The closer study of John's history clears away the charges of sloth and incapacity with which men tried to explain the greatness of his fall.

The awful lesson of his life rests on the fact that the king who lost Normandy, became the vassal of the Pope, and perished in a struggle of despair against English freedom, was no weak and indolent voluptuary but the ablest and most ruthless of the Angevins.
[Sidenote: Innocent the Third] From the moment of his return to England in 1204 John's whole energies were bent to the recovery of his dominions on the Continent.

He impatiently collected money and men for the support of those adherents of the House of Anjou who were still struggling against the arms of France in Poitou and Guienne, and in the summer of 1205 he gathered an army at Portsmouth and prepared to cross the Channel.

But his project was suddenly thwarted by the resolute opposition of the Primate, Hubert Walter, and the Earl of Pembroke, William Marshal.

So completely had both the baronage and the Church been humbled by his father that the attitude of their representatives revealed to the king a new spirit of national freedom which was rising around him, and John at once braced himself to a struggle with it.