The Magna Carta
Magna Carta was written by a group of 40 rebellious barons to protect their rights and
property against a tyrannical king. It is concerned with many practical matters and specific
grievances relevant to the feudal system under which they lived.
Magna Carta, meaning ‘The Great Charter’, is one of the most famous documents in the
world. It established for the first time the principle that everybody, including the king, was
subject to the law. Although nearly a third of the text was deleted or substantially rewritten
within ten years, and almost all the clauses have been repealed in modern times, Magna
Carta remains a cornerstone of the British constitution.
By 1206, King John’s renewed war with France had caused him to lose the duchies of
Normandy and Anjou, among other territories. A feud with Pope Innocent III, beginning in
1208, further damaged John’s prestige, and he became the first English sovereign to suffer
the punishment of excommunication. After another embarrassing military defeat by France
in 1213, John attempted to refill his coffers–and rebuild his reputation–by demanding
scutage (money paid in lieu of military service) from the barons who had not joined him on
the battlefield. By this time, Stephen Langton, whom the pope had named as archbishop of
Canterbury over John’s initial opposition, was able to channel baronial unrest and put
increasing pressure on the king for concessions. With negotiations stalled early in 1215,
civil war broke out, and the rebels–led by baron Robert FitzWalter, John’s longtime
adversary–gained control of London.
King John’s abuse of the law had antagonised both the people and the nobles. The barons
now saw themselves not as Normans but as English and alert to the opinions of their fellow
countrymen. In 1205 a meeting in Oxford had forced the king to swear he would preserve
the rights of the English kingdom – in that simple phrase is the idea that rights are the
possession not of the king but of his subjects. That idea is what lies behind the Magna
Carta. The barons asked ‘who is the law supposed to serve’ and forced King John to limit
his own power.
On June 15, 1215, in a field at Runnymede, King John affixed his seal to Magna Carta. Just
10 weeks later, Pope Innocent III nullified the agreement, and England plunged into internal
war. Although Magna Carta failed to resolve the conflict between King John and his barons,
it was reissued several times after his death, and it did provide a new framework for the
relationship between the King and his subjects. Note the opening words of Magna Carta,
and the opening words of all documents issued by King John:’John, by the grace of God,
King of England, Lord of Ireland, Duke of Normandy and Aquitaine, Count of Anjou’ - by
1215 he had, in fact, lost these territories.
Most of the 63 clauses granted by King John dealt with specific grievances relating to his
rule. However, buried within them were a number of fundamental values that both
challenged the autocracy of the king and proved highly adaptable in future centuries Most
famously, the 39th clause gave all ‘free men’ the right to justice and a fair trial.
The 1225 version of Magna Carta, freely issued by Henry III in return for a tax granted to
him by the whole kingdom, took this idea further and became the definitive version of the
text. Three clauses remain on the statute book today. One defends the liberties and rights
of the English Church, another confirms the liberties and customs of London and other
towns, but the third is the most famous:
No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or
outlawed or exiled, or deprived of his standing in any other way, nor will we proceed with
force against him, or send others to do so, except by the lawful judgement of his equals or
by the law of the land.
To no one will we sell, to no one deny or delay right or justice.
This clause gave all free men the right to justice and a fair trial. However, ‘free men’
comprised only a small proportion of the population in medieval England. The majority of
the people were unfree peasants known as ‘villeins’, who could seek justice only through
the courts of their own lords.
Buried deep in Magna Carta, this clause was given no particular prominence in 1215, but its
intrinsic adaptability has allowed succeeding generations to reinterpret it for their own
purposes. In the 14th century Parliament saw it as guaranteeing trial by jury; in the 17th
century Sir Edward Coke interpreted it as a declaration of individual liberty in his conflict with
the early Stuart kings; and it has echoes in the American Bill of Rights (1791) and the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948).
Magna Carta stated that no taxes could be demanded without the ‘general consent of the
realm’, meaning the leading barons and churchmen. It re-established privileges which had
been lost, and it linked fines to the severity of the offence so as not to threaten an individual’s
livelihood. It also confirmed that a widow could not be forced to remarry against her wishes.
