2. The Charter

If the Battle of Bouvines created modern France it certainly created modern England. The English Barons, as well as King John, had lost all their land in France and so for the first time had to concentrate on making England their only home. There was no real need for them to be bilingual French/English. Most of them had indeed spoken English poorly. They were fed up with the King who they felt must no longer be allowed to be a loose cannon and should now be brought under the rule of law, the same as everybody else.

-1213: The Pope’s Archbishop of Canterbury Stephen Langton supported the Barons “uprising” as it developed firstly in Northumbria where the Barons were not old French blood but new self-made men of Anglo stock. Langton presented the demands of the northern barons to the others at a meeting at St Paul’s based on the coronation charter of Henry I.

-1214: At Bury St Edmunds the Barons took an oath to compel King John to sign a charter detailing agreed rights and liberties or they would take up arms against him.

-1215: the Barons rode into the walled city of London with their charter and were well received by the populace and the King saw that he had the whole country against him. Hence the first bill of rights and responsibilities signed under oath by any king anywhere in the world. King John appealed to the Pope who backed John and suspended Archbishop Langton. John immediately recruited an army of mercenaries marched to and sacked Northumbria. The Barons then recruited none other than the son of King Philip of France Prince Louis who on arriving in London found himself the new uncrowned popular King of England. John still in the north hurried towards London and en-route took a short cut over the Wash with his army and all his wealth including the crown of Edward the Confessor. (Also more importantly all the jewellery of his mother Eleanor of Aquitaine who was the richest woman in the world at the time.) He lost the lot as it sank into the quicksands helped by the rapid incoming tide. A daily occurrence was well known to the locals but not the King.

-1216: With nothing left to pay his army John fled to Swinestead Abbey in Newark where he fell ill or perhaps he was poisoned and died aged 49.When King John’s son Henry was made King the Barons and the people dropped the Frenchman, Prince Louis.