he prejudiced his case by proposing a worthless favourite for the primacy and by plundering those of the clergy who bowed to the pope’s sentences. Threatened with the desertion of his barons he drove all whom he suspected to desperation by his terrible severity towards the Braose family (1210); and by his continued misgovernment irrevocably estranged the lower classes. When submission to Rome had somewhat improved his position he squandered his last resources in a new and unsuccessful war with France (1214), and enraged the feudal classes by new claims for military service and scutages. The barons were consequently able to exact, in Magna Carta (June 1215), much more than the redress of legitimate grievances; and the people allowed the crown to be placed under the control of an oligarchical committee. When once the sovereign power had been thus divided, the natural consequence was civil war and the intervention of the French king, who had long watched for some such opportunity. John’s struggle against the barons and Prince Louis (1216), afterwards King Louis VIII., was the most creditable episode of his career. But the calamitous situation of England at the moment of his death, on the 19th of October 1216, was in the main his work; and while he lived a national reaction in favour of the dynasty was out of the question.
John’s second wife, Isabella of Angoulême (d. 1246), who married her former lover, Hugh of Lusignan, after the English king’s death, bore the king two sons, Henry III. and Richard, earl of Cornwall; and three daughters, Joan (1210–1238), wife of Alexander II., king of Scotland, Isabella (d. 1241), wife of the emperor Frederick II., and Eleanor (d. 1274), wife of William Marshal, earl of Pembroke, and then of Simon de Montfort, earl of Leicester. John had also two illegitimate sons, Richard and Oliver, and a daughter, Joan or Joanna, who married Llewelyn I. ab Iorwerth, prince of North Wales, and who died in 1236 or 1237.
Authorities.—The chief chronicles for the reign are Gervase of Canterbury’s Gesta regum, Ralf of Coggeshall’s Chronicon, Walter of Coventry’s Memoriale, Roger of Wendover’s Flores historiarum, the Annals of Burton, Dunstaple and Margan—all these in the Rolls Series. The French chronicle of the so-called “Anonyme de Béthune” (Bouquet, Recueil des historiens des Gaules et de la France, vol. xxiv.), the Histoire des ducs de Normandie et des rois d’Angleterre (ed. F. Michel, Paris, 1840) and the metrical biography of William the Marshal (Histoire de Guillaume le Maréchal, ed. Paul Meyer, 3 vols., Paris, 1891, &c.) throw valuable light on certain episodes. H. S. Sweetman’s Calendar of Documents relating to Ireland, vol. i. (Rolls Series); W. H. Bliss’s Calendar of Entries in the Papal Registers, vol. i. (Rolls Series); Potthast’s Regesta pontificum, vol. i. (Berlin, 1874); Sir T. D. Hardy’s Rotuli litterarum clausarum (Rec. Commission, 1835) and Rotuli litterarum patentium (Rec. Commission, 1835) and L. Delisle’s Catalogue des actes de Philippe Auguste (Paris, 1856) are the most important guides to the documents. Of modern works W. Stubbs’s Constitutional history, vol. i. (Oxford, 1897); the same writer’s preface to Walter of Coventry, vol. ii. (Rolls Series); Miss K. Norgate’s John Lackland (London, 1902); C. Petit-Dutaillis’ Étude sur la vie et le règne de Louis VIII. (Paris, 1894) and W. S. McKechnie’s Magna Carta (Glasgow, 1905) are among the most useful. (H. W. C. D.)
JOHN I. (1350–1395), king of Aragon, was the son of Peter IV.
and his third wife Eleanor of Sicily. He was born on the
27th of December 1350, and died by a fall from his horse, like
his namesake, cousin and contemporary of Castile. He was a
man of insignificant character, with a taste for artificial verse.
