#Magna Carta

#Magna Carta 

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Although King John accepting the Magna Carta is today hailed as a landmark moment in the development of liberty, justice, and equality, at the moment of its signing in 1215, it mattered only to the king - who was being forced into signing it - and the 25 nobles who were doing the forcing. Within a matter of months, King John held the document to be invalid. For a time, it looked as if the Magna Carta would be, at best, a footnote in history. However, because of how terrible of a king John was, how quickly he died after signing it, how young his heir was, and how it got reinterpreted by future generations; the document was destined to birth an age of liberty and to lay the foundations for the English Common Law. Magna Carta was a myth that became a miraculous reality.

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Eleanor of Aquitaine’s marriage to the future King Henry II in 1152 helped lay the foundation for the Angevin Empire, which encompassed almost all of Britain and most of what we think of as France today. Desiring to keep the power that came from such lands intact instead of divided among sons, initially, Henry II planned to leave nothing to their son John, who came to have the nickname Lackland. Ironically, John outlived his brothers and took the throne in 1199, but as king of England, his nickname proved to be prophetic; he quickly managed to lose most of the lands he had inherited. Further, he so enraged the pope that all of England was put under interdict for six years, which meant that no sacraments or masses could be performed.

King John leaned far too heavily on his nobles in trying to hold onto his empire. Needing money to fight his wars, he did what many kings of England had done in earlier days: He levied taxes on his nobles, which technically, he had the right to do. But John went to the well far too often, and by 1215, his nobles had had enough. They even entertained the idea of inviting the king of France to cross the channel and claim England for himself.

In the face of outright rebellion, John had no choice but to meet with his barons and agree to their terms at Runnymede. This was definitely a turning point in the medieval world, but not a turning point in the way that we often imagine it. John agreed to a series of articles - essentially a peace treaty - that severely limited the power of the monarchy in a way that had not been effected anywhere in the medieval world before this time, but very little changed initially.

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The Magna Carta, as it came to be called much later, does not represent a triumph of the common man. It is, first and foremost, a document concerned with protecting the interests of the 25 nobles who presented it under threat of rebellion against the crown. The document helped some other people at the top of the social hierarchy, but for 90 percent of English society, the signing of the Magna Carta was a complete non-event.

The Magna Carta has 63 articles, and those that are most often hailed as a great leap forward for humanity are numbered 38, 39, and 40. Read from a modern vantage point, clauses 38 and 39 seem to articulate the right to trial by jury, but at the time, they meant that none of John’s nobles should have to accept his decisions unless they agreed to do so as a group. And Clause 40, when read on its own, seems a defiant articulation of the rights of all people: “To no one will we sell, to no one deny or delay right or justice.” At last, this seems a statement about human rights and dignity, freedom and justice - except for the fact that this clause, and 38, and 39, are buried deep in the middle of the document. These clauses come after others relating to the theft of firewood; fish traps cluttering up the Thames; and standard weights and measures for wine, ale, and corn. They are diluted still further by the fact that they are not even the dramatic climax of the document. After the bit about never denying or delaying justice, the Magna Carta shifts its focus to merchants moving in and out of the country, forest rights, whether the Crusading movement should continue, and removing from office anyone related to, or a friend of, some guy named Gerard of Athee - who apparently wasn’t very popular.

John also had to agree to give back lands and titles that he had taken from various nobles and to accept the authority of a council of barons who would have the right to censure his behavior. In other words, for the first time, a king agreed to have his power limited by his vassals. In this act, many historians have seen the beginnings of the English Parliament.

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Crucial to the history of the Magna Carta, when John agreed to accept the articles in 1215, he did not do so willingly. Just after giving his formal agreement, John appealed to the pope to declare the document unenforceable and without significance. Pope Innocent III issued a papal bull nullifying the Magna Carta just three months after it’s signing. This caused outrage among the barons, and things got even worse for John. His popularity sank, and he was forced to drain the royal treasury putting down rebellions. He then died of dysentery in October of 1216, leaving his nine-year-old son, Henry III, to succeed him.

