Short History Of... - Magna Carta

Episode Date: October 30, 2023

Magna Carta is one of the most enduring documents from the Middle Ages. Reluctantly signed by King John at Runnymede in 1215, it forever changed society and politics in Britain, and the rest of the world. Magna Carta has been credited with inspiring the US Constitution and Bill of Rights, and providing the basis for democracy across the globe. But what does Magna Carta actually say? What events led to its creation? And how has it changed the world today? This is a Short History Of Magna Carta. Written by Lindsay Galvin. With thanks to Dan Jones, host of the podcast ‘This is History: A Dynasty To Die For’, and author of Magna Carta: the making and legacy of the Great Charter’.  This is History Podcast: https://listen.sonymusic-podcasts.link/i_QB7rbc?c=3MuDbSuS3pG_wP1hXuXwWA&h=34a52a3614bd8b67e For ad-free listening, exclusive content and early access to new episodes, join Noiser+. Now available for Apple and Android users. Click the Noiser+ banner on Apple or go to noiser.com/subscriptions to get started with a 7-day free trial. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

You're a podcast listener, and this is a podcast ad heard only in Canada. Reach great Canadian listeners like yourself with podcast advertising from Libsyn Ads. Choose from hundreds of top podcasts offering host endorsements or run a pre-produced ad like this one across thousands of shows to reach your target audience with Libsyn Ads. Email bob at libsyn.com to learn more. That's b-o-b at l-i-b-s-y-n dot com. It is June 15, 1215, on the boggy grounds of Runnymede, a water meadow between Windsor and London. Beside the fast-flowing river, grand tents stand scattered across the field,

topped with brightly colored pennants. Men throng between them, dressed in church robes or in armor. They're here for a matter of great importance, but they've been kept waiting, and their patience is fraying. Inside the largest tent, made of deep red canvas, a church scribe stands beside a grand desk. of deep red canvas, a church scribe stands beside a grand desk. On it lies a large sheet of vellum manufactured from the finest calfskin. Candles flicker nearby. He anxiously checks the entrance every few seconds, while his master, a bishop with a pale cap covering his hair and ears, paces behind him. Any moment now, the King of England will arrive to sign a document that will herald a new era, and he'll be far from happy about it.

There's the sound of activity outside, and the entrance flap is thrown open. Several men enter, barons with clanking swords and armor. Something is happening, finally. The scribe stands up straighter, as the barons crowd around the desk, giving the document a last once over. There's an air of satisfaction, self-righteousness even. These powerful men have now all but forced the king to capitulate to their terms, and agree to this document that diminishes his power. It's not a done deal yet, though. Skirmishes have continued to break out during the negotiations, even though Runnymede was chosen partly because its bogginess would make a battle impossible. Now the thunder of galloping hooves comes from the north.

The scribe steadies his trembling inkpot, and a cornet sounds outside, heralding the arrival of the man himself. The King of England marches in, and the barons stand back. The monarch is less than five and a half feet tall, almost a foot shorter than his brother and predecessor, Richard the Lionheart. But only a fool would underestimate him. Everyone assembled knows of his legendary temper, his torturous punishments for anyone who goes against him. The bishop meekly directs him to the desk. The scribe swallows as the king strides over, followed by his advisors.

Sweeping his royal robes of velvet and ermine aside, he sits. Without pause, the king snatches the sealing wax candle from one advisor and the heavy brass seal from another. At the base of the document is a wooden ring, attached to the vellum by a braid. The lighted candle is dripped into the empty ring, and the scribe holds his breath as the king presses the seal to the wax. The charter is ratified. King John has agreed that he is no longer above the law, and he looks furious about it. He rises and storms from the tent without a word.

Silence reigns for a moment, before the barons clasp arms, nodding at each other grimly. Many keep their hands at their swords. Though the charter is sealed, it feels like finally bridling an unbreakable horse. They can't trust that it is truly tamed. Called to the desk, the scribe settles with his quill, ink, and a clean sheet of vellum. The king's new agreement needs to be copied without delay, so it can be distributed throughout the kingdom. Carefully, he gets to work, scratching the first words of the document known as Magna Carta.

