- 22 hours ago
Visits Sherwood Forest and the Peak District, as he sets out to discover the real King John.
前往诺丁汉郡，踏访我们中世纪历史上那段充满变故与传奇色彩时期的故地
前往诺丁汉郡，踏访我们中世纪历史上那段充满变故与传奇色彩时期的故地
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TravelTranscript
00:02My walks take me to every corner of Britain as I seek out history embedded in the landscape.
00:10In this country you're never very far from mysterious ruins or the shadow of unwelcome visitors.
00:19So from romantic moors to majestic peaks, I'm really enjoying some serious walking.
00:27Each of my walks leads me through a different time and a stunning location
00:32to find the stories you can only really appreciate on foot.
00:37This time I'm in Nottinghamshire, walking right through Sherwood Forest and up into the peaks of Derbyshire.
00:44I'm on the trail of an immensely unpopular king, a brutal medieval tyrant, sworn enemy of Robin Hood
00:52and the man forced to accept the Magna Carta or lose his kingdom.
00:59Got it? Yes, I'm on the trail of bad King John.
01:13Today, the Peak District National Park is famed among walkers.
01:18200 square miles of stunning Derbyshire parkland open to all.
01:24Over the border in Nottinghamshire, the peaks give way to the ancient oaks of Sherwood Forest,
01:30still famous for its folklore and legend.
01:34In the 13th century, these two very different landscapes were a playground for King John
01:42and would become his central stronghold as the kingdom turned against him.
01:52Over four days and 70 miles, my walk across this region will follow John's downfall.
02:00Starting at the medieval boundary to Nottinghamshire's forest,
02:03I'll discover how his quest for cash made powerful enemies as I reach Rufford Abbey.
02:10On day two, I enter the modern remnants of Sherwood and join the trail of Robin Hood.
02:16Then it's on to Derbyshire and up to Bolsover Castle,
02:19before hopping over the M1 to reach my bed for the night.
02:24Day three and I stop by Chatsworth to dig out some stonking evidence of John's approach to kingship.
02:31From there, the march to civil war leads me to Montsell Head.
02:36As John's kingdom unravels, my final push takes me to his fortress at the centre of the peaks.
02:42And the momentous turning point in our history, there was Magna Carta.
02:54So, who was John?
02:58He was a Plantagenet and born in 1167.
03:02As Henry II's fifth and youngest son, no one expected him to become king.
03:08But one by one, John's siblings died off, edging him closer to the throne.
03:16And in the year this Nottingham pub claims to have served its first pint, Henry II popped his clogs.
03:23Now, just two sons were left, Prince John and big brother Richard.
03:29Richard I, or Richard the Lionheart as we know him, has always had this glowing reputation, hasn't he?
03:35Fearless and brave when he was on the Crusades and noble and just when he was back home.
03:40So you've got him all heroic and John all nasty and villainous.
03:43But is that fair? Or is it just a cartoon version of history?
03:50I couldn't come to this part of the country without stopping by Nottingham Castle.
03:56The present building dates from the 17th century,
03:59but the site is still famous as the favoured hangout of John
04:03and his notorious henchman, the Sheriff of Nottingham.
04:09John was given the castle when he was still just a prince,
04:13together with the rich hunting counties of Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire.
04:18Like most royals at the time, he'd spent his childhood in France.
04:24But this was part of England,
04:28where he could feel at home.
04:30The next 20 years would be seismic.
04:34John would get the throne and he'd be in charge not just of Nottinghamshire,
04:38but the whole of England.
04:39And a few years after that he would become so mistrusted
04:42that the country would rise up and demand that never again should a king of England enjoy absolute rule.
04:52To mark the Magna Carta's 800th anniversary,
04:55it's this story of John's fall from grace that I'm going to explore on my walk.
05:05I'm starting 25 miles north of Nottingham.
05:10I've had a tip off that one of John's first dastardly acts as king
05:14took place at a castle just a few miles from here.
05:17And I want to find it.
05:20My route takes me through a landscape that looks nothing like our modern idea of a forest.
05:26But a forest this once was.
05:31Like the rest of the kingdom since the Norman invasion,
05:34royal forests were owned by the monarch.
05:38He then leased selected lands back to his most powerful subjects, the barons.
05:43This feudal system had worked for 130 years.
05:48But just 16 years after John got to the throne,
05:51the nation would be close to civil war.
05:55So what was it about John?
05:59I've arranged to meet medieval historian Graham Seale.
