The road to Runnymede, a veritable path of discord and greed!
In 1215 the English barons forced King John to sign Magna Carta (Great Charter) at Runnymede. This document was an important turning point in the history of the English monarchy. The king did not want to agree to its provisions so why did he sign it? The reason lay in John’s own character. Losing Normandy and the other French lands was one of the first steps in the direction of Runnymede and it would not be the last.
You mean to say that the French soldiers gained access by charging up the garderobe chute?
Yeah, Goodness knows they surprised us all, it really was the most unexpected assault route!
And by doing so they gained entry to our beloved Normandy in order to burn, rape and loot!
Well that’s exactly what happened, and some are saying that dear King John needs the boot!
This sentiment would gradually spread and eventually gain momentum amongst the nobility over the next few years. However, in the meantime, the embarrassing way that Normandy was lost was a source of considerable discomfort to the king.
Ohh! The chortles and guffaws regarding toilets that greeted John as he slunk back into England must have caused him great dismay.
Toilet humour held sway, it was most certainly and indeed most properly the order of the day!
After all it was the garderobe chute built by King John which resulted in the English crown being driven from the fray!
‘At your convenience, your majesty’ was simply no longer part of the script followed by domestic factotums when the king visited the various royal households after the debacle of Chateau Gaillard. Toilet jokes were doing the rounds in the hostelries and taverns of England in the aftermath of the crown’s ignominious ejection from Normandy. A gang of raucous youths at the back of the crowd at one gathering were heard to chant:
‘If your majesty had stuck with a simple chamber pot, you would not have lost the whole continental lot!
But you insisted on building that wretched garderobe and this is what you have jolly well got!’
The pointed resentment of the populace at the circumstances of the king’s arrival at Rochester castle was clearly made manifest. The slyly smirking sentries deliberately positioned across the moat from the base of the garderobe by a royal official with a healthy sense of humour, their shoulders contorting with mirth as the king passed, was a sight hardly calculated to alleviate John’s rather downbeat mood as he entered the castle’s portals for a night’s rest and respite. The soldiers grinning visages, with their spears jeeringly pointing to the garderobe chute of Rochester castle, constituting a veritable nightmare for John even before the bed chamber candles had been extinguished.
Rochester castle as it stands today.
Nevertheless, the king was soon scheming to get back at the man whom he had bitterly termed as ‘De-esgusting’ Augustus. In this endeavour John had to face a rather awkward fact of life, many of his barons including the much respected William Marshall owed allegiance to the French king because they also held lands in France.
William Marshall in combat as depicted by contemporary historian, Matthew Paris.
For this reason a sizeable number of them declined to support John’s campaign to wrestle his former lands from ‘De-esgusting’ Augustus. The French king was not slow to remind the barons of the implications of the situation:
‘You Anglo Norman barons hold your French estates at my generous pleasure!
If you support John, upon your heads I will bring a really quite considerable amount of pressure!’
John’s two predecessors Henry II and Richard, faced with the same obstacle of potentially divided baronial loyalties, were able to overcome it whereas he was unable to do so. Therein lay the measure of the man and indeed there too, was to be found the source of the first step on the path to the field at Runnymede.
In May of 1206, John returned to France making his way to Poitou where the nobles, although not greatly enamoured of him, were somewhat less so of the King of France. Well, perhaps it appears that John, rather than Philip, appeared the lesser of two evils as a consideration in the barons fickle but understandably self-serving political calculations. In any case John managed to consolidate support in the region and in September he crossed the Loire to Normandy.
The flag of Poitou.
However John’s endeavours failed to match his aims and little more than a month later in October, he concluded a most embarrassing two year truce with King Philip ‘de-esgusting’ Augustus. To many on either side of the English Channel, John’s military talents appeared to be really quite sorely, indeed dangerously lacking.
Both in England and in France, he was cruelly mocked as King John ‘softsword’!
But in truth, t’was the only title that anyone, unto John, could duly award!
So John! Yea John is a monarch that a kingdom can ill afford!
Bringing it all back home!
John’s conduct in England was no more distinguished than it had been on French territory. One of John’s less enlightened initiatives was to replace some of the English shire sheriffs with the French mercenary chieftains whom he had inexplicably grown to trust. These rough fellows had made a thorough nuisance of themselves in Normandy and would proceed to the do the same in England. Taxation had never been particularly popular, but giving the task of extracting the revenue to foreigners whose modus operandi was considerably less than diplomatic, made it even less palatable. The newly installed foreign officials also earned the intense resentment of the English nobility who were angered at being displaced by them as the king’s counsellors.
Recently widowed? Time to remarry!
However with John as king there could be reason to tarry!
Imagine holding a grieving, widowed lady to high ransom!
Over her desire to marry a man whom she finds so incredibly handsome!
John’s treatment of noble widows was an significant paving stone on the the road to Runnymede. The medieval monarch had the right to demand a payment from a moneyed widow in the event of her marrying again. His predecessors had asked the ladies for a relatively light fee, but John now exacted a greatly inflated amount to gain his permission for the nuptials to take place.
Hey honey!
Really looking forward to seeing you at the steps of the altar!
Mmm, gorgeous, but with the king’s high price, marital proceedings might well falter!
The years of the royal reign that John had so greatly coveted had not been kind. The king had lost much of the Angevin empire but he was now steering a course that was to lose him even more.