monks who were without exception hostile to John, mainly because
of his long struggle with the Pope, and the intemperance of their
language when they speak of him leads one to suspect that they were
far from objective reporters of his actions. Thus, from the very start,
one has to depend upon violently prejudiced writers and to bear con-
stantly in mind a suspicion, to call it no more, that the worst side of
John's character and the worst possible interpretation of his actions
are being given.

Shakespeare's play, from which the popular picture is drawn, is
based on Bishop Bayle's Kynge Johan, a ludicrous attempt to present
John as a thirteenth-century Henry VIII, anticipating the break with
Rome by three centuries. Shakespeare discarded much of the religious
polemics, but he retained Bayle's garbled version of the history of
John's reign.

While I was reading these two plays and attempting to discover
to what degree they followed history and in what respects they di-
verged from it, I realized how little information about King John is
readily available. Kate Norgate John Lacklandwas published in
1902, has long been out of print, and is not easily accessible in this
country. Dr. Sidney Painter The Reign of King Johnis a book of
profound scholarship, but it does not attempt to present the events
of John's life in chronological sequence. Other than these, I know
of no modern biographies of John.

I turned then to the contemporary chronicles, mainly those of
Roger of Hoveden and Roger of Wendover, and attempted to as-
semble from them an account of John's life. This book is the result

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