JOHN II. (1397–1479), king of Aragon, son of Ferdinand I. and
of his wife Eleanor of Albuquerque, born on the 29th of June
1397, was one of the most stirring and most unscrupulous kings
of the 15th century. In his youth he was one of the infantes
(princes) of Aragon who took part in the dissensions of Castile
during the minority and reign of John II. Till middle life he was
also lieutenant-general in Aragon for his brother and predecessor
Alphonso V., whose reign was mainly spent in Italy. In his old
age he was engaged in incessant conflicts with his Aragonese and
Catalan subjects, with Louis XI. of France, and in preparing the
way for the marriage of his son Ferdinand with Isabella of Castile,
which brought about the union of the crowns. His troubles
with his subjects were closely connected with the tragic dissensions
in his own family. John was first married to Blanche of Navarre,
of the house of Evreux. By right of Blanche he became king
of Navarre, and on her death in 1441 he was left in possession
of the kingdom for his life. But a son Charles, called, as heir of
Navarre, prince of Viana, had been born of the marriage. John
from the first regarded his son with jealousy, which after his
second marriage with Joan Henriquez, and under her influence,
grew into absolute hatred. He endeavoured to deprive his son
of his constitutional right to act as lieutenant-general of Aragon
during his father’s absence. The cause of the son was taken up
by the Aragonese, and the king’s attempt to join his second wife
in the lieutenant-generalship was set aside. There followed a
long conflict, with alternations of success and defeat, which was
not terminated till the death of the prince of Viana, perhaps by
poison given him by his stepmother, in 1461. The Catalans,
who had adopted the cause of Charles and who had grievances of
their own, called in a succession of foreign pretenders. In conflict
with these the last years of King John were spent. He was
forced to pawn Rousillon, his possession on the north-east of the
Pyrenees, to Louis XI., who refused to part with it. In his old
age he was blinded by cataract, but recovered his eyesight by the
operation of couching. The Catalan revolt was pacified in 1472,
but John had war, in which he was generally unfortunate, with
his neighbour the French king till his death on the 20th of
January 1479. He was succeeded by Ferdinand, his son by his
second marriage, who was already associated with his wife Isabella
as joint sovereign of Castile.
For the history, see Rivadeneyra, “Cronicás de los reyes de Castilla,” Biblioteca de antares españoles, vols. lxvi, lxviii (Madrid, 1845, &c.); G. Zurita, Anales de Aragon (Saragossa, 1610). The reign of John II. of Aragon is largely dealt with in W. H. Prescott’s History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella (1854).
JOHN (1296–1346), king of Bohemia, was a son of the emperor
Henry VII. by his wife Margaret, daughter of John I., duke of
Brabant, and was a member of the family of Luxemburg. Born
on the 10th of August 1296, he became count of Luxemburg in
1309, and about the same time was offered the crown of Bohemia,
which, after the death of Wenceslas III., the last king of the
Premyslides dynasty in 1306, had passed to Henry, duke of
Carinthia, under whose weak rule the country was in a very
disturbed condition. The emperor accepted this offer on behalf
of his son, who married Elizabeth (d. 1330), a sister of Wenceslas,
and after Henry’s departure for Italy, John was crowned king
of Bohemia at Prague in February 1311. Henry of Carinthia
was driven from the land, where a certain measure of order was
restored, and Moravia was again united with Bohemia. As
imperial vicar John represented his father at the diet of Nuremberg
in January 1313, and was leading an army to his assistance
in Italy when he heard of the emperor’s death, which took place
in August 1313. John was now a candidate for the imperial
throne; but, on account of his youth, his claim was not regarded
seriously, and he was persuaded to give his support to Louis,
duke of Upper Bavaria, afterwards the emperor Louis the
Bavarian. At Esslingen and elsewhere he aided Louis in his
struggle with Frederick the Fair, duke of Austria, who also
claimed the Empire; but his time was mainly passed in quelling
disturbances in Bohemia, where his German followers were
greatly disliked and where he himself soon became unpopular,
especially among the nobles; or in Luxemburg, the borders of
which county he was constantly and successfully striving to
extend. Restless, adventurous and warlike, John had soon
tired of governing his kingdom, and even discussed exchanging
it with the emperor Louis for the Palatinate; and while Bohemia
was again relapsing into a state of anarchy, her king was winning
fame as a warrior in almost every part of Europe. He fought
against the citizens of Metz and against his kinsman, John III.,
duke of Brabant; he led the knights of the Teutonic Order against
the heathen in Lithuania and Pomerania and promised Pope
John XXII. to head a crusade; and claiming to be king of Poland
he attacked the Poles and brought Silesia under his rule. He
obtained Tirol by marrying his son, John Henry, to Margaret
Maultasch, the heiress of the county, assisted the emperor to
defeat and capture Frederick the Fair at the battle of Mühldorf
in 1322, and was alternately at peace and at war with the dukes
