Gone Medieval - Magna Carta

Episode Date: August 4, 2023

One of the most important documents ever written, Magna Carta was sealed by King John after negotiations with his barons and their French and Scots allies at Runnymede in 1215.Magna Carta has inspired the way we view issues of justice and liberty, in both Britain and around the world, ever since. In this episode of Gone Medieval, Matt Lewis is joined by Professor David Carpenter to work out the how’s, why’s and what’s of Magna Carta.This episode was edited by Joseph Knight and produced by Rob Weinberg.Discover the past on History Hit with ad-free original podcasts and documentaries released weekly presented by world renowned historians including Dan Snow, Suzannah Lipscomb, Lucy Worsley, Matt Lewis, Tristan Hughes and more. Get 50% off your first 3 months with code MEDIEVAL. Download the app on your smart TV or in the app store or sign up here > You can take part in our listener survey here. If you’re enjoying this podcast and are looking for more fascinating Medieval content then subscribe to our Medieval Monday newsletter here: https://insights.historyhit.com/signup-form Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From long-loss Viking ships and kings buried in unexpected places to tales of murder, power, faith, and the lives of ordinary people across medieval Europe and beyond. Join me, Matt Lewis, Dr. Eleanor Jarniger, and some of the world's leading historians as we bring history's most fascinating stories to life, only on history hit. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries

with a brand-new release every week exploring everything from the ancient world, to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Welcome to this episode of Gone Medieval. I'm Matt Lewis. Topics in medieval history don't get too much bigger than Magna Carta. I'm not sure how we've evaded it for so long, but it's time to put that right. It marks a defining moment in history and has influenced nations for centuries after its difficult birthing. I've asked David Carpenter, Professor of Medieval History at King's College London, to come back and speak to us

about this. So we're in very safe hands as we try and work out the how's the wise and the Watts of Magna Carta. Welcome back to Gone Medieval, David. Thank you very much. I'm very happy to be back. I'm going to ask you probably the slightly mean question to start off with, given that it's not the focus of this, and we're going to need something close to a quick answer. But why was King John so horribly unpopular? Well, as a historian John Gillingham has said, King John was a shit. And he was cruel, he was manipulative, he was treacherous, he was a murderer, He was widely thought to be lusting after the wives and daughters of his barons. I think he was more hated personally than any other previous king. Were all of the problems of his reign that we see

culminating in the Magna Carta crisis, really? Was that all just driven by his terrible personality? Not really, no. I mean, there were wider problems with his rule. And the watershed in John's reign came in 1204, which is one of those key dates in European history, when John lost the continental empire of his predecessors, lost Normandy, conquered by the King of France. And after that, John spent 10 years in England trying to amass the treasure to win Normandy back. And in that process, he literally tripled his revenues. It makes a point that John was a very clever king, very hands-on, a very good administrator. And at the same time as he was doing that, hugely raising his revenues, and that's a major cause of Magna Carta, he was all so widely thought to be ruling in a lawless way.

depriving of his barons of their property without lawful judgment, demanding large sums of money to recover his goodwill, taking hostages to ensure good behaviour. And at the end of the day, I think he was widely regarded as a tyrant in the sense, the contemporary sense that he broke the law and didn't govern for the benefit of his people. So do we see issues developing throughout perhaps the beginning of the enjaveen period under Henry II, Richard I. Do we see issues developing then that, we can see on a roadmap to Magna Carta so that it's not really entirely John's fault. No, I agree about that. In fact, we can go back further still, because at the start of his reign in 1, 1, 1st, issued a coronation charter, which covered some of the same issues as Magna Carta in 1215, and indeed the barons got out the coronation charter of Henry I first and waved it at King John. Of John's immediate predecessors, yes, grievances were building up under Henry the 2 and under Richard. And indeed, one chronicler said, writing at the very start of John's reign, but no King of England had taken more money from his kingdom than had Richard. So that already, if you like,

the Pips were squeaking under Henry II of Richard, but under John, they started to scream. And as I've said, the watershed was 1204 and then the much government of England afterwards. So I think John could have got away with his personality if it hadn't have been for these wider issues of his rule. Which I guess to some extent points to another failure of John in not recognising the situation that he was in and tailoring his rule to fit that a little bit. I think he was in some ways politically very aware in terms of how to manipulate individuals. But in a wider sense, I think he was very unaware. And that comes out in one key area where the one area of Angevin rule, which was popular, with the new legal reforms of Henry II, often seen as the birth of the common law.

and they enabled ordinary people to litigate very effectively against each other to solve problems, property disputes and so on. But instead of expanding the common law, John, in a so paranoid way, closed it down. So that made it all the more seem that the government was taking a great deal and giving, in terms of law, giving too little. And I think that was due to John just not realizing what advantages he could have got from expanding the common law. The other point about the common law was that it set standards of conduct for the king's subjects. They were not to deprive people of property unlawfully and without judgment. And yet, of course, what the kings were doing, and especially John, was to break their own rules. And so in a way, it was very educative, the common law.

