The Rest Is History - 62. Magna Carta

Episode Date: June 10, 2021

Does the Magna Carta enshrine the liberties of every free-born Englishman? Or is it now irrelevant? Ted Vallance, Professor of History at Roehampton University, joins Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook to discuss King John and the bill of rights he was forced to sign. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is therestishistory.com. Does Magna Carta mean nothing to you? Did she die in vain? Brave Hungarian peasant girl who forced King John to sign the pledge at Runnymede and close the boozes at half past ten? Is all this to be forgotten? The wise words of Antony Aloysius Hancock in Hancock's Half Hour,

Twelve Angry Men. Welcome to The Rest is History. As always, we take our cues from the comedies of the 1950s. And today we are talking about Magna Carta, King John, the document that supposedly enshrines the liberties of every freeborn Englishman. Tom Holland, you're a big Magna Carta fan, no doubt. I am quite a fan of Magna Carta, which I feel is quite an unfashionable thing to be really, because my sense of reading historians on it is that they can sometimes kind of downplay it. They laugh at Magna Carta. They do laugh at Magna Carta. And that's why I think we've brought on, we've got as our guest, a historian who...

He's going to laugh at it for us. Well, no. He ran a website called Magna Carta Balls, which may well imply his view on it. And that is the one and only Ted Vallance, professor of history at Roehampton, author of A Radical History of Britain, a 17th century specialist currently working on a book on the trial of Charles I. So not a fan of dodgy monarchs. Ted, are you a fan of John? No, and I think very few people were or are. I mean, I think he's just one of those monarchs who, I mean, maybe there is a revisionist biography of King John about to come out that I don't know about, but it seems like he's got a pretty bad press from his day until the present.

As Sellers and Eatman put it in 1066 and all that, he's our first memorable wicked uncle in English history. And I think that reputation has kind of stayed with him. Tom Holland, two weeks ago, presented a rousing defence of the Emperor Nero as an uxorious, clean-living, chariot-racing... I didn't say he was clean-living. Renaissance man. You did say he was uxorious.

I did, yes, well, he was. I would be astounded if you haven't come into this podcast arm-tooled up for a defence of King John. Am I right? Well, I think we should put him first of all in his historical context shouldn't we before we come on to so he's playing just how bad he was so yeah so he's so so dominic give us a a quick skim description of him um that's put me on the spot so it's okay oh sorry no no i'm gonna do it i'm gonna do it. Do you think I'm not tooled up because I am? Well, I just suddenly realised it was implied because we've got Ted here. Well, Ted, do you know King John's dates off the top of your head?

No. Professor of History at Roehampton. Striking it hard there. 1199. 1199 is 1216. Are you reading that off a piece of paper? He succeeds Richard the Lionheart. He loses Normandy.

So he's only king for 17 years. But Ted and I were once colleagues together at the University of Sheffield, and we had a colleague who was a medieval historian who appeared on a Channel 5 documentary series talking about King John, and it was called The Most Evil Men in History. And the people on this series were Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, and King John. And I think that was kind of harsh because as far as I understand it, John was a poor king and a weak king, and he sort of squeezed people for money,

and he lost battles. But to call him evil is probably a bit – I mean, it's not Pol Pot. I think we can probably – yeah, I think in comparison to Pol Pot, probably, yeah, he's, you know, we're being a bit harsh on him by comparing him to genocidal 20th century dictators. Yeah, and I think sort of, I mean, probably if we're, you know, we're trying to be fair to John, I would say that he is a tyrant in the classical sense, in that he's somebody who rules according to his will and what he wants to get done.

And so he does things like, you know, imprison members of the family of people who aren't paying him taxes and starves them to death. You know, he's not a nice guy from that perspective. Because that was a mother and her son, wasn't it? Yes. In Corfe Castle. And when their corpses were found, it turned out that the mother had eaten the cheek of her son. I mean, that's pretty evil.

But, Tom, you could argue that's the mother at fault rather than King John. Can you? Well, I know. I think if you're peckish, you know, you haven't got anything else to eat. If you're applying the same standards you'd apply to Nero. Nero never, I mean, Nero killed his mother,

but he didn't eat her. So that's my case. He's still, yeah. But I mean, John's problem. I mean, I think, so the judgment of John Gillingham, Emeritus Professor of Medieval History at the London School of Economics and Political Science, he was a shit. And I think that's true.