Johannes de Grazia Rex Angliae. John, by the grace of God, King of England. Probably the most famous document in the world, Magna Carta is now viewed by many as a crucial foundation stone of British law. By ratifying the document with his royal seal, the tyrannical and largely hated King John submitted to the demands of the men who were supposed to obey him. It was the first time a king had been forced to follow a set of rules, but he agreed in

order to avoid a civil war he was likely to lose. The most well-known clauses of Magna Carta are also the most vague, alluding to the rights to justice and a fair trial. It states that even a king is subject to the laws of the land. These passages have made Magna Carta a symbol of liberty all over the world. But how did Magna Carta come about? And what did it mean at the time? Did it achieve the purpose for which it was intended? And how has its legacy played out, even inspiring the declarations of American independence and international human rights? I'm John Hopkins.

From Noisa, this is a short history of Magna Carta. A charter is nothing special in itself. It is a very typical document issued by medieval rulers since at least the year 800. Though it's a long time since the collapse of the Roman Empire, Latin continues to be England's official legal language. And it's because Latin doesn't use the grammatical determiners a or the, that the charter is called Magna Carta and not the Magna Carta. But what is a charter for? that the charter is called Magna Carta and not the Magna Carta. But what is a charter for? Dan Jones is host of the podcast This Is History, A Dynasty To Die For.

A public historian, he is the author of Magna Carta, The Making and Legacy of the Great Charter, and The Plantagenets, The Kings Who Made England. Kings issued charters as a matter of course. It's a statement of what you, the ruler, are going to do. These could be liberties, they could be statements of policy, and they're authenticated in some, slash most cases, with a royal seal, you know, a piece of wax often attached with a silk cord or some other kind of material.

There's nothing particularly wondrous or special about a charter. If anything, it's a sort of bog-standard tool of medieval government. That government is based on a system of feudalism, in which the king holds almost limitless power. One rung below him are around 100 to 150 barons who lease land, known as a manor, from the king. These lords of the manor have absolute control over their land and function as mini-kings. In return, they serve on the royal council, pay rent, and provide the king with knights for military service when he demands it. The barons keep as much of their land as they wish for their own use, and divide the rest among their knights, a class of lower nobility. These gentlemen soldiers are

trained to fight in armor on horseback. In turn, they provide land for the peasants, or vilains, who make up the vast majority of the population. Some free peasants own small holdings of land, but most own nothing and work the land for the privilege of living on it. It's a rigid hierarchy, with a monarch at the top, but even the king must answer to the pope. England and most of Europe is Catholic. The church is incredibly rich and owns about 20% of English land. But it's not the inequality of the feudal system itself that brings about Magna Carta. Though the ruler who'll become known as Bad King John is crucial to its creation, discontent among its nobles is nothing new.

among its nobles is nothing new. The Plantagenets had been in power by the time John came to the throne for almost 50 years. They governed a federation of territories, I suppose it's best to call it, colloquially an empire that included England, parts of Wales, Normandy, in what's now France, Anjou, Maine, Touraine, they controlled Brittany, they controlled Aquitaine. This amounted to about a third of the territorial landmass of modern France. So there were big issues within governing this federation of territories that related to how the territories interacted with one another, how England ought to pay for the governance and particularly the reconquest of lost territories.

John's father, Henry II, is the first Plantagenet king. Adept at government, he imposes feudal laws, reliable systems, so the baron's riches flow steadily to the crown through taxes. In return for their tithes, he defends the baron's lucrative holdings in France, a deal that's laid down in a general charter. He is a skillful and energetic leader, but his violent outbursts mean he's not an easy man to get along with. Even so, he marries a powerful French noblewoman, Eleanor of Aquitaine, and has four sons. The youngest of Henry's surviving sons, John, is born on Christmas Eve 1166 at the Royal Palace, Oxford.

