The Devil's Brood The Plantagenets

BIRDSONG

BELL TOLLS

CHORISTER SINGS

In early medieval France, the Count of Anjou

became enthralled by a mysterious woman.

They married and had several children.

But the Count grew concerned

because his wife always left church before Mass was celebrated.

BELL TOLLS

WIND WHISTLES

One day he ordered his knights to stop her.

But she pulled free and flew out through a window.

The Countess of Anjou was never seen again.

BELL TOLLS

According to this legend, all 15 Plantagenet kings of England

were descended from the demon Countess of Anjou.

Her blood flowed in their veins.

And over the centuries,

this provided an explanation for the fierce temper,

the bloody family feuds and the brutality of the Plantagenets.

Richard the Lionheart himself once declared defiantly,

"From the Devil we came, and to the Devil we will go."

In the medieval world, all politics was family politics,

and the Plantagenet family dominated England for more than 300 years

through some of the nation's most famous and infamous kings.

King John. Henry V.

Richard III.

They were driven by dynastic ambition,

striving to expand their power beyond their French homeland.

In the process, the culture

and politics of the British Isles were transformed...

..England's distinctive system of justice was established,

Parliament was born

and the great Gothic cathedrals transformed the landscape.

The Plantagenets developed

a new style of warfare in their attempt to claim Scotland.

They conquered Wales...

..and half of Ireland.

And their great royal castles hammered home their power.

When the Plantagenets won the kingdom of England,

it was shattered and lawless.

Under their rule,

it was transformed into one of the best governed states in Christendom.

But their story is one of intrigue, conflict and violence.

They fought their enemies but also turned on each other -

sons made war on fathers, brothers betrayed brothers,

powerful queens conspired.

The future of Western Europe would be shaped by

this extraordinary dynasty, this Devil's brood.

BELL TOLLS

The story of England's longest reigning dynasty begins here,

in Anjou, western France.

12th-century France was dominated by its great barons

rather than by its nominal king.

And these fertile farmlands of the Loire Valley

were the domain of the Count of Anjou.

In 1128, an enraged Princess arrived here.

Her name was Matilda and she was the only surviving

legitimate child of King Henry I of England, and his acknowledged heir.

Her father had commanded her to marry a 15-year-old boy,

Geoffrey, the oldest son of the Count of Anjou.

Matilda was outraged.

She was 26 years old,

she was the granddaughter of William the Conqueror,

she was the widow of the mighty Holy Roman Emperor.

She always called herself "Empress".

Geoffrey was the heir of a mere count.

Matilda was notoriously wilful.

But in the selection of a husband she had no say.

Princesses were a powerful tool used by Europe's medieval dynasties

to expand their territories.

King Henry hoped that the arranged marriage at Le Mans Cathedral

would produce a male heir,

who would ultimately become Count of Anjou,

Duke of Normandy

and King of England.

Things didn't go according to plan.

Both Geoffrey and Matilda were proud and quarrelsome people,

and, after a tumultuous year, they separated.

But this was, above all, a political union

and a reconciliation was soon imposed.

Matilda rejoined her teenage husband and performed her royal duty,

giving him three sons in three years.

This ended any doubts about the succession

and also laid the foundations of a powerful new dynasty.

Le Mans Museum contains

the only surviving image of Geoffrey of Anjou.

It once adorned his tomb.

This plaque contains one of the earliest examples of heraldry -

that system of vivid symbols through which the ruling families

of Europe were beginning to proclaim their dynastic pride.

The distinctive pattern of blue and white

on the inside of Geoffrey's cloak is called "vair",

representing the winter pelt of squirrels.

And the golden lions on his shield

were adopted by his descendants as the royal coat of arms

and, ultimately,

became one of the most familiar national symbols of England.

Geoffrey was an energetic, intelligent man

with golden-red hair.

By all accounts he was handsome,

and known as "Geoffrey the Fair".

But he also had another name.

It comes from the Latin for the broom plant.

Planta genista.

Plantagenet.

No-one knows for certain why Geoffrey was called Plantagenet.

One theory is that it's because

he wore a sprig of the plant in his hat.