06:04I suppose the one thing we all know about King John is that he signed the Magna Carta,
06:10which I just happened to have a copy of.
06:12Very good, I was hoping you would.
06:13Show me a good bit.
06:15Well, the one that everyone knows is of course Clause 39.
06:19Oh, we all know that.
06:20Which says,
06:22There's no freeman shall be taken or imprisoned or deceased, or that means have lands taken away,
06:28without judgment, legal judgment by his peers.
06:32And some people see it as proto-trial by jury.
06:35Yeah, yeah.
06:35But actually, the real clause in here is Clause 61, which is that the barons insist that if John misbehaves,
06:43they will destroy his castles, they will take his land, he will become a phantom of a king.
06:51So the significance of this is that the barons are actually constraining him.
06:56More than that, they are collapsing his authority.
07:01John's misdeeds must have been extraordinary to prompt this first organised attack on the absolute power of a king.
07:09But was he really the monster history makes out?
07:12A chronicle source from later on in the 13th century famously says,
07:17As foul as hell is, it was made yet fouler still by the presence of King John.
07:22But you don't agree with the chroniclers, do you? You think that he was nicer than they do.
07:25I do, because there's an alternative body of evidence which suggests that he was.
07:30The administrative evidence, the record evidence, the charter evidence.
07:33What does that say about him?
07:34If you study that closely, that suggests that he was energetic, conscientious, vigorous, all of the things which the chronicles
07:42allege that he wasn't.
07:43It's hard to believe, Graham. It's hard to believe.
07:49To judge for myself, I'm continuing my search for John's first castle conquest.
07:54And that means heading deeper into the old forest.
07:59800 years ago, royal forests covered four fifths of Nottinghamshire and around half of Derbyshire.
08:07But they weren't just for the king and his mates to hunt in.
08:11Anyone living or working within their boundaries was taxed under a punishing system of forest laws.
08:19The cash raised from these taxes was collected at the castle I'm trying to find, somewhere near the little village
08:26of Laxton.
08:30That is Laxton Church there. Here's Laxton. There's the Motten Bailey castle. That's the route I reckon I've been going
08:44on.
08:44So, unless I'm daft, I think the Motten Bailey should be... See where those horses are with those trees beyond?
08:52I reckon it's over there. Let's see if I can go around the side.
09:03Oh, that's classic. Absolutely classic. Got to be a castle. Look.
09:07There's the Motte. There's the Bailey.
09:09No, in my memory, I probably dug it sometime in the last 20 years and forgot all about it.
09:15800 years ago, Laxton Castle dominated the landscape and acted as financial control centre for the whole of Sherwood Forest.
09:24I've asked local historian David Crook to share this lost castle's secrets.
09:30So, did this place actually belong to John?
09:32No, it didn't. It was the property of a lady called Maud de Coe.
09:36A woman, Maud? Yes, indeed.
09:38Was that usual in the medieval period?
09:40No, but she had recently lost her husband and as a widow, without an heir, she fell to the king.
09:46She was in the king's gift and John just took the money away from her.
09:51So, now John gets direct administration of the forest?
09:54Yes, he does. John was always short of money and the forest was one of the best sources of income
09:58in the later part of his reign.
10:01John nicked the castle off poor Maud just three years into his reign.
10:07He immediately handed it over to a lackey who ratcheted up the forest taxes.
10:13The king and his men were ruthless, but also highly organised.
10:18And helpfully for us, they wrote everything down.
10:22It's an amazing set of records. It shows where the king was on any particular day for most of his
10:27reign.
10:28Isn't that fairly unusual to have the day-to-day life of a medieval monarch in such detail?
10:33It's completely new. It starts in John's reign.
10:36So, it's quite exciting for historians and archivists this castle.
10:39Very exciting.
10:39Where's our castle?
10:40Our castle is there, Lexington, which is the other name for Laxton.
10:44And on the 22nd of September in this year, he was at Lexington at the beginning of the day and
10:50was at Nottingham later.
10:51So, he went all over the place, continued on the move. He didn't sit in the palace at Westminster.
10:58King John travelled relentlessly, averaging between 12 and 15 miles a day.
11:05And he was always on the lookout for new areas he could squeeze for cash.
11:09But why?
11:12In the early years, it wasn't just England John was ruling, but also roughly two-thirds of modern France.
11:20He'd inherited this vast overseas empire from Richard I, along with a whole load of problems.
11:28Richard's crusades had left the kingdom broke.
