Fascinating Facts: King John

King John is a man I know a lot about, since he is the protagonist in my history book Broken Reed: The Lord of Gower and King John. I’m studying him again right now for my new book The Magna Carta Story.

• He was a stocky, red-haired man, about 5 feet 5 inches tall, who put on weight as he aged.
• He was his father Henry II’s favourite.
• As the youngest son, he was trained under Ranulf de Glanville to be a royal governor.
• King Henry knighted John himself at Windsor Castle.
• When Richard died, John claimed Normandy at Rouen, seized the royal treasury, and had himself crowned at Westminster, all in short order.
• When John’s rival Arthur was captured, John starved to death his followers.
• John later murdered Arthur and threw his body in the Seine, weighted with a stone.
• In June 1204 Normandy was lost to France, the last of the French lands of the Angevin empire.
• He fell out with the Pope, who put England under an interdict – the church was effectively on strike.
• When Matilda de Braose revealed John’s greatest secret, he starved her and her son to death. Her husband William died a beggar in France.
• A prophet said John’s reign would end on Ascension Day 1213. On that day, when John was still on the throne, he had a party and then executed him. But, the day before, John had bowed in homage to the Pope and given him his kingdom!
• John agreed to Magna Carta, but he wrote to the Pope, who annulled it a few weeks later.
• Civil war broke out and London opened it’s gates to Prince Louis of France and offered him the throne.
• John really did lose his crown jewels in the Wash! The Wash is a five mile wide river estuary, and the sea came in and swallowed his baggage.