But in any case,

for over 300 years none of his descendants bore the name.

Kings don't need surnames.

But it's proved a useful label for historians to describe

that long line of monarchs who descended from Matilda

and the young Geoffrey of Anjou.

15 Plantagenets would be crowned kings of England,

but they had to fight to win the throne.

Henry I had named Matilda his heir.

But when he died in 1135,

the English throne was seized by Matilda's cousin - Stephen.

The Plantagenets fought back.

Geoffrey led a successful invasion of Normandy,

which had been part of Henry I's dominions,

while Matilda crossed the Channel to claim her crown.

This started almost two decades of civil war.

Government virtually collapsed and England descended

into a period of bloody conflict, often called simply "The Anarchy".

The Peterborough Chronicle describes England's fate

as the Plantagenets fought to secure their birthright.

"God and his saints slept.

"Every powerful man built his castle and filled it with devils

"and evil men.

"They grievously oppressed the wretched people of the land.

"They tortured them for their gold.

"And when the people had no more to give, they plundered and burned."

In the winter of 1142, the war turned against Matilda.

Her cousin Stephen besieged her here in Oxford Castle.

Her garrison held out for three months,

but with their supplies running low, they were close to surrender.

One wintry night, Matilda wrapped herself in a white cloak.

Camouflaged against the heavy snow, she slipped out of a side gate.

She crossed the frozen river in front of the castle

and managed to pass unseen through the ranks of Stephen's army.

Matilda trudged for seven miles through the frigid night.

She eventually made it to the safety of Wallingford Castle.

Now she was free to continue her struggle.

For another decade, civil war ravaged England.

The fighting could only be brought to a stop

when her eldest son came of age -

a mail heir, a direct descendant of Henry I.

Matilda's son, Henry, was a charismatic young man

who'd inherited Matilda's determination and temper...

..along with Geoffrey Plantagenet's red hair,

intelligence and boundless energy.

Henry also inherited his parents' claims to the English throne

and much of northern France.

As a young man, he was granted Normandy.

Later, he inherited Anjou.

He then expanded Plantagenet territory again,

through a profitable and unexpected marriage.

This is the great hall of the ducal palace in Poitiers,

home of the court of Aquitaine - that vast and wealthy principality

that encompassed a quarter of the French lands.

The Duke had an only child,

a beautiful and well-educated daughter called Eleanor.

When she was about 15, her father died unexpectedly.

Eleanor of Aquitaine was now the greatest catch in Europe.

The King of France, Louis VII, snatched the prize.

But Louis couldn't hold on to Eleanor or Aquitaine.

The King was a pious man,

but his new queen was ambitious and worldly.

Eleanor once said, "I've married a monk not a monarch."

And there was another problem.

THUNDER RUMBLES

The French king needed a son

and Eleanor gave birth only to girls.

After 15 years and two daughters,

Louis persuaded the Church to declare the marriage void.

THUNDER RUMBLES

The great heiress was once again available.

Suitors circled, eager to obtain her hand and her lands.

But Eleanor was headstrong and independent.

She was determined to marry the man

who could help her fulfil her own dynastic ambitions -

Henry Plantagenet.

Eleanor sent word to Henry to meet her in Aquitaine.

As she made her way there from Paris, Eleanor had to evade

kidnappers, who wanted to marry her forcibly and lay claim to her lands.

CHORISTER SINGING

Henry and Eleanor married in a hastily arranged ceremony

in Poitiers Cathedral.

This was a scandalous marriage.

Henry was 19, Eleanor around 30.

And Eleanor's union with the King of France

had been annulled only two months earlier.

The French king had been outmanoeuvred by his ex-queen

and Henry Plantagenet.

He was humiliated by the scandal and he'd also lost half his territories.

By inheritance, by conquest, and now by marriage,

Henry had built up an enormous conglomeration of lands in France,

and soon he and Eleanor would have four sons

to secure the future of the dynasty.

But the French king never forgave the Plantagenet upstart.

CHORISTER SINGING

The Plantagenets were still fighting for their birthright in England,

but the dynasty was thriving.