It made people think we want lawful rule from the king, and that's what he's demanding about. So in a way, Magna Carta was a demand that the king should obey his own rules. There was a bit too much do as I say and not as I do from John. Exactly. Yeah. And how do the barons come in 1215? How do they come to force Magna Carta onto the king? Is John simply left with no option but to agree to their demands by then?

John felt that by May June 1215. And it was by force, by rebellion. The barons had rebelled against him. Very large numbers of them had. They defied him. They withdrawn from his allegiance. And the key moment in the buildup was the fall of London. In May 1215, the barons took over London, and that meant John knew he could not win the war,

or it would be very difficult to win the war with the great city, the capital of the kingdom in baronial hands, and that's what brought him to negotiate. And I guess with hindsight, we'll know that John will tread Magna Carta almost as soon as he's put his seal upon it. But do you think there's any element of him sealing it just to buy himself time that he never really meant to abide by this? I think it's a little bit more complex than that. What John hoped and thought might happen is that having, in a benevolent way, granted this charter, all these liberties to the kingdom, everyone would then go home, it would end the war, there would be peace. And the charter would never be implemented. People would not really know what was in it. And so, in a way, things can go back before. John certainly never thought it was going to be actually put into practice. And of course, sorry, when it was, he then realized, his mistake and immediately reneged on the deal. I mean, the barons showed their ability to enforce the charter to the letter and beyond. In fact, amazing new discoveries have been made of that of a letter written by the chief barons actually enforcing the charter, getting everyone to take an

oath to abide by it, setting in train the whole reform of local government it promised. And so it's really key link which we now had, discovered by Nicholas Vincent, which we've never had before, the implementation of the Charter and thus explaining why John reneges on it. Do you think there's an element maybe of John is forced to agree to stop ruling the way that he's ruling because he's been so bad, but then that the barons almost make too much of their victory and are too keen to impose it too tightly on John instead of allowing him to ease into it? That's a very good point. And actually, the person who thought that more than anything else was the great Archbishop of Canterbury, Stephen Langton, because nobody did more

after Magna Carta to try and maintain Magna Carta's peace. And on the one hand, he supported elements of what the Barons were going to do. But on the other hand, he cautioned them. He said you were taking far too much under the Charter in terms of the reform in local government. So he realized what was going wrong. I think it is possible that some kind of middle way might have been found in which, as I've said, Magna Carta was not enforced to the letter, but was enforced in a slightly loose away. John might have put up with it for longer. It might have become established in his reign. But that was never likely to happen because the barons distrusted John so much.

They were very determined to enforce the charter to the letter and, as I say, beyond. Yeah, yeah. And I'm sure they felt like John had been enforcing what he considered his rights ruthlessly to that point. And I guess if we get into the meat of it then, what does Magna Carta? actually say, what does it seek to impose on, not even necessarily John, but on the institution of the Crown? What's so striking about Magna Carta is two things. First, it's the assertion of a general principle that the ruler is subject to the law, but in a way that's an old principle. There's nothing novel in that. What's novel about Magna Carta, this is the second point, is the sheer

detail in which that principle is asserted across the whole range of royal government. So it's a detailed granular, nitty-gritty charter trying to regulate the operations of kingship across the whole spectrum. And that's why it's conventionally divided up into 61 chapters in modern printed additions. In the actual originals, there are no separate chapters, there are no numbers. It is divided up by big capital letters at the start of each chapter. And what do they cover? They cover restrictions on the King's ability to take money from his subjects. They cover trying to prevent him taking arbitrary action against individuals and to make royal justice more equitable, more available. There are a lot about local government and the malpractices of the King's local government officials.