At first, it seemed that Henry III might be removed as king in favor of someone who was more mature and skilled in warfare and diplomacy. Such a person did emerge, but he did not try to take the throne for himself; rather, he sought to save it for Henry by reaffirming the articles of the Great Charter. This man was William the Marshall, who had survived a threat of hanging from King Stephen and gone on to become the most universally admired knight in the land. It was William’s loyalty, along with his recognition that something drastic had to happen in order to keep Henry III on the throne, that gave the Magna Carta new life.

In 1216, William made a point of reissuing the charter in the name of Henry, and while he kept the bulk of the document intact, he carefully and cleverly amended certain clauses to appeal to the greatest population of nobles. This was a brilliant move, but again, we should note that peasants, traders, and craftsmen figured in the document only insofar as they had anything to do with the concerns of the nobles.

Later on, Henry would reissue the charter under his own authority, and later kings would follow suit. Over time, it became customary for the full text of the Magna Carta to be reissued every year and, later, read aloud in public. Without this oral reading, there would be no way for the average person to know what the document contained since few could read. As time passed, it was the “average person” who would come to be most deeply invested in the charter.

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Neither King John, nor his barons, nor William Marshall, nor Henry III could have imagined what the events of that June day at Runymede in 1215 would eventually produce. Neither could they see, from their perspective, how the moment when a king agreed - against his will - to a contract he never intended to keep, would ultimately transform the entire world.

In the 17th century, lawyers in England, principally Sir Edward Coke, began to assert that the Magna Carta stated basic principles of law, arguing that there needed to be limits on the powers of the king, and that this document had been affirming that idea for centuries. When Englishmen began setting up colonies in the Americas, they ran with Coke’s idea and began quoting the Great Charter in their colonial laws. The document was later cited by the Founding Fathers of the United States and by those who fought in the French Revolution. And its name was placed in the United Nation Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Every time someone pointed to the values described in the Magna Carta as an inspiration, the significance of the moment of the initial agreement was enlarged and enhanced. Eventually, the barons at Runymede became mythologized as freedom fighters against the crown. But in fact, striking a blow for human rights was not on the minds of these nobles. As men who believed in the class hierarchy of their age, most of them probably would have been horrified and confused at the idea that the document suggested an earl might have something in common with a blacksmith or a knight with a farmer.

Still, King John’s acceptance of the Magna Carta stands as a massively pivotal moment because without his agreement to its articles - reluctant as it was - the English system of law and justice might not have developed along the lines it eventually did. If that hadn’t happened, one could go so far as to suggest that the United States, the modern nation of France, and the international body of the United Nations would not exist in the forms they do today. It truly was a magnificent myth that became a reality.

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“In 1215 the Magna Carta was nothing more than a failed peace treaty. John was not to know - any more than the barons who negotiated its terms with him would have done - that his name and the myth of the document sealed at Runnymede would be bound together in English history forever. Yet this, in the long run, was the case. The Magna Carta would be reissued time and again in the years immediately following John’s death, and interpreting this intricate document on the limits of the powers of a king would be at the heart of every constitutional battle that was fought during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. As Henry III struggled to regain the rights and territories that his father had lost, the great charter gradually came to define the terms of engagement between king and community. When it was reissued in 1225, the Magna Carta was nailed to church doors and displayed in town squares across England, gaining legendary status as a document whose spirit stood for the duty of English kings to govern within the laws they made. That, in a strange way, was John’s legacy. Perhaps the most ruthless legalist ever to reign as English king would have appreciated the irony.” (Jones)

Today, some scholars have attempted to rehabilitate John and make excuses or offer up explanations for his behavior as king, arguing that he really wasn’t that bad. Yes he was that bad - a brutal and terrible king. There is no way to put it nicely: He was a dismal failure in almost every way imaginable. But it was precisely his ineptitude that gave us the liberty of the English Common Law.

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Book Sources:

    - “The Plantagenets: The Warrior Kings and Queens Who Made England” by Dan Jones

    - “Magna Carta: The Birth of Liberty” by Dan Jones

    - “A Brief History of Liberty” by David Schmidtz and Jason Brennan

Picture: “King John Signing the Magna Carta Reluctantly” painting by Arthur C. Michael