Henry William Carless Davis

“ In spite of the incapacity which he displayed in this war, John was sent a little later to govern Ireland (1185) ; but he returned in a few months covered with disgrace, having alienated the loyal chiefs by his childish insolence and entirely failed to defend the settlers from the hostile septs. Remaining henceforth at his father’s side he was treated with the utmost indulgence. But he joined with his brother Richard and the French king Philip Augustus in the great conspiracy of 1189, and the discovery of his treason broke the heart of the old king (see Henry II.) . ”

“ Soon after the king’s departure for the Holy Land it became known that he had designated his nephew, the young Arthur of Brittany, as his successor. John at once began to intrigue against the regents with the aim of securing England for himself. He picked a quarrel with the unpopular chancellor William Longchamp (q.v.) , and succeeded, by the help of the barons and the Londoners, in expelling this minister, whose chief fault was that of fidelity to the absent Richard. Not being permitted to succeed Longchamp as the head of the administration, John next turned to Philip Augustus for help. ”

“ John’s struggle against the barons and Prince Louis (1216) , afterwards King Louis VIII., was the most creditable episode of his career. But the calamitous situation of England at the moment of his death, on the 19th of October 1216, was in the main his work; and while he lived a national reaction in favour of the dynasty was out of the question.
John’s second wife, Isabella of Angoulême (d. 1246) , who married her former lover, Hugh of Lusignan, after the English king’s death, bore the king two sons, Henry III. and Richard, earl of Cornwall ”