KING JOHN’S DOWNFALL: 1205-1216 EDEXCEL HISTORY GCSE (9-1) OPTION B - KEY TOPIC 3 THE REIGNS OF KING RICHARD I AND KING JOHN, (1189-1216) Learning Objectives

• Students should appreciate the significance of King John’s conflicts with the Papacy during the Learning1200s and , Objectives

• •Students X should understand the factors contributing to low baronial support for King John and how this declining support led to the First Barons’ War, • Students should understand the condition of in 1216 when a minor acceded to the throne. Content Learning Resources • Video: The Baron’s Revolt • Quiz [Page 3 in this document] • • Video: The Baron’s Revolt [Online link] [Length: 08:56]

• Video: Magna Carta—The Document and Its Importance [Online link] [Length: 05:55] •Recommended Reading extracts [Pages 4Reading and 5 in this document] Recommended• Text here Pre-Reading For Teachers

• Magna Carta: A Primer (The Road to Runnymede) pg. 21-26 [Online link] •Activities Magna Carta: A Primer (Magna Carta’s Provisions) pg. 29-36 [Online link]

• • MagnaX Carta: A Primer (The Charter’s Immediate Effects) pg. 39-43 [Online link]

Extension Activities • X

1 Key Questions

• What caused King John’s dispute with the Pope and how was it resolved? • What was the and how did it impact everyday life? • What factors led to worsening relations between King John and the baronial class? • How did the provisions of Magna Carta reflect the barons’ grievances? •Learning What happened Objectivesin the immediate aftermath of Magna Carta?

Activities• X • Begin the lesson with a general class discussion on what students know about Magna Carta—its origins, purpose, and significance today. Content • Play The Baron’s Revolt video module and ask students whether they think that King John was the •“ worstVideo: king inThe English Baron history.’s Revolt” Ask them to explain their answer and list their reasons in order of importance. • • Ask students to read the following extracts from the learning resources section, then use the quiz resource to test their knowledge of the lesson’s key questions (read the questions aloud and get Recommendedstudents to mark their partner Reading’s answers): • Extract 1: from “Q&A: the legal significance of Magna Carta” • Text here • Extract 2: from “Magna Carta: A Primer”

• Play Magna Carta—The Document and Its Importance video module. Ask students whether they think Activitiesthat King John and the barons realized the significance of Magna Carta at the time. Ask them to explain their answer, considering whether Magna Carta was pragmatic or a grand political treatise. • • SplitX students into groups of three, with each student representing King John, a baron, and Pope Innocent III respectively. Ask students to roleplay each figure and debate their point of view, wih King John defending himself from the criticisms of the Pope and the baron. •Extension Ask students to write Activities a short newspaper article from the point of view of an English baron immediately after the signing of Magna Carta, detailing the victories won for the baronial class, • X • Ask students to split their page in two. Instruct them to list Magna Carta principles in order of their importance to the barons on one side of the page, and in order of their importance to modern Britain on the other side of the page.

2 QUIZ

1. In what year was Magna Carta signed, and where was it signed?

1215, Runnymede.

2. What was the Interdict?

LearningThe suspension Objectives of all religious rites, such as mass, weddings, and funerals. • X 3. What threat prompted John to accept Pope Innocent III’s recommendation of Steven Langton as Archbishop of ? Content The Pope called on King Philip of France to depose John. • Video: The Baron’s Revolt

4. • True or false; Magna Carta guaranteed that the English Church shall be “free and shall have its rights undiminished”.

RecommendedTrue. Reading

• Text here 5. Which of King John’s economic policies were the barons attempting to address by inserting Clause 14 of the charter, which required the king to “obtain the common counsel of the kingdom for the assessment of aid”? Activities Excessive taxation. • X

6. What is habeas corpus?

ExtensionThe right to be Activitiesfree from arbitrary detention (a citizen must to be charged with a crime and • X brought before a court).

7. True or false; “Magna Carta enshrined the principle that the King was above the law”.

False (it enshrined the principle that the King was not above the law).