11:31So, right from the start, John's armies were underfunded and outmanned by the French.
11:39In 1204, disaster struck and John lost control of Normandy, cutting him off from his remaining French lands.
11:49John has been beaten back here to England.
11:51His reputation and his kingdom are in tatters.
11:55From now on, there's going to be one goal, one obsession that will dominate the rest of his reign, to
12:01win back Normandy.
12:03But that means matching the military muscle of the French, and that is going to cost him money.
12:09Lots and lots of money.
12:15Following John's quest for cash leads me to Rufford Abbey.
12:20It's now a popular public park, but was originally built by Cistercian monks, whose great wealth unsurprisingly attracted the king's
12:29attention.
12:31Medieval historian Claire Taylor explains.
12:35It's a very mixed relationship.
12:37The beginning of the reign, John founded Beaulieu Abbey in Hampshire, which was very prestigious.
12:41They were very pleased with that.
12:43But he'd done that really because they'd been upset about his forestry laws and they'd complained to him.
12:49But then, later on in the reign, he finds the order itself a huge amount of money.
12:54This abbey in particular had to find 300 marks.
12:59John fined this abbey around two and a half million pounds in today's money as penalty for refusing to support
13:05one of his military campaigns.
13:07After the loss of Normandy, no part of his kingdom was sacred.
13:11He didn't stop with the Cistercians. He went right to the top. He wasn't afraid to take on the Pope.
13:17Pope Innocent III was not a pope that you messed with.
13:20He was one of the first popes that decided that he was going to take on the secular world, the
13:26kings and the emperors.
13:28In 1205, Pope and King clashed.
13:32The Archbishop of Canterbury had just died, and Pope Innocent wanted to put loyal follower Stephen Langton onto this powerful
13:39seat.
13:41But John said it must go to his own yes-man, the Bishop of Norwich.
13:48They squabbled for three years before Innocent brought out the big guns and issued an interdict against the English church.
13:56An interdict is where all of the clergy in the land are forbidden from saying mass.
14:02It means that nobody can get married.
14:04We have stories about people being put into coffins, but they were hung from trees in church grounds.
14:09So it's people trying to find a way of burying their relatives, but the church won't let them do it.
14:15But then that didn't do any good, so he excommunicated John.
14:18He excommunicated?
14:19Yes.
14:21John was banished from the church.
14:24Meanwhile, many of his subjects were so fearful of being damned to hell for eternity, they were forced to worship
14:31in secret.
14:32The churches were shut, the doors were barred, the bells stopped ringing, people were cut off from their religion at
14:40a time when religion was central to everything.
14:42And at the same time, John was failing diplomatically on an international scale, and everyone was groaning under the weight
14:50of all the taxes and fines.
14:52Dark days? I think so.
14:57Well, today's journey so far has given me plenty to think about, as I end it at the little town
15:03of Ollerton, on the fringes of modern Sherwood Forest.
15:17Today I won't be able to see the wood for the trees, as I head into what remains of Sherwood
15:22Forest, once the heart of King John's stronghold against the wild north.
15:29My route takes me right through the forest to John's pleasure palace at King's Clipston.
15:36Then it's over the border to Derbyshire and a linchpin castle at Bolsover.
15:43Finally I hop over Chesterfield to end my day at the edge of the Chatsworth estate.
16:00It's nice to see some trees.
16:03I've actually been inside the borders of Medieval Forest since I started this walk, but this is the first time
16:08it's felt like forest, or at least our modern idea of forest.
16:15Today, 450 acres is a public nature reserve, but Sherwood is a tiny fragment of what it was in John's
16:22day when he came here frequently to hunt stags and boar.
16:26As I've discovered, his royal forests were also earning him money.
16:32Hunting, farming, or even collecting firewood all required the King's permission, and it came at a price under forest law.
16:41After losing Normandy, John ramped up taxes across all his forests, and he squeezed Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire much harder than
16:50lands further south.
16:53I've joined a route John would certainly have travelled.
16:57The Great North Way was the Medieval main road linking London to York.
17:02There was another Medieval chap who came this way, or at least he made good use of other people who
17:06came this way.
17:07He had a green uniform, a pointy hat with a feather in it, catchy theme tune. I think you know
17:13who I'm talking about.
17:18It's impossible to come to Sherwood Forest without conjuring up images of Robin Hood.
17:26Good stick.
17:28Back when picking up a stick could get you fined, it's not hard to see the appeal of an outlaw
17:34who championed the rights of the little people against a wicked king.