He was clearly a very, very unpleasant man. I mean, he had this horrible habit of, say, William Marshall, the great knight errant, the greatest knight of his day, who stands by John through thick and thin. John would go up to William Marshall and kind of tell him that his best friends had died in distant battles. And it would be completely made up. It would just be done to kind of get a rise out of him. So that's a kind of genuinely horrible thing to do. Sort of jackass approach to kingship, is it? That he's having to raise money because of the one

catastrophe of his reign which is losing this great empire in france that he's inherited from well ultimately from william the conqueror who's the duke of normandy conquers england of course but then the accumulation of other um territories that he's got from his father henry ii and which his brother the great crusader richard the Lionheart had defended so heroically. And then John just loses the lot. And so then he is spending the rest of his reign, essentially screwing money out of England, this great milch cow to try and raise cash. He does that. He launches an invasion attempt on France to get his territories back. And then at this battle at Bavine in 1214, he loses. And that's a judgment both on him as a tactician, as a commander,

but also a judgment on him coming from God, because clearly God has judged him and found him wanting. And basically everything follows from that, doesn't it? I mean, that's what Magna Carta is about, is that he's been so oppressive. He's now, after Bavine, having to raise more money, and people just can't face it yeah i think it's it that's totally that the context is totally this this ratcheting up of taxation you know six times the level uh at the start of his reign uh and the pressure of that

becomes um you know something that the english elite are no longer prepared to bear, particularly in light of the military disaster that has befallen John and the loss of those lands. And that is the context in which this document, Magna Carta, is created of effectively a civil war with, you know, the rebel barons basically, you know, deciding that they are going to resist the heavy burden of taxation that's placed upon them and forced John by force of arms to the negotiating table. And that's where we get to with Magna Carta in June of 1215. And Ted, is that something that's completely unprecedented? So in other words, is this the first time a king has signed up to anything

to limit his own power, or have there been sort of instances of this before? So I think when historians are sort of thinking about this and looking at this in a sort of broader European context, I mean, there have been arguments that there are kind of similar sorts of aristocratic charters that sort of place similar kinds of burdens on monarchy. I think the argument has been that Magna Carta is exceptional because of its breadth and because it seems to go much beyond just being a kind of set of aristocratic demands and includes these broader principles. And I think some of the most

interesting work has actually been to say that, in fact, those kinds of principles about the binding nature of agreements on royal power are actually things that are accepted across Western Europe as well, that you can find kind of imperial judgments from a century or more prior to Magna Carta, which basically say that the king can't just tear up, you know, agreements that are made and seize property and tax people. There has to be a process of law. And actually, that sort of idea of judgment by your peers, which obviously, you know, literally kind of, you know, fellow nobles is something that's a kind of Europe wide principle that's being observed and adhered to so it's not the necessarily the

first in terms of statements these principles but it is the kind of scope of it the scale of it which is unusual which actually connects back to you know what tom was talking about in terms of the way in which you know we might see magna Carta as a product of a tax revolt which is basically that John is kind of looking at so many different tax loopholes and trying to sort of screw money out of so many different areas that it is just this kind of comprehensive suite of things that the king can't do you know he can't fiddle with inheritance in this way or wards in this way or you know forests all these different things he can't do um the charges say you have to be kind of hived off and protected basically because one of the things one of john's qualities that you

could emphasize would be precisely that he does have this incredible command of detail and you know if there's a chance to make money he will sniff it out and come after you and that's precisely why magna carta has to be so detailed is because they want to block everything off and because they don't trust him an inch. But also, I mean, John is brought to the negotiating table essentially because by 1215 there's a stalemate. And what brings the stalemate really round is that his enemies capture London. And without London, John can't win. But equally, John has an army, he has mercenaries, he has everything, he has all his castles. So the bar John can't win. But equally, John has an army, has mercenaries, has everything, has all his castles. So the barons can't win.

