The name 'King John' is almost always preceded by the word 'bad'. He is seen as tyrannical and childlike, having no control over himself or over others. He is seen as a military failure and a poor excuse for a monarch.1299Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡFM1oJkO6FX
But what if I told you that he wasn't really all that bad? What if I suggested that he was simply compared to his darling elder brother Richard every waking moment of his life? And what younger sibling doesn't get sick of that eventually?
The first argument people will take is that John ran the country into the ground, raising taxes to an explicable amount, so high that people were unable to pay them. But do these people ever ask why the taxes needed to be raised? Contrary to Disney's portrayal (which has greedy king John sleeping with bags of money next to him), the money was needed.1299Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡBgYJ1EgN8W
Not only had his brother Richard I raised taxes already in order to pay for his crusade, his mother had bankrupted the kingdom to pay for Richard's release when he, after rather foolishly insulting the person whose lands he needed to cross, got himself captured. Therefore, John raised the taxes in order to replace the money they had lost funding his brother's crusade. Furthermore, not only had Richard raised taxes, but their father Henry II had also done so. Could it be suggested that John was simply following the example set by his father and brother? It could.1299Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡlwHZIyxcO7
Also, Henry II and Richard had given away vast, vast amounts of land - John's income had decreased. (For those unfamiliar with medieval land systems let me briefly outline it here: the king owns all the land in the country. He then rents this to his vassals who pay him a fee. When this land is sold or given away, the king no longer owns it and can no longer take rents.)
The second argument is that John must have been terrible, because the Pope excommunicated him in 1209. However, this was a power struggle, not a religious one. John wanted the right to appoint his own bishops in his own country. The bishop the pope wanted to appoint had spent most of his life in France (who, at this time, was England's enemy) and so putting this man in a position of power in England was incredibly risky - is it hard to see why John was vehemently against the appointment of Stephen Langton to archbishop?1299Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡGj3GVOBVVY
Furthermore, John and the Pope soon reconciled, and the Pope even annulled Magna Carta in 1215, mere days after John had asked.1299Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡoDUgW3xOgZ
In a similar vein to this argument - did anyone ever consider the possibility that he's called bad king John because he went against the papacy? In an age when the only ones that could read and write, and the only ones that wrote history, were monks and churchmen, does it not surprise you that they may have over exaggerated John's 'badness'? Did anyone ever consider the possibility that they glossed over Richard the Lion Heart's weaknesses because he was a good Christian and went on Crusade as the Pope had asked?1299Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡuog6ryM0Kl
What if we only have this image of John being a greedy, childish, bad king simply because his brother was lorded over him. His brother has been lionised for centuries - what if tarnishing John's reputation was simply a way to mask Richard's failures?1299Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡGM1o9z5RdC
Personally, I don't believe John was as bad as he was made out to be. Of course he argued with his barons, lost territory and taxed his populace, but I would give you a grand sum of money to name me a king that didn't. John was affected by a lot of things - his mother always preferring his older brother and his entire family being perhaps the single most dysfunctional family in England's entire history.1299Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡT9ahD3w9Lo
Perhaps it is time we cut 'bad' King John some slack.1299Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡtEp3unSY7x
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