Although most of the clauses of Magna Carta have now been repealed, the many divergent
uses that have been made of it since the Middle Ages have shaped its meaning in the
modern era, and it has become a potent, international rallying cry against the arbitrary use
of power.
From the medieval Church to money-lending, feudal rights to the royal forest, Magna Carta
was both influenced by, and impacted upon, the institutions and customs of its day.
Despite the enduring legacy of Magna Carta and its lasting message — that there are limits
to the power of our rulers — much of the 1215 document dealt with issues affecting
the people and institutions of medieval England.
It is not certain how many copies of the 1215 Magna Carta were originally issued, but four
copies still survive: one in Lincoln Cathedral; one in Salisbury Cathedral; and two at the
British Library. Like other medieval royal charters, Magna Carta was authenticated with the
Great Seal, not by the signature of the king.
What was the long-term impact of Magna Carta?
Magna Carta is sometimes regarded as the foundation of democracy in England. In fact,
most of its terms applied only to a small proportion of the population in 1215, and the
implementation of the charter in subsequent centuries remained open to the interpretation
of the courts.
Revised versions of Magna Carta were issued by King Henry III (in 1216, 1217 and 1225),
and the text of the 1225 version was entered onto the statute roll in 1297. Magna Carta had
limited the circumstances under which the King could raise money without the consent of
the people. The 1225 version of Magna Carta had been granted explicitly in return for a
payment of tax by the whole kingdom, and this paved the way for the first summons of
Parliament in 1265, to approve the granting of taxation.
The act of Habeas Corpus of 1679 gave ‘prisoners or third parties acting on their behalf the
right to challenge their detention by demanding from the Lord Chancellor, Justices of the
King’s Bench, and the Barons of the Exchequer of the jurisdiction a judicial reiew of their
imprisonment’. This act widely quoted today can be traced back to Clause 39 of Magna
Carta.
Some of Magna Carta’s core principles are echoed in the United States Bill of Rights (1791)
and in many other constitutional documents around the world, as well as in the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights (1948) and the European Convention on Human Rights (1950).
--Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 1941 Inaugural address:
"The democratic aspiration is no mere recent phase in human
history . . . It was written in Magna Carta."
Magna Carta in context
Feudal rights and obligations
The feudal system was the framework governing all landholding in medieval England. In the
feudal hierarchy, all land was ultimately held from the king, in a complex web stretching
down from the king’s tenants-in-chief, through a series of under-tenants, to the rural
peasantry at the bottom. Everyone in this hierarchy had rights and obligations which were
regulated by long-established custom.
The king was entitled to many customary payments from his tenants-in-chief. He could
demand money on the marriage of his eldest daughter or when his tenants’ heirs inherited
their estates; he had the lucrative right of wardship over tenants’ heirs who were minors,
and he could control the marriage of his tenants’ widows and heirs. The barons also owed
the king a payment called ‘scutage’ in place of military service.
King John repeatedly breached the bounds of traditional practice by exploiting his feudal
rights to excess. Over a third of the 63 clauses in the 1215 Magna Carta dealt directly with
these rights, defining and limiting the extent of the king’s authority.
Justice
King John’s father, Henry II, introduced extensive judicial reforms, established the
authority of the royal courts and laid firm foundations for the future system of justice in
England. In contrast, John regularly abused the justice system to suppress his opponents
and to extort revenue from the barons. The justice system and feudal law were two of the
main themes addressed in Magna Carta, and the most famous clause dealt with justice:
No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or
outlawed or exiled, or deprived of his standing in any other way, nor will we proceed with
force against him, or send others to do so, except by the lawful judgement of his equals or
by the law of the land.
The barons ensured that numerous other clauses in Magna Carta defined in more detail
how the justice system and its officials were to operate. These clauses sought to remedy
specific abuses by the king and to make the system more consistent, accessible and fair.
Magna Carta and peace
Many of the clauses towards the end of Magna Carta were practical arrangements for
making peace. Rather than looking forward to how the king was to behave in the future,
these clauses sought to put right the wrongs done by King John.
