England
John “Lackland”, 1196-1216
- “cruel, mean, ..., faithless,
greedy, weak-willed”, a womanizer with “no virtues” - lost most
of his French possessions, which forced
the English nobles to focus on problems at home - along with that he feuded with the pope
about who should be archbishop of Canterbury - the pope finally appointed Stephen Langton,
and John exiled him - the pope put England under the “interdict” (no religious
services of any kind), but John survived it all until his defeat by
Philip II of France - that led to the Magna
Charta of 1215, which was a document forced on the king by his nobles basically stating that
the king was not above the law
- two important parts of the Magna
Charta were (1) no unusual taxes were to placed on people without their consent and (2) no
free man could be arrested and held or punished without “lawful judgment of his peers and
by the law of the land”
- in 1209 the University of Cambridge
was founded
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