Medieval Royal Mistresses by Julia A Hickey

Author:Julia A Hickey
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: HISTORY / Europe / Medieval
Publisher: Pen and Sword
Published: 2022-10-16T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 13

Magna Carta Mistresses

Norman and Plantagenet kings were not models of moral integrity but King John gained a reputation as a sexual predator which had political consequences of a kind that never impacted on his predecessors. John’s reputation was blackened by chroniclers like Matthew Paris who wrote of him, ‘Foul though it is, Hell itself is defouled by the foulness of John’.1 Between 1207 and 1215, John’s second wife Isabella of Angouleme gave him five children but he also had between eight and twelve acknowledged illegitimate children by different women. All the women who were said to have joined John between the bedsheets were viewed by the Church as temptresses or victims. The former resulted in political damage to the state whilst the latter became a small part of the justification for rebellion against the monarch. One chronicler announced that even John’s mercenaries noticed the king’s covetousness when beautiful women were involved. The Chronicle of Meaux wrote:

He deflowered the wives and daughters of his nobles, not a woman was spared if he was seized by the desire to defile her in the heat of his lust.2

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