John's Marriages

John, son of Henry II, having seized the throne of England after Richard the Lionheart's death, and subsequently having lost several possessions on the continent through war and treaties, decided to marry into a French noble family in order to regain some influence in France. His choice was Isabella of Angoulême in 1200. There were a couple issues about his decision that certainly raise modern eyebrows, and more than a few contemporary ones.

For one...well, we don't know enough about Isabella to know when she was born, but one estimate is 1188, making her 12 years of age. Still, she would be Countess of Angoulême in her own right when her father died (which he did, in 1202). Also, she was the niece through her mother of the current Latin Emperor of Constantinople, Peter II of Courtenay.

The other—well, one other—issue was that John already had a wife: Isabella, Countess of Gloucester. He managed to have that marriage annulled on the grounds that, as his cousin, he never should have married her in the first place, and in fact had failed to get the proper papal dispensation to do so, considering the current laws of consanguinity (they would change the same year that John would sign the Magna Carta, 1215). Fortunately for John, Isabella complied with there annulment, even though he kept the lands he had received through their marriage.

Back to the second Isabella: she had already been betrothed to Hugh IX le Brun, Count of Lusignan (and remember that Roman numeral; we will be coming back to it in the post after next). Her father decided that his daughter would be better off as a queen than as a Countess of Lusignan, so he agreed to the change in husbands for her. John might have made amends with the Lusignan's, but instead chose to treat them with contempt. This motivated an uprising by the Lusignan and their supporters which John had to suppress. Philip II of France also took the Lusignan snub as an excuse to confiscate the Angoulême lands.

So John's choice did not have all positive results, and rather than make inroads into France through marriage, he alienated a powerful family and lost more lands to Philip.

The second Isabella provided John with something the first one never could, however: heirs, including the next king, Henry III. Here's a good question, though: John was married to his first wife for 10 years. Why did they produce no heirs? The reason is simple: the couple was forbidden to have sexual intercourse. I'll explain that tomorrow.