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Welcome to the History of English Podcast, a podcast about the history of the English language.

This is Episode 93, the two authors.

In this episode, we're going to turn our attention to developments during the early reign of King John.

As we know, John became King of England when his brother Richard died in 1199.

But it didn't happen automatically.

John actually had a nephew named Arthur who had a competing claim,

and the struggle between John and Arthur ultimately led to a split within theange of an empire,

and that split led to the loss of Normandy and most of the other territories in northern France.

The loss of Normandy meant that England was no longer an outpost in a larger French empire.

For the first time since the Norman Conquest, England was severed from France,

and that led to a renewed sense of Englishness, and an increase in the production of documents composed in English.

One of the first documents to be composed in the wake of these events was the story of another Arthur,

the legendary King Arthur.

It was the first time that the story of Arthur had been composed in English,

so this time we'll also take a closer look at that text.

But before we begin, let me remind you that the website for the podcast is HistoryofEnglishPodcast.com,

and you can sign up to support the podcast at patreon.com.

Just go to HistoryofEnglishPodcast.com and link from there.

So this time we're going to explore the early part of King John's reign,

and let's begin by noting that John was the youngest of the five legitimate sons born to Henry II,

so he was never really destined for kingship.

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