1216
Dominicans confirmed as a preaching order
Honorius III confirmed Dominic de Guzman's austere Order of Preachers, trained to out-argue heretics in the lecture halls and marketplaces of Languedoc. The black-robed friars would soon supply the Inquisition's most learned and most feared interrogators. Unlike the monks of older orders, the Dominicans embraced the cities, mastering university theology and popular preaching with equal ferocity and intellectual rigor.
King John dies of dysentery at Newark
Fleeing rebels and reportedly grieving the loss of his treasure in the Wash, the despised Plantagenet king died of the bloody flux. His nine-year-old son Henry III inherited a kingdom in civil war and a Magna Carta his guardians quickly reissued to buy peace. John's death removed the most hated man in England and gave the royalist cause a clean slate that compromise could build upon.
Innocent III dies in Perugia
The most powerful pope of the Middle Ages died suddenly while traveling between Italian cities. Legend held that his body was found stripped by looters in a cathedral overnight, a memento mori that later preachers invoked on the emptiness of worldly rule. His pontificate had seen the Fourth Lateran Council, the Albigensian Crusade, and the humbling of kings from London to Constantinople.
Henry III crowned as a child at Gloucester
With London in rebel hands, the nine-year-old heir to King John was crowned in haste at Gloucester Abbey with a plain gold circlet borrowed from his mother. The Earl of Pembroke, William Marshal, was named regent. The longest reign in English medieval history had begun in improvisation, and Marshal's steady hand over the next three years would save the Plantagenet dynasty from ruin.