A decade after Henry and Eleanor's wedding,

this cathedral was completely rebuilt in the new Gothic style

sweeping across France.

Structurally stronger, pointed arches

allowed these dramatic, soaring vaults

and vast windows.

Henry and Eleanor graced the new cathedral

with the gift of this wonderful east window.

It's one of the oldest stained-glass windows in France.

The royal couple are themselves depicted on it,

along with their four sons, presenting their gift to God.

It proclaims the piety of the Plantagenet dynasty

and their family solidarity.

Henry now set his sights on winning the greatest prize of all -

the English crown.

Crossing the Channel with a small army,

Henry found England devastated by nearly two decades of the civil war

between Stephen and Matilda's supporters.

His arrival persuaded many barons to join the Plantagenet cause.

Henry's and Stephen's armies confronted one another

here at Wallingford Castle.

These few mounds and walls are all that

remain of one of the mightiest fortresses of medieval England.

Stephen was besieging the castle

and Henry had come to relieve Matilda's loyal forces.

The armies faced one another across the river.

A contemporary chronicle describes what happened next.

"It was a terrible thing to see so many armed men with drawn swords,

"ready to kill their relatives and fellow countrymen.

"And so the chief men on each side shrank in horror from civil war...

"..and the destruction of their kingdom."

Because the two armies refused to fight,

Stephen and Henry were forced to talk.

According to the chronicles, they met outside the castle,

one on either side of the stream.

And eventually they came to an agreement.

King Stephen would continue to rule,

but he recognised Henry as his lawful heir.

The very next year,

Stephen was seized by a terrible pain in the gut and a flow of blood.

The King was dead.

The negotiations that began here would lead to more than three

centuries of Plantagenet rule in England.

On 19th December, 1154,

Henry II became the first Plantagenet King of England.

This French-speaking monarch now ruled a vast empire that

stretched from the Scottish Borders...

..to the Pyrenees.

Henry's first priority was to restore peace and order.

He tore down hundreds of the barons' castles.

Then, to extend Plantagenet power across the country,

Henry turned to the law.

This manuscript, which is more than 800 years old,

is one of the treasures of Balliol College, Oxford.

It contains a text known as Glanvill,

the earliest guide to the workings of the English law.

It was written during the reign of Henry II

and is one of the foundations of the English legal system.

These are its opening words.

"Royal power should not only be adorned with arms to fight rebels

"and hostile peoples, but also with laws to rule its subjects in peace."

Henry inherited a complex judicial system,

where cases could be heard in a variety of local courts.

In order to concentrate power in his own hands,

Henry introduced swift and consistent royal justice,

as set out here in Glanvill.

Henry established central courts at Westminster,

and sent newly-appointed royal justices on a circuit

around the country.

These circuit judges would meet regularly

and agree to follow one another's decisions,

thus ensuring common practice throughout England.

A distinct method of law-making emerged.

Laws now evolved through precedent as well as royal decree.

Disputes over land were important in this agricultural society.

Traditionally, they'd been determined by trial by battle,

in which opponents exchanged blows to resolve the issue.

Only the King could summon a body of men to give a verdict on oath,

so royal justice could offer a new, non-violent, alternative,

something not available in the baronial courts - trial by jury.

"Every free man can retain his right in his tenement

"and avoid the doubtful outcome of a duel.

"When the 12 knights have been chosen,

"they are to be summoned to come to court

"to swear on oath which party has the greater right."

This legal revolution was motivated by Henry's royal

and dynastic ambitions,

but it laid the foundations for the common law,

the system that still governs legal practice

and procedure in England and in the United States to this day.

Henry's imposition of Plantagenet control

alienated many English barons.

It also provoked a power struggle between Crown and Church.

It came to a head in a bitter conflict between Henry

and one of his most loyal friends -

Thomas Becket.

Becket was the son of a London merchant who'd enjoyed

an extraordinary rise to power.

Henry had made him his chancellor, in charge of the day-to-day running

of the government on the King's behalf,

and he'd acquired enormous wealth.

While Henry disdained luxury and pageantry,

his chancellor revelled in it.

But the two were close friends.

