Season 3 | 9. The Army of God

We're supposed to learn from our own mistakes that other people's errors can be instructive too, from efforts to control the weather that went disastrously awry to the untimely death of the Segway Boss. History is a treasure trove, mishaps and meltdowns that can teach us all. I'm Tim Halford, host of cautionary tales, the podcast that mines the greatest fiascoes of the past, for their most valuable lessons. Listen to cautionary tales wherever you get your podcasts. The night's life face down on the floor of the church, as the choir begins to sing. Winter has barely gone, and the stone pressing into their faces is hard and cold. But the nights don't get up. They shiver as they listen to the solemn, clear voices of the singing churchmen running through sarms and hymns. As the singing reaches a crescendo, the nights now hear the slow, steady footsteps of a bishop and a bevy of priests pacing around them. They smell the rich, sickly scent of swinging incense burners, and feel the cool spray of holy water being sprinkled around them. They listen as the bishop calls out to God to preserve them all from diabolical attack and enemy ambushes. Should the nights get unlucky, the priests ask that they shall be granted a smooth path towards heaven. Then the moment finally comes that they can pry themselves from the icy floor and approach the bishop himself. They all promise to serve the church with their bodies and their souls, to join an army of the faithful and fight for a year against the enemies of Christ. The bishop gives them each a little white cross to sew on their clothes. They have all now sworn to become crusaders. This in itself isn't so unusual. The holy wars in the kingdom of Jerusalem are still raging, and Pope Innocent III wants all hands on deck. What is unusual is exactly who is among this group of newly pledged holy warriors. There's someone here who really hasn't been serving the church too well for most of his life. He's not a knight. He's a king. King John of England, the Plantagenet ruler who's ridden roughshod over every one of the ten commandments he can remember. Who was, until recently, excommunicated from the church by order of that same Pope Innocent III. John is one of the least likely crusaders it's possible to imagine. But here he is, wiping the dust from his shirt and telling the bishop of London that he's going to catch the next easy jet to Crusaderville and give the infidel a piece of his mind. The date of King John's cross-taking ceremony is March the 4th, 1215. In the Christian calendar, that's Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent. It's a day John's picked carefully. Lent is a season of penitence, of saying sorry, of atoning for your sins. Is this John finally admitting what a low-down, dirty scoundrel he's been all his life and seeing the error of his ways? Is he going on crusade because he suddenly developed an intense fear of damnation for his misdeeds? Or, John being John, is there some other secret agenda? Well, if you've been listening this long, I reckon you'll have your suspicions, and rightly so. John's talking the talk, he's even making a show of walking the walk, converting what little cash he has left into the international currency of gold and ordering ships to be kitted out for a long trip. But he's not doing it because he loves God and yearns to see Jerusalem liberate it. He's doing it because he's a desperate man, under attack from almost every side, and starting to run out of options. Seven months ago, John's allies fought a decisive battle at Boven. John staked his political future and a vast sum of cash on winning. He lost. Now in England, his barons, fed up with being bullied and extorted, are on the brink of rebellion. John's taking the cross, hoping the church will protect him from the oncoming storm. He'd better hope he's right. Otherwise, he's a dead man walking. I'm Dan Jones and from Sony Music Entertainment, this is History, a dynasty to die for season 3. Episode 9 - The Army of God. I don't think it's easy to feel sorry for King John. Even so, you have to admit that what happened at Boven in the summer of 1214 was a kick in the teeth. He was so close to turning his whole reign around. In 1213, he'd sorted things out with innocent the third. He'd built up a handsomely paid network of allies, including his nephew, the Emperor Otto. He'd had another great win just before Boven, when William Longsword had led that triumphant raid on Philip Augustus's navy. He'd finally made it over to France with his army, which he'd failed to do so many times before. And then Boven itself was a really close run thing. Otto was within a whisker of capturing maybe even killing Philip Augustus before the tide of the battle turned. So all in all, it was really hard luck. Then again, like they say, you get the luck you deserve, and like they also say what goes around comes around. One thing's certain. After Boven, trouble comes hurtling John's way. Or in the words of William Marshall's official biography, after Boven, began the war, the strife and criminal conflict between the King and the Barons. As we've heard, John is no stranger to conflict and strife with his Barons. He's been taxing them, meddling in their business as a stay at home King, and asking them to write to war for places in France they don't really care about. And there was the highly unpleasant business with the Brue's family. There were whispers of a conspiracy from the Barons to murder John and his family, which caused him to halt his invasion of Ireland. But that's nothing compared to what comes next. It begins in earnest in January 1215. Two months before John makes his crusading vow. It's at this point that he makes his first serious move to smoke out his enemies among the Barons, who smart