17:39But did Robin of Sherwood actually exist?
17:43Well, no. The legendary hero we think of today was shaped by centuries of popular ballads.
17:51200 years after John died, the first ballad that we know of appeared, which specifically locates Robin here in Sherwood.
17:58It went, Robin Hood in Sherwood stood, hooded and hatted, hosed and shod, four and thirty arrows he bore in
18:07his hands.
18:08That's the bloke, isn't it?
18:10But in hundreds of medieval ballads, there's not one mention of King John.
18:16It was actually 19th century novelist Walter Scott who made John into Robin's villainous foe.
18:24Hollywood lapped up Scott's version and has regurgitated it ever since.
18:34So the mythical Robin only sealed John's dastardly image in the last century.
18:41There's another chap who didn't help either.
18:44John's tax collector, the Sheriff of Nottingham.
18:48Some of you may remember a children's show I wrote in which he stalks this very forest.
18:58We're in the middle of a forest ridden with unseen danger. Anything could jump out of us.
19:03Mad axemen, werewolves, lunatics.
19:05You money all your life.
19:07Idiots in skirts and berets.
19:09You think I'm frightened of you?
19:11The Sheriff of Nottingham is frightened of nobody.
19:15Morning.
19:17It's Robin Hood, the fiercest bandit in England.
19:19Well, come on. I had to keep the best part for myself, didn't I?
19:22But what I find really interesting is that the Sheriff of Nottingham did actually exist.
19:28Although from the year 1208 until after King John died, the Sheriff of Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire, as he was known,
19:36would actually have spoken more like this because he was a Frenchman, if you didn't understand what that accent was.
19:43His name was Philip Mark, he was a henchman of John's, and this forest would have been part of his
19:50patch.
19:56For proof, here he is in the Magna Carta, named and shamed.
20:00Paragraph 50, we will entirely remove from their bailiwick the relations of Gerald Athie, Engelard of Sijoin, blah, blah, blah,
20:11blah, and Philip Mark with his brothers and his nephew Geoffrey and the whole brood of the same.
20:18In other words, by the year 1215, Philip Mark was so unpopular that the Magna Carta specifically states that he
20:25and his family should be booted off their land.
20:29There aren't many names singled out in the Magna Carta. The Sheriff obviously made some powerful enemies.
20:35Morning, Tony. Morning.
20:37Morning, Tony. You all right?
20:39I'm all right.
20:40800 years ago, Sherwood would have been much more open to allow for hunting and farming.
20:46But some of these trees would already have taken root.
20:51Today, a small team of foresters care for almost a thousand ancient oaks. The trees are known as veterans.
20:59That's a gorgeous old tree, isn't it?
21:02We're just in the process of banding it. We're trying to get it to move as one tree again.
21:07It's a bit thin on top, isn't it?
21:08Yeah, that's what happens with veterans. The first thing they do is they spend the first 300 years to grow,
21:14and then they spend 300 years to live their life, and then they spend the last 300 years gracefully dying.
21:20So this is retirement?
21:21So in this case, it's retiring, yes.
21:26You're not going to do this to all your veteran oaks, are you?
21:28No, it would be costly. But also, you don't want to go around a forest full of metalwork. So no,
21:34we only do it to the most vulnerable ones. But we still look after them all.
21:38That's fantastic. So you've got a thousand old trees, and each one has got its own care plan.
21:43Yes. Yes, that's correct.
21:48Sherwood's post boy is the major oak. With support from generations of foresters, it's holding up pretty well, considering it's
21:56at least eight centuries old.
21:59It's amazing to think that when King John was hunting here, this would have been a little oak just tentatively
22:07stretching out its roots.
22:15Time to leave modern-day Sherwood, but I'm still well inside John's medieval forest.
22:21Three miles south of the major oak lies the village of King's Clipston, and a window into the King's private
22:28life.
22:30Compared to many medieval monarchs, John was almost straight-laced. We only know of seven illegitimate offspring, and all of
22:39them were born before John got hitched to French heiress Isabella.
22:43By most accounts, she and John got on quite well. Who knows? Maybe he had a softer side.
22:51John may well have brought Isabella to his palace at King's Clipston.
22:55Deep inside old Sherwood, this was one of his most private and most lavish retreats.
23:02We have lists from the historic documents of chapels, accommodation, chambers, great halls. We're probably walking through what was the
23:11garden area. That's our current belief.
23:13But why did he bother to invest in this place when he got a whole castle at Laxton just down
23:17the road?