William Fitzstephen, who later served as Becket's clerk,

says that the two of them hunted, joked and played together like boys.

The unexpected reverse in the friendship came in 1162,

following the death of the Archbishop of Canterbury.

The King was convinced that Becket would make an ideal replacement,

someone who would support him in curtailing the judicial

powers of the Church.

Once Becket was in office, he immediately resigned

as chancellor and devoted himself to the interests of the Church.

The two of them soon clashed over the proper limits of priestly power.

Becket supported the Church's view that the clergy should not be

subject to King Henry's royal courts,

but should be tried in special church courts where the worst

punishment, even for rape or murder, was expulsion from the clergy.

Becket refused to compromise.

In fear of the King's wrath, he spent six years exiled in France.

In 1170, he reached a form of reconciliation with the King

and came home.

But from the pulpit in Canterbury, he immediately began to

excommunicate all who had crossed him.

This news provoked an outburst of demonic Plantagenet fury.

"I have brought up and raised some feeble, wretched men in my kingdom

"who are not loyal to their Lord.

"Whom they allow to be mocked

"so shamefully by some low-born clergyman."

Legend has simplified King Henry's words into,

"Who will rid me of this turbulent priest?"

Four knights decided they understood the King's wish.

In Canterbury, they found Becket eating in the Bishop's Palace.

Harsh words were exchanged.

The Archbishop then made his way through these cloisters

and into the cathedral.

The four found Becket here, in the north transept.

They attempted to drag him back outside,

but the Archbishop clung to a pillar,

calling them pimps and madmen. They struck out.

The first blows felled Becket.

Then one of the knights hit him

with such force that he sliced off the top of his head.

The sword itself shattered on the paving stones.

The knights spread Becket's brains on the floor and ran off,

one of them calling out, "This one won't rise again."

Within days, stories began to circulate that Becket's

blood had miraculous powers.

Soon people with fevers, tumours, swollen legs,

were being cured by a single drop.

The Pope declared Becket a saint.

Pilgrims came here in their thousands.

They purchased little badges or tokens, like this one,

and they would take these home and wear them

on their clothes or on their hats.

Or they might acquire flasks, like this,

containing a tiny drop of Becket's blood diluted in water.

And they would wear them around their necks for protection or

even drink the water in the hope of a miraculous cure.

These objects show that Becket was more successful in death than

he had been in life.

Henry's expansion of Plantagenet power had turned many

nobles against him,

and Becket's murder shattered his reputation in France.

Henry struggled to hold his sprawling empire together.

He had limitless energy and was never in the same place for long.

King Louis of France once said of him,

"Now in England. Now in Normandy.

"He must fly rather than travel by boat or horse."

The French king was always eager to stir up

dissension in the Plantagenet family.

He was still furious about Eleanor's marriage to Henry.

Complicating matters was Eleanor herself.

She may have been Henry's queen, but she was not always his ally.

In fact, the greatest threat to Henry

came from his own wife and children.

Henry and Eleanor had three daughters and five sons together.

Four of the boys lived to adulthood.

Henry,

Richard,

Geoffrey,

and the youngest, and the King's favourite, John.

After John's birth, Eleanor moved back to Aquitaine.

She insisted her favourite son, Richard, be made Duke.

Her scheme was to rule her homeland in his name.

But Henry frustrated Eleanor and his teenage son.

Plantagenet sons were impatient to exercise real power.

They had been brought up to command, trained in deadly warfare,

their political marriages often arranged in infancy.

At the age of 20, Henry himself ruled of half of France

and had been promised the throne of England.

His sons were equally ambitious.

Henry and Eleanor's eldest son, Henry the Younger,

sparked the first great Plantagenet family implosion.

His father had agreed to let him be crowned joint King of England,

but refused to trust him with any authority or independent income.

Encouraged by Louis of France,

young Henry raised a rebellion against his father.

His younger brothers, Richard and Geoffrey, also joined the revolt.

They were supported by disaffected French counts,

and some of England's most powerful barons.

Then Eleanor joined the fray.

Medieval kings often face rebellious sons.

A rebellious queen was less common and more shocking.