Their retrospective pauses trying to put right injustices of the past. The chapter's about Scotland and Wales. So it's actually a British charter. It's not just England. And at the end of it, of course, the most radical clause was that 25 barons were set up to enforce the charter. And if John or his ministers broke it, they were empowered to seize the king's property, seize his castles, to make sure the charter was actually implemented. Obviously, the most famous chapter of all is chapter 3940, which did in a way sum up the king is subject's law. No, man is to be outlawed, imprisoned, proceeded against deprived of property, saved by lawful judgment of his peers, or by the law of the land. That's 39 and 40. To no one will we deny, delay or

sell, right or justice. Yeah, I think those are the ones that stick in everyone's mind, but it's interesting how much stuff is going on around all of that. And it sounds a little bit like there wasn't anything hugely new. What it was trying to do was solidify and get down in writing some of the principles that had been around in the ether for a little while, and that perhaps the big change was that now the barons in this panel of 25 would have some power over the king to make it stick? Well, you've said exactly what the barons like to think, because they constantly asserted that what Magna Carta was doing was restoring ancient custom and ancient the law. And later lawyers in the later Middle Ages and the Tudor and Stuart time, they constantly said all

Magna Carta does is to enforce the existing common law. Actually, though, that's not true at all. The barons like to think it was ancient. John Wooder said, bloody hell, in actual fact, a lot of these things are novelties. And there was certainly no precedent for the very, very detailed granular way in which kingship is now controlled and regulated. And yes, you're absolutely right, of course, the security clause, the 25 barons empowered to enforce it, which is really a sort of parallel executive, And I think actually one of the really interesting discoveries to come recently have been these letters issued by the 25 barons, really taking over part of the government of the country. So, you know, there was two parallel executives set up as a result of Magna Carta. So all of that is radically revolutionary new.

Yeah, and I guess we're still in an age where a king has no interest in tolerating a rival to his power and authority within his own realm. That's a real threat to John. So these barons have set themselves up in a way that makes them an intolerable threat, really. No, I agree about that. And it was once John saw that the 25 barons were really going to get their act together. And were treating him actually personally with contempt. They refused to rise when he came into a chamber, but also issuing all these orders to implement the charter and so on. That was when he realized, understandably, that this is just not going to work. and he gets the Pope to quash the charter.

I guess one of the most famous opinions maybe of Magna Carta is the idea that it was this very narrow, selfish, baronial power grab to correct the issues that a few rich barons had with the way things were going and that it wasn't really about everybody else. Do you think it did cater for other social groups, and if so, was that deliberate or an accident? Yeah, that selfish baronial document is both wrong, and right. I mean, it's wrong in that clearly the Charter reaches out to wide sections of society,

chapter on the church, chapter on London and the towns. The knights are given a very important part in the reform of local government. And wide sections of society would benefit from that, from the local government reforms. And you know, the Charter is granted to all free men, which is a very wide section of society. On the other hand, it's perfectly true that if you like the lion's share of the Charter, who are going to benefit most. It is the Great Barons. And what comes first, it's all the chapters regulating the ways in which the King has taken money from the Great Barons. And when it comes to control over taxation and the assembly, which is to consent to taxation, it's largely a baronial assembly. So the heart of the Charter, yes, is baronial. But the barons

reach out to a much wider section of society. Why do they do that? It's, I think, largely because they needed support, but also it might be ideological. And people have argued that the ideas of churchmen, just like the king, you must govern for the benefit of all your subjects, the whole community. That too may have influenced perennial thinking in 1215. And I wonder whether there's an extent to which they were, in producing a document that complains about how totalitarian John was, they needed to be wary that they weren't simply repeating that, that they weren't just creating themselves as a new layer of Johns, that it had to offer something for other people as well. The idea that Churchman influenced them would fit into that. I do think largely, though,

it was because they could do no other. Well, they need to support of London, for them's sake. They wanted the support of Churchmen. They desperately needed to support as many knights as possible. And so, you know, that was why these other sections of society had gradually brought into the And it's quite interesting, see how the Bronial demands built up, and you can see how they build up by introducing clauses which are going to appeal to wider sections. And you mentioned as well that Magna Carta was made available to all free men. And I guess there's two important parts in that word, isn't there? There's free and there's men. Does Magna Carta still discriminate against a significant portion of the population in terms of

who's not free and who's not a man? Exactly. If we take free men to start with, that. That did mean that unfree peasants were excluded from the benefits of the Charter. And you know, it's a striking, the most famous clause. What does it say? No free man is to be outlawed in prison, deprived of property, saved by lawful judgment, peers, or by law of land. And what that meant was that unfree peasants, lords could still deprive them of property,