The king was immediately to return all hostages, to remove all foreign knights and
mercenaries from England, to remit all fines exacted unjustly, and to restore lands, castles
and liberties to all who had been wrongfully deprived of them. These clauses were not
statements of legal principle, but they were a part of the peace-making process.
Perhaps the most radical clause in Magna Carta was the 61st, which set up an elected
commission of 25 barons to monitor the king’s compliance with the settlement and to enforce
its terms. The 25 barons had the power to seize the king’s property in order to seek redress
if he failed to keep the terms imposed on him. This innovative clause demonstrated the
power invested in Magna Carta to limit royal authority.
The medieval Church
For much of his reign, King John was in dispute with Pope Innocent III over the election of
a new Archbishop of Canterbury. When John refused to recognise the papal nominee,
Stephen Langton, the dispute intensified. In 1208 the Pope prohibited priests in England
from celebrating mass, conducting marriages in church and burying the dead in consecrated
ground. John retaliated by seizing the lands and income of the Church, but in 1209 the Pope
excommunicated him, turning him overnight into a spiritual outcast.
By 1212, facing the threat of a French invasion, John was forced to make peace with the
Church. He accepted Langton as Archbishop in 1213, he compensated the Church for the
revenues he had plundered, and he made the Pope feudal overlord of England.
This capitulation after years of bitter struggle proved to be a shrewd political act once King
John had been coerced into granting Magna Carta. Within weeks, John had sent envoys to
Innocent III, demanding that Magna Carta be rejected; before most of the charter’s terms
could be properly implemented, the Pope declared Magna Carta null and void on 24 August
1215.
Debt and money-lending
Medieval Christians were forbidden from lending money at interest, whereas Jews were free
to make such loans. The King and the barons depended on Jewish money-lenders because
they needed financial credit, but the King also plundered Jewish wealth through punitive
levies and the confiscation of property.
Since the Crown had the right to collect debts owed to Jews who had died, Jewish loans to
the barons were often profitable for the King and financially painful for the barons. Despite
this, Magna Carta did not forbid the reversion to the Crown of debts owed to Jews. Indeed,
Magna Carta implicitly allowed the seizure of property for the payment of debts, and neither
did it prohibit imprisonment for those in debt.
Instead, Magna Carta set out principles for how debts should be collected and it corrected
two minor abuses: first, if the heir of a debt to a Jew was a minor, the debt could not accrue
interest; secondly, widows and minors were to be protected from excessive demands for
repayment.
The royal forest
During the 12th century, King John’s predecessors, and especially his father, Henry II, had
declared vast and ever increasing areas of the country to be royal forest, set aside for the
king’s hunt. Prior to 1215 the extent of the forest was controlled by the king, and John
increased its limits even further.
The royal forest was governed by a separate set of especially severe laws, enforced by
special justices, sheriffs and wardens. All hunting was prohibited, as were bows and arrows,
greyhounds, hawks and falcons, the cultivation of land and the felling of trees. Those living
in the forest were unable to exploit the land’s resources and were subject to fines for any
breach of forest law.
The barons used Magna Carta to regulate the boundaries of the forest, investigate its
officials and reform forest law. These clauses subsequently formed the basis of the separate
Charter of the Forest in 1217.
Towns and trade
England’s cities and towns were evolving rapidly in the 12th and 13th centuries. Urban
populations were growing, commercial life was expanding, and the complex structures of
urban administration were beginning to emerge. In London, the only large city in England,
networks of craftsmen, tradesmen and shopkeepers supported a thriving urban culture, and
the River Thames was busy with merchant traffic. The city jealously guarded the extent of
its self-governance and its financial freedoms.
Only three of the clauses of Magna Carta that were enrolled on the statute roll in 1297 are
still valid today, one of which declares that London and all other cities, boroughs, towns and
ports shall enjoy their ancient liberties and customs.
Kathleen Cameron
April 2015
The British Library
1215 – Danziger & Gillingham
Simon Schama – A History of Britain
Michael Wood – The Great British Story (the Norman Yoke)
Leslie Townsend