With three older brothers, Henry, Richard, and Geoffrey, John is not expected to inherit, let alone ever become king. John is not expected to inherit, let alone ever become king. His father teases him with the nickname John Lackland, though it's difficult to imagine John appreciating this joke even as a child. When King Henry II dies in 1189, he is succeeded by his eldest son, King Richard, later known as Richard the Lionheart. The new king immediately raises taxes by 50% to bankroll his crusade in the Middle East, where he will fight to secure sites considered sacred to both Muslims and Christians. After three years of fighting, Richard is captured. His ransom must be paid in silver, weighing a staggering 100,000 pounds. The barons have no choice but to pay even steeper taxes, knowing that refusal to support a holy crusade could bring their own faith and loyalty into question. But in the years when Richard is

either in prison or fighting, his youngest brother John gains a reputation for disloyalty. Prince John slyly attempts to pay the Pope to keep Richard imprisoned for longer. Traveling to France, he allies with the French King Philip II, granting away strategically important English lands. Though Richard is considered a man of honor, he almost bankrupts the country, dying in France of a war wound in 1199. With no heirs and his other brothers all dead, John is named as his successor. Large numbers of barons strongly object, preferring the claim of Arthur, Richard and John's

twelve-year-old nephew. But despite their concerns, John is crowned king on the 25th of May 1199. By this time, John has been married to Isabella of Gloucester for 10 years, but they have no children. He has his marriage annulled in 1199, but does not intend to lose her valuable lands, so he ensures she is confined to her own castle for the next 14 years. The 33-year-old king then takes a new French wife, Isabelle d'Angélem, who is no more than 12 years old. With the famed warrior king Richard now gone,

King Philip invades John's remaining territories in France. Like his brother before him, John crosses the Channel to defend his holdings. It doesn't help that the French king backs Arthur's claim to the English throne. In a rare moment of victory in an unsuccessful campaign to regain lost lands, John captures Arthur, intending to force him to swear loyalty.

He takes the boy back with him as he retreats to his stronghold in Normandy, northern France. It is here that he really starts to cement his villainous reputation. You're a podcast listener, and this is a podcast ad heard only in Canada. Reach great Canadian listeners like yourself with podcast advertising from Libsyn ads. Choose from hundreds of top podcasts offering host endorsements or run a pre-produced ad like this one across thousands of shows to reach your target audience with Libsyn ads. Email Bob at Libsyn.com to learn more.

That's B-O-B at L-I-B-S-Y-N dot com. To learn more, that's bob at libsyn.com. the rounds with the prisoner's rations. He stops outside the cell of the English boy and slides back the wooden hatch. Arthur is quiet in his narrow cell, where he has been imprisoned for eight months. He barely looks up until the jailer places a trencher onto the shelf inside. It's a hard slice of bread, soaked with pink blotches of meat juice left over from someone else's meal. To the jailer, it's just something to eat from, no more edible than a wooden plate or goblet. To the boy, it's all he's going to get. Arthur coughs pitifully and shuffles towards the door, his fetters scraping across the stone flags. The young nobleman's pale cheeks are smudged and hollow, his lips cracked and hair filthy. A livid bruise blooms on his right cheekbone,

and there's a bloody cut on his eyebrow. He reaches out for the food, but grimaces as he starts to eat. The old jailer isn't without sympathy for the child, but knows it could be worse. The rations are poor, certainly, but King John's reputation for starving his prisoners means this youth should think himself lucky. Then there's a sudden noise, the heavy, iron-studded door to the prison slamming. But it's been opened from the outside,

which at this time of day can only mean one thing. Heart-hammering, the jailer straightens his clothing as the voice of King John, sounding drunk again and in worse than his usual temper, carries down a corridor. The king has been visiting his nephew at odd hours of the day and night, attempting to bully the youth into relinquishing his claim to the throne. Striding straight towards the cell, John shouts to the jailer to open the door and step aside. The king disappears inside. Sometimes his demands begin quietly, with wheedling, before building to violence.