their ultimate disciplinary weapon, just as before. So how large a section of English society? I mean, what are we dealing with? we're dealing with a population of two, three million, probably three, three and a half million, something like that. Well, certainly about probably half that population, perhaps more, would be unfree peasants. And so a large number of peasants are excluded from benefiting from the charter, although in fact, if the general pressure of local government officials and so on is reduced, they might benefit

from that. And there are some chapters, for example, on bridge building. No man is to be forced to build bridges, save in an accustomed way. So, you know, some of the chapters can reach out more widely. So, yes, that's completely true. It was later altered in the 14th century when no free man was glossed in legislation in the 14th century, meaning no one of any, whatever condition they are. Now, as for women, that's slightly more difficult because homo, the Latin homo,

can also be used in the sense of human being. And probably if you ask the drafters of the charter, does Homo here include women? They would probably have said, yes, it does. And of course, there are specific chapters benefiting women, particularly widows, and they come in the early baronial ones. So no woman is to be forced to remarry.

Widows are to have all their property given them without offering money to the king. and so essentially baronial widows we're dealing with there, but Magna Carta certainly protects the rights of widows. And of course, you can see that maybe because, obviously, men, too, want their mothers to be looked after. On the other hand, the only chapter where the word woman appears, Chapter 54, Femina, actually does discriminate against women

and puts women on a lower pain than men when they're accusing anyone of crime, particularly of homicide. And that does reflect that women are not trusted. A woman's word is considered of less moment and less value than the word of a man. So Magna Gartre certainly does discriminate against women, although it does help the baronial widows and so on. That's quite a high level of society. So Magna Carta is sealed by John at Roney Mead famously, but doesn't last in that form for particularly long. Precisely how does John wiggle himself out of this mess he's got himself into?

Yeah. Well, it's thanks to the Pope. he simply gets the Pope to quash the charter. Pope Innocent III was very ready to do that. And then John knew he was in for a real struggle because, of course, he has then to go back to war. He has to win the war. But it's important to remember that Magna Carta was a negotiated document.

John realized he could not win the war easily, but he hadn't lost it. He was still in command of his castles. He still had large numbers of mercenary soldiers and so on. Magna Garta wanted to get rid of them. There was a clause trying to strip John of his mercenary soldiers, but obviously that was never implemented. So John now is in the business of fighting a war to get rid of the charter,

and the people who submitted to him had to forswear it. I'm Professor Susanna Lipskin, and on not just the Tudors from History Hit, my guests and I run through the full gamut of human emotion and experience. From the heartbreak of the Virgin Queen, Elizabeth not being able to marry, arguably the only man in the world she ever really wanted to marry, may have, for that reason, not married anyone else. To a prenatal battle of the sexes.

A male and a female seed meet in the womb at conception, and whichever one is stronger determines the sex of the unborn child. From Lady Jane Gray facing her executioner. You can't help but feel just the utmost sympathy for this young girl. To why the Laughing Cavalier is, well, laugh. He strikes me as someone who goes off on a sort of swaggering booze up. Subscribe now to not just the Tudors from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. When and how then does Magna Carta return? Because we remember it is this huge landmark document,

but it so nearly went immediately in the bin. When does the name Magna Carta first become associated with it, for example? Well, a quick story here, I mean, you're right. By the end of 1215, that Magna Carta seemed a failure without a future. John had got the post. to quash it, but the barons in a curious way had abandoned it also, because they clearly thought it doesn't work. We can't restrict him. What we must do is have a new king. And so they offered the throne to the eldest son of the king of France to Louis, who invaded England in 1216, carried all before him. I mean, the great majority of the barons are supporting him. And Louis, there's no evidence that he had any brief for Magna Carta. His view was that you don't need Magna Carta with me as a

sort of benevolent capetian king. So how does it survive at all? Well, the answer to that is John's death, because John died in October 1216 in that great gale blowing round Newark Castle and leaving his nine-year-old son, Henry III, in an absolutely desperate situation. And the loyalists still supporting Henry realized the only way forward is to accept what John had projected and Louis was ignoring. And so they issued a new version of Magna Carta in November 1216. And that was a great wisdom, I think, of William Marshall, Earl of Pembroke, the Regent, but also perhaps even more striking the papal legate guala,

