King John reacted by sending a letter to the Pope where he threatened to stop the papacy from using English ports. He followed this up with declaring "Langton an enemy of the Crown, and took the possessions of the See of Canterbury into royal custody." Innocent III responded on 23rd March 1208, by placing the whole of England under Interdict. This meant that all church services were forbidden to be held. (3) He also decreed that anyone calling Langton archbishop was guilty of high treason. (4)

The following year he excommunicated King John and offered negotiations to deal with the problem. However, John refused and all churches remained closed. John now seized the estates of the clergy and many of the bishops fled from the kingdom. It is being claimed that this was worth about 20,000 marks a year. Hostility towards King John increased and Roger of Wendover, a monk from St Albans Abbey, announced that he had "a vision has revealed to me that the king shall not rule more than fourteen years, at the end of which time he will be replaced by someone more pleasing to God." (5)

In 1211 the Pope declared that unless the King "would submit he would issue a bull absolving his subjects from their allegiance, would depose him from his throne, and commit the execution of the mandate to Philip of France." (6) As the result of these comments Philip II of France announced an invasion of England in April 1213. John stationed a large army in Kent but on 15th May, he decided to surrender his kingdom to the papacy and promised to pay an annual tribute of 1,000 marks. Many people saw this as a humiliating servitude, but others have praised John for carrying out a master stroke of diplomacy. "Although negotiations over payment of compensation meant that not until July 1214 was the interdict finally lifted, it none the less immediately converted Innocent into his most ardent defender and so - much to Langton's disquiet - John was able to promote his own clerks to vacant bishoprics". (7)

King John now decided to make another attempt at gaining control on his lost territory in France. In February 1214, he sailed from Portsmouth for La Rochelle, in a ship carrying numerous English nobles, as well as Queen Isabella of Angoulême and their five-year-old son, Richard. The campaign began well and his soldiers seized Poitou, Nantes and Angers. However, he suffered defeats at Roche-au-Moine (2nd July) and Bouvines (27th July). King John was forced to sign a five-year truce with King Philip at a price that was believed to be in the region of £40,000. (8)

King John returned to England as a discredited monarch. The only patch of territory in mainland France that remained loyal to the English Crown was Gascony and the area around Bordeaux. The historian, Frank McLynn, has argued that his military defeat in France caused John serious problems: "Having given up (or been forced to give up) their Norman lands, the new barons domiciled in England had more time to concentrate on the affairs of the island, with unpleasant consequences for John." (9)

When John tried to obtain this money by imposing yet another tax, the barons rebelled. Few barons remained loyal, and in most areas of the country, John had very little support. In January 1215 the king met his opponents at London - they came armed - and it was agreed that there should be another meeting in the near future. On 15th June, 1215, at Runnymede, King John was forced to accept the peace terms of his opponents. (10) As one historian pointed out: "The leaders of the barons in 1215 groped in the dim light towards a fundamental principle. Government must henceforward mean something more than the arbitrary rule of any man, and custom and the law must stand even above the King." (11)

The document the king was obliged to sign was the Magna Carta. In this charter the king made a long list of promises, including: (I) The English Church shall be free... freedom of elections, which is reckoned most important and very essential to the English Church. (II) If any of our earls, or barons... shall have died, and at the time of his death his heir shall be of full age... he shall have his inheritance. (VII) A widow, after the death of her husband, shall without difficulty have her inheritance. (VIII) No widow shall be compelled to marry, so long as she prefers to live without a husband. (XII) No scutage or aid (tax) shall be imposed on our kingdom, unless by common counsel of our kingdom. (XIV) And for obtaining the common counsel of the kingdom before the assessing of an aid or of a scutage, we will cause to be summoned the archbishops, bishops, abbots, earls, and greater barons."