observers think are readying themselves to launch a coup against him. Two ring leaders have already broken cover, Robert Fitzwater and Eustace Devesi. It said their extra mad because John tried to seduce their wives and daughters. Drew or not, both of them have fled England, more or less an admission that they are plotting something serious. So in January 1215, John invites a dozen or so of his most senior Barons and bishops to come to London and tell him to his face what their problem is. He meets them at the English headquarters of the Knights Templar, a massive fortified compound just outside London's walls, kitted out with a stunning round church, a tournament ground, and a lot of Templar Knights, who have a reputation as being the toughest in the world. That itself is a sign of just how worried John is. The Barons arrive in a bullish mood. They've already been holding meetings of their own, and they're being advised by Stephen Langton, the Archbishop of Canterbury foisted on John by Pope Innocent III. Langton is playing peacemaker, but he leans more to the rebels' point of view than the kings. Seeing as John nearly gave up his immortal soul to stop Langton getting the job of Archbishop, that's hardly surprising. Langton's advised the Barons, that if they want to hold John to account, they need a proper list of demands to place before him. What might that look like? Well, he's gone rooting around in the history books and found a document that was issued by John's great grandfather, Henry I. When Henry came to the English throne in 1100, he'd drawn up a charter, a document granting a list of rights and privileges to his subjects. Henry had basically promised not to hammer his barons with new fangled taxes, to write off debts to the crown and to abolish evil customs, whatever those might be. Langton recommends the barons try to get something like this out of John. So, when they arrive at the temple in January 1215, that's what they ask for. The trouble is, John isn't interested. His back may be up against the wall, but there's no way he's going to sign up to anything that will prevent him from raising taxes and governing the way he wants to. That may sound pig-headed, but after Bovine, John is financially in a double bind. He agreed a peace deal with Philip Augustus to avoid losing even more than he already had, but Philip had made him agree to pay 60,000 quid for the privilege. That's a debt John has to service if he doesn't want very bad things to happen. He needs to start raking in more cash soon. So he can't and won't agree to the barons demands at the temple. He tells them very vaguely that he's not going to agree to this nonsense, that he needs time to think and that he'll come back to them at Easter. The meeting breaks up, with Tempers flaring. It doesn't take a political genius to work out that if there's no peaceful settlement on the table, John's English barons are going to start kicking off. A civil war could well be on the cards, if John isn't prepared to play nice with his barons, then he's going to have to protect himself some other way. And he only has until Easter to figure out what that might be. Which is why John decides to make those crusading vows. It's an attempt to get Pope innocent on his side. At the same time, he's also got builders and engineers working on his most important castles, improving their defences. Down at Corp in Dorset, they're enlarging the moat. In the Tower of London, new defences are being erected. And John's trying to use what little cash is in his exhausted treasury to hire foreign mercenaries to come to England in case he really does need an army to save his bacon. None of this looks like the actions of a king who's really sorry for what he's done, ready to own his mistakes and hoping to turn over a new leaf. It looks much more like a king who's going to dig in his heels, throw up the barricades and show his enemies he isn't going down without a fight. When you consider medieval history like I do, you realise that a great deal of change hinges on leaps of faith. Something England's King Henry VI largely did not do. Now, he might have been better suited to selling stained glass windows and he would have been unstoppable if Shopify was around in his day. It's a commerce platform that helps you make that leap to get your business into the world. Henry would have loved Shopify's inbuilt design studio where he could have sampled hundreds of ready-to-use templates to build a beautiful online store. Plus, this Shy King would have had plenty of AI tools at his disposal helping him elevate his product descriptions, page headlines, and product photography. So, make that leap. Turn what if into with Shopify today. Sign up for your £1 per month trial today at shopify.co.uk/dinasty. Go to shopify.co.uk/dinasty. That's shopify.co.uk/dinasty. Fabio Semantilly. Big heart, big voice, big laugh. A rock star hair stylist who drove a Porsche. He was like a wizard behind the chair. The killers came for Fabio in his own backyard. You can't rationalize it. You can't figure it out. There was rampant speculation about everything. But every wild theory was wrong because the truth was even more unbelievable. What is anyone hearing what I'm hearing? And even more heartbreaking. The uncertainty of not knowing is a form of agony. From Sony Music Entertainment and Novel, this is Cut Color Kill. I'm Jonathan Hirsch. Cut Color Kill is available now on The Binge. Search for it wherever you get your podcast to start listening today. Subscribers to The Binge can listen to all episodes all at once. Add free. In the last days of April 1215, William Marshall rides to a tournament field near Northampton. This is a lovely time of year. Spring has sprung. The countryside is bursting into life. But Marshall hasn't come to admire the