23:18Ah, well, Laxton Castle was for the dull administration and paperwork and stamping. This is a different thing altogether.
23:24This is a royal pleasure gardens, a royal retreat house that could be used for hunting, entertaining dignitaries and romancing.
23:33I love the fact that we're looking at three walls of a place that John built to have a good
23:38time.
23:42So John knew how to party. In contrast to the popular image of him as a frail, weasley man, he
23:50had a healthy appetite and in middle age, a waistline to match.
23:58But this place saw bad times as well as good. In 1212, a royal hunting holiday ended in disaster.
24:06To explain, Andy's taking me to the old entrance to the palace, 30 minutes walk to the northwest.
24:12I've brought you here because I want to show you this tree. This is a very famous tree in Sherwood
24:15Forest and it's known as the Parliament Oak.
24:18Why?
24:18Well, in 1212, we believe John was hunting through Sherwood Forest when he heard news of a rebellion in Wales
24:25and he summoned barons here under this tree to hold Parliament.
24:30We can't be certain John held a parliament at this exact spot, but he certainly was in this region when
24:37he learned of the Welsh uprising.
24:39And that was a significant moment in his reign?
24:42Yes, we think it was a pivotal moment in his reign.
24:44From the point of that rebellion, things start to go downhill for King John.
24:51John had angered some Welsh lords when he seized their lands and took their heirs hostage.
24:58He crushed the rebellion quickly, but even by the standards of the day, his next move was brutal.
25:06John ordered 28 of the Welsh hostages to be hanged from the walls of Nottingham Castle.
25:13Some were as young as 12.
25:16I'd been wondering whether the Robin Hood legend had helped to give John an unfair reputation.
25:22But here he is in the year 1212, facing a real rebellion after years of simmering resentment.
25:29And what's his solution? He kills a bunch of kids.
25:42I'm finally leaving medieval Sherwood as I cross over the border into Derbyshire and up to the mighty castle at
25:49Balsover.
25:54This hill site was fortified even before the Normans, although the semi-ruined and rather romantic pile here today dates
26:02from the 17th century.
26:07After hanging the hostages, John faced mounting discontent, and not just from the Welsh.
26:15Powerful barons north of here had always been a law unto themselves, and now some of them were becoming openly
26:21hostile to the king.
26:24Once there'd been an actual uprising against him in Wales, John realised that there was the possibility that something similar
26:30might occur elsewhere in his kingdom.
26:32But he calculated that if it came to a direct confrontation with the rebellious barons in the north, this was
26:40one of the key places where he'd be able to hold the line.
26:48John shored up his defences at a total of ten of his castles, including this one.
26:53He was bracing for trouble from north and west.
26:59To follow the march to Magna Carta, I need to head closer to enemy territory.
27:05But someone's gone and put the M1 in my way.
27:09So I'm leapfrogging over it.
27:12Tomorrow I'll pick up King John's trail in the fabled walking country of the Peak District.
27:26Day three, and I'm walking right across King John's front line against an increasingly rebellious north.
27:32When I left Bolsover Castle yesterday afternoon, I discovered that King John had been spooked into shoring up his defences
27:40all over this region.
27:41And by the year 1212, in small parts of the country at least, this rumbling discontent had escalated into violent
27:49uprising.
27:51My route takes me over the moors to Chatsworth and some first-hand evidence from John's reign.
27:59Then I join the stunning Monsal Trail as I head into the heart of the Peak District National Park.
28:14After almost two days spent crossing the medieval forest of Nottinghamshire, in just a few miles I'll reach another.
28:23The forest of the peak covered around 200 square miles.
28:28It rivalled Sherwood in size and in the amount of tax John could squeeze from it.
28:32He inherited his forest laws from the Normans, whose feudal system was all about controlling the population.
28:41But more than any monarch before, cash-strapped John turned his kingdom into a business.
28:48While I was reading up in preparation for this walk, something really rather exciting cropped up.
28:53It seems that Chatsworth are in possession of some original archive material.
28:59In other words, primary sources that go back right to the time of King John and give us a really
29:05vivid picture of what was going on around here.
29:09My route from the east brings me the walker's back way to the great house.
29:22In John's reign, records show a medieval hamlet here, also called Chatsworth, and perched on the fringes of his forest
29:29of the peak.
29:31It was more than 500 years before the Dukes of Devonshire began taming the valley into the world-famous parkland,
29:39gardens and spectacular water features we know today.
29:42But what I've come to see isn't on the guided tour.
