King John, Revised Edition: Volume 11

by Wilfred Lewis Warren

Book Overview

King John is a study not only of a king and his political misfortunes, but also of a period--a period of profound changes in society at large, and hence one of unprecedented stressed. John's personality, so distorted by chronicles such as Roger of Wendover and Matthew Paris, is investigated through his acts: but he is seen also against the background of his predecessors on the throne, of the society in which he lived and of the problems that were...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0520036433
• ISBN13: 9780520036437
• Release Date: October 1978
• Publisher: University of California Press
• Length: 362 Pages
• Weight: 0.95 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.4" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

An Excellent Biography

In this excellent book, W. L. Warren attempts to rehabilitate the image of King John of England. Warren sees a gulf existing between the reality of John's reign and its popular perception. He writes, "It is a gulf that I have attempted in this book to bridge--reassessing the reign of King John in the light of the most recent research, and presenting it in a way that is, I hope, both readable and sound" (xi). In KING JOHN, Warren succeeds in this aim by producing an accessible text that illuminates the complex rule of John. Warren begins by analyzing the source materials and the biases that the sources contain. He explains how depending on which sources you believe, John was either an industrious and clever, yet flawed, monarch, or a foolish and wicked do-nothing king. Warren convincingly argues for the former portrait of John. John's reputation is much lower than that of his father and elder brother, but Warren's book shows that in many ways he was much like them. John was far from being the inept successor to great men. John had Henry and Richard's talent and energy, but he also had their heavy-handedness. John inherited a dire need for silver and an unstable political situation on the continent from his brother. These things coupled with John's inherent distrust of his barons robbed him of much of his continental territory. John's reign, however, was not merely one of failure. Though he didn't regain Normandy, he did consolidate power over Ireland and manage to frustrate Philip's seemingly realistic dreams of conquering England. Warren's portrayal of John is much more interesting than his reputation as the wicked king. KING JOHN is an excellent example of biography, both convincing and readable.

King John

An excellent history book, factual as a text book but reads like a novel. Hollywood could never dream up a life or character so complex.

King John

This book shows the "dastardly" King John of Robin Hood fame in a more realistic light. He is seen to be an enlightened ruler who reviewed the law courts and other English institutions and who truly, of all the previous Plantagenet kings, preferred England as his inheritance. He is not the cowed king who is seen to have signed the Magna Carta, but a king who was faced with the accumulatiom of misrule by previous Plantagnet rulers including his brother Richard the Lion Heart. This book does not hide the King's less likeable attributes, avarice, lustfullness, a bad temper, a vengeful nature, but then Richard Coeur de Leon had that too. This book shows that John was no worse than his predecessors. Read also "Eleanor of Aquitaine" by Alison Weir, which corroborates this book very well..

Truth is more fascinating than fiction

W.L. Warren begins this biography with an explanation of how and why King John ended up with the dastardly reputation we all know from Robin Hood stories and other popular fiction. John, Warren says, suffered from a confluence of factors that have rendered a slanted and warped portrait of him. Historiography methods of the past concentrated almost entirely on contemporary chronicles, practically ignoring administrative records and other types of extraneous material. John especially suffers under this kind of examination, since the chroniclers who wrote about his reign were all either poorly informed, outrageously prejudiced, or both. John is mocked with the name "Softsword" for having lost his hold on the French domains his father, Henry II, and his brother, Richard I, worked so hard to keep. Warren points out, however, that such far-flung territories could never have been maintained, and, even had Richard lived, the French outcome would probably have been the same. Far from being a military do-nothing, John is the founder of the Royal Navy. Warren marvels that a nation that came to treasure its naval superiority as England did could so completely vilify the founder of its navy. But this book is no whitewash, either. John was duplicitous and grasping and didn't trust anyone who wasn't beholden to him. He surrounded himself with baseborn hangers-on, excluding and alienating the barons of his realm. He took money for dispensing justice and then still ruled against the side that paid him. He was cunning and conniving, and was known to issue decrees that said one thing while secretly issuing instructions that ran exactly counter to what he wrote. Yet this same king instituted something that, to historians, is even more important than the Royal Navy: the systematic keeping of government and court records. Before John ascended the throne in 1199, English government recordkeeping is spotty and haphazard - a frustratingly obscure and incomplete source for the study of history. But from 1199 on, these same records emerge as a rich and authoritative resource. Hmm, almost as if John knew the chroniclers weren't going to treat him fairly... Another myth that gets busted in this book is the one about King John's being forced to sign the Magna Carta. While Warren concedes that John had backed himself into a corner by running roughshod over his barons, he explains that the Magna Carta was simply a compromise brokered between him and his opponents. Nobody was holding a gun to his head - and wouldn't have been even had guns been invented. And John had the last laugh when, days later, he made England a fief of the Pope, who reciprocated by declaring the Magna Carta null and void. When I started reading this book, I had a fairly negative attitude about King John. By the time I finished, I still didn't like him much, but I had a new appreciation for him as a brilliant, complex, and probably tortured soul who tried to do great things and occasionally succeeded.

A Good Bio of a King who was Not All That Bad

If you've been conditioned by the Robin Hood stories to think of King John as the ultimate bad guy, read this book. It will show you that, while he was not a saint and not the best ruler of England, he really was not all that bad. I found this to be a useful, informative, and well-written biography. One of the points I came away with was that King John was apparently the founder of the great British navy, that pride of later generations. His struggles with Pope Innocent III show him to be a nationalist, even a patriot of sorts. And those rebellious barons who forced the Magna Carta upon the king may have had some valid arguments, but it can also be argued that John was doing the best he could. This book shows that John compares favorably with his much more popular brother Richard the Lionheart.