WWW UBO

History in Focus

with Dr Alice Turret

 

Tower

This then was the scene that met John when he arrived at Runnymede. Whereas it was no secret that the King thought Langton a hufty-tufty jobbernowl and suspected mosquito-buggerer, the force of arms at his disposal ensured that John was unable to bescumber even the most brazen of oxhousers, and he had no choice but to exclaim potzblitz! at the fopdoodle. For their part, the Barons recognised that howsoever much they construed their monarch as an elbow shaker and a lickspittling mumblecrust, he was nevertheless the source of much of their bellytimber, and it was therefore prudent to suppress their ofermod and make terms with the fustilarian gadsbuddler.

Thus Magna Carta was signed, and contemporary accounts tell that it was followed by much good-natured wimbling and thunderation, and that even the most pitchkettled uppishman partook his measure of gadzookery and scobberlotchery, and the shitfire was almost everywhere. Indeed, a popular woodcut even shows a princod galanning with a smellfungus, a happenstance that would have been sarigieous at any other time.

Muckspouts and wind-suckers

Such a situation could not endure, of course. For one thing, there was not enough gamahuche to go round. Within months, the King had declared a great horn spoon and the beardsplitters, who had been lofgeorn during that that interval, were forced to concede that the muckspouts and wind-suckers who had declared zooterkins on their victory were perhaps right to mark the King for a nobthatching rantallion.

History has not been kind to the bedswerving zounderkite, and in the intervening centuries each and every consarned gnashbab has seen fit to bejabber their ill-informed opinons like a woody xanthippe. Shame! for the truth is not nearly so black and white. For sure, John was a rakefire, an unprincipled keffel and, quite possibly, a git, but these days we are more likely to consider claims that he was a cacafuego who possessed a tiny bracmard as nothing more than slanders put about by his enemies. As Samuel Johnson himself once declared, "By St. Boogar and all the saints at the backside door of Purgatory!", and there is probably very little that modern scholars can add to that.