Most of the terms of the charter dealt with the rights of the barons and those who were wealthy. However, there were some clauses that concerned ordinary people: (XX) "A freeman shall not be fined for a slight offence... and for a grave offence he shall be fined in accordance with the gravity of the offence... and a villein should be fined in the same way. (XXIII) No village or individual shall be compelled to make bridges or river banks. (XXX) No sheriff or bailiff... or other person, shall take the horses or carts of any freeman for transport duty, against the will of the said freeman. (XXXIX) No freeman shall be taken or imprisoned or outlawed or exiled or in anyway destroyed... except by the lawful judgement of his peers or by the law of the land. (XL) To no one will we sell, to no one will we refuse justice. (XLII) It shall be lawful in future for anyone to leave our kingdom... excepting those imprisoned or outlawed in accordance with the law in the kingdom." (12)

Stephen Church, the author of King John: England, Magna Carta and the Making of a Tyrant (2015) has pointed out that in reality it was a peace treaty but it was important to King John to describe it as a charter: "The barons might have forced John to make concessions about how he would rule, but no king could allow himself to be seen to capitulate to his subjects; he was, after all, set over them by God... The terms of Magna Carta were, therefore, couched in the form of a grant from a benevolent king to his faithful subjects." (13)

In July 1215, King John secretly wrote to Pope Innocent III asking him to annul the charter. Early in September the arrival of papal letters excommunicating the rebels, gave him the confidence to declare war on the Barons. He now denounced the charter and his troops laid siege to Rochester Castle. The rebels responded by offering the throne to Prince Louis, the young son of Philip II of France. In May 1216 Prince Louis invaded and made an unopposed entry into London. (14)

King John died of dysentery on 19th October 1216. His son Henry was only nine-years-old and the supporters of Louis quickly deserted to the young prince. He was crowned, and the government was carried on in his name by a group of barons led by William Marshal, Earl of Pembroke. They made sure that the principles of the Magna Carta came to be accepted as the basis of the law. (15)

King John and the Magna Carta (Answer Commentary)

Medieval and Modern Historians on King John (Answer Commentary)

Henry II: An Assessment (Answer Commentary)

Richard the Lionheart (Answer Commentary)

Christine de Pizan: A Feminist Historian (Answer Commentary)

The Growth of Female Literacy in the Middle Ages (Answer Commentary)

Women and Medieval Work (Answer Commentary)

The Medieval Village Economy (Answer Commentary)

Women and Medieval Farming (Answer Commentary)

Contemporary Accounts of the Black Death (Answer Commentary)

Disease in the 14th Century (Answer Commentary)

King Harold II and Stamford Bridge (Answer Commentary)

The Battle of Hastings (Answer Commentary)

William the Conqueror (Answer Commentary)

The Feudal System (Answer Commentary)

The Domesday Survey (Answer Commentary)

Thomas Becket and Henry II (Answer Commentary)

Why was Thomas Becket Murdered? (Answer Commentary)

Illuminated Manuscripts in the Middle Ages (Answer Commentary)

Yalding: Medieval Village Project (Differentiation)

(1) Dan Jones, The Plantagenets (2013) page 188

(2) Robert Bartlett, England Under the Norman and Angevin Kings (2000) pages 404-405

(3) Dan Jones, The Plantagenets (2013) page 188

(4) Frank McLynn, Lionheart & Lackland: King Richard, King John and the Wars of Conquest (2006) page 375

(5) Roger of Wendover, Flowers of History (c. 1235)

(6) William Stubbs, Constitutional History of England (1875) page 520

(7) Thomas K. Keefe, Henry II : Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004-2014)

(8) Wilfred Lewis Warren, King John (1991) page 224

(9) Frank McLynn, Lionheart & Lackland: King Richard, King John and the Wars of Conquest (2006) page 323

(10) Thomas K. Keefe, Henry II : Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004-2014)

(11) Winston Churchill, The Island Race (1964) page 49

(12) The Magna Carta (June, 1215)

(13) Stephen Church, King John: England, Magna Carta and the Making of a Tyrant (2015) page 229

(14) John Gillingham, The Lives of the Kings and Queens of England (1975) page 50

(15) A. L. Morton, A People's History of England (1938) page 66