More nonsense is attached to Magna Carta than any document in British history. Several exaggerated claims are made for this text. It is routinely asserted that Magna Carta is the basis of the rule of law, the guarantor of liberty, cornerstone of the English constitution and even the foundation of global human rights. At its 800th anniversary in 2015, huge publicity attended the occasion, with TV programmes, exhibitions, several written pieces masquerading as learned articles, and vast public enthusiasm. Sadly, this was pretty well all misplaced.
Magna Carta’s importance, such as it is, depends less
on what it says, but on what people wrongly think it says. So what’s the
background? King John’s 16 year reign was a series of disasters. Among these
were the loss of Normandy in 1204, huge arbitrary taxes, general misgovernment
of the realm and John’s eventual excommunication, until 1213, by the Pope. A
succession of failed attempts to reconquer Normandy led to military and
financial catastrophe.
The barons, whose families had to pay for all this,
had finally had enough. It wasn’t just the vast sums raised from them, but the
nakedly unfair, even cruel, means of doing so. They resolved to force the
issue. Indeed it’s surprising it took them so long. Historian Marc Morris makes
his point unequivocally - not only was John a bad king, he was by far the worst
king England has ever had.
Tipping point
With the country verging on civil war, the tensions
building up culminated in the standoff at Runnymede, near Staines on the river Thames.
There in June 1215 John was presented with a series of demands from the leading
landowners and magnates, designed ostensibly to try and improve the king’s behaviour. This group
of nobles was supported by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Stephen Langton. A
draft written by Langton was also presented. It proposed, under its security
clause, setting up a Council of 25 leading men to enforce the charter, and
advise the king. It also sought to impose rules to establish reasonable conduct
with some limits on arbitrary royal power. The document was sealed, not signed,
by John. It later became known as Magna Carta.
So where did the attempt at peace go wrong? First it was annulled by Pope Innocent III in August. He had sent letters to England warning the barons that John was accountable to him, the Pope, as overlord of the kingdom, not to them. The agreement was ‘illegal, unjust, harmful to royal rights and shameful to the English people’. He declared the charter ‘null, and void of all validity for ever’.
A bad start. John, too, was angered by what he saw as
the arrogant attitude of the 25 barons. He thought the charter would help calm
things down, and then become just a generally vague symbol of good government.
But his opponents saw things differently. They were determined the deal should
be strictly enforced, and in the course of this standoff, constantly challenged
local officials. They also refused to disarm. John never meant to adhere to the
agreement, and realising this, the barons remained, to say the least, wary. So
neither side stood behind their commitments and indeed, may never have truly believed
in the exercise. In truth, it didn't have a chance.
No effective enforcement, then, and conflict between
the king and barons soon renewed. John died the following year, and the charter
was immediately re-issued, minus some of its more radical content. The
following year at the end of the war with Louis, it formed part of the Lambeth
peace treaty where it assumed the name Magna Carta. It was re-issued again in
1225 under Henry III, and by Edward I in 1297 when it was confirmed as part of
England’s statute law.
The document's key contradiction
Magna Carta had again become a political tool. But in
its original form the technical detail of Church rights, feudal payments to the
Crown, taxes and even fish weirs was relevant only to a very small number of
people - rich landowners. It had nothing to do with Britain’s libertarian
tradition.
Jonathan Sumption, former Supreme Court judge and renowned
medieval historian, puts it well. “I have no problem with the values which the
charter is commonly supposed to express. But I have the utmost difficulty in
finding them anywhere in the charter. The document is long. It is technical.
And it is turgid. Magna Carta may have been an ambitious document for its time,
but it is nothing like as ambitious as the Declaration
des Droits de l’Homme et du Citoyen. Magna Carta is a document for 1215,
and not for all time. And it is a document for Englishmen, not for humanity.
Indeed not even a document for all Englishmen, but only for the small minority
who were free, male and relatively rich.”
Magna Carta famously states ‘no free man should lose
his liberty or property except by the lawful judgment of his peers or according
to the law of the land’. But that pledge was next to worthless in a despot state
with arbitrary rule. There’s no point saying you could only be imprisoned
according to the law of the land when the law of the land said a man could be
arrested simply by the King’s warrant.
Magna Carta as a political weapon
The modern myth of the charter is mainly due to Sir Edward
Coke, the 17th century lawyer and politician. Seeking arguments
against the doctrine of the divine right of kings, so beloved of Charles I, he sought
to make the document a foundation of parliamentary powers and principles, like habeas corpus. His account,
unfortunately, was badly flawed. But he rescued Magna Carta from obscurity, and
transformed it from a laundry list of feudal regulations into a key part of our
history. Taken up by the founding fathers it also guided the US Constitution mainly by virtue signalling. Coke’s
idea of Magna Carta has been sold to the world, but it’s not a version that either John or
his barons would have recognised.
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