CHAPTER XXI.
JOHN.—1199 to 1216.
Why King John was called Lackland; how he killed his nephew Arthur, and how the barons rebelled against him, and made him sign the Great Charter.
John, the youngest son of Henry Plantagenet, became king after the death of his brother Richard.
His reign was a bad one for England, for John was neither so wise as his father, nor so brave as his brother. Besides, he was very cruel.
At first he had been called John Lackland, because his father had died before he was old enough to get possession of the lands that his father wished to give him. And not long after he became king he lost Normandy and all the lands that had belonged to his grandfather, Geoffrey of Anjou. He did not know how to govern England so as to repair the ill it had suffered while Richard was absent at the wars, so that the Pope called upon the King of France to go to England, and drive John away and make himself king instead; and then John was so base that he went to a priest called a Nuncio, or Ambassador, who came from Rome, and really gave him the crown of England, and promised that England should belong to the Pope, if the Pope would only keep him safe.
You cannot wonder that John was disliked; but when I have told you how he treated a nephew of his, called Prince Arthur, you will, I am sure, dislike him as much as I do. Some people thought that this Prince Arthur ought to have been King of England, because he was the son of John’s elder brother, Geoffrey. And John was afraid that the barons and other great men would choose Arthur to be king, so he contrived to get Arthur into his power.
Prince Arthur and Hubert.
He wished very much to kill him at once; but then he was afraid lest Arthur’s mother should persuade the King of France and the other princes to make war upon him to avenge Arthur’s death. Then he thought that, if he put out his eyes, he would be so unfit for a king, that he should be allowed to keep him a prisoner all his life; and he actually gave orders to a man named Hubert de Burgh to put his eyes out, and Hubert hired two wicked men to do it.
But when they came with their hot irons to burn his eyes out, Arthur knelt down and begged hard that they would do anything but blind him; he hung about Hubert’s neck, and kissed and fondled him so much, and cried so bitterly, that neither Hubert nor the men hired to do it could think any more of putting out his eyes, and so they left him.
But his cruel uncle, John, was determined Arthur should not escape. He took him away from Hubert, and carried him to a tower at Rouen, the chief town of Normandy, and shut him up there.