John of England

John (December 24, 1167–October 18/19, 1216) reigned as King of England from April 6, 1199, until his death. He succeeded to the throne as the younger brother of King Richard I (known as "Richard the Lionheart"). John acquired the nicknames of "Lackland" and "Soft-sword".

Alleged illiteracy

For a long time, school children have learned that King John had to approve Magna Carta by attaching his seal to it because he could not sign it, lacking the ability to read or write (ignoring the fact that King John had a large library he treasured until the end of his life). This textbook inaccuracy resembled that of textbooks which claimed that Christopher Columbus wanted to prove the earth was round. Whether the original authors of these errors knew better and oversimplified because they wrote for children, or whether they had been misinformed themselves, as a result generations of adults remembered mainly two things about "wicked King John", both of them wrong. (The other "fact" was that, if Robin Hood had not stepped in, Prince John would have embezzled the money raised to ransom King Richard. The fact is that Prince John did embezzle the ransom money, by creating forged seals, and Robin Hood may or may not have had any historical reality. In any case, the real life source for the legend lived at least half a century before Richard was king. )

Related Topics:
Magna Carta - Christopher Columbus - Robin Hood - Embezzled

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

In fact, King John did sign the draft of the Charter that the negotiating parties hammered out in the tent on Charter Island at Runnymede on 15–18 June 1215, but it took the clerks and scribes working in the royal offices some time after everyone went home to prepare the final copies, which they then sealed and delivered to the appropriate officials. In those days, legal documents were sealed to make them official, not signed. (Even today, many legal documents are not considered effective without the seal of a notary public or corporate official, and printed legal forms such as deeds say "L.S." next to the signature lines. That stands for the Latin locus signilli ("place of the seal"), signifying that the signer has used a signature as a substitute for a seal.) When William the Conqueror (and his wife) signed the Accord of Winchester in 1072, for example, they and all the bishops signed with crosses, as illiterate people would later do, but they did so in accordance with current legal practice, not because the bishops could not write their own names.

Related Topics:
Charter Island - Runnymede - 18 June - 1215 - William the Conqueror - 1072

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Henry II had at first intended that his son Prince John receive an education to go into the Church, which would have meant Henry did not have to give him any land, but in 1171 Henry began negotiations to betroth John to the daughter of Count Humbert III of Savoy (who had no son yet and so wanted a son-in-law), and after that, talk of making John a churchman ceased. John's parents had both received a good education—Henry II spoke some half dozen languages, and Eleanor of Aquitaine had attended lectures at what would soon become the University of Paris—in addition to what they had learned of law and government, religion, and literature. John himself had received one of the best educations of any king of England. Some of the books the records show he read included: De Sacramentis Christianae Fidei by Hugh of St. Victor, Sentences by Peter Lombard, The Treatise of Origen, and a history of England—potentially Wace's Roman de Brut, based on Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae.

Related Topics:
Humbert III of Savoy - University of Paris - Hugh of St. Victor - Peter Lombard - Origen - Wace - Geoffrey of Monmouth - Historia Regum Britanniae

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~