29:47I've arranged for Magna Carta expert Dr Sophie Ambler to join me down in the bowels of the building.
29:57Oh, there's two of them.
29:58There's two of them.
29:59These beautiful charters were legal documents issued by John himself when he held court near here over 800 years ago.
30:08The first thing that strikes me about these is that they're incredibly good neck.
30:15We begin here with King John's title.
30:19Now this is quite a long title as titles go.
30:22John, by the grace of God, King of England, Lord of Ireland, Count of Anjou,
30:27know that we have granted and in this charter confirmed to William Fitzwalklin and his heirs that the manor of
30:34Stainsby may be free of forest law.
30:36So is it actually like a deal between the king and a particular subject that the subject pays money and
30:43King John gives him something in return?
30:45Yes, William Fitzwalklin offered 60 marks for the confirmation of three charters. That's about, that's £40.
30:53Which to somebody like William Fitzwalklin was quite a lot of money.
30:57What does he get out of this deal?
30:59What that means is that William is free to cultivate his lands and develop his estates as he sees fit.
31:05So under forest law, you couldn't cut down trees, you couldn't hunt, you couldn't fish without getting permission from the
31:13king.
31:14This is deregulation, isn't it? This is a businessman suddenly being unshackled and being able to make money out of
31:22the forest.
31:22Yes, it's life-changing, it's an investment because this is not just a grant for him but also for his
31:28heirs.
31:28And from John's point of view, it's good business.
31:30It's very good business for King John. He confirmed hundreds and hundreds of charters.
31:35All of those tidy little sums add up to quite a lot and that's a lot of money in the
31:40coffers.
31:44By deregulating chunks of his forests in return for cash, John was selling off the family silver.
31:52In just 12 years, he quadrupled the total royal revenue to £83,000 a year, which is over £100 million
32:00in today's money.
32:02No mean feat, even for a mean king.
32:06Just west of Chatsworth, the old town of Bakewell sits on the boundary of John's great Derbyshire money spinner, the
32:13Forest of the Peak.
32:16Like the rest of the region, Bakewell's got John's sticky fingerprints all over it.
32:23In one deal, he even handed over the ancient town church of all saints to an ambitious bishop.
32:30Hunting forests, castles, churches, everything had a price.
32:39Heading west out of Bakewell, the Monsell Trail runs along eight and a half miles of the old Midland Railway.
32:47In the last 20 years, it's become a main walking route into the heart of the Peak District National Park.
32:59On my walk, it's been easy to see how John made enemies.
33:04After the loss of Normandy, he was ruthless in his taxes, and he could certainly be cruel.
33:09But he was a medieval king.
33:13Tyranny is in the job description.
33:16So just what tipped England from simmering resentment into rising up and producing the Magna Carta?
33:24I'm hoping medieval historian Lauren Johnson can help me join the dots.
33:29I think the trouble with John's reign is you have a situation that's been bubbling away for a really long
33:34time.
33:35This sense of the king interfering in people's lives, the fact, particularly the barons' lives.
33:40But all kings were doing that, weren't they?
33:42Yeah, you're absolutely right.
33:43But the difference with the previous kings is that they have this continental set of lands that they can pop
33:49over to
33:50and use to source funds from and spend time in.
33:53Whereas John, after the loss of Normandy, is in England all the time.
33:57So he's constantly on their doorstep pressing them for money.
34:01What about the hanging of the Welsh hostages? That kind of helped?
34:04No, I don't think it did.
34:05The trouble is that just as the Welsh rebellion is really getting going,
34:10you have this situation where King John finally discovers a plot that might have been going on for a while.
34:16The barons not only want to actually move him aside and take power for themselves,
34:21they actually want to have him killed.
34:26So three years before Magna Carta was on the table, there was a plot to murder the king.
34:34The ringleaders were powerful northern barons
34:37who hadn't forgiven him for the loss of their own French estates when he had lost Normandy,
34:42not to mention all the taxes.
34:45So John's in the right old pickle. Is there any way out for him?
34:49Well, one option of course is to go and actually try and crush the men in the north.
34:53That is a real dangerous situation for him to be getting into.
34:56The much more obvious solution, what he has been building towards for the past ten years,
35:01is to go back and try and retake Normandy.
35:03Which also sounds pretty dangerous.
35:05It is pretty dangerous, but at least it's dangerous outside his own kingdom.
35:08Yeah.
35:08And he demands soldiers from the people of England, all of the barons.