So they decide to meet. I mean, Windsor is basically kind of neutral ground. I suppose John's got a huge castle at Windsor. But they meet at Runnymede, which is meadows, open space. And they meet on an island in the middle of the thames and that's the measure of how little trust there is between both sides yeah and both camps are armed as well and they are as you say effectively meeting somewhere that is you know near to where you know near to london but not in london which is now held by the rebels so it's sort of a a relatively safe neutral zone but one in which obviously

neither side trusts the other enough to come unarmed to this to this meeting have you have you heard of the anchor wiki you i have not heard of the anchor wiki i'm dying to know more well i bring i mentioned just because my uh friend jamie muir ted who you know yes we've all done pub quizzes together he he took me on a tour of his um places where he grew up and the anchorwick u is a u next to saint mary's priory in runnymede and apparently it was on an island isn't anymore very very ancient and the theory is is that this is where john set the seal on magna carta which is a highly contested, but I just throw that in because it's a kind of interesting detail. Ted, to move on from Tom's fascinating detail.

So they're there. They've got their soldiers with them. There's the barons. There's John and his cronies. How much is this basically a purely kind of internal elite matter that these are just people from this sort of top caste of society and no one else could give two hoots um i mean i think there's one sort of if you like jaundiced view of magna carta which is just you know um and and tom has brought up my magna carta balls history which is just to say this is

you know very squabbling amongst various rich people, you know, a series of demands from the top 1% for tax exemption. You know, we could view it in that way. But I think most of the experts on the period actually argue that there is more going on here, that there is something more broad ranging and substantive about sort of rights and liberties that's being articulated and i think actually that's one of the things that um susan reynolds and her in her piece on sort of you know the european context of magna carta stresses is that when the barons are talking about things like judgment of peers, they are engaging with these broader kind of agreed principles that are there. And Ted, the guy who's basically the umpire, the guy who's kind of convening this conference, Stephen Langton, Archbishop of Canterbury, former professor at Paris, University of Paris.

John's had an enormous run in with the pope about whether to let him in or not um basically john's kind of submitted to the pope and let him in um how key is his role because obviously he's he's not a neutral operator he's there to defend the interests of the church right yeah and i think you know the position of the church and the papacy is important as well because both sides are actually trying to get this external, you know, approval on their actions from the papacy in these negotiations as well. So both the rebels and John, John, who's previously been excommunicated for his failure to recognise Stephen Langton as well, is trying to now get Innocent III on side to get him on his side. Because Innocent III is a Pope of kind of enormous sweep isn't it and that's an

example of how in a way unlucky John is that he's up against a Pope who really is in a position to kind of humble kings. Yeah and also that it's not just you know this is not just an English elite concern it's a concern that obviously you know connects with France as well as with the papacy. And so John is not just, you know, dealing with these English barons. He's dealing with these other forces as well and trying to negotiate with these other external forces too. And of course, the rights of the church also become an important part of, you know, the discussions within the charter um and that's actually you know one of the one of the you know the clauses of the charter that remains

in legal force today is the one that protects your notionally protects the rights of the church could could would it be very boring or would it be very interesting i think the answer is always it's very boring if i just very quickly skimmed through what magna carta says well it'd be good to know what it says yeah yeah so i've got i've got david carpenter's edition for the penguin classics came out obviously in 2015 for the anniversary yeah uh very good edition and so it kicks off with john by the grace of god king of england lord of ireland blah blah blah blah and then you get a list of all the people the witnesses and it's the churchmen who come first so stephen langton archbishop of dublin

papal envoy etc and then you get a list of all the kind of noblemen so that's how it kicks off and as ted as you said the very first so this has been divided up into chapters i think later on isn't it it's some later jurist who does this so it's not actually in the documents but the very first one is saying the English church should be free. And so that's still on the statute book. That's one of the things. Then you get loads of stuff about basically the barons trying to stop John from raising money in sneaky ways.

And you just get loads and loads of them. And it's all about the widows. This is all the inheritance stuff, isn't it? And, yeah, widows. Yeah. You can't charge you to marry this person or whatever. Widows and lords and, yeah. And Jews. So Jews are the moneylenders. Yeah.

And John is, you know, kind of exploiting them to get cash. So he's trying to reign. Oh, and London. So London is, you know, it's siding with the barons. And the city of London is to have all its ancient liberties and free customs by both land and water so that's still in force that's still in force as well so importantly obviously preserve the city of london and i think london is the only town mentioned in magna carta so that's a kind of reflection of its importance uh then just you know loads of stuff uh then you start getting mentions of um uh people. So no one is to be restrained to build bridges at riverbanks.

