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Before

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we start, just a quick warning that

0:32

this episode will feature violence and

0:34

sexual content that may not be suitable

0:37

for everyone.

0:44

Boots tramp and weapons

0:46

rattle against armour as the huge

0:49

English army marches down the road.

0:53

Although they're in enemy territory, it's

0:55

sweet countryside, and the troops

0:57

are in good spirits, bantering and

1:00

joking as they go. They

1:03

stop now and then to let their horses

1:05

slurp at the river that runs alongside

1:07

the road. Every

1:09

so often, a detachment of engineers

1:12

peels off from the army and starts

1:14

putting up

1:14

makeshift wooden forts along the route.

1:18

They saw planks and hammer nails,

1:20

grunting as they haul beams hewn

1:23

from tree trunks into place.

1:30

It's the high summer of 1211, and

1:33

King John's war machine is on

1:35

the move. After years

1:38

of waiting, they're finally getting to

1:40

business, on their way to seize

1:42

land for their king, restoring

1:44

him to the glory he deserves.

1:48

Glory he thinks is well overdue.

1:51

Anyone who gets in

1:53

their way will be dealt with harshly.

1:57

The best thing to do if you see the army coming...

2:00

is to lie low. That

2:03

said, lying low is sometimes

2:06

a military tactic in its own right,

2:09

especially round here. Because

2:12

John's army isn't marching through

2:14

France. This isn't the

2:16

long-awaited invasion of Normandy or

2:19

the reclaiming of the other territories snatched

2:21

away by French king Philip Augustus.

2:25

No, they're in Wales.

2:27

And here, the time-honoured way

2:29

of fighting is to use the countryside

2:32

itself as a weapon. On

2:34

the rare occasions that an English king

2:37

is bold enough to try and conquer

2:39

Welsh territory, the locals

2:41

melt into the forests and mountains, only

2:44

reappearing to launch expert

2:46

guerrilla attacks on the invading

2:49

army. That's

2:52

exactly what happened to John and

2:54

his men earlier in the year.

2:58

They'd surged into North Wales to attack

3:00

the most powerful native lord in that

3:03

region, Clewellyn Appureworth,

3:06

later to be known as Clewellyn the Great. Clewellyn

3:10

was supposed to be an ally of John's. They

3:13

used to be close. Indeed,

3:15

in a way, he's family. But

3:18

John was furious that Clewellyn

3:21

was said to have supported the Briyus family

3:23

when they were on the run. You'll

3:25

remember from last episode that the king

3:28

was trying to hound them out of existence.

3:31

That vendetta ran so deep that

3:34

John had decided to break Clewellyn's power

3:36

too. John's

3:39

first surge into Wales had been frustrated

3:42

when Clewellyn's men did as the Welsh so often do and

3:45

ran for the hills before harrying

3:47

the English soldiers into retreat. That's why this

3:50

time, in the summer,

3:53

he's back with a much, much bigger

3:55

army,

3:56

too big to be picked off by guerrilla raids.

4:00

Clewellen's spies watch with horror

4:02

as John's army rumbles into North

4:05

Wales, and they send word back

4:07

to their master that, to coin a phrase,

4:10

resistance is futile.

4:13

If they don't stop the English juggernaut,

4:15

they'll be fought everywhere, and

4:18

it'll be years before they can get John

4:20

off their backs. So

4:22

Clewellen sends an envoy to meet

4:25

the English army. And

4:27

not just any envoy. When

4:30

he and John were tight, he'd married

4:32

the king's illegitimate daughter, known

4:35

as Joan in English, or Shewan

4:37

in Welsh. This

4:39

being the middle ages, we don't know much

4:42

about Shewan. What we do know

4:44

is that she was about nineteen years old

4:46

at this point, and Clewellen is hoping

4:49

that her appearance will soften her

4:51

old man's heart. It's

4:53

a clever play, and to a point

4:56

it works. When

4:59

Shewan turns up to parley with the English,

5:01

John respectfully puts the brakes on

5:03

his march. We don't

5:05

have records of how the daddy-daughter

5:08

conversation goes, but John

5:10

does agree to call his dogs off, with

5:14

a few conditions. To

5:16

put a hard bargain simply, John

5:19

promises to go easy on Clewellen,

5:22

if the Welsh Lord hands over

5:24

a massive chunk of land, a load

5:26

of cash, and a few dozen of his

5:28

good friends as hostages to guarantee

5:30

his good behaviour. Clewellen

5:33

doesn't have much of a choice. If

5:36

John's own daughter can't squeeze out

5:38

a better deal than this, no one

5:40

can. So he agrees.

