GIOVANNI Plantagenet, Lackland, king of ENGLAND. — Born on 24 (?) December 1167 at Oxford, died on
19 October 1216 at Nervark. II (v.), brother and successor of Richard the Lionheart, he was called Lackland because, in the division of the lands made by his father among his four sons, he received no share.
Although he was not a politician like his father, nor chivalrous and magnanimous like his brother, he equalled both in despotic pride, and surpassed them in brutality and violence. G. was unable to resolve the three great and intricate questions of his reign: namely, relations between Church and State in England, relations with France, and internal agreements between Anglo-Saxons and Normans, between the people and the nobility.
As soon as he ascended the throne, he became involved in the conflict with Philip Augustus, king of France, who, as protector of Arthur, G.’s cousin and claimant to the English throne, occupied part of Normandy. Indecisive and lacking foresight, G. concluded the shameful peace of Vesein on 23 May 1200; he violently abducted Isabella of Angoulême, who became his wife; murdered his cousin Arthur, and recovered Normandy.
He also came into conflict with Pope Innocent III because he did not help Otto of Brunswick, protected by the Pope, to obtain the Empire, and then, in 1205, on account of the election of the new archbishop of Canterbury, Langton (v.), elected by the Chapter of Canterbury and confirmed by the Pope, but not accepted by him, since he wanted his own chancellor, the bishop of Norwich, to be elected.
In 1208 the interdict was imposed on England, and in 1209 G. himself was excommunicated on account of the persecutions against ecclesiastical persons and property. In 1212 the Pontiff released the subjects from their oath of allegiance. In the event of G.’s incorrigibility, the throne of England was promised to Philip Augustus, king of France, who was also appointed executor of the sentence against G. Philip, supported by most of the barons and prelates of England, declared war in 1213, and G. was thereby compelled to make peace with the Church (at Dover in May 1213). In this peace G. 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, in order to save it, he gave as a fief to the Holy See; 4) the recall of the exiled prelates.
Innocent III believed in the sincerity of these conditions and protected G. against Philip Augustus. In 1215 the English nobility, having risen against the King, Magna Charta libertatum (v.) from him. Thereafter the nobles called the Dauphin of France, Louis VIII, to England; elected king of England, he entered London in 1216, but was excommunicated by the papal legate. In the same year Innocent III and G. died. G. was succeeded by his son Henry III (v.), under whom, once peace had been restored with Louis VIII and the nobles, the Magna Charta libertatum acquired its definitive and more moderate form and, approved by the King and the papal legate, became the foundation and first example of constitutional government.