But this is different. The assault is immediate. There are whimpers from the boy as the blows start to land. Then the jailer winces as he hears a sickening crack. And after that, the boy is silent. Now the king staggers from Arthur's cell, his eyes unfocused, bloodshot, malevolent. The jailer ducks his head to avoid eye contact, realizing the precarious position he's now in as a witness. But the king beckons to him, and the jailer has no choice. He steps into the

soundless cell, knowing that whatever the king has done, he himself is a part of it now. Some sources claim that the body of 15-year-old Arthur of Brittany is thrown into the River Seine, weighted with a rock, and later buried when it's caught in a fish weir. And though John never admits to killing him, what's certain is that eight months after his capture, the boy disappears. Your instinct with a main character is always to try and feel some sympathy with them for them. In John's case, it's very difficult. John seems consistently to have made poor and malicious decisions.

Untrustworthy, disloyal, he was unlucky, but he made his own bad luck. He was, by most accounts, an extremely unpleasant person to be around. By December 1203, John is forced to return to England, tail between his legs. In less than five years, he has lost virtually all the territories his predecessors fought so hard to secure. It's a huge blow to John's reputation as king. With France now under Philip's control, the barons are forced to relinquish either their British or Normandy holdings, as they can only swear fealty to one king. They deeply resent that king being John, and many start to refer to him by a new, equally unflattering nickname, John Softsword.

But he's nothing if not consistent, and once he's back on home turf, the misdeeds keep stacking up. When twenty-two captured French knights attempt to escape Corfe Castle in Dorset, England, he simply starves them to death. I think we could sit around and have a very enjoyable hour in the pub discussing the exact order of the top ten worst kings of England. I might argue for John to be high up the list, possibly even number one. There is some stiff competition. Charles I, God bless him, got his head chopped off. But only one of them has the prefix bad in the popular imagination,

and John certainly deserves to be known as Bad King John. Does he deserve to be known as the worst? He's in the conversation. Absolutely. But John can't forget about those lost French territories, so he imposes heavy taxes to raise an army. If the barons can't pay up, he confiscates their lands and castles, even taking family members as hostages when debts are not paid. John tours his royal court continuously, splitting his time between manners. The barons come to dread the arrival of the royal entourage. There were consistently rumours that he had seduced,

sexually assaulted, behaved with gross impropriety towards the wives and daughters of his barons. So there were a huge number of problems with John himself. John had what I think it's fair to call a prickly personality. He was judged by his contemporaries to be very cruel, to be not very chivalrous in an age where chivalry, the sort of knightly values were a very important asset in the political process. Maybe a more successful ruler could have gotten away with his behaviour, but he's as lacking in military expertise as he is in charisma and diplomacy.

Attempts to invade France in both 1205 and 1206 fail, and having already alienated many of his barons, John now falls out with the most powerful man in Europe. He and Pope Innocent III cannot agree over who will be appointed as Archbishop of Canterbury. Eventually, Rome deploys the biggest weapon in a medieval pope's arsenal, the papal interdict. Effectively, he ordered the English clergy, the churchmen in England, to go on strike. They weren't to perform masses, they weren't to perform marriages, they were limited to baptisms and extreme unction for the dying, and no other church services were allowed.