5:43

John stands his army down, feeling

5:46

like maybe he's getting the hang of this warfare

5:48

business after all. The

5:51

time is coming when he'll be good and ready

5:53

to hand out this sort of treatment to his

5:55

nemesis across the channel. Philip

5:58

Augustus, King of France.

6:01

John goes back to England taking Clewellyn's

6:04

hostages with him. Little

6:06

do these unfortunate souls know they'll

6:08

never be back in Wales again. But

6:11

little does John know that in treating

6:14

his neighbours so poorly he's

6:16

opening a can of worms. With

6:20

his list of enemies growing by the day,

6:22

it's only going to be so long before

6:25

one of them decides to take matters into

6:27

their own hands. I'm

6:32

Dan Jones and from Sony Music

6:34

Entertainment, this is History,

6:37

A Dynasty to Die for Season 3, Episode 7,

6:42

The Switch. I'm

6:54

not sure how many listeners to this podcast

6:56

are into cricket, but I am, and

6:58

there's an expression in Cricket Pundatory that

7:00

I think fits John perfectly.

7:04

It refers to a batsman who smashes easy

7:06

balls all around the ground, looking

7:08

fabulous as he does it, but

7:11

is hopeless when he comes up against

7:13

more difficult opposition. It's

7:15

called being a flat track bully.

7:18

And John is every inch a

7:21

flat track bully. As he demonstrates

7:24

between 1209 and 1212. At

7:29

this point we're a decade into John's reign.

7:33

He's in his 40s and he's stuck

7:35

in England because he can't quite afford

7:37

a full on invasion of his

7:39

old lands in France. The

7:42

English church is still on strike thanks

7:45

to that papal interdict, but

7:47

John has turned the situation to his advantage

7:50

by taking possession of church property.

7:54

In the absence of any serious challenges

7:56

to his power, the king is idling

7:59

his time away driving baronial

8:01

families like the bruises to death

8:04

and destruction. On

8:06

the surface of things, with every passing

8:09

year, John starts to look more

8:11

and more like a ruler you don't want

8:13

to tangle with. Especially

8:16

in what we would call today foreign

8:18

policy. The

8:20

long-term goal remains taking on

8:22

Philip Augustus in France. But

8:25

between 1209 and 1212, John's

8:28

attention is fixed firmly on

8:30

his small and relatively weak

8:33

neighbours. He

8:35

goes first at the Scots. The

8:40

ageing king William the Lion

8:43

is pushing 70 when John comes

8:45

to the throne. But he still

8:47

has big ambitions for enlarging

8:49

Scotland, and figures he'll have

8:52

a go at adding a few of England's

8:54

northern counties to his realm. In 1209,

8:58

William the Lion is said to be in contact

9:01

with several northern English barons

9:03

who are fed up with John's interfering

9:06

style of kingship, and to

9:08

be cozying up to Philip Augustus. To

9:11

put him off both these ideas, John

9:14

sends an army up to the Scottish borders.

9:17

It's big and scary enough to have

9:19

William begging for a peace treaty,

9:22

sweetened with a massive pot of cash

9:24

for John's French invasion fund. John

9:28

makes him grovel and enjoys

9:30

seeing the older man suffer. Straight

9:33

after Scotland, John takes an army

9:35

to Ireland. He's got

9:38

a variety of beefs with various English

9:40

barons who settled their families there.

9:43

So he pulls out more or less the same

9:46

flat track bully playbook. In

9:48

summer 1210, John lands a

9:50

big army at Waterford, marches towards

9:53

Dublin, and scares the bejesus out

9:55

of everyone in his path. And

9:58

finally, there's Wales. where

10:00

this episode began. John

10:03

wants to show the Welsh who's boss, and

10:05

he's willing to humiliate his son-in-law

10:08

Clewellen in the process. Once

10:11

he's taken all those hostages, and made

10:13

Clewellen bend the knee, John feels

10:16

like he's on top of the world. Arguably,

10:20

no English king before him has

10:22

smashed the Scots, the Irish and

10:24

the Welsh so hard in such

10:27

a short space of time. John

10:30

Chronicler sums up the mood in the British

10:32

Isles in 1212. There

10:34

was now no one in Ireland, Scotland

10:37

or Wales who did not bow to

10:39

John's nod, a situation

10:41

which, as is well known, none

10:43

of his predecessors had achieved. Which

10:46

is all well and good, until

10:49

it's not, because John

10:51

the flat-track bully isn't going to

10:53

have things his own way forever.

10:56

It doesn't take long for his apparent

10:58

triumph to start falling apart.

