7 - Peace with the Pope: Diplomacy, Personal Religion, and Civil War

Summary

King John was no stranger to ecclesiastical sentences. His first marriage (1189), to his second cousin, Isabella of Gloucester, was deemed consanguineous, prompting an interdict imposed by Archbishop Baldwin of Canterbury. The count of Mortain incurred excommunication when he attempted to seize the throne in 1194. Here, he was attempting to violate the rights and possessions of a sworn crusader, his brother Richard. The sentence was pronounced by Archbishop Hubert Walter and his fellow bishops. In 1203 Hubert, acting alongside Eustace, bishop of Ely, was again charged with sanctioning John. This time, an ambulatory interdict was to be imposed if John Cumin, archbishop of Dublin, was not allowed to return from exile. This had begun in 1197, when Cumin fell into dispute with the Irish justiciar, Hamo de Valognes, a close associate of John both as count of Mortain and king. After 1199, the archbishop of Dublin was barred from the realm, whereupon he sought papal support. Hubert and Eustace did not enforce the interdict they had been ordered to impose, incurring papal rebuke, although a settlement allowed Cumin to return to Dublin in 1206. Meanwhile, whilst engaged in dispute with the pope over the appointment of Langton, and whilst England was under interdict from 1208–14, John was also threatened with a local interdict, to be applied to the lands he refused to surrender to Richard I's widow, Berengaria, as settlement of her dower. A further sentence was contemplated because the king would not restore property to his half-brother Geoffrey, archbishop of York.

This cannot have been a promising track record for those who hoped for a quick solution to the Canterbury dispute. John must have appeared intent on achieving peace on his terms or not at all. Contemporary observers saw little hope of resolution. At one point, the Life of St Hugh noted that ‘we have now endured [John] for fourteen years and three months’, suggesting that the author, Adam of Eynsham, was at work in September 1213. The king seemed to have forgotten the promises made when he succeeded Richard I.