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 The proper heir to the throne was Arthur of Brittany, a mere boy, son of Henry II’s third son Geoffrey, who had died in 1186. But John was in England, and seized the crown without much difficulty. Of course he quarrelled at once with his old friend Philip, and Philip knew that his own time and that of France had now come. John did, indeed, get hold of little Arthur and had him murdered; but then dawdled away his time in small sieges and useless raids in France, while Philip overran all John’s French dominions except Aquitaine with perfect ease.

By 1205, Normandy, Maine, Touraine, Anjou, the inheritance of the mighty Norman and Angevin races, had gone to France for good. And of the French possessions of England, only the far south-west remained.

The English barons, most of whom had owned lands in Normandy ever since 1066, were of course furious with their King, especially when he kept on screwing enormous sums of money from them, calling out large armies to fight and then running away without fighting. As for Aquitaine, none of them owned lands there, and they refused to defend it. John raved and cursed, and practised horrible cruelties on any enemies he could catch, and generally behaved in a most unkingly fashion. But in 1206 he began quite a new quarrel with the English Church and the Pope. His cause was at first a good one, for it was about the appointment of the Archbishop of Canterbury. Both the Pope and the monks at Canterbury had refused to accept the man whom John named as Archbishop; and the Pope had even appointed one Stephen Langton in his place. John swore a horrid oath that he would never receive