Why is King John considered to be the worst king in English history?

What did he or did he not do that earned him that reputation and made all succeeding monarchs unwilling to name their sons “John”? He lived in brutal times, but was he worse than his older brother, Richard I? Was he more stupid, or more venal or…? What? Other than the Barons Revolt, what did he do that was sos terrible that he was forced to sign the Magna Carta, which, if I understand, he did willingly?

Richard was gay, John married a 13 year old girl. (At least he married her; Richard seemed to have no interest in producing an heir).

Richard took off for the Holy Land for years and left John in charge. John kind of started liking being in charge. Richard was stupid enough to get caught by someone who held him for ransom, thus bankrupting his kingdom. John at least collected the ransom to free his brother instead of letting him rot in Germany. However, John ticked off the nobles enough that they all got together to force him to put limits on his power.

I dunno, I’m starting to see a tie here.

Yes, I"m aware of the outlines of both their histories, and of their Plantagenet father. None of it is very savory, but by the standards of the time, and in fact, up until the mid-19th century, nothing he did seems that awful. So why is he still, 900 years later, regarded as the worst king inEnglish history?

Is John considered to be the worst king? I’d like a good citation for that. Certainly he’s near the bottom, but I’d bet that cases could be made for other monarchs. Richard III is pretty unpopular. There’s James III (IIRC), William Rufus, Mary I, Edward VIII, George IV…

Richard was gay? Is that a guess by historians, or something mentioned even at the time?

I think the main things were

a) He lost most of the English possessions in France, more or less ending the Angevin Empire and

b) He got slapped around by the Pope (granted, a lot of High Medeival monarchs were slapped around by the Pope.)

c) He got slapped around by his Barons, leading to the Magna Carta

d) He’s gone down in popular culture as the bad guy in Robin Hood and

e) Aside from loosing his empire to the formally pathetically weak French Monarchy, he also almost lost England as well, and only managed to keep a Louis from conquering the Island by dying so that his Barons could unite behind someone they liked better.

I though it was almost unanimous that King Ralph is the worst monarch in English history.

James III was the worst, didn’t even have the decency to exist! But it’s only John who’s commonly called “Bad King John”.

Wasn’t he married to Berengaria? Didn’t he have a daughter who he wanted to give to Saladin?

While I am far from a historian, I do have a possible explanation from what I do know and what is given here.

It isn’t the common people who write history. Historians tend to either be or work for the people who have money, and, in that time, that would be the nobles and the royalty. Neither of them think John was a good king, the former because they had to limit his power, and the latter because he let the power of royalty be limited.

Now this biased history wouldn’t last forever, but it would likely last long enough to become a sort of meme, which is what “bad King John” really is. Despite realizing that he’s not any worse than any other king, the meme still survives in the language as something everyone “knows.”

And since a big function of royalty is PR, it makes sense that even they wouldn’t like the name, due to the meme.

Furthermore, there’s Robin Hood and Ivanhoe, where Prince John is definitely the enemy.

Just out of curiosity, how strictly has the no-John rule been followed? Is it just the first-born sons of kings? Any sons of kings? Any even likely cousins?

Have any been of the above been named Richard since Richard III?

There have been no Dicks and Johnson as Kings since (Sorry I had to say that).

The last 2 Johns were Edward VII son; died as a child and George V son (EIIR’s Uncle) who was epileptic (I think) kept away from the family and died young circa 1919.

It is not a good luck name.

Bear in mind that British monarchs get to choose the name they reign under. Even if some of them went by John their entire life, they chose something else when ascending to the throne.

I really think this is something which has occurred over the last few monarchs. I don’t think it happened earlier; I think Victoria was the first; Alexandrina was her first name which she dropped.

Much of the antipathy against Kings named John in Britain is directed against John ‘Empty Shirt’, King of Scots.

Robert III of Scots was very unlikely to inherit the crown and was christened John. He refused to rule under the name of the Empty Shirt, so renamed himself to become Robert III.

It may be different is Scotland, but I doubt whether most English people have ever heard of this guy, whereas most have heard of “Bad King John”.

Incidentally, everything you say about “John ‘Empty Shirt’” is contradicted by the Wikipedia article you link to. There is no indication there that he ever used the name Robert. He acquired the nickname ‘Empty Shirt’ at the time he was deposed, so he never got the opportunity to refuse to rule under that name, and he was succeeded by Robert I (the much more famous Robert the Bruce) so could hardly have ruled as Robert III, even if he had wanted to or had the opportunity.

As for King John, one of the things that “every schoolboy” in England knows, is that King John lost his treasure in the Wash. This sounds a lot sillier than it actually was, and adds to the common perception that John was an incompetent.

I think John’s reputation also suffered a lot by comparison with that of his brother Richard “the Lionheart”, who was traditionally built up as a great hero of English history (perhaps as much because of his fairly well deserved nickname as for anything he actually did). John, his rival for power, and a very different sort of man, was bound to be made to look bad by comparison. Modern, revisionist history has been much less kind to Richard. Now, although he is recognized as a brave (or perhaps reckless) warrior in the crusades (which themselves have changed from being seen as a ‘good thing’ to a ‘bad thing’), he is seen as having done a lousy job as ruler of England. In fact, he was not even there for most of his reign, and never seems to have given the job much attention. In comparison, John’s reputation has improved, and much of what he was previously blamed for is now laid at Richard’s feet. However, this new perspective is barely beginning to filter into the popular mind and temper traditional perceptions of John as a baddie.

I thought perhaps that title belonged to Edward VIII.

:confused: Why would you think that? He was scarcely king at all, certainly not for long enough to screw anything up. As Prince of Wales, he had been very popular. The abdication had nothing to do with him being a “bad king.”

His later brief dalliance with Naziism was nothing out of the ordinary for the English upper classes of the time, and almost certainly would not have happened if he had indeed been king. It was almost certainly the product of his frustration with having no more role in life (and perhaps anger at what had been done to him).

FWIW, my mother, who was around at the time, still thinks he was treated very shabbily, and would have made a much better king than what we actually got. I doubt if she is the only person of her generation who thought so.

Losing!

Robert III of Scotland was a different, later king. He was christened “John” and changed it.

My understanding is that while upper-class flirtation with Hitler may have been a popular stance in the 1930s, anti-Semitism was very deeply rooted in those classes. And E8 was definitely a fan of Hitler. So we can speculate all we want about what he might have done had he been allowed to continue as King, but the evidence points toward a flabby resistance, more show, really, rather than the robust resistance that actually occurred under his brother.

As for Lion-heart, per Wikipedia, he was most likely bisexual. He did produce a daughter from his marriage, and acknowledged one illegitimate son, Phillip of Cognac. It was this “failure” to produce a legitimate heir that was the thin edge of the wedge in the disslolution of the Angevin empire; John finished the process, but didn’t start it.