The Plantagenets: The Warrior Kings and Queens Who Made England

Despite minor continental gains in his 1206 campaign, John was confined to England, where he roamed and took a close interest in justice. Where his predecessors had exploited the vast territories’ resources for defense, John had only the resources of England to reconquer them. He used tax structures that set a precedent for centuries to come. He also exploited the justice system and the king’s feudal rights, often against his magnates’ interests.

From 1208, John tightened his grip on his remaining territories. He subjugated Wales, Scotland, and Ireland. He persecuted England’s Jewish population for their wealth. He crushed barons who tried to resist his punitive financial demands, such as the Briouze family. In the conflict over appointment rights, the pope placed an interdiction on the country and excommunicated John; John exploited this to seize clerical property and income.

In 1212, John was forced to abandon his plan for continental campaigning to deal with a Welsh rebellion and a plot against his life. Many barons were increasingly discontent with the structural growth of bureaucratic, centralized government at their expense and John’s rule specifically.

In 1213, with Marshal’s encouragement, John made political and financial concessions to reconcile with Rome. A fleet he sent to France found Philip’s half-ready invasion fleet and destroyed it. John directed his extorted wealth toward continental campaigning, squeezing more from his reluctant barons to pay for alliances. However, his 1214 campaign ended in ruinous defeat.

In 1214-1215, hostility escalated between John and the barons; the papacy supported John throughout. In 1215, a group renounced their fealty, motivated by personal interests and a connected belief in reform to prevent kingly tyranny. A negotiated document placed limitations on the king and defined a mutually beneficial spirit of kingship: the Magna Carta. However, neither side was happy; civil conflict quickly resumed. In 1216, Philip declared John guilty of Arthur’s death. His son, Louis, invaded, advancing through the South. John moved constantly trying to secure his realm but died of illness. He left a reputation as a villainous king; the Magna Carta laid the foundations for future constitutional developments.

England faced foreign occupation, home-grown rebellion, and now a nine-year-old on the throne: John’s pious eldest son, Henry III, had papal blessing, and Marshal as his guardian. However, after several English victories, Louis withdrew.

Marshal, present throughout all the Plantagenets’ reigns, died in 1219. Henry and his new guardian aimed to achieve what John had not: baronial cooperation to campaign for Henry’s continental territories. They re-issued the Magna Carta and the Charter of the Forest in return for a large levy, which funded some minor military successes. These charters set an important precedent for constitutional bargaining. They were reissued before an assembly of bishops and magnates, an embryonic precedent for a parliamentary body.

Despite coming of age, Henry failed to take control, remaining under advisers’ sway to the detriment of short-lived continental campaigns, the honoring of Magna Carta, and the goodwill of other magnates, including Henry’s brother, Richard. In 1233 and 1234, rebellion loomed; Henry went on a pilgrimage. Under pressure, Henry eventually stepped into kingship, dismissing dominant advisers and promising governance per the notion of kingship bound by charters. He looked to Edward the Confessor as a model of fair and pious kingship.

Henry used material art and ceremony to develop his culture of kingship. He extended his family ties through a marriage that brought no land but offered connections to Germanic powers. He involved his barons and bishops in his choice and the ceremony. He married his sister to a French nobleman, Simon de Montfort, granting him power and prestige without consulting his magnates. Their initial friendship grew personally and politically sour.

Henry nurtured a culture of divine kingship through displays of piety, competing with other European rulers’ relics. His veneration of Edward the Confessor tied his Plantagenet and Norman line into ancient Saxon traditions and signaled affiliation with the Church.

Through the 1240s and 1250s, Henry harbored unfulfilled continental and crusading ambitions, dreaming of religious and Plantagenet glory. He sent de Montfort to secure continental territory several times, with poor results. De Montfort had skill as a general, unlike Henry, but was an unpopular ruler. They fell out terribly.

Henry had issues with revenue shortage and his barons. Periodic prototype parliaments sat, generally refusing his financial requests while airing grievances. Henry resorted to borrowing, reissuing the coinage, and exploiting local justice to extract money from less powerful sources. He was accused of using his royal powers to protect his favorite cliques.

In 1255, he agreed to conquer Sicily as a vassal territory to the pope, an expensive mission without practical value. If he failed, huge fines and Interdiction were threatened. In 1258, he summoned a parliament to raise funds but met resistance.

In 1158, following a year of disease and bad harvests, a group of barons, including de Montfort, strong-armed Henry into agreeing to terms that reduced the king to a figurehead for a bureaucratic government formalizing the barons’ input. In the Provisions of Oxford, they set out terms including judicial reform, the precedence of charters of liberties, and the removal of Henry’s favorite clique, the Lusignans.

By 1159, the baronial council signed the Treaty of Paris, requiring Henry to formally cede any claims to hold his continental territories independently of vassalship to the French king. This marked the end of the Plantagenet empire.

Henry was ultimately ill-suited to kingship. The English king’s geopolitical and internal power was shrunk and defined during his reign, though Henry left a cultural and artistic legacy.