Top 10 Worst British Monarchs
Class 7PA agrees that King John was the worst king. The reasons for this are:
He got his country excommunicated from the Church because he was arguing with the Pope over who should control the English Church.
He did not listen to his barons, and he should have listened to everyone instead of his foreign advisers.
A source said that he had an unstable personality and was evil.
He had an agreement, Magna Carta, but he abandoned it, causing the barons to fight against him. He also raised unfair taxes.
Had no idea how to rule England. She failed to understand that England's population was largely Catholic and thus added strength to the Protestant cause by stupidly burning 300 Protestants who were immediately viewed as martyrs.
She was also dominated by her husband Philip II of Spain and, after choosing to invade France, Henry II completely showed her up by taking Calais, the last English possession in France.
Her treatment of Protestants is unforgivable. Furthermore, she did little for England during her reign and well and truly earned the name Bloody Mary.
Edward V doesn't need to be on here, but this guy does! Unpopular, cruel, manipulative (if Sir Thomas More is to be believed), a child-killer (not yet confirmed, but highly likely)...
Would you want him for a monarch?
In his quest for power, he failed to protect the dynasty and likely killed the only legitimate York heirs.
He didn't even care about his own nephews.
A completely useless monarch. He had no interest in Britain, had huge debts, and by the time he became king, he avoided being seen in public, leading many people to wonder what the point of having a monarchy was.
He held huge debts, wasted money, and did not help his country.
He only cared about money and mistresses. He was useless!
Spent all his time with the wrong crowd and married women. I am not sure why most people brush over his Nazi sympathies.
Shamed the monarchy after abdicating the throne to marry an American actress, Wallis Simpson.
Henry VIII (28 June 1491 - 28 January 1547) was King of England from 22 April 1509 until his death. Henry is most well-known for his six marriages and his efforts to annul his first marriage to Catherine of Aragon... read more Henry VIII was a self-interested, irritable monarch who actually achieved very little in a positive sense. The fact that we are a Protestant nation (largely seen as a good thing) is purely a by-product of his self-interest. OK, so he told the Pope where to get off, but his wars were costly and largely unsuccessful.
On the whole, he spent money like there was no tomorrow and left the country far worse off than when he became king. People are only obsessed with him today because the whole "six wives" thing makes good television.
The worst thing, in my opinion, however, being a student of architecture, is that he was a vandal on an epic scale. So many abbeys and priories were wrecked needlessly.
He was ruthless, feckless, capricious, and oppressive. His father was ruthless, but at least he was an intelligent soldier.
William Rufus was utterly selfish.
England was in total chaos after he usurped the throne in 1135. He ended up being imprisoned, but after a brave assault by his wife, he was freed.
His only redeeming feature was that he was a capable leader in battle.
He plunged Britain into a series of four civil wars between 1138 and 1154!
He created chaos with nearly every decision.
He was haunted by madness, but even when he was sane, he had a weak personality. This led to the outbreak of the Wars of the Roses.
His small successes were mainly due to his wife or his noble friends.
His lack of leadership directly caused the Wars of the Roses and the loss of the Hundred Years' War.
To be honest, I kind of feel bad for the guy. Everyone puts Charles at fault. However, Parliament is equally to blame here.
For example, his father was James I, a feeble king. He was king during the Gunpowder Plot due to his assumed hatred against Catholics. He tried copying Elizabeth I's policy of the Middle Way. He was homosexual, making him seem girly and weak for a king, and so much more. However, Parliament had no right to deny Charles custom tax for his entire lifetime. That caused Charles to do everything he did.
If he had guidance from Parliament, he probably would have succeeded in the taking of Cadiz and his expedition in France. But Parliament refused to help him. He would have gained so much money if Parliament had just cooperated with him. He held illegal merchant taxes, thereby breaking the Magna Carta, but could you really blame him?
Every time he asked Parliament for permission, they refused. Furthermore, Queen Elizabeth I sold land for money, thereby decreasing the worth of the crown. After losing the two Bishops' Wars due to lack of money, Parliament became even more controlling. Parliament executed his two best friends, Strafford and Laud. They forced Charles to remove illegal taxes, and Parliament couldn't be dismissed for more than five years. After that, Parliament still bullied Charles. The Grand Remonstrance, written by John Pym, listed 204 problems with Charles I - an act of treason!
When Charles went to arrest John Pym and four others, Cromwell stated that if he were to arrest them, Parliament would declare civil war on Charles. After that, Parliament committed treason again, this time writing Nineteen Propositions, limiting the power of the king even more.
