History of England 1-6

Wars, and preparations for wars, took their toll upon the nation’s wealth in the same period. King John still entertained hopes of winning back his Angevin Empire, but for that he needed money. He was perhaps no more exacting than his brother and his father, but he was more ingenious. He discovered new ways of extracting revenue, and in 1207 levied a thirteenth part on incomes and moveable property to be paid by all classes of people; it was the first move towards general taxation. The clamour of complaint, however, was so loud that he never repeated the exercise.

For ten years he travelled throughout his kingdom in search of money; he was restless; he was always in a hurry, generally staying in any one place for no more than two or three days. In 1205 he spent only twenty-four days in London and in Westminster. For the rest of the time he was on the road. He penetrated the far north at the end of a bitter winter; he fined York and Newcastle for not affording him an appropriately grand reception. He was looking for money everywhere. He was told, during a visit to Hexham in Northumberland, that Roman treasure was buried at Corbridge nearby; he ordered his men to dig for it, but nothing was unearthed.

During the course of his rapid journeys, sometimes covering 30 miles (48 kilometres) a day, he evinced a particular interest in imposing justice upon his subjects. This again was largely because of his desire for revenue, but as a boy his tutor had been Ranulph de Glanville whose legal treatise has already been mentioned. There may be some connection. John declared once that ‘our peace should be inviolably preserved, even if it were only granted to a dog’.

So John paid much attention to the details of administration and of justice, with a diligence quite different from the insouciance of his elder brother. If he was suspicious, he was also vigilant and curious. Most of the people had never seen their king before. Yet here he was, in the robes of state, questioning and charging and judging. His own voice was the voice of law. He loved fine gems and he glittered with jewellery. He bathed regularly and often, a practice almost without precedent in the thirteenth century. The body of the king – the flesh and blood – was sacred. Here is the essence of medieval governance.

This was also a time of rising prices; a rapidly increasing population meant that the common resources of life became scarcer and more expensive. Financial, as well as demographic, explanations can be found. The importation of silver from the mines of eastern Germany increased the amount of money in circulation; as a result, prices rose between 100 and 200 per cent in the last two decades of the twelfth century. This is the proper context in which to see baronial rebellion and the sealing of the Magna Carta. The consequent ‘inflation’, to use a contemporary term, affected the king as much as the lords and the commons. War, in particular, had become much more expensive. The problem was then compounded by recession as the king took more and more money out of circulation in order to pay for his military ambitions. So the king was constrained at every hand; it might seem that the forces of nature were against him.

After the collapse of the Angevin Empire in 1204 King John began to assert himself on the island of Britain. He waged campaigns in Wales, Scotland and Ireland. In Ireland he managed to impose royal government upon the feuding Anglo-Norman barons who had divided the rule of southern and eastern Ireland among themselves; John also gained the fealty of the native Gaelic kings who recognized his power. In 1209 he launched an expedition against Scotland, and forced its king to recognize him as overlord. He subdued, temporarily, the Welsh principalities; he cowed them by violence, in other words, and before the start of hostilities he hanged at Nottingham some twenty-eight Welsh boys, the sons of chieftains who had been surrendered as hostages. It was not the least, or the last, of his acts of cruelty. But the cruelty of kings worked. At the end of these campaigns a contemporary chronicler stated that ‘there is now no one in Ireland, Scotland and Wales who does not obey the command of the King of England; that, as is well known, is more than any of his ancestors had achieved’.