35:12And again, the northmen say, no, we are not sending you soldiers,
35:15we're not sending you money, we're not going to help.
35:16This isn't our fight.
35:17So he goes to Normandy, unfortunately somewhat undermanned.
35:21He has some successes during his time there.
35:24But when it gets to the Battle of Bouvines, where the King of France absolutely trounces all of the opposition,
35:29that's the most decisive battle probably of the entire Middle Ages.
35:34After the Battle of Bouvines, it's not a case really of whether there's going to be an English rebellion.
35:38It's just a case of when it's going to happen.
35:45John's catastrophic trouncing by Philip of France at Bouvines was the last straw for his seething barons.
35:54It's a bit of an Emperor's New Clothes moment really, isn't it?
35:57John's been squeezing money out of everybody left, right and centre on the promise that one day he'll get Normandy
36:02back.
36:03But when the moment comes, he can't deliver.
36:07And with France off the agenda, he's now got a new problem.
36:10He could lose this country as well.
36:27The final day of my walk, and it's the big one.
36:29As I follow the slide to Civil War that produced the most famous document in English history, the Magna Carta.
36:39From Montal Head, I follow the Limestone Way, north-west through John's Old Forest at the Peak, to reach Peverell
36:46Castle.
36:47Then on a final push towards Kinder Scout, I'll look for the legacy his reign has left us today.
37:00Following John's defeat in France in 1214, war with the barons looked inevitable.
37:08Drastic action was needed.
37:10John went cap in hand to the Pope, ending his five year excommunication and securing a powerful ally.
37:19Unfortunately, it was too little, too late.
37:25But when violence erupted, it wasn't in the north or even Wales.
37:29It was in London.
37:31In a shock move, on 17 May 1215, rebel barons seized the tower, pulling the might of John's capital city
37:39from under him.
37:41His kingdom was shrinking fast.
37:44Where can John feel safe?
37:47Well, up there, for a start.
37:51It was said anyone who held Peverell Castle, and its sister fortress at Bolsover, held the whole region.
37:59Peverell was built in 1176 by John's dad, Henry II.
38:04Its perch high on a limestone ridge turns almost sheer ravines to incredible defensive advantage.
38:12I wouldn't want to be the one attacking this place in the days before Cannon.
38:16Imagine trying to lug a siege engine up here, or even just walk up in a suit of armour.
38:23You'd have a coronary by the time you got to here.
38:30John had loyal retainers installed right through his Midland stronghold, all the way from Laxton to this castle.
38:41But even if his men could hold this central core of the country, it wouldn't be enough to save his
38:47throne.
38:49John had already lost too much support elsewhere.
38:53The only thing for it was to meet the barons and negotiate terms.
38:59In June 1215, John travelled to Runnymede in Surrey.
39:05John just pushed it too far.
39:06He demanded too many taxes, and by 1215 the lid blew off.
39:11I've asked medieval historian Richard Eales to help me make sense of this momentous turning point in English history.
39:18He'd lost control of just too much of the ruling class.
39:20They'd realised that royal power was so strong that they had to band together.
39:25They had to go to the centre of government, to where John was, and force him to accept concessions at
39:29the national scale.
39:30So that's what gives us Magna Carta.
39:34On the 15th of June, John put his seal to a charter limiting his own royal power.
39:42800 years later, Magna Carta has been woven into our nation's DNA.
39:49But on the field at Runnymede, it was a peace treaty, hurriedly thrown together by deputations from both sides.
39:57It's got some things in it which look to us like great statements of principle.
40:02No free man should be imprisoned or ruined without trial by his peers.
40:06And that's great stuff.
40:07But then there's also another lot of clauses that are really just about immediate tactics in 1215 that we're going
40:13to chuck out of the country a number of particular, you know, friends of John that we don't like.
40:18All foreign soldiers and crossbowmen have to be thrown out.
40:22So it's a ragbag document.
40:23Did John ever have any intention of sticking to it?
40:26Probably not. I mean, the historical evidence won't tell us what's going on in people's minds.
40:30But we do know that pretty quickly, he started asking the Pope to release him from his promise, his oath,
40:36to keep to the terms of the charter.
40:39It was meant to produce peace, but actually it produced a slight civil war.
40:43The extremists on both sides took over.
40:44It's not just John. On the Baron's side, on the rebel side, there are quite a lot of people who
40:48really hate John.
40:49And they don't really want to make a deal with him, they want to depose him or kill him.