So, when Eleanor was caught

attempting to cross France to join her sons,

Henry regarded this as the greatest betrayal of all.

Perhaps even more shocking was the fact

that she was disguised as a man.

This is the ancient chapel of St Radegund...

..carved into the cliffs

below the Plantagenet fortress of Chinon in Anjou.

It's been a place of worship since Roman times.

In 1964, this 12th-century fresco

was discovered under centuries of grime.

It's widely agreed that they are the Plantagenets,

and it could be significant that their cloaks have

the same blue-and-white lining as we find

on Geoffrey Plantagenet's funerary plaque.

But it's not quite certain who they are.

It could be Henry II and his four sons.

The first crowned figure being Henry II

and the other crowned figure being Henry, the young king,

who was the only son of an English king

to be crowned in his father's lifetime.

But one scholar claims to see Eleanor of Aquitaine

being led off into captivity in England...

..where she was, in fact, held a prisoner by her husband

for the next 16 years.

GATE RATTLES

With his formidable wife imprisoned in England,

Henry did battle with the French king, the rebel barons

and his own sons for 18 months.

The rebels claimed that Thomas Becket,

the new martyr, was on their side,

and Henry sought to ward off the martyr's anger

by a remarkable act of public atonement for the murder.

At the height of the rebellion,

the proud Plantagenet king came to Canterbury.

Here, at the Westgate, he dismounted, removed his shoes

and walked barefoot through the crowded streets.

Henry made his way to the shrine of his murdered friend.

He removed his cloak to reveal a hair shirt

and submitted to being beaten bloody by the bishops and monks.

BELL TOLLS

WHIP CRACKS

He spent the night prostrate on the bare stone floor.

Henry's salvation came quickly.

The very next day, his troops won a stunning victory over his enemies

and soon they were all brought to submission.

But Henry had been forced to abase himself before the clergy

and recognise the authority of the Church.

Tension between monarchy and church was never fully resolved.

But the Plantagenet settlement with the Pope

held for the next 350 years.

There was no settlement between the Plantagenets

and the French monarchy, despite a new king, Philip, taking the throne.

He encouraged Henry the Younger and his brother Geoffrey

to rebel again.

This time, they attacked their brother Richard's Duchy of Aquitaine

and occupied the city of Limoges.

Henry II marched on the city

and rode up to the walls, hoping to reason with his sons.

Henry the Younger ordered archers to fire on his own father.

An arrow narrowly missed the King.

A few months later, young Henry was struck down with dysentery.

To fight against your father, and against the King, was a sin

and Henry believed that his illness was divine retribution.

As an act of penance, he gave away all his possessions.

He lay on a bed of ashes, dressed in a hair shirt,

with a noose around his neck like a common criminal.

Young King Henry died with nothing but the sapphire ring

his father had sent him as a token of forgiveness.

When he heard of the death of his eldest son,

old King Henry said,

"He cost me much, but I wish he lived to cost me more."

Now it was Richard's turn to betray his father.

And once again, the French king was the family traitor's ally.

The two spent the summer pursuing the ageing Henry around France.

They eventually besieged him here, in his birthplace, Le Mans.

In order to deny his assailant supplies and a base,

Henry ordered that the suburbs outside the city walls

should be put to the torch, but the wind changed and the flames

leapt over these ancient Roman walls into the city itself.

Henry was forced to abandon Le Mans.

Ill and exhausted, he had to submit to his treacherous son.

But as he gave Richard the kiss of peace, he whispered in his ear,

"God grant that I do not die until I have avenged myself on you."

Too sick to walk, Henry was carried here to Chinon Castle.

He was shown a list of those who had rebelled against him.

At its head was the name of his youngest and favourite son.

"Is it true," he said, "that John, my heart, whom I've loved

"more than all my other sons, has abandoned me?"

On 6th July, 1189, betrayed by his wife and every son,

Henry, the first Plantagenet King of England, died.

His last words are said to have been,

"Shame, shame on a conquered king."

BELLS TOLL

The King of England's body was buried here

in the Abbey of Fontevraud in Anjou.

CHORAL SINGING

The Plantagenets' future now lay in the hands of Richard...

