, an interesting view which deserved more coverage

[Hyperbolus · Rating 2 out of 5]

At points there's a few interesting details especially earlier in John's life but the book has misplaced priorities in terms of what it aims to focus on. There are lines and lines of just names or pointless details which have little actual value yet despite being the title of the book Magna Carta feels more like a footnote tacked on at the end. The book's author states he wished to prove the importance of John as a king despite his failures yet there was no elaboration on Magna Carta. It's clauses ,which you would think would be something mentioned, are barely explained and the documents impact on English History is barely explained. Perhaps he could have used the conclusion to do that rather then rambling on pointless trivia about John's burial site. A strange biography which feels too detailed and not detailed enough at the same time.

5/10

[Kevin Moynihan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book. Well written. Anyone that can spank ‘modern historians’ like this is fantastic (p.87) —

“The production of these illegitimate children has given many modern historians — many still languishing under the delusion that our hang-ups about sex are the same as those held by our medieval ancestors — the opportunity to heap opprobrium on the heads of monarchs who bedded women other than their wives.”

[Jason Cecil · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting book considering the thin historical record. I wish I had more of a sense of John as a person than as a ruler. The best part was the whole build up to the Magna Carta, and I never knew how influential pope innocent III was in the events of John's life. Three stars because the characters were always too cardboard with little to make them come alive.

[Neeuqdrazil · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was well written, with thorough (but not intrusive) end and footnotes.

Church takes John without prejudgement, and looks at his reign, as well as his life before his reign, without considering what happened later - basically, trying to take events as they came, rather than looking at them with the judgement of hindsight.

It works.

[Ann · Rating 4 out of 5]

A long tale of fighting over lands, ownership, money, finery , jewels, power all with a background of who owned what and the control of the church along with other kings fighting to get the lands and powers that were desired. Really not much different from today although the church has lost much ground in the domination of rulers and people.

[Gayla Bassham · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well-written overview of the frustrated life of King John.

[Mark · Rating 3 out of 5]

Solid but unspectacular. Excellent for detail, but not very vibrant

[Quentin Schaefer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Can’t say this book was exactly a page turner the whole time, but it was a really excellent and thorough account of King John’s life, reign and downfall.

[Jim · Rating 3 out of 5]

Learn a lot of King John and his rule.

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

Written for the 800th anniversary of the Magna Carta in 2015, Church day-to-day correspondence of the Chancery clerks in King John's reign to look at how royal government was conducted. This correspondence , as well as the Close rolls tracking official correspondence, gives an insight into the mind of the king and what preoccupied him. King John's reign was the first in which correspondence was routinely recorded by the king's administration.

There are interesting contrasts with modern practices:
"Letter writing in the late twelfth-century northern Europe was a vigorous habit, and letters were sent with the expectation that they would be widely circulated and play their part in shaping public opinion. There were no 'private letters in the modern sense of the term.' Until the widespread use of ciphers emerged in the later Middle Ages, secret messages were transmitted by word of mouth."

Stephen Church would do well to write a description of a day in the life of the royal court during this period because many of the complexities of administration are lost in the last 800 years. Indeed it is unclear what functions seneschals, castellans and others performed; what hereditary rights were; how money flowed during scutages, tallages on towns, "Thirteenth" levies, forest eyres or special taxation on Jews.

[E · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book wasn't as good as I was hoping it would be. For one thing, the subtitle is misleading. It is a straight biography. Magna Carta doesn't not appear until the last chapter (fair enough, considering John died a year later), but it is not placed in context, its effects are not mentioned, and in fact the reader hardly saw it coming.

Church agrees with the assessment that lists John as a terrible king, but he does a poor job of showing why. Taxation problems? Who doesn't have those? Issues with the pope? Naturally. Trouble holding on to land in France? Understandable. Competition from energetic nephews and cousins? Hard to blame them. But somehow this coalesces into the opinion that John was a horrible king, and I'm not sure I buy it. If we're going to swallow that diagnosis, our writer needs to do a better job of backing it up.

[Bob · Rating 4 out of 5]

King John usually tops the list of despised English monarchs. And Stephen Church does little to dissuade you of that idea. John was a greedy and insecure man. He was not the man portrayed in the Robin Hood legends, but he was plenty bad enough.

The book is interesting but does get bogged down a little in French-English relations. But that was John's problem.

The Magna Carta, in Church's view, was not a revolutionary document as much as it was a reassertion of any earlier charter issued in 1100. The terms of it were negotiated between John and the barons. Some barons remained in rebellion against John and wanted to put the French king, Philip, on the throne. But before that happened, John died. The war would be fought later.

[Daniel Kukwa · Rating 3 out of 5]

It has a great deal of what I like in a history book, particularly its ability to be concise in analysis & writing style. However, I was disappointed by the conclusion -- it takes the book from concise to abrupt. I wanted a longer analysis of John's legacy, particularly from the viewpoint of his heir & his later actions as king. I wanted to see an analysis of the fallout in France, post-John. I wanted to read more about John's legacy in the centuries after his death. The sudden conclusion just leaves a disappointing taste in my mouth, but in overall terms, this book is truly a how-toguide in how to lose an empire.

[Nicole · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was inspired to pick this up after reading a biography of William Marshal, since the Marshal's life and career were intertwined with the Angevins, including King John. And of course, everyone knows Prince John as the mean and evil ruler from the Robin Hood stories.

I appreciated this book for its attention to detail - the author certainly did his research. It was a somewhat dry read, never hooking my interest beyond a general desire to learn about the subject matter. It was a good read for lovers of history, but I'm not left raving about it.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Clearly written and easy for laypersons like me to read. Church presents enough evidence to show historical ambiguity where it exists rather than insisting on one view, particularly when some sources claim John murdered people and other sources say otherwise. I recommend this for anyone who wants a researched and documented overview of King John's life.

[Ty Barnett · Rating 4 out of 5]

I received this book for free from Goodreads Giveaway. I love to read books from this time frame of history. The books tells of the story of King John, the son of Richard, journey through politics and war. The book is worth reading if you would want to learn of the life of King John.

[Jane Ginter · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm serving on Grand Jury and am interested in the Magna Carta. This books mostly covers the life of John but does get into the beginnings of the Magna Carta. I feel like I still need to do more research

[Doug · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great level of detail -- very thoroughly researched. Maybe my expectations were a bit too high, but it felt more like a textbook than something for mass consumption.

[John Dedio · Rating 2 out of 5]

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