Dr Cristopher Nash, of South Embankment, Dartmouth, writes: It was fun reading in the Chronicle that 'the port at which King John landed on his return from France was Dartmouth', Concert's Magna Carta joy, May 1. Still, for those used to celebrating John's brother Richard I having assembled a great crusader fleet in Dartmouth harbour, it may underplay the full story. But maybe with good reason? Six years after Richard's death, in April-May 1205, John set up headquarters and marshalled a force of mercenaries in Dartmouth as one of two bases for an invasion of France. 'All along the roads to Southampton and Dartmouth,' a modern historian writes, 'carts trundled laden with bacons, venison, hurdles, quarrels for crossbows, wool for sails, and barrels of money for everything.' In a pincer movement, the Dartmouth expedition was destined for Poitou at the same time that John in Portsmouth was to set out for Normandy.  John failed to finalise sufficient support for his Normandy venture, but the Dartmouth expedition reached Poitou, though with little total gain. This king's teeth-grinding distaste for 'incomplete victory' was a matter of record, and the next spring he organised a second expedition, to be led by himself, with several hundred ships to assemble in Dartmouth on the eve of Whitsun 1206. The fleet landed at La Rochelle on June 7, and John carried out a series of raids that ended with the recovery of most of Poitou and steeled him for one last far more ambit­ious – and famously disastr­ous – assault on France. The outcome was his historic defeat at Bouvines in 1214 and with it, as the Chronicle says, England's loss forever of virtually all its vast possessions in France. John, returning to England, landed at Dartmouth, and here he put his signature to two documents on October 15.  Eight months later he was to sign Magna Carta, and the year after, he would be dead. Can Dartmouth be forgiven for having forgotten a king at the expense of remembering just how rich – in fact king-sized – its own history? Where did he stay? you might ask. Well, okay; commemorating royalty, especially for those fancying virtue and success, can be a tricky thing.