JOHN (1167-1216), king of England, the youngest son of Henry II. by Eleanor of Aquitaine, was born at Oxford on Dec.
24, 1167. He was given the nickname of Lackland because, unlike his elder brothers, he received no apanage in the Continental provinces. When only five, John was betrothed to the heiress of Maurienne and Savoy, a principality which, as dominating the chief routes from France and Burgundy to Italy, enjoyed a con sequence out of all proportion to its area. Later, when this plan had fallen through, he was endowed with castles, revenues and lands on both sides of the channel ; the vacant earldom of Corn wall was reserved for him (1175) ; he was betrothed to Isabella the heiress of the earldom of Gloucester (1176) ; and he was granted the lordship of Ireland with the homage of the Anglo Irish baronage (1177). Henry II. even provoked a civil war by attempting to transfer the duchy of Aquitaine from the hands of Richard Coeur de Lion to those of John (1183). In spite of the incapacity which he displayed in this war, John was sent a little later to govern Ireland (1185) ; but he returned in a few months, having alienated the loyal chiefs by his childish insolence and failed to defend the settlers from the hostile septs. He joined with his brother Richard and the French king Philip Augustus in the great conspiracy of 1189, and the discovery of his treason broke the heart of the old king (see HENRY II.).
Richard on his accession confirmed John's existing possessions; married him to Isabella of Gloucester; and gave him, besides other grants, the entire revenues of six English shires ; but ex cluded him from any share in the regency which was appointed to govern England during the third crusade; and only allowed him to live in the kingdom because urged to this concession by their mother. Soon after the king's departure for the Holy Land it became known that he had designated his nephew, the young Arthur of Brittany, as his successor. John at once began to intrigue against the regents with the aim of securing England for himself. He picked a quarrel with the unpopular chancellor William Longchamp (q.v.), and succeeded, by the help of the barons and the Londoners, in expelling this minister. Not being permitted to succeed Longchamp as the head of the administra tion, John next turned to Philip Augustus for help. A bargain was struck; and when Richard was captured by Leopold, duke of Austria (Dec. 1192), the allies planned a partition of his dominions. They were, however, unable to win either English or Norman support and their schemes collapsed with Richard's return (March 1194). He magnanimously pardoned his brother,
and they lived on not unfriendly terms for the next five years. On his deathbed Richard, reversing his former arrangements, caused his barons to swear fealty to John (1199), although the hereditary claim of Arthur was by the law of primogeniture undoubtedly superior.
England and Normandy, after some hesitation, recognized John's title; the attempt of Anjou and Brittany to assert the rights of Arthur ended disastrously with the capture of the young prince at Mirebeau in Poitou (1202). Originally accepted as a political necessity, John was soon detested by the people as a tyrant and despised by the nobles for his cowardice and sloth. He inherited great difficulties—the feud with France, the dissen sions of the continental provinces, the growing indifference of England to foreign conquests, the discontent of all his subjects with a strict executive and severe taxation. But he cannot be acquitted of personal responsibility for his misfortunes. Astute in small matters, he had no breadth of view; his policy was continually warped by his passions or caprices ; he flaunted vices of the most sordid kind with a cynical indifference to public opinion, and shocked an age which was far from tender-hearted by his ferocity to vanquished enemies. He treated his most re spectable supporters with ingratitude, favoured unscrupulous ad venturers, and gave a free rein to the licence of his mercenaries. Each of his great humiliations followed as the natural result of crimes or blunders. By his divorce from Isabella of Gloucester he offended the English baronage (1200) ; by his marriage with Isabella of Angoureme, the betrothed of Hugh of Lusignan, he gave an opportunity to the discontented Poitevins for invoking French assistance and to Philip Augustus for pronouncing against him a sentence of forfeiture. The murder of Arthur (5203) ruined his cause in Normandy and Anjou, though the story that the court of the peers of France condemned him for the murder is a fable. In the quarrel with Innocent III. (1207-13; see LANGTON, STEPHEN) he prejudiced his case by proposing a worthless favourite for the primacy and by plundering the clergy who bowed to the pope's sentences. Threatened with the desertion of his barons he drove all whom he suspected to desperation by his terrible severity towards the Braose family ( i2 to) ; and by his misgovernment irrevocably estranged the lower classes.