The history of John’s reign may conveniently be arranged in three divisions, which fell into a nearly chronological sequence; first, the foreign relations, including the war with Philip, the fate of Arthur, and the loss of Normandy; secondly, the dispute with the clergy, and the interdict and submission to Rome; and thirdly, the events that led to and flowed from the granting of Magna Carta. In each of these divisions of our period we find certain persons coming to the front as the mainstay of John’s power, at whose death that power, in one region or another, seems at once to suffer collapse. Of these the first is his mother, the great source and prop of his Continental position. Of her character enough has been said already; her better points come out most strongly in her old age, when we see her, between seventy and eighty years old, running about from one end of Europe to another to patch up truces, to make peaces, and to close wars which sprang mainly out of her own levity and intriguing of half a century past. She had engaged in a life-long quarrel with her first husband in 1150, and with her second in 1173; now in 1200 she fetches a grand-daughter of the second to marry the grandson of the first, as a pledge of harmony between the sons of the two. John’s fortunes are not wholly hopeless until he loses his mother.
Arthur’s
claims in
France.
Richard’s unexpected death occurred during a negotiation for peace with Philip; and John succeeded at once, just as Richard himself had done, to the claims in whole accumulation of dynastic and territorial grievances, which had been mounting up for fifty years; with the addition of Arthur’s claims, which gave Philip the opportunity of interfering in every possible question. Before the coronation these claims had been raised; Philip had determined to be beforehand, and had seized the city of Evreux on the receipt of the news of Richard’s death. At the same moment the barons of Anjou, Maine, and Touraine had declared Arthur their count, and Constance had delivered him bodily into Philip’s keeping. John, in revenge for this, had destroyed the walls and imprisoned the citizens of le Mans, which he regarded as the stronghold of Arthur’s party. He returned to Normandy directly after the coronation, on June 20, and made a truce with Philip for two months, during which Philip accepted Arthur’s homage for all the Continental estates of the family and constituted himself his champion. Immediately on the expiration of the truce the kings met again, and Philip then proposed by way of compromise that John should retain Normandy, and Arthur have the remaining states, Philip himself receiving the Vexin as a remuneration for his good offices in thus arbitrating. John refused this, and war broke out again, in which Philip showed himself so much more anxious for his own interest than for Arthur’s that the unhappy boy allowed himself to be removed from Philip’s protection and placed under John’s. He discovered his mistake, however, almost instantly, and fled from his uncle’s court to Angers, in company with his mother, who took the opportunity of finally breaking with the Earl of Chester, and without waiting for a divorce, bestowed herself in marriage on Guy, a brother of the Viscount Thouars.
Peace
between
John and
Philip, 1200.
John’s
marriage.
Upon this John and Philip made a fresh truce which grew into a peace, by which Arthur’s interests were finally sacrificed, and which was cemented by the marriage of Blanche of Castile, John’s niece, to Lewis, the son and heir of Philip. This was accomplished in May 1200. Philip’s matrimonial difficulties, which arose from his wanton repudiation of his second wife, Ingeburga of Denmark, exposed him at the time to a threat of interdict, and he probably thought it wise not to have both John and Innocent III. arrayed against him at once. John, seeing the marriage laws practically in abeyance, had taken advantage of the objection which had been raised by Archbishop Baldwin to his marriage, and released himself from his wife, Hawisia of Gloucester, on the ground of relationship. Now inspired either by love or territorial covetousness, he married Isabella, the child-heiress of the Count of Angoulême. This marriage offended on the one side of the Channel, Hugh of la Marche, who was betrothed to her, and on the other side the great kinsmen of the house of Gloucester, and the lady Hawisia herself, who subsequently married Geoffrey de Mandeville, one of the bitterest of John’s enemies.
Forfeiture of
Normandy.
Death of
Arthur.
Loss of Normandy
and
Anjou.
The peace did not last longer than Philip’s domestic difficulties, which came to an end on his consenting to receive back Ingeburga. Mischief began in 1201, both on the Norman frontier, where Hugh de Gournay played fast and loose between the kings, and in Poictou, where the barons were excited by the Count of la Marche to rebel against the severe repression exercised by John. The next year Philip summoned courage to call John before his court of the peers of France to answer the charges of the Poictevins, and on his non-appearance declared him to have forfeited his fiefs. Arthur, who was now fifteen, and who had lost his mother the year before, thought that this was his opportunity. He mustered his forces and attempted to seize the old queen Eleanor in the castle of Mirabel. Instead of taking her he was defeated and captured by John, who imprisoned him, and in whose hands he died, how we know not, on April 3, 1203. Philip did not hesitate to declare John the boy’s murderer; he held another court upon him, and again sentenced him to forfeiture. This time he undertook the execution of the sentence himself. He invaded Normandy, and took city after city. John did not raise a hand in its defence, and quitted the duchy finally in November. The next year, 1204, saw Anjou and the rest of the patrimony in Philip’s hands; the loss of most of the Guienne followed. Eleanor died on April 1, 1204, and on her death John’s cause became hopeless. He did little or nothing to redeem it. In 1206 he tried to recover Poictou, but was obliged to purchase a truce by resigning his claims on the northern provinces; and in 1214, as a part of a general scheme of attack upon Philip, in which he had the support of Flanders and the Empire, he made another expedition, but it also ended in a truce by which some small fragments of Eleanor’s inheritance were preserved to her grandchildren.