3 Reading Extract 1

Extract from “Q&A: the legal significance of Magna Carta” Owen Bowcott in The Guardian newspaper (June 2015)

“Magna Carta was a product of its time. The medieval knights and lords who gathered in June 1215 assembled a long list of grievances to present to the king. Some, however, resonate to this day, such as theLearning declaration in clause Objectives 40 that: “To no one will we sell, to no one deny or delay justice.” Others suggest complaints more specific to the , such as clause 33, which demands the removal of all fish• Xweirs on the Thames and throughout England; and clause six, which prevents heirs being given in “to someone of lower social standing”. Four clauses are commonly agreed to remain in law: clause one guaranteeing that the “English church” shallContent be “free and shall have its rights undiminished”; clause 13 permitting the City of to “enjoy all its liberties and ancient customs”; and clauses 39 and 40, which are jointly seen as embodying what • Video: The Baron’s Revolt have become the rights of habeas corpus – banning arbitrary detention – and trial by jury. • The former lord chief Justice Lord Judge has noted that the word “parliament” does not appear in the document. Nor can the word “democracy” be found and “Magna Carta” is not even in the text. Those absences do not deter enthusiasts. Lady Justice Arden, an appeal court judge, said its significance wasRecommended not so much as a piece of Readingparchment but as a “defining moment in English constitutional history”. Its spirit• Textand clauses here had been absorbed into common law so that Magna Carta “has remained alive in our national consciousness”, she said.

That both the king, and by extension the government, must behave in accordance with the law is one of theActivities constitutional principles that emerges from Magna Carta. Lord Sumption, a medieval historian and supreme court justice, has argued that the principle was “generally accepted for at least a century before • 1215”X and the dispute was “about what the law was”. Lady Hale, the deputy president of the supreme court, acknowledges that “historians tend not to be so excited” because they see it as “not so very different from the charters of other kings, and that much of itsExtension contents were simply Activities reaffirming generally understood principles of feudal law”. She adds, however, that Magna Carta confirmed “the idea that government as well as the governed is bound by the law”. • X Clause 14 of the charter required the king to “obtain the common counsel of the kingdom for the assessment of aid”. In effect, it established that those forced to pay taxes should have a voice in deciding what they should be used for. “It was disregarding that principle that lost us the American colonies getting on for six centuries later,” Hale said.”

4 Reading Extract 2

Extract from “Magna Carta: A Primer” Dr. Eamonn Butler

Learning Objectives “The Church in mediaeval England was another power unto itself, and as such always a potential threat to the• authorityX of the king. So John found himself clashing with it, as Henry II and other monarchs had done before him. The dispute started when the clerics were deeply divided about who should succeed as Archbishop of Canterbury,Content the head of the English Church. John had his own favourite but the Pope, Innocent III (1161-1216), stepped in to appoint Steven Langton (1150-1228) as Archbishop instead. Langton was the • Video: The Baron’s Revolt foremost churchman in England and a distinguished biblical scholar – he devised the order of books in the• Bible that we still use today – and Innocent had known him when they were both studying in . But he was also a critic of absolute earthly power. Not surprisingly, John was deeply discontented by this

appointment. TheRecommended quarrel came to a head in Reading 1207 when John dismissed the Canterbury clerics. In response, the Pope placed all England under an interdict, meaning that no religious rites could be performed: no mass, and • not evenText christenings, here weddings or funerals. In response, John seized the lands of those ecclesiastical foundations that did not support him. In 1209 the Pope excommunicated the King; whereupon John squeezed further in order to extract even more revenue from Church property. ButActivities John’s hold on power was becoming tenuous. Internationally, there were rumours that the Pope • wouldX depose him. The French king, Philip II (1165-1223), posed a threat. And at home, the northern barons were in revolt.

At last, in 1212 the Pope called on King Philip to depose John – who promptly backed down. In 1213 he acceptedExtension Langton as Archbishop, Activities agreed to pay compensation to the Church and even placed his kingdom under the feudal protection of the Pope. England was now a papal fief, leased from the Holy • See.X Langton took up his position as Archbishop, and gave John full absolution.”

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