 John and his predecessors had ruled using the principle of "vis et voluntas", or "force and will", taking executive and sometimes arbitrary decisions, often justified on the basis that a king was above the law.Many contemporary writers believed that monarchs should rule in accordance with the custom and the law, with the counsel of the leading members of the realm, but there was no model for what should happen if a king refused to do so.John had lost most of his ancestral lands in France to King Philip II in 1204 and had struggled to regain them for many years, raising extensive taxes on the barons to accumulate money to fight a war which ended in expensive failure in 1214.