""Foul as it is, hell itself is defiled by the fouler presence of John." The terrible verdict of the King's contemporaries has passed into the sober judgment of history. Externally John possessed all the quickness, the vivacity, the cleverness, the good-humour, the social charm which distinguished his house. He was fond of books and learned men, he was the friend of Gerald as he was the student of Pliny. He had a strange gift of attracting friends and of winning the love of women. But in his inner soul John was the worst outcome of the Angevins. He united into one mass of wickedness their insolence, their selfishness, their unbridled lust, their cruelty and tyranny, their shamelessness, their superstition, their cynical indifference to honour or truth."
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People from OxfordMonarchs from EnglandPeople excommunicated by the Catholic ChurchHouse of Plantagenet
Original Language: English
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Sources
John Richard Green, A Short History of the English People (1874), p. 118
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John%2C_King_of_England
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John, King of England
John (24 December 1166 – 19 October 1216) was King of England from 1199 until his death in 1216. He lost the Duchy of Normandy and most of his other French lands to King Philip II of France, resulting in the collapse of the Angevin Empire and contributing to the subsequent growth in power of the French Capetian dynasty during the 13th century. The baronial revolt at the end of John's reign led to the sealing of Magna Carta, a document considered a foundational milestone in English and later Brit
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