And so this, we have to say, had a profound effect on the day-to-day religious landscape of England. And this is in an age in which religion is much higher up the agenda of everyday life than it is in our own time. Churches are boarded up. The bells are silenced. Public worship is banned for six years, although the extent to which the populace obeys orders is unclear. Even when he is personally excommunicated, his soul condemned to hell, he responds by diverting the vast revenues of the church directly to the crown rather than the pope. He plunders religious treasures seemingly without fear of heavenly repercussions. So that tells you something about John, politically very hard-headed and prepared to drive hard bargains and not perhaps

conventionally religious. But not content with risking the souls of his people, John continues a campaign against the barons whom he believes should be his allies. In Wales, he launches a huge military raid, commanding Welsh princes to forfeit their ancestral lands to the crown. The English nobility are horrified by his tyrannical behavior, and they are becoming more vocal about it. But not without consequence. Noblewoman Matilda de Bruse is ordered by John to hand over her son to serve in the King's court as a guarantee of her and her husband's loyalty. Within earshot of the King's men, she replies that she will do no such thing, John captures both Matilda and her son, returning to the strategy he used to such horrific effect at Corfe Castle. She hounded several members of the wealthy baronial family known as the Bruzes to death,

starved Matilda de Bruze and her son William de Bruze to death in the dungeons, probably of Corfe Castle. A terribly grisly scene they were found with Matilda had gone mad with starvation. So very violent personal vendettas. Outraged, the barons begin to despair. In summer of 1212, a rebellion breaks out in Wales, and John diverts his entire army, which is en route to France, to quash it. Furious, he has two dozen of the insurgents hanged. This same summer, rumor spreads that two of his barons

are plotting to kill him outright. One of these is the fabulously wealthy Robert Fitzwalter, who was close to John until he tried to seduce his daughter. The plotters are outlawed and the king becomes extremely paranoid. Those opposing John are now numerous enough to pose a serious threat of country-wide revolt. He needs powerful allies. So he engages his cunning side and turns back to the most powerful man of all. side and turns back to the most powerful man of all. He flip-flopped quite spectacularly, became a crusader, took his crusading vows, promised he was going to go off and fight against the enemies of Christ in the Holy Land, the enemies of the

Church in the Holy Land, and then wrote letters to Innocent III in Rome telling him what he'd done and Innocent wrote back saying, oh jolly good boy, well I'm on your side now and I'll protect you if anyone wants to rebel against you. So John was trying lots of different schemes and strategies to protect himself against his baronial rebels, but really it was too little too late. I mean the opposition to John among the barons had been growing for a long time. John remains stubbornly determined to win his French lands, believing them key to reclaiming the loyalty of his barons. And now, thanks to his punishing taxation and the plundering of the church during the interdict, he has the money for a full campaign. He pays foreign allies, hires mercenaries, and sets sail for Normandy. Finally, the goal of John's entire reign is within his grasp as his allies

bring King Philip of France to battle at Bouvines on the 27th of July 1214. It's worth saying that battles do not happen very often at this point in the middle ages because they're very very dangerous things to undertake. Most military campaigning in this period is small-scale skirmishing or more than that, siegecraft, attacking castles and cities. Big battles, your side against mine, don't happen very often. But at Bouvines on the 27th of July 1214, one does. And unfortunately for John, his allies are destroyed by Philip Augustus. Everything he's done, plundering the church, extorting his people, in the aim of winning a great military victory, has gone completely wrong.

And now he has to go home and face the music. It's a crushing, shameful defeat. And the final straw for the barons, who funded much of it. John's unbridled excess cannot continue. They need a way to curtail him. On the 5th of May 1215, Robert FitzWalter leads a group of barons to a tournament field in Northamptonshire. There, they formally renounce their oath of fealty, their sworn loyalty to their king,

which forms the foundation of medieval society. The barons draw up a list of demands for reforms on taxes, personal liberties, and law. They intend to compel John to change his ways. And if he refuses, they're prepared for violence. When John hears of the meeting, he orders his men to lay siege to these barons' castles. What follows is nothing less than the start of a civil war. But the rebel barons don't want that for their country any more than the king does. They need a way to force John to capitulate to their demands before their lands are ravaged.

