Free Richard & John: Kings at War by Frank McLynn Page A

Greenwood , told by Rose Yeatman Woolf, published by Raphael Tuck, 1910-20 ( Private Collection/The Bridgeman Art Library )
    Statue of King Richard I, by Carlo Marochetti, outside the Houses of Parliament, Westminster, London ( Mary Evans/Gerald Wilson )
     
    Calendar scene for August showing three men reaping, with a farmer directing them, from the Queen Mary Psalter ( By permission of the British Library/Royal 2 B. VII, f.78v )
    Calendar page for July showing three men cutting down trees with axes and loading logs on to a cart, from the Anglo-Saxon Calendar ( By permission of the British Library/Cotton Tiberius B. V, Part 1, f.6 )
    A man raising a club before three Jews, from Chronica Roffense by Matthew Paris ( By permission of the British Library/Cotton Nero D. II, f.183v )
    Exchequer receipt roll headed by anti-Jewish drawings ( The National Archives, Kew/ref. E401/1565 )
    William Marshal unhorses a French knight ( The Master and Fellows of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge/MS 016, f.85r )
    Seal of King John, 13th century ( Centre Historique des Archives Nationales, Paris, France, Lauros/Giraudon/The Bridgeman Art Library )
     
    Portrait of King John ( National Portrait Gallery, London )
    King John hunting a stag with hounds ( By permission of the British Library/Cotton Claudius D. II, f.116 )
    King John with his dogs, from Chronicle of England by Peter de Langtoft ( By permission of the British Library/Royal 20 A. II, f.8v )
    The sixteen-year-old Prince Arthur is murdered by his uncle, King John, at Rouen Castle, engraved by J. Rogers after W. Hamilton ( Mary Evans Picture Library )
     
    King John pays homage to Philip of France, from Chroniques de France ou de Saint Denis , vol. 1 ( By permission of the British Library/Royal 16 G. VI, f.362v )
    Battle of Bouvines, from Grandes Chroniques de France ( Bibliothèque Nationale de France/Ms Français 2609, f.219v )
    Prince Louis of France crosses the Channel to invade England ( The Master and Fellows of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge/Ms 016, f.46v )
    King John at Runnymede by Ernest Normand ( Guildhall Library, City of London )
    The Magna Carta ( By permission of the British Library/Cotton Augustus II.106 )
    King John loses his treasure in the Wash ( Getty Images )
    MAPS
    The Angevin Empire at the death of Henry II 116
     
    The Mediterranean and Palestine, showing Richard’s journey during the Crusade 166
     
    The French campaigns 326
     
    The Angevin Empire after Bouvines 412
     
    John’s campaigns 1215-16 436

Introduction
    I have always been fascinated by the personalities of Richard I and King John but, Shakespeare aside, knew little of them apart from the various filmic representations over the years. That Richard was a born-again warrior I realised from many celluloid extravaganzas and I still remember with amusement Virginia Mayo’s characterisation in King Richard and the Crusaders: ‘Fight, fight, fight. That’s all you think of, Dick Plantagenet!’ Although one critic described the sound effects for that movie as the sound of Sir Walter Scott turning in his grave, Scott himself had historians turning in their graves and has attracted two hundred years of academic contempt for his notions of Saxons and Normans still at each other’s throats in the 1190s - which did not stop Michael Curtiz and his producers annexing the idea for the famous The Adventures of Robin Hood in 1938. Since all these screen depictions showed Richard as the good guy and John as a creature of the night, I assumed this was a stereotype that could quickly be dispatched after some serious historical research. Imagine, then, my surprise, when my own sleuthing in ancient documents turned up what is in effect a reinforcement of the stereotype. But the honest historian must perforce go where the evidence leads him. If it has led me into areas which will not please the champions of King John, so be it. John’s defenders, it seems to me, work mainly by denying the reliability of the most