who is turning papal policy on his head. And yet does it, I'd love to see the letter he wrote to in the third explaining what he was doing. But, you know, the popes are very good at adjusting to new situations. And so a new version of the Charter has issued November 12th. without some of its most objectionable clauses, no security clause anymore, no 25 barons. And I think it did help win the war because the Decipher Battle of Lincoln, what's so striking is that the barons on Louis's side don't fight very hard. They all get captured. And I think that was because they realized in some ways they've got what they wanted. They've got a new version of Magna Carta. And then at the

end of the war, a second new version is issued, November 1217, this time with a smaller document which is regulating the whole running of the Royal Forest. And that the last takes you back to your question. How does the name Magna Carta come in? Well, we've now got two charters. We've got a bigger one, which is, you know, the descendant from John's 1215 Charter. We've got a physically smaller one dealing with the Royal Forest. And so it's necessary for the clerks sending out proclamations. to distinguish between the two. And so one clerk has his brainwave and thinks, not very surprisingly,

we'll call the bigger one the great charter because it's physically bidden than the smaller one. And of course, Great Charter in Latin is Magna Carta. You can see the very first appearance of it in a record of a proclamation in 1218 when actually Magna Carta is inserted above the line with a little sort of arrow. I love that the name of one of the most famous documents

in all of human history is sort of based on a complete lack of originality. It's a big charter, so we'll just call it the big charter. Yeah, lack of originality and also almost an afterthought of the clerk. How am I going to describe it? And so he thinks, all right, Magna Carta, you're right, not terribly original. The final kind of definitive version of Magna Carta appears a few years later, further on, still, in 1225. How does that one differ from that original one of 1215?

Is it weaker? Is it stronger? Does it look for different things by that point? It's crucially different, which partly explains its survival. In the first place, it's more inclusive in that the 1215 Charter had only been granted to free men, whereas now there's a new preamble which says it's granted to everybody. So that's a really important thing. The second thing is, it's not merely inclusive, it's also with common consent, because at the end of the Charter, it says, in return for this charter, the whole kingdom has granted the king attacks. And so it's got rid of any idea that the charter has been forced out of the king, that it's a coerced document. The charter is now both inclusive and also consensual. And that enabled, one very striking thing is it's got a

huge witness list which none of the previous charters had in which all the great and good of the land come to witness it, but whatever side they'd taken in the civil war, and also the church now comes full square behind the charter for the first time, and Archbishop Langton issued a famous sentence of excommunication against all who violated the charter. So in all those ways, in a way, the 1225 Charter is much solid. And of course, it's also granted for the first time by Henry III of his own free will, and it's sealed by him for the first time. The 1216, 1217 charters, because the King didn't have a seal then,

have been sealed by the Papal Leggett and by the Regent William Marshall. So in all those ways, the Charter seems and is more solid than ever before. On the other hand, you could say it's weaker because what's no longer there is the security clause. There's no longer those 25 barons who are going to enforce the Charter if it is broken. And that did leave the Charter without constitutional means of enforcement. I mean, excommunication or threat of excommunication is no real substitute for that. And that leads you into the great arguments of the 13th century. Is the charter being obeyed or not?

And lots of people said it wasn't being obeyed. I think it's quite interesting how close that final arrangement in 1225 comes to being a real contractual relationship in that the taxation is provided as a consideration. There is offer, there is acceptance, there's consideration. the King has had something for doing this. There's a proper formal contractual relationship there, which makes it more difficult to wriggle out from. But it also sets a template, I think, doesn't it,

for the idea that observance of Magna Carta is a prerequisite to getting taxation almost from that point onwards. Yes, and this, of course, leads into the history of Parliament, in that Magna Carta lies behind the most important constitutional development of the later 13th century, which is the first appearance of parliamentary power, and the great lever behind parliamentary power, which is the Parliament's ability to control taxation, to refuse taxation, if it doesn't think it's justified. How does that relate to Magna Carta? First of all,