But to do that, they must prove to him just how powerful they are. It is sunrise on the 17th of May 1215, and mist blankets the meadows outside the great walled city of London. In the forest that surrounds the open grounds, a young knight hides in the undergrowth. He is part of a rebel army, 500 men strong. His horse bucks her head, and he holds her reins more tightly in his armoured fist, murmuring to her. Now, at the sound of the church bells, the knight and everyone around him fall silent. It's nearly time. The bells are the signal for the one of their number who has been tasked with climbing the city walls. Once he's made his ascent, he'll open the huge gate from the inside while everyone is at church.

Eventually the bells fall quiet. This is the second signal. The young man exchanges words of encouragement with his fellow warriors, and then slides his flat-topped iron helmet onto his head, reducing his vision to a narrow slit. He hooks his foot into his stirrup and pulls himself onto the saddle. Then, as one, the rebel army bursts from behind the tree line. The knight leans low over his horse as they gallop across the meadow for Aldersgate. Everything rests on whether the rebel baron's allies inside the city wall have stayed true to their promises to support their cause. Sure enough, as the night nears, the portcullis lifts. Even better, through the narrow window in his helmet, the knight can see

there is no defending army gathered at Aldersgate. The army slows, forming into a column as they approach the entry point. Gathering the reins into one hand, the knight draws his sword. The gate is fully open now, and more importantly, it's undefended. Still, alert to attack, the knights walk their horses through the gate and into the open streets just inside the walls. A few scattered peasants watch the armed men warily, but the wide, cobbled road leading towards the center of the city is almost empty. Glancing to the top of the gatehouse, the knight watches for sentries with arrows, ready

to face resistance. But the sentries stand watching, bows lowered. The most important city in England is about to fall to the rebel barons. The fall of London to 25 barons and their knights is a bloodless coup. The only real stand against it is from the King's guards at the Tower of London, but even they are quickly overpowered. Without the option of buying time to

bolster his forces, King John is now forced to negotiate with his enemies. From his court up the river at Windsor, he requests that the Archbishop, the Pope's envoy, acts as a go-between. he requests that the Archbishop, the Pope's envoy, acts as a go-between. Soon the roads and waterways between opposing sides become filled with messengers. Military action elsewhere in the country stalls temporarily, but the barons will not accept a peace treaty unless their demands are met. On the 10th of June, a meeting at Runnymede begins. On the 10th of June, a meeting at Runnymede begins. The setting is a water meadow positioned between London, now the stronghold of the rebel barons, and the king's court at Windsor. Because the king has dismissed his barons' grievances for so many years, no one takes for granted that the negotiation will result in a peaceful treaty.

But London is lost, John is fearful for his life, and rebel armies threaten to snatch the king's land throughout the country. If there was ever a time to force the king into concessions, this is it. The weeks of negotiations culminate in the production of one large document, Magna Carta. Written on parchment with vegetable-based ink, Magna Carta opens with John's name and a greeting to his subjects. Though it's later broken into bite-size clauses, the original document continues in one uninterrupted flow. 3,600 words of tightly written Latin prose on a large single page. Magna Carta feels like a sort of shopping list of demands from various different interest groups present at Runnymede in the middle of June 1215. Those interest groups include the church, and high up the agenda of Magna Carta is the church shall have its liberties.

include the church and high up the agenda of Magna Carta is the church shall have its liberties. Those interest groups include the great barons of England and very high up the demands of the charter are setting limits on certain taxes that John has been imposing on the barons of England. They're limited to specified numbers because John has been charging vast and extortionate sums out of individual barons for these numbers. There are protections for, for example, widows whose rights are somewhat vulnerable, you know, rights to land and property are somewhat vulnerable under John and under the Plantagenet government in general. There are demands for freedoms for the City of London because London's a very powerful

political force in England. One of the clauses of Magna Carta most often quoted is the demand that the fish traps will be removed from the rivers Thames and Medway. This sounds slightly comical to us, but of course, fish traps in a river make it very hard to navigate a particular river. So these are demands that will serve the interests of merchants. What's noticeably missing from Magna Carta are any demands on behalf of the peasants, clearly demonstrating their lowly role in feudal society. Even so, one of the clauses seems to refer to the rights of everyday people.

