Vol 1: The Bluets - Lackham Countryside Centre

The Bluets 53
210
.
King John came to the throne in 1199 after the death of his brother
Richard the Lionheart. He had, of course, been regent while Richard was
on Crusade. It was not a happy reign; he was involved in a war in France,
for which he was mostly responsible as had its own sheriff, who
answered to the tenant-in-chief not the Crown: no royal sheriffs are
recorded before the twelfth century.
King John refused to attend the French King 211 , his overlord as
ordered and as a result John eventually lost Normandy, Anjou, Maine,
and parts of Poitou to the French king.
With virtually all of his French holdings gone, John was forced to stay in
England, where his prestige had dropped due to the loss of lands, amongst
many other things, which accounts for his popular name of John Lackland.
In an attempt to make up for his reduced revenue, he cracked down on
finances, taxing revenues, taxing the Jews (although it was his father
who was the first to realise he could simply tax the Jews instead of
taking out loans which then, at least in theory, had to be repaid 212 )
conducting investigations into the royal forests and feudal tenures, and
exploiting his prerogatives, all of which would later serve as the basis for
the charges of tyranny brought against him. The barons, never
particularly fond of John, had grown more discontented; they had lost
their French lands and had to stay in England and concentrate on their
estates here, or to give up their English lands and stay in France 213 . One
example of this, relevant to Knepp, is Roger de Courci who
preferring to retain his Norman lands, forfeited his claim to
Warblington, [in Hampshire] which became an escheat to
King John, of whom it was held by his ardent supporter
Matthew son of Herbert, sheriff of Sussex under John... in
210
http://www.theheritagetrail.co.uk/castles/bramber%20castle.htm
211
Although the French king was looking for a reason to fight and the disappearance
of Arthur, John‘s nephew and the only other possible claimant to the English
throne, probably didn‘t help
212
Carpenter, D (2003) The Struggle for Mastery: Britain 1066-1284 OUP p252
213
The above is an extremely simplistic and rapid overview of some of the factors
in this complicated time, see Carpenter, D (2003) The Struggle for Mastery:
Britain 1066-1284 for a brilliant consideration of the entire period