“John was an absolute rotter through and through.” The general populace, most medieval chroniclers, and even a considerable number of current and prior historians would not quibble with such a concise summation, delivered by Nicholas Vincent in the opening of BBC Radio's In Our Time episode on The Magna Carta in May 2009. Paul Webster would, at the very least, beg to differ with “through and through.” As he argues in his thoroughly researched text, “Were it not for his reputation for failure and misgovernment, he [John] would rank alongside other medieval kings who recognized the importance of outwardly demonstrating their personal religion. (1)” Webster demonstrates that, like his Angevin predecessors, John was “conventionally devout (2).” He founded and supported religious houses, such as Beaulieu, maintained chapels and chaplains, visited and prayed at shrines, collected holy relics, and ensured the execution of prayers and masses for his soul. In this very particular, but important, aspect of kingship, John was solid, neither a rotter nor an exemplar.

Webster's study meticulously examines evidence for John's piety in the first four chapters: John's possible attendance at mass (chapter 1); his collection of relics and his promotion of veneration of saints linked with royal authority, such as Edmund, Edward and Wulfstan (chapter 2); his establishment and support of monasteries, chapels, and chantries (chapter 3); his willingness to continue some of the religious practices of his father and mother (chapter 4); and his conventional support for charity and almsgiving in a manner akin to his predecessors and successors (chapter 5). In two of the final three chapters (chapters 6 and 7), Webster challenges the eight-hundred-pound gorilla in the room, John's struggle with the pope over appointments to powerful ecclesiastical offices which resulted in a lengthy interdict of England and the less-lengthy excommunication of John himself. More than any of the prior aspects of John's religious practices, which Webster has so thoroughly examined, this battle between what John considered “his rights,” and what the papacy considered the church's jurisdiction influenced contemporary chroniclers’ impressions of John's piety. Webster summarizes the enervation of John's reputation for (traditional kingly) piety clearly when he states, “sanctions of interdict and excommunication, and his reaction against those who obeyed them, provide powerful reasons why his ongoing religious observance went unnoticed, or if it was observed, deemed insincere” (197). Rarely one to pass up even a highly contentious source of revenue, John zealously appropriated the land of clerics, who dared to execute the interdict, and then he demanded heavy fines for its return. Webster argues that like many of his royal predecessors in England and elsewhere, John considered such clerics to be traitors and he intended to fight for his temporal and spiritual rights just as prior rulers had done in England and on the continent—though Webster admits that John “was fighting against the tide.” (197) As in prior chapters, Webster keeps his focus on the quotidian aspects of royal religious observance during the interdict and excommunication. He notes that despite the interdict and being an excommunicant himself, John continued to give alms, support his favored monasteries, patronize cults of saints and observe high feast days such as Easter. Webster argues that the continuation of John's religious observances reveals his intention to ride out the storm of the interdict. The excommunication struck John much harder. His ham-fisted attempt to present a unified front through mass displays of oaths of loyalty only exacerbated tensions with not only the clergy but some of his lay subjects as well. Some chroniclers of this period of tension allege that John endorsed assaults on the clergy or at the very least presided over a period of increased assaults. Webster stretches his interpretation of the evidence a bit too far when he argues that a royal letter from 1208 forbidding assaults or defamation of the clergy reveals the lack of substance of the chroniclers’ accounts. The impetus for this letter is far more likely to have been instances of assault rather than pious royal foresight. However, setting aside this instance, Webster's reading of his meticulously gathered evidence is sensible and shrewd in these chapters and in prior ones as well.

Scholars have shown increasing interest in trying to illuminate the personal perspectives of medieval monarchs. Works such as Malcolm Vale's Henry V; The Conscience of a King reveal how one might employ archival sources to obtain glimpses of a medieval monarch's personal sentiment on certain subjects. While the subjects studied in King John and Religion primarily reveal appearances of piety (something that Webster himself is quick to admit), they do chart a clear course for comparisons of royal religious practice. What was standard? What was abnormal/lacking/notable? What changes have occurred over time? Webster's text provides a clear set of subjects and evidentiary examples for future studies comparing the everyday, but important, religious practices of monarchs.