Probably the most famous clause states that no free man is to be arrested, or imprisoned, or deceased, or outlawed, or exiled, or in any other way ruined, nor will we go or send against him, except by the legal judgment of his peers, or by the law of the land. This article will come to resonate through the ages, but it's a mistake to read it as the setting out of a universal right. privileges, but it's a mistake to read it as the setting out of a universal right. The term free man in the feudal system discounts the vast majority of peasants, arguably the people who would need its protection the most.

Any peasant of John's reign really thought about anything is largely obscure to us today and would have been considered laughably irrelevant to anybody involved in Magna Carta. One of the biggest mistakes you can make about Magna Carta is to think that it's got anything to do with you. Magna Carta was not to do with ordinary people. It was not to do with democracy. Had you mentioned the word democracy or even tried to explain the concept to anybody who was at running meet negotiating Magna Carta, they would have become either angry or hysterical with laughter. This was nothing to do with democracy, and it was certainly nothing to do with peasants who, to all intents and purposes, in medieval England, certainly of the early 13th century, didn't count. And in fact, the significance of John sealing Magna Carta is less momentous at the time than

its later reputation suggests. Though it forces a tyrant into concessions and puts the brakes on civil war, the story doesn't end there. In the days following his sealing of Magna Carta, the peacemaking continues. Most of the rebellious barons now swear fealty to their king once more. But some don't agree to the terms of Magna Carta. For them, it doesn't go far enough. They return to their holdings to prepare to fight. Seven copies of Magna Carta are immediately distributed to cathedrals and put on display. This means they can be accessed by all, at least by all those who can read. Many other copies are made and sent around the country.

But it is no surprise that the barons do not trust John. The expectation that he will break faith is even written into the charter in Clause 61. They try and create this mechanism by which he can be forced to do so. And to make a complicated process simple, it says, if John breaks the terms of Magna Carta, then XYZ specified high-ranking barons will decide whether he's broken the terms of Magna Carta. And if he has, then we'll start attacking his castles and taking his stuff away until he agrees to Magna Carta. Well, good effort, lads. But ultimately, this is totally self-defeating because Magna Carta is supposed to be a peace treaty, effectively to stop a civil war, a full-blown civil war breaking out. And yet within it is the exact mechanism for starting a civil war.

The Baron's suspicions about John's duplicity are well-founded, because now John sets into place the plans he was making before he sealed the Charter, contacting his new ally, Pope Innocent III. He writes straight away to Pope Innocent III and says, oh, this terrible thing's happened. My beastly subjects made me agree to a charter and they did it under duress and I don't want to obey it, thank you very much. You know, first class post to the Pope. Pope writes back going, well, this is an absolute disgrace.

Of course you don't have to obey it. There's no messing around and I mean in the meantime of course John is going about his preparations for a civil war. To John's relief, the pope excommunicates the rebel barons. Within six weeks, John has reneged on the deal made at Runnymede and the first barons war breaks out. Increasing numbers now side with the rebels who wish to uphold Magna Carta over a faithless king whose word and seal are meaningless. As a peace treaty, Magna Carta is a failure. The barons struggle to hold their own in the early part of the war and turn to forging foreign alliances. After a year, they attempt to depose John, replacing him with Prince Louis of France, in the hope of securing French support for their cause.

John fights on, but in October 1216, he falls ill with the Bloody Flux, now known as dysentery. On the wide, treacherous estuary in the east of England known as the Wash, he misjudges the tide, and his entourage is trapped in rising water. His remaining treasure, and even members of his court, are sucked into the quicksand. Though weakened, he continues north, carried on a litter. But later that month he dies, just short of fifty years old. The eldest son from John's second marriage, nine-year-old Henry III, is immediately crowned with his mother's bracelet, the crown jewels having been lost in the sea. But John's detractors still favor Louis, and the battle for the crown continues into 1217.