11:02

It's the Welsh who stick it to John first. For

11:06

a few months after he humiliates

11:08

Clewellen and Schuan, things

11:10

are harmonious. Clewellen

11:12

even travels hundreds of miles east

11:15

to hang out with John in Cambridge for

11:17

Easter in 1212. We

11:20

can imagine John boasting at dinner

11:23

that with the profits of his British wars

11:25

and his ongoing scalping of the church,

11:28

he's raising an army that's going to sail

11:31

that summer to Aquitaine to give

11:33

Philip Augustus what for. If

11:36

so, that must be rather galling

11:38

for Suelintah here.

11:40

His cash is now part of John's

11:43

war chest.

11:44

The outcome is that in the summer, just

11:47

as John is about to head to Aquitaine, Wales

11:50

erupts into all-out rebellion.

11:53

All

11:55

the forts John's army built in 1211 are

11:58

raised to the ground. John

12:01

has to put his French invasion on pause

12:04

and march the army in the opposite direction

12:06

to deal with this mess. He

12:09

orders every soldier under his command

12:12

to head for Chester, the nearest

12:14

big English city to North Wales, and

12:17

wait for his instruction. He's

12:19

planning to go big, really

12:22

big. He's going to take

12:24

nearly 10,000 men storming

12:27

through North Wales, building castles

12:29

on a far, far bigger scale

12:32

than the forts he set up the previous year.

12:36

He's not just going to force a deal, he's

12:38

actually going to conquer Wales completely.

12:41

By late

12:43

August, John himself is in Chester.

12:47

On the night before his army sets out, he

12:50

sits down for a slap-up dinner in

12:52

anticipation of the fire and

12:54

fury he's about to launch into Wales.

12:58

As an appetizer, he's enjoyed some

13:01

grisly entertainment. 28 of

13:03

the hostages he took from Wales the previous

13:06

year hanged. Now

13:08

he's ready for his soup starter. Then

13:16

messengers burst into the dinner hall. One

13:19

later chronicler says they come from Shewan

13:22

herself, another that they come

13:24

from William the Lion, who has spies

13:26

in Wales. Whoever

13:30

sends them, what the messengers say

13:32

makes John's blood run cold. There's

13:35

a plot, a very serious

13:38

one, and it's coming from inside

13:40

John's own army. Some

13:43

of the barons are just waiting for the

13:45

departure to Wales before they launch

13:48

a brutal coup attempt. Once

13:50

the army is underway, they're either

13:52

going to make sure John is murdered by

13:55

friendly fire, or else arrange

13:57

for him to be ambushed and taken prisoner

13:59

by the police. the Welsh. There's

14:02

talk of killing his kids, of

14:04

doing dreadful things to his wife. John

14:08

is terrified. Despite

14:12

his natural paranoia, he hadn't

14:14

seen this coming, and word is, this

14:17

is no idle rumour.

14:20

Indeed, two of his most powerful

14:22

northern barons have fled the

14:24

realm, which looks very

14:26

suspicious. They're called Robert

14:29

Fitzwalter and Eustace Devesci.

14:32

Make a note of those names, because we'll hear

14:34

more from them. Everyone

14:37

in the know is telling John, this is

14:39

real. You've made more enemies

14:42

than you realise. If you go

14:44

ahead with this invasion,

14:46

you're a dead man.

14:48

John doesn't panic, but he does

14:50

act fast. He can't risk

14:53

continuing with the Welsh campaign. He

14:56

disbands the main army and sends

14:58

units off to Fitzwalter and Vessie's

15:00

castles to seize them for the crown.

15:03

Then he high-tails

15:05

it out of Chester and puts his

15:07

sons, Henry aged four

15:09

and Richard, still a baby, into

15:12

safe houses. He

15:14

realises he's going to have to postpone his

15:16

expedition to France again. He

15:19

also accepts the broader situation. In making

15:22

himself master of the British Isles, the

15:25

terror of his barons and the plunder

15:27

of the church, he's put several

15:29

huge targets on his own back.

15:34

If he's ever going to win back Normandy

15:36

and Anjou to reclaim that

15:38

plantagenent glory he so

15:41

desperately desires, then he's going

15:43

to have to start turning enemies back

15:45

into friends.

15:47

But where to begin?

15:52

Well, that's where John turns

15:54

up a rare political masterstroke.

16:03

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16:06

and eat like a King? The good

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news is, you don't need the staff, gold

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17:04

Talking Bull podcast

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17:09

Racing. Each month, join me, Mr. Hume,

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We weren't afraid to have a bit of fun along

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us wherever you get your podcasts. The

18:31

US

18:37

At the same time that the Welsh are throwing a

18:39

whole bag full of spanners into John's

18:41

plans for a war with Philip Augustus, a hermit

18:44

called Peter of Wakefield starts

18:46

wandering around England telling people

18:49

a bizarre story.

