Having already unsettled the barons John also fell foul of the Pope. He had had difficulties with the Papacy over revenues and appointments but these came to a head with the death of the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1205. Pope Innocent III was insistent on his rights. In a dispute over who should be the new archbishop, John did his best to win even forcing the monks of Canterbury Cathedral to forgo their own candidate in favour of John's. The Pope chose neither and appointed Stephen Langton, consecrating him in 1207. A furious John stopped Langton returning to England and seized the archbishopric property, turning out the monks. Treating the Pope as an enemy, he seized lands of the clergy and lay people opposed to him. Common law 'wives' of clergy were imprisoned until fines were paid. Indeed, John made good money from those willing to negotiate over keeping their possessions and rights. The Pope responded by placing England under an Interdict in 1208 which meant clergy could not officiate at Church Services, except for christenings and absolutions for the dying. By 1209 the Pope decided his only recourse was to excommunicate John, but John was not cowed probably because two of his allies had already been excommunicated. He simply ensured that he maximised the amount of money he was diverting from the Church to his own coffers. John's subjects suffered more than he did but as time passed it became clear that many of the diktats were being undermined anyway. Finally, it was the threat of French invasion that brought John to a reconciliation in 1213. It had taken about six years.
John surrendered England and Ireland to the Papacy in return for a feudal subsidy. Langton was enthroned as Archbishop. However, by then many barons had had enough. Rebel barons captured Lincoln, Exeter and London. John deputed Langton to negotiate and he drew up the Great Charter, or Magna Carta, now recognised as the basis for later legislation as it focused on the rights of free men. John sealed it under duress at Runnymede, an island in the River Thames near Windsor Castle, on 15th June 1215. Among the twenty–eight barons was Henry de Bohun, Earl of Hereford. It granted the rights of the Church, access to swift justice while prohibiting illegal imprisonment, limitations for feudal payments, and new taxation only with the consent of a baronial council. John later appealed to the Pope, now his staunch supporter, and was permitted to rescind his agreement. The Charter was finally implemented, slightly abbreviated, by William Marshal, Earl of Pembroke in 1216 when he served as Regent of England and Ireland for John's young son Henry III. When Marshal reissued it again in 1217 to build political support, its size meant it became known as Magna Carta. William Marshal, whose base was Chepstow Castle, was crucial in the continuing history of Magna Carta. Again reissued as a bargaining tool for new taxes in 1225, it was Edward I (Henry III's son) who confirmed it as part of statute law in 1295.
This is the context of Dore Abbey's relations with King John. Cistercian abbeys were not classed as being in England or Wales at the time, though Herefordshire was described as 'Hereford in Wales' in Hereford charters by Richard I in 1189, and John in 1215. Of course many records are missing but enough has survived to show that John's relations with individual abbeys were pragmatic, depending more on the personalities involved than with any other factors. The factors to be considered are John's need and ability to acquire money, his reaction to the first Abbot Adam of Dore, monastic difficulties over the Interdict, and John's relations with William de Braose.
Dore Abbey had to pay almost £1,000 for their surviving charters from John's reign, an exorbitant amount that was about ten times their annual income recorded prior to the 16th century Dissolution of the Monasteries. In addition, in 1206, Dore had been fined 840 marks for felling trees for arable or pasture in 500 acres of woodland presumably in Trivel. Dore had evidently not obtained a license for this.