..a dynamic and bloodthirsty warrior.

One of Richard's courtiers said he was furious in arms,

rejoicing to travel only on bloodstained roads.

But when he arrived here, to stand vigil over his dead father's body,

he is said to have wept bitterly over the king he had betrayed.

As he did so, blood began to pour from the dead king's nostrils.

According to medieval beliefs,

this was sure sign of the presence of a murderer.

The traitorous son would become

the great English hero Richard the Lionheart.

But he could speak barely a word of English.

He visited his kingdom only briefly for his coronation

and, in the ten years of his reign,

spent only six months in the country.

The moment he became king, Richard had his mother, Eleanor,

released from captivity and made regent of England.

Richard, the favourite son, bestowed on his mother

the power of doing whatever she wished in the kingdom.

He himself regarded England primarily as a source of money

to fund his wars to assert Plantagenet power in France

or to win glory and spiritual merit on crusade.

He once said, "I would sell London if I could find a buyer."

BELLS RING

Europe had been gripped by crusading fever

since Jerusalem had fallen to Saladin's Muslim forces.

The prestige of reclaiming the holy city

was irresistibly appealing to the warlike new king.

Philip of France also vowed to go on crusade.

The two kings arranged to meet here, at Vezelay Abbey in Burgundy.

The chronicle of the Third Crusade

describes how these hills and valleys

were filled with the tents and pavilions of two vast armies.

It looked like a new city.

Richard and Philip spent two days here planning the campaign.

They considered their crusade an armed pilgrimage.

Their hardships would earn them absolution for their sins.

They swore a sacred oath agreeing to divide the spoils of war equally.

The two great pilgrim armies then set out for the Holy Land.

But on the way, the grand alliance forged here turned sour.

In Sicily, Richard caused outrage by reneging

on a childhood betrothal to the French king's sister.

The old feud between the Plantagenets

and the French monarchy was reignited.

The armies then made their way separately to the Holy Land.

Philip arrived first and joined a Christian siege

of the strategically crucial port of Acre.

The Plantagenet army arrived seven weeks later.

Richard immediately assumed command

and re-energised the faltering assault.

Richard already had a reputation for ferocity

and his name struck fear into the Muslims.

"The King of England was a very powerful man,"

wrote one of Saladin's officials, "A man of great spirit and courage."

He'd fought many great battles and had a burning passion for war.

Muslim mothers told their children,

"Be good, or the King of England will get you."

Within two months of his arrival,

the city that had held out for two years surrendered.

Once again, a French king was humiliated by a Plantagenet.

Announcing his crusade complete, Philip returned to France.

Richard fought on.

But his arrogance turned many allies into enemies.

After 18 months, Richard headed home,

but en route, was captured and imprisoned by the Duke of Austria,

one of the enemies he had made in the Holy Land.

The Plantagenet empire was left in the hands of his mother

and his younger brother John.

It had always been difficult

to fit the youngest Plantagenet son into the family plans.

There had been no territories left to award John

and he'd been nicknamed Lackland.

Henry had finally managed to make him Lord of Ireland.

But John wanted the English crown.

He began plotting with Philip of France.

In exchange for his backing, John agreed to hand him

the strategically vital Vexin region,

guarded by this great border fortress of Gisors.

Gisors protected the gateway

between the lands of the King of France in that direction,

which began just beyond the castle walls,

and Plantagenet Normandy with its capital at Rouen

just a day's ride away in that direction.

John was making a terrible mistake.

By agreeing to surrender the Vexin,

he was leaving Normandy defenceless.

John and Philip did their best

to make sure Richard stayed in his prison.

But Eleanor was doing all she could to free her favourite son.

Eventually, Eleanor managed to raise the enormous ransom,

34 tons of silver, a king's ransom indeed.

Philip sent John word -

"Beware! The devil is loosed!"

On Richard's return, John was forced to submit.

Richard then set about re-conquering what John had lost.

In 1197, Richard confronted Philip's army

before the walls of Gisors.

Richard is said to have ridden at the French

just as a raving lion starved of food runs on his prey.