40:53What we're getting, as with so many civil wars and disputes, you know, going on now, is a slide to
40:58extremism.
41:01So in 1215, Magna Carta failed as a peace treaty and was thrown aside.
41:09Now, the Baron's War began.
41:12John furiously rallied his supporters, but even this region was no longer safe.
41:19Mighty Bolsover Castle came under siege.
41:21Not from the rebels, but from the king's own allies, who were now squabbling over the spoils of his crumbling
41:28authority.
41:29Down in London, the barons threw open the gates to Prince Louis of France, giving the rebel factions a figurehead
41:35to rally behind.
41:38The final leg of my walk towards Kinder Scout is also the most dramatic.
41:45The great ridge of brush of edge gives walkers what must be some of the best views in the country.
41:52In the months after Runnymede, John was far from defeated.
41:56He powered around the country, stamping on insurrection.
42:04But then 1216 brought disaster.
42:08If one famous account is to be believed, the king was travelling to Norfolk when he started feeling ill.
42:16Oh, sorry guys.
42:18He turned around, but sent his baggage train onto the causeway to cross the great estuary of the Wash.
42:27Trouble was, they'd not checked their tide timetable.
42:31Carriages sunk into the mud and the tide swept the convoy away.
42:39In that accident, he lost something really ominous.
42:42His crown jewels, which had been in one of the carriages.
42:46And he never recovered from his illness.
42:49On the 19th of October in the year 1216, in the middle of the Civil War,
42:53he died in Newark, back in Nottinghamshire, on the outskirts of Sherwood.
42:59He was suffering from dysentery and rumour had it that he'd gorged on a surfeit of peaches.
43:05And knowing the royal appetite, it could have been true.
43:15As I passed through the beautiful Edale Valley,
43:18I followed John's rise and fall across almost 70 miles and 17 long years.
43:24There's a lot of really obviously bad stuff, isn't there?
43:27He's ruthless and cruel and does a lot of things which today we would consider barbaric.
43:32But this is the 13th century, for goodness sake.
43:35If you're a feudal king, that kind of behaviour goes with the territory.
43:41John was a failure as a king, but he wasn't some kind of cartoon villain.
43:46Magna Carta railed against absolute power,
43:49but that problem had been around since 1066.
43:53John's blundering just made it a whole lot worse.
43:55The great charter only became ingrained in our history thanks to compromises made after John's death.
44:03The advisers to his heir, his nine-year-old son Henry, negotiated peace,
44:08and a new and improved version of the charter was issued.
44:12The Baron's War melted away.
44:16Over the centuries, Magna Carta has been cited as the cornerstone of everything from land rights to trial by jury.
44:24What started in the year 1215, bit by bit, has become our modern democracy.
44:30And now, our common rights stretch to all corners of our lives.
44:36Including walking, of course.
44:45I'm finishing my journey with a modern story that invokes the spirit of Magna Carta,
44:50and took place here at the centre of John's Forest of the Peak.
44:55Joining me is journalist and fellow walker, Roley Smith.
44:59This is Kinder Scout up ahead of us, and this is where, in 1932, the famous mass trespass took place.
45:07It was a move by a group of young Manchester walkers to overcome the fact that they could see these
45:17fantastic moors from their homes, from their factories, but they couldn't walk on them.
45:24And they decided that if there was enough of them, they could do something about this.
45:30So they organised this mass trespass, and, as a result of which, six were arrested, merely for walking on the
45:38moors.
45:41Thanks to the trespassers' defiance of private landowners here on Kinder Scout, all this land is now open to walkers.
45:50In fact, their action kick-started the Right to Roam movement across the whole country.
45:55Phew!
45:56Quite a climb.
45:57Yeah, but it was worth it, wasn't it?
45:59Oh, yeah, what a view.
46:00It's a privilege to be up here, really.
46:02So, is the fight won?
46:04No.
46:05Scotland has got de facto access to all of its countryside. We want the Scottish model here. So, as far
46:11as I'm concerned, the fight goes on.
46:13So, what started back in the 13th century with a struggle against oppressive forest laws and ended with Magna Carta,
46:20actually, is still going on into the 21st century.
46:23Absolutely right.
46:24I think we should set a good example, don't you? Stop hanging around and get on.
46:27Let's go.
46:31If you want to follow in my footsteps, you can download a guide to my walk by going to www
46:37.channel4.com.
46:39Bye-bye.
46:42Bye-bye.
46:55Bye-bye.
47:06Bye-bye, and enjoy TV spreadsheets.
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