a. financial difficulties;
b. solutions.
2. King John (1199–1216);
a. conflicts and losses;
b. raising money;
c. conflict with the nation
d. Magna Carta, 1215
Henry II
Henry II was a ruler of far more land than any previous English king. As lord of Anjou he added his father's lands to the empire. He also ruled lands south of Anjou (к югу от Анжу). Although Henry recognized the king of France as the overlord (владыка) of all his French lands, he actually controlled the greater amount of lands than the king of France himself. Many of Henry’s nobles held land on both sides of the English Channel.
Unfortunately, Henry’s sons didn’t manage either to preserve the territory and its borders or to preserve its wealth.
Richard I 'The Lionheart' (1189–1199)
Richard I was Henry’s eldest son. He has always been one of England’s most popular kings, probably because he hardly spent any time in England when he was the king. Of course, he had the territory in France as well and basically his nickname was originally French word combination, so he belonged more to the French culture than the English one. It is also important, Richard very often went on crusades, took parts in a lot of battles and wars, so very frequently he was absent from England. But he was brave, he was good soldier and he was everyone's idea of a perfect feudal king. He went to the Holy Land to make war on the Muslims and fought with them with skill, courage and honor.
However, if we look at Richard as the administrator of his land, we can't say that he was very successful. Through his reign Richard experienced significant financial difficulties and there were several reasons for that.
1. Firstly, wars and crusades are costly business and Richard spent a lot of his money from the royal treasury on his military activities and when he saw that that wasn’t enough he also sold public offices (for example, if you wanted to be appointed as a sheriff, you had to pay the king first)
2. Secondly, on his way back from one of his crusades Richard was captured by the Duke of Austria with whom he had previously been on this crusade and had quarrel being on this crusade. So, to take revenge the Duke of Austria captured the English king and demanded money before he would let the king go and the sum was about 150,000 marks which was a huge sum at the time. It took England about 2 years to collect this money and repay for the captured king.
Richard had to deal with his financial difficulties. He tried to get more money from his people, and did it in three ways:
1. Scutage ['скатитч] - the money that a knight or a noble could pay the king instead of doing the military service. The scutage was mainly collected when the country was at war and when it needed military sources of financial sources to fight this war. Richard started to collect this tax much more often even at the time of peace and increased the number of money that had to be paid.
2. Richard introduced a new tax - Carucage /ˈkærəkɪdʒ/ - a tax on the plow ([plau] – пахотную) land - the land that one could work, grow something on it. The general idea was that the amount of tax depended on the amount of land that someone possessed (the more land you have, the more money you have to pay for it).
3. General tax - 1/4 of persons revenue that had to be given to the crown. But even at the time of Richard, although he turned to this tax, it wasn’t collected too often, so it wasn’t annual or it wasn’t collected every month. It was more or less rare.
In 1199 Richard was killed in France. In total he spent about 4-5 years in England. The rest of the time he had been busy with crusades and was in France. What is more, when he died, the French king took over parts of Richard’s lands in France to rule over them himself. So not only the country lost part of its territory, but the treasury had been considerably exhausted (исчерпаны) while the population still was really pressed for money.
King John (1199–1216)
Famous for being the worst king of English history.
King John – Richard’s younger brother. He inherited English crown and became quite famous for being the worst king in English history. But in fact, he wasn’t much better or worse than the rest of medieval kings, but he found himself in a very unfortunate circumstances when he came to power, he had to deal with certain difficulties that no-one before him had experienced. Secondly, he wasn’t the best diplomat ['dipləmat] and in certain cases he made mistakes that turned out in fatal for him afterwards.
In 1199 Richard was killed in France and John became the king of England. His reign started in an unfortunate way - in a series of conflicts with various influential people.
1199 – his reign started with a series of conflicts.
I. John had a conflict with his young nephew - Arthur of Brittany. Arthur tried to claim English throne. In order to be recognized as a lawful heir (наследник, читается как air) it was necessary (among other things) to win the support of the French king because the English king still recognized the fresh king as an overlord of his French positions, and Brittany was a part of France. John thought that the best way to win the support of the French king was to sec u re (добиться этого) it with money and he paid the French king a huge bribe - 20,000 marks. No wonder it made a serious damage to the state's treasury but somehow John managed to keep the crown to himself.
II. Two years after the conflict with Arthur John had to face another one. This time with Philip II of France. The conflict itself was not that harsh, but John for a very long time kept ignoring his people’s complaints and so they had to get to French king and to complain to him about Johns behavior. Philip II of France, being the overlord for king John, tried to summon John to his court in order to somehow settle this dispute, but John refused to come. For the king of France that meant that his vassal disobeyed him and had to be punished for that. Philip took away Johns possessions in France, quite big pieces of land that king John hoped to control, confiscated John’s French lands. This led to war between England and France about these territories. Philip had a powerful supporter - Arthur of Brittany. He sided (встал на сторону) with the French king. In 1202 Arthur was suddenly captured and he disappeared (the rumor was that he had been murdered). A lot of people, especially people in Brittany believed that their duke had been murdered by King John himself. That's why these people rebelled against John. Eventually in 1204 John's army was defeated in Brittany and John had to retreat. He lost all his lands in France except Gascony. This was a disaster both for the country and John himself well. For any king his military standing was very important, because that’s how you gain respect among your nobles. John lost a lot of respect and he was even given a nickname - John ‘Softsword’. So, the defeated north France was a major blow for John and his treasury, because afterwards he had to somehow compensate and that's why he increased the taxes, and this measure wasn’t popular with anyone.