As they fled, Philip and his knights crowded onto the bridge at Gisors

in such numbers that it collapsed. 20 knights drowned.

King Philip was dragged out alive,

but was said to have "drunk of the river".

Richard had Philip on the run.

Richard had survived many savage campaigns far from home.

But in the spring of 1199, his luck ran out.

While laying siege to the castle of a rebellious baron in Aquitaine,

he was struck by a crossbow bolt.

Returning to his tent, he broke off the shaft,

but the head was too deeply embedded in his shoulder. The wound festered.

Richard wrote a last letter to his mother Eleanor

asking her to come to him, but it was too late.

His body was buried alongside his father in the abbey of Fontevraud.

The heart of the lion, said to be "of great size",

was interred in the Norman capital, Rouen.

John was now the only surviving son of Henry and Eleanor.

His older brother Geoffrey had died in 1186.

But just as the English crown seemed in his grasp,

he faced another contender for the throne,

Geoffrey's teenage son Arthur.

John quickly secured his coronation at Westminster.

But yet again, the French king provoked a Plantagenet family feud

by supporting Arthur's claim to the English crown.

Wicked uncles are a common feature of medieval dynastic politics.

Like John, they're usually younger brothers.

They watch from the sidelines

as an older brother attains the exalted position of king.

But if that brother dies,

it's understandable that they might think,

"I could tolerate being subordinate to my older brother,

"but not to my snotty-nosed nephew."

And in this violent world, it's not surprising

if the uncle sometimes decides that the nephew must be eliminated.

In 1202, Arthur led an army into Anjou,

hoping to capture his grandmother Eleanor.

The great Plantagenet matriarch was now 80.

John rushed to Anjou to free her

and young Arthur was captured.

No-one is certain what happened to Arthur after that.

But a contemporary chronicler claims that Arthur's own jailer

told him of the boy's fate.

According to him,

John at first kept his 16-year-old nephew a prisoner,

but then one night, after dinner,

when John was "drunk and full of the devil",

he went to Arthur's cell and killed him with his own hands,

then tied a huge stone around the corpse

and tossed it into the River Seine.

Philip of France refused to make peace with John

until Arthur was handed over alive.

He probably knew this was impossible.

One by one, John lost the Plantagenets' French domains.

In 1204, Philip conquered Plantagenet Normandy.

After 300 years, it was now fully part of France once again.

Soon, all that remained of the Plantagenets' continental empire

was Gascony, a fragment of Eleanor's great Duchy of Aquitaine.

Eleanor spent her final years here in Fontevraud Abbey.

She lived to see her only surviving son, John,

lose the great European empire she had founded and fought for.

She died as the French king

was closing in for his final assault on Normandy.

She was buried here, alongside Henry,

the husband she had betrayed,

and Richard, the son she loved the most.

With France lost,

John was determined to tighten his grip on England.

He dispossessed barons who opposed him,

and exploited his royal powers to accumulate vast personal wealth.

Like his father, John also resented Rome's power in his realm,

and in 1206,

he refused to accept the Pope's latest choice of Archbishop.

In retaliation, the Pope deployed his most fearsome weapon.

The kingdom of England was placed under an interdict.

This meant that all church services in England were suspended.

The churches and cathedrals stood empty.

No baptisms or marriages could take place in church,

the dead could not be buried in churchyards.

No church bells were heard in England.

And this lasted six years.

For believers in a so-called "age of faith",

this must have been deeply disturbing.

But it made John rich.

John hit back by confiscating the clergy's possessions.

Here at Lincoln Cathedral, the Bishop received

a letter from John, informing him that royal custodians would

seize everything owned by clergy refusing to perform their duties.

John had a malicious sense of humour.

He ordered that all the priests' mistresses should be locked up

and held to ransom.

The King and the Pope eventually came to terms.

John would accept the Pope's nominee as Archbishop -

but he would keep all the money that he'd squeezed out of the Church.

But John wanted MORE money.

He was determined to fund an army

to win back his Plantagenet birthright -

the territories he had lost in France.

His English barons didn't share his dynastic ambition,

and were not enthusiastic.

