ABSTRACT
King John’s crises culminated in the baronial uprising of 1215-16that resulted in Magna Carta. Unlike earlier English revolts, the great rebellion of John’s last years was a broad-based movement, not aimed at mere amendment of personal grievances but at redressing general charges of misgovernment. In Stephen’s reign, individual barons had taken advantage of the king’s weakness to coerce royal charters granting them privileges, but in 1215 a large corps of barons co-operated to force John to grant a general charter of liberties including safeguards for ordinary free men. Baronial dissatisfaction was not due to John’s unpopularity alone, for twelfth-century centralization of government set in motion a broad backlash that would have caused trouble for a monarch with a more winning personality. Unlike seventeenth-century foes of Stuart absolutism who looked back to immemorial custom, the barons turned to the laws of the king’s great-grandfather, Henry I, whose reign they imagined as a society marked by good lordship. In their view, the Angevins’ extension of royal government into all corners of the kingdom and over all classes constituted unlawful innovations, challenging baronial control over the countryside. According to a contemporary chronicler, the 1215 rebellion aimed at abolition of the evil customs ‘which both the father and brother of the king had raised up to the detriment of the Church and kingdom, together with the abuses which [King John] had added’.1