scenery. He certainly hasn't come to partake in any tournaments. He's in his 60s now and those days are behind him. He's here with Stephen Langton, Archbishop of Canterbury, to meet dozens of barons and many more nights gathered in full armour. None of them are exactly happy to see him. Marshall is here representing John and that's a problem in itself. Because John was supposed to be here in person a week ago to meet his angry barons. But he never showed up. He actually received some good news. Innocent the third heard about his crusading vow and sent letters telling him that he's got his back 100% in any argument John has with his subjects. If they give him any grief at all, they can expect to be excommunicated by the church. John was pleased as punch with this. So instead of travelling to Northampton, like he promised, he's lying low at Corphe Castle, protected by the newly deepened moat. He sent Marshall to ask why the rebels don't chill out a bit and think about whether they really want not only to break the law but to have their souls condemned to hell along the way. Now the fact that Marshall is here representing John, not teeming up with his unhappy barons might seem surprising given their history. After all, Marshalls spent much of John's reign in self-imposed exile in Ireland. But night that he is, Marshall can never stay away from the action for long. He also can't, or won't, duck what he considers his chivalrous duty. Marshall reckons loyalty is the highest virtue a man can have. So he's agreed to represent John no matter how difficult the task. At the tournament field, Marshall sees for himself just how fed up John's less than loyal subjects have become. In response to John taking his crusader vows, they've set themselves up as a sort of rival crusader organisation. They've adopted the name the army of God, and they've elected as their leader the mega-wealthy, extremely belligerent Baron Robert Fitzwaltor. Now we've heard that name before. Fitzwaltor is one of the two barons who fled the country when words spread of the plot against John. He's super aggressive. His official seal shows him in full armour on horseback about to slay a dragon with his sword. He's also fed up with John. For his arbitrary taxation, his tyrannical treatment of other barons, and, if the rumor mill has it right, for John's gross attempts to seduce Fitzwaltor's daughter. Marshall isn't the kind to be scared of Fitzwaltor. He's contotatoed with plenty of guys like this in his career and usually come out on top. All the same, he's got to be worried on John's behalf when Fitzwaltor tells him what the army of God wants. They've drawn up a draft charter, which they want John to agree to. Historians call it, fairly unsexily, the unknown charter. It's based on the old coronation charter of Henry I, but it goes way, way beyond that. It has dozens of conditions. The barons want John to swear to protect the church, to limit by law the taxes he can impose, and to cut down the limits of land defined as royal forest, where a special Often very harsh code of so-called "forest law" applies. I'll tell you what that means in this week's subscriber episode. They also want John to promise he won't make Englishmen fight anywhere overseas, except Normandy and Brittany, and to swear he won't arrest anyone without due process of law, nor commit any unjust act. That last line is almost hilarious. John without the unjust acts isn't really John at all. But the barons are deadly serious. Fits Walter tells Marshall that if John doesn't agree to all of this, or something very much like it, then they're going to start seizing his castles until he does. In other words, give Fits Walter and his rebel allies complete control of government policy, or its war. Marshall and Langton listen to all this and take several deep breaths. Then they leave Fits Walter and the army of God and travel back to Dorset to give John the bad news. Not surprisingly, John flies into a rage. Why among these unjust demands did the barons not ask for my kingdom too? He rants. Their demands are vain and visionary, and are unsupported by any plea of reason whatever. After quite a lot more gnashing of his teeth, he says that he will never grant such liberties as would render me their slave. After a while though, he calms down, and says that maybe he'll agree to abolish a few evil customs on the advice of faithful men. In other words, no one involved at the tournament field. But that's a very long way from what anyone needs to hear. And in the end, events overtake John's ranting and raving. On May 5, 1215, with John still nowhere near Northampton, the rebel barons in the army of God lose their patience. They meet again on the tournament field and agree to renounce their obedience to the king. They've finally gone rogue. Fitzwater sends a messenger to find John and tell him what they've decided. But if anyone thinks it's going to shock John into submission, they're all wrong. When he gets the message from the army of God, John takes stock for a moment. Then, he issues two orders. One is basically a press release, a public statement saying how sad he is that things have come to this, that this is something the law will have to deal with, and that the proper person to overseen negotiations is the Pope. The second, far less weasily in its words, is an order to the royal sheriffs across the country. He commands them to start confiscating all the lands, castles and property belonging to members of the army of God. John's talking peace, but in reality, England is now at war. It's a war that will cost some of its leading figures their lives. Bring the country to the brink of collapse and foreign conquest and produce one of the most famous documents in world history. Magna Carta. Find out how next time on this is history.