On 21 May 1216, during the First Barons’ War, Prince Louis VIII of France ⓘ landed with an army at Thanet in Kent after the English crown had been offered to him by barons in rebellion against John of England ⓘ.

Louis advanced on London, where he was proclaimed king by his supporters, though he was never crowned. By the time of John’s death in November 1216, Louis and the rebel barons controlled more than half of England.

The French intervention formed part of the wider political crisis that followed the sealing of Magna Carta in 1215 and represents one of the most serious challenges to Plantagenet rule in the early thirteenth century.1

• 1. Poole, Austin Lane From Domesday Book To Magna Carta The Oxford History Of England The Oxford History Of England Oxford Clarendon Press 1985. p484.