So I guess that's not on the statute book. But I mean, that's something perhaps if we have to start building bridges for Boris over the Irish Sea or something. This is actually what sounds like a very minor one. But Susan Reynolds points out that it's quite an interesting one in terms of the broader implications, because that one is basically saying that, you know, it's one that's even dealing with the rights of the unfree it's saying you can't you know get get your villains to to build bridges or whatever so it's actually it's actually you know as as boring and sort of irrelevant to our interests as it seems now it's maybe one that actually says some interesting things about the broader implications

so hold on is this a world in which in which you were at risk if you sort of, you know, a sunny day, you're wandering down the lane, of being press-ganged into building a bridge at a moment's notice? Absolutely, yeah. It was a common anxiety of the labouring poor of the time. Or it seems of having someone nick your horse or cart, because that's also banned. So there's this kind of idea that John could just just nick your car that's important oh and wood neither we nor our bailiff shall take wood

belonging to another person for castle so that's banned as well oh and fish weirs we love we love the fish weirs so that's article 33 all fish weirs are henceforth to be removed completely from the thames and the medway so what's all that about is john been basically overfishing or stealing other people's fish? That apparently is the Archbishop of Canterbury. He put that in because he wanted to sail up the Medway to his summer resort. So that's a bit sneaky.

Standard drinking measures based on London measurements. So that's there. And then you get the famous, the two famous ones that are still on the statute book, which is really what makes Magna Carta famous across the world. No free man is to be arrested or imprisoned or dispossessed of property or outlawed or exiled or in any way destroyed. Nor will we go against him, nor will we send against him, save by the lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land. And then the next one, to no one will we sell sell to no one will we deny or delay right or justice and that's the kind of from our perspective i guess the heart of it um then there's loads of stuff about forests we might come on to that um and then there's a they're

obviously trying to to make sure that john doesn't winkle out of this so there's loads of stuff about how um uh you know if if John is breaking the law, then people can object, which obviously John didn't want at all, but I guess shows how mistrusted he was. There's loads of stuff about him, not just he's claiming that he wants to go on a crusade.

This again is a scam. They're trying to block off. There's loads of stuff about the Welsh and the Scots, which is interesting. So it's, you know, it's thought of as an English document, but it's actually a kind of British one, isn't it? Because it's kind of dealing with them as well. They're parties to this sort of civil war,

really, against John. So that's their presence explained within the chart. Yeah. And then kind of a notorious thing that then gets cut, doesn't it, from future editions of the charter, where there are to be 25 barons to keep watch on John. So that's a huge restraint on his autonomy, right? That he's got this kind of committee of barons sitting over him

to sort of, what, to hold him in check? Is that the deal? Yes, basically this is a sort of enforcement clause that this council are going a sort of enforcement clause that they this this council are going to sort of be there to sort of monitor observance of the charter and if if john you know doesn't observe it to their um satisfaction then they have all sorts of rights in terms of seizing his military resources and it talks about kind of possessing his castles and so and so forth um and and i think

this is one you know it's one on one level this is one thing that means that this document doesn't have a long shelf life because it it basically means that john john's power is fundamentally undercut by this this council of barons but it's also something that is a real distinction from things that have gone before and these sort of european precedents um that we might have for magna carta this this council of barons seems to be a real divergence from accepted ideas about hierarchy about loyalty about obedience this does seem to be something that is moving in a direction where you're saying, actually, you know, the person at the top of the tree can have their power checked if they're not ruling in accordance with the law. Can I just jump in and ask a very boring question? I'm sure Ted will be able to answer quickly. Why didn't they just kill John?

Yeah, I mean, I think that's a very good question, which I don't have a quick answer to, but I think, yeah, I mean, I guess it's a question of this isn't a civil war in which alternative claimants to the throne are being, we're not talking war of the roses scenario where alternative kind of claimants are parties that sort of, you know, waging war against each other. This doesn't seem to be one in which, you know, there's a dynastic struggle at the centre of it. And so I don't think it's the sense that people want to, you know,

remove that dynasty and replace it with another one. But it is about dealing with, you know, John's, you know, dealing with a bad king, not wanting to, you know, to replace the monarchy, but sort of how to hedge it in, how to sort of place limitations on it. But Ted, what then happens is, so the final kind of section, they took all ill will, indignation and rancor,

which has arisen between us from this time of the discord, we have fully remitted and pardoned to everyone. So the ill will, indignation, rancor is obviously summing up of what John's's like but obviously he doesn't stick to it and it all goes wrong and the war breaks out again john john loses all his what he loses all the jewels in the wash or whatever um crossing the the estuary um and there's a great storm and he dies and teaches he's eaten too many from from eating raw cider, a new cider and raw peaches, yes. As you do.