18:53

From what we know about Peter, he was very

18:55

much a man of the people. He was

18:58

illiterate, possibly not entirely

19:00

sane and rail thin since

19:03

he lived on a diet of bread and water. In 1212,

19:08

Peter has a vision in which Christ appears

19:10

to him and tells him all manner

19:12

of things, including most importantly

19:15

that King John is only destined

19:17

to reign for 14 years. Even

19:21

in an age before compulsory mass tuition,

19:24

people can run those numbers. John

19:27

came to the throne in 1199. This

19:30

means he's only got a year or so

19:32

left. Quite

19:35

a few people like the sound of this prophecy and

19:37

Peter begins to gather a following.

19:41

It's the medieval equivalent of going

19:43

viral. It isn't long

19:45

before John hears about him and

19:48

has him arrested and brought to court. John

19:51

summons Peter to his royal presence

19:54

and demands he repeat his predictions.

19:57

To be fair to Peter, that's exactly what

19:59

he does.

20:00

You're dead, mate," he says, in about

20:02

a year. Peter

20:05

doesn't attempt to weasel out of it, because

20:08

in his mind it's plain as day.

20:11

Christ has told him something, so it's true.

20:14

John can do with him, says Peter, whatever

20:17

he likes.

20:20

Initially, John finds all this highly

20:23

amusing. In fact, John

20:25

actually is a big fan of hermits, as

20:27

we'll discuss on this week's subscriber

20:30

episode. But his advisers and

20:32

counsellors are not amused. They

20:34

convince John to deal with this impudent

20:37

recluse. So

20:39

John sends Peter of Wakefield to his

20:41

favourite dungeon of no escape, and

20:43

orders that he be kept in chains until

20:46

after Ascension Day, 40 days

20:48

after Easter, 1213. That's

20:51

the latest possible date that John could

20:53

survive, according to the prophecy. As

20:57

time ticks down towards Ascension

20:59

Day, John tries to keep cool

21:01

and calm. Yet Peter's

21:04

predictions, along with the massive

21:06

shock of the plot between his own northern

21:08

barons and the Welsh, is getting

21:11

him down. It's

21:13

at this moment that John finally realises

21:16

he needs friends. Or

21:18

at least, one very powerful

21:21

friend. If only there

21:23

was some group in his realm whose

21:25

whole world philosophy were based

21:27

on saving sinners, offering forgiveness

21:30

and turning the other cheek. If

21:33

only... ...very

21:35

kind

21:37

of... ...sick... ...Eureka.

21:44

With Peter of Wakefield's divine death

21:46

sentence hanging over his head, John

21:48

pulls off one of the most remarkable

21:51

U-turns ever seen in British

21:53

history. He

21:55

sends word to the one man

21:58

he thinks can protect him. John

22:01

writes to Pope Innocent

22:04

III. He tells him he's

22:06

ready to come in from the cold. If

22:09

the Pope will let him off the sentence of interdict,

22:12

John says, he'll basically do

22:14

whatever he's told. He's

22:17

seen the error of his ways. John

22:21

sends a delegation to Rome armed

22:23

with fine words of regret and

22:25

promises to be a better guy. The

22:29

Pope goes for it.

22:38

Now, Innocent III is no fool,

22:41

far from it. There's no shade of a

22:43

chance he actually believes John

22:45

has seen the error of his ways. But

22:48

he's also an arch-pragmatist.

22:51

He sees an opportunity for getting

22:53

the Plantagenets to commit to supporting

22:55

him in all his quarrels with other

22:58

princes and kings. Innocent

23:01

graciously sends word back to England,

23:04

suspending the interdict. Then

23:07

he sends officials to hold a grand

23:09

open-air ceremony welcoming

23:11

the excommunicated John back

23:13

into the church. Innocent

23:16

also sends over to England the

23:19

one man John wants to see least, Stephen

23:22

Langton. Langton

23:25

is Pope Innocent's pick for Archbishop

23:27

of Canterbury and one of the main reasons

23:29

the relationship broke down in the first place.

23:33

The deal is, if John wants

23:35

to get back into bed with the papacy, he

23:37

has to accept Langton. John

23:41

says fine. Almost

23:43

on a dime, England's position

23:46

has totally switched. Ascension

23:50

Day comes and goes and John

23:53

sees the light of a new day. Filled

23:56

with gratitude and humility, he

23:58

has Peter of Wakefield, excellently. executed for his prophecy

24:01

and turns his gaze back across the channel. With

24:07

the might of the Catholic Church at his back and

24:09

his royal coffers overflowing with

24:12

silver, John finally feels

24:14

strong enough to go storming

24:16

back into France and make Philip Augustus

24:19

pay. But is the

24:21

flat track bully ready

24:23

for a real test? Find

24:28

out next time on This is

24:30

History.