Henry's advisors finally agree to re-issue Magna Carta if he is accepted, and the rebel barons declare fealty to the crown once more, abandoning Louis to flee back to France. In 1297, Magna Carta enters statute as English law. If a king wants to change it, he must go through Parliament. If a king wants to change it, he must go through Parliament. Magna Carta grants concessions to few but the most powerful baronial families. It lays out that taxes cannot be changed without agreement of the barons, that the king cannot alter the customs of inheritance,

take family members hostage, or impose new laws without consultation. It includes smaller protections to the liberty of the church, merchants, townsmen and the lower aristocracy. But the vast majority of the English population remain without an active voice in government for another 700 years. Universal suffrage, the right of all adults to vote, is only achieved in the UK in 1928. In 1629, Charles I dissolves Parliament. He fails to recall it for 11 years, breaking the terms of Magna Carta.

The civil war that ensues ends with the loss of his head. Magna Carta takes on an even greater symbolic significance when the United States use it as a basis for the Declaration of Independence in 1776. The colonists even compare King George III to King John in his flagrant disregard of their liberties. The United States was created, was written into being by the founding fathers and has a set of very well-known documents that say very well-known things that purport to say what the United States is and how it operates. And perhaps because we're so in thrall to the United States in the West today, we wish that the UK had something similar, or we assume that the UK

had something similar. And because Magna Carta is probably the oldest document that anyone's heard of, we assume that that must be it. There is a sort of longstanding set of principles by which the government ought to abide and behave. And when we see them broken, we reach for Magna Carta because that's the thing we've kind of heard of, that we've heard probably has something to do with this and it's ages, ages old. Now, it's not wrong to think that there is a long-standing tradition of rules for the government.

That's called the British Constitution. We don't have it written down. It is a historically informed thing that owes its value to its long historical existence. After World War II, Eleanor Roosevelt and her team write the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. She calls it a Magna Carta for all mankind. Magna Carta has become a symbol, and what it symbolizes is much more important than what it actually says. It was important in the 13th century. Today it's just a sort of totem and a pair of words that we associate with modern political concepts that would have been alien,

strange and peculiar to the people who actually made Magna Carta in the 13th century. Four original copies of the document still exist, two of them held in the British Library in London and the others at Lincoln and Salisbury Cathedrals. In 2007, a 1297 copy of Magna Carta is put up for auction. The $21.3 million it fetches in its sale to an American businessman is the highest price ever paid for a single page of text. Though Magna Carta, the Great Charter, immediately failed as a peace treaty, it remains one of the

most famous documents in the world. Four of the 63 clauses of Magna Carta remain in UK law today. The right to justice and a fair trial is central to the legal structures and government, which in turn becomes a model for other legal systems across the globe. I'm fascinated by the story of the making of Magna Carta. The Plantagenets are the most interesting dynasty, in my opinion, that ever ruled England. And their psychodrama, which ended up producing all sorts of famous episodes, but in this case, a very famous document in Magna Carta, is a family story that has huge political consequences. And it's a story that I believe everyone should know and would enjoy. In a broader sense, I'm just fascinated by our emotional attachment to this document that no

one's ever read and wouldn't understand if they did. It's just a really interesting case study in how we perceive ourselves as a political community and as a society. And for all that people don't really know what Magna Carta is, I think it's fascinating that many people feel so attached to it today. Next time on Short History Of, we'll bring you a short history of Charles Dickens. I think we should consider Dickens' incredible achievement to be the fact that he still keeps poverty on the agenda even today. You can guarantee that pretty much every December, somebody will write in a newspaper

around the world, you know, Dickens wrote about this in 1843, and we still have child poverty with us today. That to me is one of his enduring legacies. Also, the fact that he just wrote such incredible stories that people still want to adapt to them. There's constantly new Dickens adaptations. And through that, that keeps his social campaigning on the agenda because every time somebody does a new version of whatever Dickens novel or novella it might be, it brings the issues back up again. And that to me, I think, is amazing. That's next time.