JOHN Plantagenet, Lackland, King of England. — B. (?) 24 Dec. 1167 at Oxford, d. 19 Oct. 1216 at Newark. Son of Henry II (q.v.), brother and successor of Richard the Lionheart, he was called Lackland because in the division of lands made by his father among his four sons he received no share.
While he was not a statesman like his father, nor chivalrous and magnanimous like his brother, he equalled both in despotic pride and surpassed them in brutality and violence. J. failed to resolve the three great and tangled issues of his reign: namely, the relations between Church and State in England, relations with France, and internal agreements between Anglo-Saxons and Normans, between people and nobility.
Scarcely had he ascended the throne when he became embroiled in conflict with Philip Augustus, King of France, who, as protector of Arthur, J.’s cousin and claimant to the English throne, occupied part of Normandy. Indecisive and improvident, J. concluded the shameful Peace of Le Goulet on 23 May 1200; he abducted by force Isabella of Angoulême, who became his wife; he murdered his cousin Arthur and recovered Normandy.
He also came into conflict with Pope Innocent III, first for not assisting Otto of Brunswick, protected by the Pope, to obtain the Empire, and then in 1205 over the election of the new Archbishop of Canterbury, Stephen Langton (q.v.), elected by the Chapter of Canterbury and confirmed by the Pope but rejected by J., who wished his chancellor, the Bishop of Norwich, to be elected.
In 1208 an interdict was placed on England and in 1209 J. himself was excommunicated because of his persecution of ecclesiastical persons and property. In 1212 the Pope absolved J.’s subjects from their oath of fealty. In the event of J.’s incorrigibility, the throne of England was promised to Philip Augustus, King of France, who was also constituted executor of the sentence against J. Philip, supported by most of the barons and prelates of England, declared war in 1213, forcing J. to make peace with the Church (at Dover in May 1213). In this settlement J. promised the Pope: 1) obedience; 2) restitution of ecclesiastical property; 3) payment of an annual tribute to the Apostolic See for his kingdom of England, which, to save it, he gave as a fief to the Holy See; 4) recall of exiled prelates.
Innocent III accepted these terms in good faith and protected J. against Philip Augustus. In 1215 the English nobility, in revolt against the King, wrested from him the Magna Carta Libertatum (q.v.). Subsequently the barons invited to England the French Dauphin, Louis VIII, who was elected King of England and entered London in 1216, but was excommunicated by the papal legate. In the same year Innocent III and J. died. J. was succeeded by his son Henry III (q.v.), under whom, after peace was restored with Louis VIII and the barons, the Magna Carta Libertatum attained its definitive and more moderate form and, approved by the King and the papal legate, became the foundation and first example of constitutional government.