Magna Carta stopped up quite a lot of traditional sources of revenue. And in that sense, although people said it's never obeyed, it actually was obeyed in many ways. It makes making kinds of ways of getting money much more difficult. So that meant the King needed general taxation from the realm in a way he'd never done before. The 12th century kings don't need it. And of course, that's where Magna Carta kicks in again, because the 1215 Charter has said explicitly that general taxation needs the common consent of the kingdom. Now, that clause has actually been left out of the later charters, but it still remained very well known and people thought it was still Dallad. So no King of England in the 13th century ever tried to raise taxes without the common consent

of the kingdom, which meant the consent of Parliament. And that does lead us into a totally new polity. It leads us into the tax-based parliamentary state. And while that's going on sort of at the centre, we are seeing these really critical constitutional developments in England. More widely, how well was Magna Carta known? Would people in the country have known what Magna Carta said in the first century of its existence, for example? Well, this is another very important new discovery which came out of the Magna Carta project because one of its tasks was to try and collect

all the unofficial copies made of Magna Carta in the 13th century. And the results were quite extraordinary in that well over 100 unofficial copies of the various versions were discovered. Often they were tables of contents, there were marginal annotations about what all the chapters were about, Sometimes there were little memoranda comparing the different versions. So whereas it used to be thought that Magna Carta in the 30th century was just vague principles and no one knew what was in it, I think that's now quite wrong.

The detail was very well known, known to who. It was certainly lots of these copies were made by religious houses, by monasteries, but even more were made by lawyers, by the developing common lawyers. And they copied them into what are called statute books, which had all the legislation. of 13th century. And these statute books frequently began with one or other version of Magna Carta. So the charter is very well known. I always remember going to St. Petersburg in 2015 and giving a talk to Russian lawyers about Magna Carta. And they made the point that the Russian constitution set up after the fall of the Soviet Union was full of good things and yet no one knew what was in it. and I was able to say to them, well, Magna Carta was totally different.

People did know the detail, did know what was in it. And I think that did help it make a real difference in the 13th century. I think you can think, although other historians would disagree about this, but I've always thought that Magna Carta did represent a watershed between lawless and much more lawful rule. How many copies of original Magna Carta still survive to this day? Are there some 1215, some 12, 16, some 12, 17? Yeah, four of the original 1215 Charter survived.

One is at Lincoln Cathedral. One is at Salisbury Cathedral. They've probably always been there. And two are in the British Library, one of which is very badly damaged. Again, one exciting new thing to come out of all the new research for the anniversary in 2015 was that the damaged one in the British Library had once been at Canterbury Cathedral. So it seems highly likely that the charters in 1215, the originals, were sent to the cathedrals. And we know from documentary evidence are at least 13 charters produced for distribution around the country,

which more or less corresponds to the number of bishops in post in 1215. So there were certainly 13 originals of which four survive. There may have been more, but that's our minimum number. As for the later ones, very few of the 1216 survive, 1217 about 4, 1225, about 4 or 5 originals. But they were copied and copied, and they were circulated to all the counties and so on, and that's how it all becomes so well known. Is it interesting then that the original copies went to cathedrals when it seems like the church were pretty strongly opposed to Magna Carta and not involved in it very much?

Oh, well, no. sorry, the Pope in the end was opposed to it, but actually no, I think Archbishop Lankton in 1215 very strongly believed in the principles behind the charter. And he did one very crucial thing at Rannemede, because we have these documents showing the build up of Bronyal Demands. Until the last moment, till we get to Ranymede, there's no reference to the church in them. And yet at Runeemede itself, Langton put in chapter one of the charter, which protects all the liberties of the church. And from then on, churchmen are very keen to support the charter. And in 1215, the charter has not merely went to the cathedrals, but there's some evidence that Episcopal scribes of bishops actually wrote out some of the copies. Because you see, John's not in the business of distributing the charter. He wants everybody to know, as a benevolent king, he's made these concessions. And then he thinks, oh, go home, forget all about the detail. So what happened in 1215 was that, the bishop said, look, we'll write it out and we'll take these originals off to the cathedrals.

The last thing you want to do is to give the originals to the king's officials to the sheriffs because they're the very people under attack. Yeah, be the best way to make sure every copy was eradicated. And a little bit after our medieval period, we see a kind of resurgence in Magna Carta's presence in the 16th and 17th century around Tudor and Stuart Tyranny. Why do you think people return to Magna Carta to try and apply? that. I think it's important. Again, new research, particularly by Sir John Baker, has shown that Magna Carta was never forgotten. In the 14th and 15th century, it was studied continuously by

lawyers, and that's partly what all these copies helped them do. So Magna Carta is kept alive, partly simply as an academic study, and sort of people would puzzle over what is meant by free, what's meant by man, what's meant by outlawy and so on, so academic debate about all of that. But that does change, you're right, in the late Tudor, early Stewart period. And it changed because lawyers began to realize that particularly chapters 39 and 40 combined as chapter 29 in the 12-25 charter with their famous statement, no free man is to be outlawed in prison, deprived of property, saved by lawful judgments, appears law of land, to no one should deny, right, delay, right, sell, right and justice. That could be used in a very effective way to resist the tyranny of both Elizabeth.

