The letter from Innocent III to King John, which opens with a nice compliment to John, restates the pledge given by John and his court to give an annual tribute of 1,000 marks per year to the roman church, and then ends with Innocents statement of acceptance of the pledge (and basically apology) from John.

At the time leading up this letter of 1214, the decree of Innocent that church services not be conducted in England had angered John, who probably felt quite heavily the backlash in terms of public opinion. What John had done up to that point, was to seize the land of clergy who refused to practice and as well, offered protection to those members of the clergy who agreed to continue to practice, against Innocent’s ruling.

This is the same king John as the one in Robin Hood so it shouldn’t be a surprise that he had taken much more than 1,000 marks from the various churches in England(Wikipedia cites a sum of roughly 100,000 marks).

It seems to be to the pope that the more important part of the letter is John’s pledge of Fealty, and so an assurance that the king will not attempt to effect the outcome of proceeding papal elections. It must have seemed important to the pope. Here he is receiving a letter from the king of England, and the King is pledging loyalty to him, and as well, pledges the loyalty of all of his successors.

The letter does seem to have the same ‘tenor’ as the three other letters printed in Rosenwein (325-326), and I wonder how many letters Innocent sent to John, and how often he used the line “by apostolic letter, we command you…”.