d to the times. He came to the throne at the
age of thirty-two. He had entered early into business, and had been
often involved in difficult and arduous enterprises, in which he
experienced a variety of men and fortunes. His father, whilst he was
very young, had sent him into Ireland, which kingdom was destined for
his portion, in order to habituate that people to their future
sovereign, and to give the young prince an opportunity of conciliating
the favor of his new subjects. But he gave on this occasion no good
omens of capacity for government. Full of the insolent levity of a young
man of high rank without education, and surrounded with others equally
unpractised, he insulted the Irish chiefs, and, ridiculing their uncouth
garb and manners, he raised such a disaffection to the English
government, and so much opposition to it, as all the wisdom of his
father's best officers and counsellors was hardly able to overcome. In
the decline of his father's life he joined in the rebellion of his
brothers, with so much more guilt as with more ingratitude and
hypocrisy. During the reign of Richard he was the perpetual author of
seditions and tumults; and yet was pardoned, and even favored by that
prince to his death, when he very unaccountably appointed him heir to
all his dominions.

It was of the utmost moment to John, who had no solid title, to
conciliate the favor of all the world. Yet one of his first steps,
whilst his power still remained dubious and unsettled, was, on pretence
of consanguinity, to divorce his wife Avisa, with whom he had lived many
years, and to marry Isabella of Angouleme, a woman of extraordinary
beauty, but who had been betrothed to Hugh, Count of Marche: thus
disgusting at once the powerful friends of his divorced wife, and those
of the Earl of Marche, whom he had so sensibly wronged.

[Sidenote: A.D. 1200.]

The King of France, Philip Augustus, saw with pleasure these proceedings
of John, as he had before rejoiced at the dispute about the succession.
He had been always employed, and sometimes with success, to reduce the
English power through the reigns of one very able and one very warlike
prince. He had greater advantages in this conjuncture, and a prince of
quite another character now to contend with. He was therefore not long
without choosing his part; and whilst he secretly encouraged the Count
of Marche, already stimulated by his private wrongs, he openly supported
the claim of Arthur to the