WARS
John was at once engaged in war with the supporters
of his nephew and with the French king. At Mirabeau, or Mirabel
The barons endeavoured to get the King to call a council
with the intention of forcing him to sign a Charter, but
he was very elusive.
1202.
John defeated Hugh de la March; the Poitevin, Angevin,
and Breton rebels, and captured Arthur.
1211-12.
John invaded and ravaged Wales.
1212.
The French prepared to invade England, but the Earl
of Salisbury burnt their fleet in the harbour of Damme in Flanders.
1214.
John fruitlessly invaded Poictou.
At Bouvines in 1214 the French defeated John's half-brother
the Earl of Salisbury, his nephew the Emperor Otto, and the Count of Flanders. A decisive victory, leaving John
helpless in the hands of his barons for the time, and permanently establishing the supremacy of the French king
in northern France. The defeat of Pedro of Aragon at Muret in 1213 by De Montfort, similarly established French
supremacy in Languedoc on the borders of Gascony.
1215 - 16.
John was engaged in civil war with his barons and Louis of France, whom they invited to their assistance .
Eventually, after capturing the city of London, they
persuaded the King to meet them at Runnymede, on the Thames, near Windsor, on 15th June, 1215. On the appointed
day, the King met the barons and all the assembled company of people, and was compelled to place his seal of approval
on a Charter which was presented to him, and which has become known as
Magna
Carta - the Great Charter. Having
signed against his wishes, John was determined to break his promise, but he could only do so by getting the Pope
to release him from his oath. This he proceeded to do, but the barons forestalled him. Rather than waste any more
time arguing with John, they offered the crown to the French Prince, Louis, on the understanding that the French would drive John out. Later, a French army, under
the leadership of the prince himself, landed at Dover, where it wasted too much time in trying to break the siege
of that town .In the meantime, some of the barons were disillusioned by the length of time the French were taking.
Moreover, as a conspiracy was uncovered, by which the French were likely to break their agreement with the barons,
many deserted Prince Louis.
THE SEAL OF THE GREAT CHARTER 1215
OFFICIALS
Archbishop - Hubert Walter, d. 1205; Stephen Langton,1207- 1216.
Justiciars - Geoffrey Fits-Peter, 1199 - 1213; Peter des Roches, Bishop
of Winchester, 1214 - 1215 ; Hubert de Burgh, Seneschal of Poitou, afterwards Earl of Kent, 1215 - 1216. Chancellors.
- Hubert Walter, Archbishop, 1199 - 1205; Walter Grey, afterwards Bishop of Worcester and
Archbishop of York, 1205 - 1213; Peter des Roches, Bishop of Winchester, 1213 - 1214; Walter Grey, 1214; Richard de Marisco, afterwards Bishop of Durham, 1214 -1216.
ACTS AND DOCUMENTS
Submission of John to the Pope, Innocent III., and
cession of his kingdom, an act which had the greatest consequence in the subsequent struggle between John and his
barons and the French prince Louis, and in the reign of Henry III.
The Great Charter (Magna Carta), a treaty in fact between John and the nation, with the object of restraining some
special forms of tyranny of John'; and of restoring the legal and orderly government of Henry the Second's reign,
with certain features modified, which clergy, barons, or people had found oppressive, and with the whole made to
depend upon a joint agreement, under the sanction of the Church, and not as in Henry's reign, upon the pleasure
of the king.
The method of enforcing the observance of the Charter, the license to twenty-five barons to make war upon the king,
if remonstrance's against a breach of the Charter fail, is an instance of the backwardness, as the clauses of the
Charter are of the advance of the constitutional and legal spirit of the age.
The form in which it is printed at the beginning of the Statutes is as made in the ninth year of Henry III, and
confirmed in the twenty-eighth year of Edward I