It starts under late Elizabeth and then it seemed to be very relevant under James and Charles. And Redmond Cook is the most famous of the war who really seems suddenly start to produce this and fling it at what they think are Stuart despots. So, I mean, that's how it is revived and it plays a big part in the ideological resistance to Stuart rule. Yeah, it's interesting. So it's almost involved in the seeds of the Commonwealth again. Another rupture between the country and the monarchy. You can still see Magna Carta playing into that. And obviously there's seen a parallel between John's tyranny and Stuart tyranny. So it's the same problems, the same solution. This is something that crops up in the news every once in a while and people are always debating about it and I think quite often getting it a little bit wrong. What parts of Magna Carta are still on the UK statute book today? On the statute book is the preamble protecting the liberties of the church, the chapter of London and towns, and then most famous of all, chapters 39 and 40, or chapter 29 in the 1225 charge. It's the 1225 Charter of Henry III, which is on the statute book, not the chapter of 1215. I mean, I think it's still very much part of political discourse today, and it's used in all kinds of ways in which people resisting some of the COVID restrictions. thought these were breaches of Magna Carta. People in all kinds of ways, I call it in aid, not always with great accuracy. I soon in 2015, for example, when the government wished to introduce fees to bring cases to court, the Lord Chief Justice said this was a clear breach of

Magna Carta, in which said justice should not be sold. And that was an issue on which the government actually retreated. So you could say it still has some teeth today, as well as just just people aware of the general principle that the government should be subject to the law, both in terms of general principle and occasionally perhaps in more detail. It's still relevant and still has bite. It's interesting enough that I think after 800 years, it still has legal effect in our day-to-day lives. But I think I was thinking around the COVID restrictions and people quoting Magna Carta to sort of protect themselves from what they felt were tyrannical COVID restrictions. And it's interesting how Magna Carta is still something that people turn to in the

face of what they regard as tyranny, whether it was tyranny or not is relevant. Clearly, they felt it was tyrannical rules that were containing them and that Magna Carta was the answer. Even after 800 years, it's still the response to tyranny, as it was under the Tudors and Stewards, as we mentioned. Yeah, I know. I completely agree. Magna Carta still has life. And can we see more broadly Magna Carta's influence kind of around the world. I guess the US Constitution is the big thing that we would associate Magna Carta with. I think that goes back in a way to the revival and to the Stuarts in that of course lots of the Puritans who'd been citing Magna Carta then go out to the new world and they found New England and all the other states. And of course

they've taken away Magna Carta with them. And so the founding fathers are both the federal Constitution, but also the Constitution of the individual states, frequently quoted the principles of Magda Carter, particularly again, 3940, either without actually mentioning Magna Carta, but often mentioning Magna Carta by name. So it's very important, I think, for the founding fathers of the United States of America. And more widely than that, you know, in the last century, it was cried in aid by Gandhi, Mandela, freedom fighters throughout the world. And interesting you mentioned, you know, you've been to places like St. Petersburg to talk about it. Yeah, exactly. Rani Mead's a very atmospheric place because, you know, the Great Plains taking off from London Heathrow,

turn and fly the whole length of Rani Mead and then disappear in the distance. And it is as though they're taking Magna Gart around the world. Well, thank you so much for joining us again, David. It's been absolutely fascinating to talk about this really critical topic. As I say, I'm not sure how it evaded us too long, but I can't think of anyone I'd rather have gone through it all with. Thank you very much. Well, thank you very much. I really enjoyed talking about it. David's books include The Penguin Classics, Magna Carta, which is available in paperback now,

and really is the definitive look at the Great Charter. David is also the author of a two-part biography of Henry III, which covers the complex and fascinating period around the Magna Carta crisis and its lasting impacts. If you want to understand the 13th century, I'd really recommend them wholeheartedly. There are new episodes of Gone Medieval every Tuesday and Friday, so please join us next time for more on the greatest millennium in human history. Don't forget to also subscribe or follow us wherever you get your podcasts from and to tell all of your friends and family that you've gone medieval.

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