Hey. I think we know a modern-day King John.
«Like El Cid before him, William [Marshal] had now stepped up from the world of knightly adventure to the front rank of regional and international politics. But he would still throw himself headlong into battle when the situation called for it. At one encounter between English and French troops at Milly castle in northern France, Marshal climbed from the bed of the empty moat and up a ladder to the top of the ramparts, while wearing full armor and carrying his sword. At the top of the ramparts he singled out the constable of Milly and “dealt such a blow at him that he cut through his helmet [so that the constable] . . . fell down unconscious, battered and stunned.” The Marshal, “now weary,” sat on the defeated constable to stop him from waking up and escaping.53
For once, William Marshal was not present at the death of the king when, in 1199, Richard I succumbed to gangrene after being hit with a lucky shot from a crossbow bolt while besieging a castle in Châlus-Chabrol. He was, however, involved in the politicking that placed Richard’s brother John on the Plantagenet throne at the expense of his young nephew Arthur of Brittany—a decision that would ultimately prove fatal for Arthur, whom John captured, imprisoned, and killed in the first years of his reign. For supporting John, William was rewarded with yet more valuable prizes, including the earldom of Pembroke in west Wales, which linked together his now-extensive English and Welsh estates with those in Ireland. Once more, his chivalric values—chief among them loyalty—seemed to have served him right.
Yet William could not get along with John. The new king’s character was neatly summed up by a chronicler known as the Anonymous of Béthune. Although John was capable of lavish hospitality and generosity, noted the writer, adding that he gave out handsome cloaks to his household knights, John was otherwise “a very bad man, more cruel than all others, he lusted after beautiful women and because of this he shamed the high men of the land, for which reason he was greatly hated. Whenever he could, he told lies rather than the truth. . . . He hated and was jealous of all honorable men; it greatly displeased him when he saw someone acting well. He was brim-full with evil qualities.”54
This was far from the only damning judgment passed of King John, who between 1199 and 1216 enjoyed one of the least successful reigns in English history. Even a summary list of his failures runs quite long: John lost most of the Plantagenets’ lands in France (including the duchy of Normandy); he murdered Arthur of Brittany; he irritated Pope Innocent III to such a degree that he was excommunicated; he extorted so much money from his barons in taxes and semi-legal fines that he pushed many of them to the verge of either bankruptcy or rebellion; he wasted all the money he had plundered from his people on a hopeless war to regain his French lands; he drove his realm into a civil war, during which he was forced to grant a peace treaty circumscribing his royal powers, later known as Magna Carta; he reignited the civil war by renouncing Magna Carta and consequently suffered a full invasion of his realm by the heir to the French crown, Prince Louis; and in the end, he died, abandoned by most of his allies, having lost many of his crown jewels in the marshlands in eastern England known as The Wash.
To what degree precisely all of this was John’s fault is not our concern here.* What is significant, though, is that the Anonymous of Béthune, who was probably in the service of a Flemish lord from that town, near Calais, saw John’s failings through an unmistakably chivalric prism. John was not merely incompetent, an unskilled leader, unlucky, or undiplomatic. He was also untruthful, dishonorable, lustful, untrustworthy, and spiteful. For as much as William Marshal’s biographer would portray his rise through life as the reward for his dedication to knightly virtues, so too would chroniclers like the Anonymous of Béthune ascribe John’s free fall through kingship as just deserts for his unchivalrous approach to life. Knightliness—or the perception of knightliness—could make or break a man in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. It made William Marshal. It unmade King John.
William fell out with John early in his reign, and spent the middle seven years of it in self-imposed exile in Ireland. John summoned him back to England in 1213, as the wheels began to fall off his regime—Marshal used this as yet another opportunity to demonstrate his unwavering fidelity, by riding to the service of a lord who hardly deserved it on any other grounds save the oath Marshal had sworn to support him on becoming Earl of Pembroke. He stuck ostentatiously by the king’s side during the rebellion that produced Magna Carta—just as he had done during the last year of Henry II’s life, when men (including John) had abandoned the old king and looked to a new regime. Even as England collapsed into civil war, he refused to abandon his monarch—although he allowed his sons to join the rebel side, in order to hedge the family’s bets and ensure that someone ended up having backed the winning party. When John finally died, in October 1216, Marshal was, as usual, not far away. He took personal responsibility for John’s nine-year-old son Henry: knighting him, attending him on his coronation as Henry III in Gloucester Abbey, and going on to lead the war effort that removed French troops from English soil and reunited the realm under the new young king’s rule. His final charge into battle took place at Lincoln in 1217, by which time he was about seventy years old and had to be reminded to put his helmet on before he spurred his horse toward the enemy.
Lincoln was a dramatic victory, which turned the course of the war. What was more, it cemented William Marshal’s reputation as the greatest knight who had ever lived. When he died a few years later in 1219, he summoned the young king Henry to his deathbed and gave him a solemn lecture. “I beg the Lord our God that . . . he grant you grow up to be a worthy man,” croaked William. “And if it were the case that you followed in the footsteps of some wicked ancestor, and that your wish was to be like him, then I pray to God, the son of Mary, that He does not give you long to live.”
“Amen,” replied the king, and left Marshal to die in peace.»
Sorry, just couldn’t find a good stopping point. 🙂
Here, Read This 