On August 1642, Charles finally had enough and declared the Nottingham Standard, beginning a civil war. But, could you really blame him? Honestly, I blame Parliament more.
The Newcomers
Elizabeth II (Elizabeth Alexandra Mary; 21 April 1926 – 8 September 2022) was Queen of the United Kingdom and 14 other Commonwealth realms from 6 February 1952 until her death in 2022. Elizabeth was born in Mayfair, London, as the first child of the Duke and Duchess of York (later King George VI and... read more More about Windsor Castle: the people were forced to pay the money to repair Windsor, so the people wanted a republic. She receives millions of pounds from the government every year! (I recommend watching The Kings and Queens of England by Lindsay Koski, which has eight videos, each 17 minutes max).
It was under her rule that the British Empire declined greatly. It is more than likely that the United Kingdom will dismantle after her reign, seeing as nearly all the territories became independent countries.
He let the valuable colonies that would become the United States slip away. He was quite mentally unstable and unwilling to compromise to satisfy the colonists.
He was insane and lost America.
This coward didn't want to offend Lenin by granting asylum to his own cousin Tsar Nicholas and his family. Unforgivable!
Another person completely unfit for monarchy. He allowed himself first to be dominated by Piers Gaveston and made the same mistake again with the Despensers.
He was crushed at the Battle of Bannockburn by Robert the Bruce. The legend of him being murdered with a red-hot poker seems an appropriate way for him to go after his reign.
He was never kind to his wife and made really bad decisions for his country!
He wielded his office only in his own and his favorites' interest, finally becoming a tyrant.
Queen Victoria (Alexandrina Victoria; 24 May 1819 – 22 January 1901) was Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from 20 June 1837 until her death in 1901. Her reign of 63 years and seven months was longer than that of any previous British monarch and is known as the Victorian era... read more She is the worst because she killed so many Indians and took over India for 200 years. The people who were in India at the time became slaves to the British, which is like slavery.
He didn't understand that England would not accept a Catholic king who tried to brush aside Parliament.
He was overthrown by William III during the Glorious Revolution.
James could have written the opposite of a popular management book, "How Not to Win Friends or Influence People."
This senseless king was soon replaced in the Glorious Revolution.
A weak and cowardly man, who never led from the front in battle. He drove his people into poverty because of his own fears and even enslaved those who dared to rebel against his huge taxes and fines. He executed large numbers of people and held the young boy Edward of Warwick (a York heir) in basically solitary confinement in the Tower of London until he lost his mind.
He treated his wife appallingly but, as a grown man of over 30 years and crowned king, needed his mother's rooms next to his, and she would see him to bed at night (basically tucking him in).
A total lamppost. He is the reason England was under French control.
Ill-advised, as his name says, into marching on Winchester and killing his brother, Eadwærd the Martyr. He pranced around England while his kingdom was taken and pushed his son, Ironside, to war with Cnut and Harthacnut (as well as Harold Harefoot). He was a pretty bad king, so abrasive and stupid that the Witan (the council that elected kings in Anglo-Saxon England) kicked him out of the country twice in favor of a Scandinavian candidate.
Over the dead body of his brother, the king received a country ruled by the laws of Alfred the Great - the best-organized state in Western Europe. His long reign, marked by unrest and the slaughter of his Danish subjects, resulted in the loss of England to Danish kings and paved the way to the Norman Conquest that brought ruin to the North and extermination of Anglo-Saxon aristocracy.
Overrated bloodthirsty warlord who only cared about England when he wanted money from his subjects to help him kill more Muslims. He never even attempted to learn English and always considered England a distant second to his homeland, France.
Ambitious to the point of megalomania, he usurped his own father to win the throne.
Utterly moronic, he managed to get himself kidnapped through incompetence, and the ransom bankrupted the nation for years.
In a final act of stupidity, he was killed in battle as he didn't bother to put any armor on. His good reputation stems from the fact that the Church did most of the writing back then, and they gave him a good write-up as he took part in the Crusades. Through modern eyes, his reign can be seen for the warmongering egotism that it really was.
One word: hatred. This man hated everyone. He loathed women and had an unusually sick fascination with believing everyone to be a witch.
Not his fault, but at the end of the day, he was only on the throne for 2 months before being overthrown by Richard III and therefore achieved nothing as king.
The poor boy never got a chance to prove himself and became more famous for his mysterious death.
It's not fair he had to be killed by his uncle.
A very weak king who was dominated by his barons and then his wife and her family, leading to his imprisonment by Simon de Montfort.
It was down to his son Edward, not Henry himself, that Simon was killed and that Henry got his throne back.