But John began to squeeze them dry,

extracting what he needed through draconian taxes,

and by exploiting the royal courts his father had established.

John soon became richer than any English king before him.

The hostility this provoked was compounded

by John's reputation for lechery.

He was accused of sleeping with the wives and daughters

of his barons.

He certainly fathered at least half a dozen illegitimate children.

"He was too covetous of pretty women," wrote one contemporary,

"and brought terrible shame to the great men of the land.

"For this, he was much hated."

John trusted no-one

and made his barons hand over family members

as hostages to guarantee their compliance.

When one of his nobles, William de Braose,

prepared to give up his sons,

his wife remembered how the King had treated his own nephew.

DOOR SLAMS

William de Braose was the baron who had served as Arthur's jailer.

His wife shouted at him, "I will not hand over my boys

"to your lord, King John,

"because he foully murdered his nephew, Arthur,

"when he should have kept him in honourable captivity."

The King's reaction was savage.

De Braose managed to escape to France but John

captured his wife and son and imprisoned them.

He commanded that their food be stopped.

After 11 days, they were found, starved to death.

The son's cheeks had been eaten away

by his ravenous mother.

Plantagenet cruelty had sunk to new depths.

John's invasion of France failed.

In May 1215, many English barons

renounced their allegiance to him and occupied London.

They demanded a settlement, liberating the nobility

from absolute royal power.

In desperation, John agreed to accept the demands they made.

The agreement was issued in a charter

sealed at Runnymede.

Magna Carta - the great charter -

is one of the most famous documents in English history.

Only four copies of the original issue

are known to survive...

..including this one, held at Lincoln Castle.

To secure the Plantagenets on the throne,

Henry II had concentrated power in the hands of the monarch.

John's abuse of that power showed the dangers of leaving it unchecked.

Magna Carta was the barons' response.

Some of its clauses seem quite mundane,

like the one fixing the level of death duties.

But this was a royal power that John had exploited

for financial gain.

Other clauses have a more ringing tone.

"No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, except by the lawful

"judgment of his peers and by the law of the land.

"To no-one will we sell, to no-one deny or delay

"right and justice."

All the clauses are based on the idea that

there is a right way of doing things,

enshrined in Magna Carta as the law of the land.

The most important thing was that it bound both king

and subject.

Plantagenet dynastic ambition

had provoked a new settlement between the monarchs

and those they ruled.

Magna Carta has become an emblem of liberty.

But at the time it was a complete failure.

The Pope called it, "Not only shameful and demeaning

"but also illegal and unjust."

At John's request, he annulled it.

Once again, the Plantagenets plunged England

into civil war.

Many barons decided they would rather be ruled by

the French than by John.

The rebels offered the English throne

to Prince Louis, son of the Plantagenets' perennial enemy -

King Philip of France.

In 1216, Louis landed on the English coast

and was warmly welcomed by the rebels.

Some celebrated his arrival

as liberation from Plantagenet tyranny.

The madness of slavery is over.

Days of liberty have arrived.

Happy days at last, after so many evils.

In his 17-year reign, John had lost most of the Plantagenet empire.

Now, the English crown was at stake.

John led his mercenary army on a rampage,

attacking rebel-held areas across southern England.

In King's Lynn, he contracted dysentery

but refused to rest.

In October, John took a short cut here

across the marshes of the Wash.

The wagons carrying his vast accumulated treasures

were cut off by the incoming tide.

As the King looked on helplessly,

men, horses and the treasure he'd acquired so ruthlessly

were swallowed up by the quicksands.

Exhausted and broken, John died three days later.

In medieval Europe, the destinies of nations

were determined by the lives and the deaths

of their ruling dynasties.

John's death plunged the Plantagenets into crisis.

His son and heir, Henry, was a nine-year-old boy.

Half the kingdom that he'd inherited was in the hands

of the French prince, who was holding court in London.

The future of the Plantagenet dynasty

had never looked so bleak.

In the next programme, The English Empire,

the resurgent Plantagenets fight to expand their dominion

across Wales and Scotland...

..they attempt to win back France...

..and Parliament is born in a Plantagenet golden age

of pageants and chivalry.