So he leaped, but the tower was high, and the fall killed him. And before he died, he murmured—"Heaven take my soul and England keep my bones."
That is the story as Shakespeare gives it.
Almost everyone in England hated King John, even before this dreadful affair of Prince Arthur's death. The King of France took Normandy away from him, and his own people would not help him to fight for it.
He was very cruel and revengeful, and often put people in prison or killed them without giving any reason for it, or having them properly tried. So the great nobles of England joined together and said that they would not let John be King any longer in England unless he would give them a written promise to behave better in future. At first he laughed at the idea, and said he should do as he chose, and that he would fight the lords and keep them in their proper place. But he had to give in when he found that only seven of the lords of England were on his side and all the rest against him. So then he asked the barons and the bishops to meet him at Runnymede and there he put his big seal to a writing, promising what they wished. He did not sign his name to it, but you can see that very parchment sealed in the British Museum with the King's big seal to it.
Magna Charta
a.d. 1215.
But though he fixed his seal to the paper he did not keep the promises that were in it, and the barons grew so angry that they asked the King of France to help them to fight John, and to turn him out.
John ran away when he heard that the French were coming. He left his friends to fight his battles, and went off, wrecking the castles of the barons who had asked the French Prince to come over, and who were now with him. Then someone told the barons that the French Prince was determined to cut off all their heads as soon as he had got England for his own. So they saw how foolish they had been to ask him to come and help them. John was in Lincolnshire, and was coming across the sands at the Wash, but the tide suddenly came in and swept away his crown, his treasure, his food, and everything was lost in the sea. King John was very miserable at losing all his treasures, and he tried to drown his sorrows by drinking a lot of beer and eating much more than was good for him. This brought on a fever, and he died miserably, with no one at all to be sorry for him.
a.d. 1216.