III. John also succeeded in falling out with the Pope in 1207. Two years before that the archbishop of Canterbury had died and there was a need to appoint a new one. John wanted to appoint someone who was loyal to him, he wanted to appoint archbishop himself. But the churchmen demanded that the king stayed away from this, they wanted to vote for the archbishop. They ensured the support of the Pope. The Pope, of course, sided with them, had them elect person named Steven Langston. He was an Englishmen who at that time lived on Rome, so he knew things about both England and Rome itself, and he was also very educated person. He seemed like the best choice for the job, but despite all that John still persisted in his wish and named someone else. So, he appointed the archbishop himself. The Pope reacted and he did 2 things. First of all, in 1208 he issued an imposition (навязывание, наложение) of an interdiction on England: the pope issued special church law, that said that no marriage, no funeral, no christening (М.В. произносит 'кр и стченинг') could be legal in England until the Pope said otherwise. For the Medieval country it was a real disaster, because the church law said that only Christian people could get to heaven, only children who were born in a christian marriage would avoid hell after death. So, people were forced to live in sin and they couldn’t do anything about it. This placed ordinary people of England under a terrible strain (напряжение) and they blamed just one person for that - their King. The second thing that the Pope did was excommunicating in 1208. It meant that the Pope stopped recognizing John as a lawful king and proclaimed that anybody who would try to overthrow king John would be legal entitled to do so (имеет право на это)and there was nothing wrong about it.
King John did something that make things only worse. He simply seized the finance of Canterbury and confiscated a lot of Church lands. Mainly the lands which were possessed by churchmen who obey Pope's instructions. Instead of dealing of the conflicted, he only got it worse. But the Pope knew that John was in no position to do such things (не в состоянии, не в том положении) because people generally were already very-very irritated by the fact that Pope issued this i nterdict (интердикт; отлучение от церкви) on England. That's why Pope decided to press the English King even further and he called the King of France to invade England. In 1212 (twelve-twelve) the second conquest of England by the French nearly became a reality. In 1214 (twelve-fourteen) John lost another battle to French and this defeat resulted in losing all English possessions in France. Taking all the dissatisfaction of people inside the country and his military defeats John had to finally accept the Pope's choice of archbishop. John also admitted that he had been wrong about what he had done to the Church. So, he gave back everything that he had seized from the Church and, apart from that, he paid the Church compensation. And you can imagine this was another burden (?) for the royal treasury (бремя для королевской казны). When you find yourself in such a difficult financial situation, you start looking for sources of income. 
And for John primary source was taxation of course. Apart from the existing difficulties, John had been constantly waging |ˈweɪdʒɪŋ| war (вел войну) against France. He was trying to reclaim all the lands that he had lost. And of course, he needed money. The main source of income available to King John was his feudal tights.
1) Annual scutage in increased amounts. First and foremost, it was scutage [ск а титч]. And during the reign of King John this tax became annual which was unprecedented, nobody had done this before. And apart from that, he increased the amount of scutage.
2) High fines and payments for marriage and succession. He also collected some more traditional customary dues, but the sums demanded by the crown amounted to (составляли) enormous numbers (огромные числа). It was always normal for a feudal lord to pay a certain amount of money to the King when his daughter got married. And nobody questioned that custom. But John actually asked a lot more than a custom demanding. Similarly (подобным образом), when a noble died without a son, it was normal practice for this land (?) to be passed on to a member of a noble family. John stopped this from happening for at least several years. Instead he kept this land himself and profited from it. In order to pay such taxes many barons – this was the richest class – had to borrow (брать в долг) money. And when they couldn't pay their taxes, their lands were simply confiscated.
3) General tax collected twice. For about 15 years general tax was collected twice. It was a great burden (бремя) for the people.
4) Expensive and unsuccessful war. Most of money that Richard collected was spent on his wars in France. In order to fight the French he amassed [əˈmas] (собрал) an army. But the barons had no significant gains of territories, there were no great victories that would justified the amount of money that the King demanded from them. On the contrary (вопреки этому), it seemed that instead of winning lands the King only kept losing them.
Another source of revenue was the judicial system. Making the judicial system into a source of money, King John allowed judges to abuse the judicial power (злоупотреблять судебной властью).
Judicial System
– bribes (corrupted justice). Bribes were really common. The more you pay – the more chances to win you get. If you don't have enough money to pay for the procedure, well, then you are welcome to take a loan (заем) from the King. If you can't pay back afterwards (позднее), your family will be taken into King's serfs (рабы).
– unlawful punishment for enemies. Very often there were no trials, the person could be convicted (осужден) without a trial.
– unfair litigation fees. The money you have to pay to get your case through the court were completely unreasonable and unfair. Very often fines were much bigger than the crimes. Minor offences and a huge fine you have to pay for it.
– no uniform fines and fees.
– taking cases from feudal courts. William I established feudal courts: courts in counties, shire courts and feudal courts (with earls as judges). The earls that decided the cases in such courts profited from them, because people had to pay fine or money to the lord. John took a lot of cases from feudal courts to royal court which meant that now it was the King who profited from this litigation.
John managed to make himself unpopular with at least three most important groups of the English society: the nobles, the merchants ([мёрчентс], торговцы) and the Church. At the end of his reign he was unpopular with all social classes.