So he leaves behind a young son, Henry III. But basically the barons have decided that they're going to hand it over to the son of the King of France, Louis, who by the time of John's death has seized about half the country, hasn't he? And it's only William Marshall, the great knight, who by this point is very old, and actually is the first person to be named in the list of magnates, in the Magna Carta.

It's only thanks to him that they're able to defeat it. And they do that by reissuing Magna Carta. And if that hadn't happened, then perhaps Magna Carta would be completely forgotten. Is that right? Yeah, I think that is right. And I think Henry III's Magna Carta is the really critical one in terms of the memory of this document.

So that's 1217, isn't it? 1225. I think you're right, there is a 1217 issue. Because that comes out with the Charter of the Forest, which is also very confusing. But we won't get into that because that's too complicated yeah yeah yeah so so yeah and i think those those 13th century kind of um you know and 14th century reiterations of magna carta are critical to people actually remembering it as you as you say if this has been something where actually, you know,

John gets the Pope to nullify, you know, issue decrees that the Magna Carta is nullified and barons, you know, decide to instead install the son of the King of France, then maybe we completely forget about this instance altogether. Yeah. We should probably have a break, just i mean basically just to sum up and to line up the second half where we'll talk about the you know the afterlife of magna carta here's a question from gordon smith is the point of magna carta that the king recognizes that he

is bound by the laws of the land rather than being above them otherwise what is its significance i mean is that essentially the key the key factor to bear in mind or are we being over romantic about that uh no i don't think we are but i think that's i think that's only one of the um takeaways from it i think the other one is you know well there are several but i think another really important one is actually about um liberty in general and and freedom of the individual. And that's another critical thing, I think, that comes from Magna Carta.

Oh, that's very romantic text. Isn't it? Talking about liberty. It's great. It's great. What a note on which to go to a break. Very good. Liberty. We'll see you back soon.

I'm Marina Hyde. And I'm Richard Osman. And together we host the rest is entertainment it's your weekly fix of entertainment news reviews splash of showbiz gossip and on our q a we pull back the curtain on entertainment and we tell you how it all works we have just launched our members club if you want ad-free listening bonus episodes and early access to live tickets head to the rest of entertainment.com that'sisentertainment.com. That's therestisentertainment.com. Welcome back to The Rest Is History.

We're talking about Magna Carta. We have seen off King John. Matthew Paris, the great chronicler, said of him, foul as it is, hell itself is made fouler by the presence of John. Let's hope no one says that about the rest of his history and the presence of Ted Vallance on our podcast. Now, so we've done Magna Carta, we've done John, and we're going to do its afterlife,

which I think is in many ways a more fascinating story. It's something that you've written a lot about, Ted. And we've got a question from Simon Hodge. And he says, at what point did the perception of Magna Carta move from being about the rights of an elite to a more generalised conception of English rights? And does that shift have any merit? And I guess that's the big question, isn't it? So when people talk about Magna Carta today in the newspapers, are they talking about an imaginary Magna Carta that was basically invented hundreds of years afterwards, do you think?

I think they're to some extent talking about an imaginary Magna Carta, if they're talking about, you know, defending the right to open soft play areas during lockdown, for example. Because that's not mentioned, is it? That's not one of the statutes. Yeah, the fish wears, yes, soft play areas, no. But we might come back to soft play areas, I hope, later on. But I think that there is something genuine um you know that there is a um a genuine uh part the magna carta has to play an important part the magna house the car has to play

in the development of the idea of um rights and liberties extending beyond the elite and that's something that actually starts um you know we can argue that it actually starts with the 12th 15 charter itself but certainly in the 13th century and on into the 14th century kind of reiterations um of magna carta so in the in the in magna carta they they talk about the free man liber hollow so that obviously the question then is um who are the unfree men? How many are there? And by what point can every Englishman, and I suppose it's Englishmen rather than women, is it? Yes. Be counted as free. What's the process? Yeah. So, I mean, yes, in terms of it being defined as men, that's something that doesn't change. Although, I don't know whether

we're going to come on to it anyway, but women's suffrage campaigners did point out that the English law generally uses, you know, interprets masculine pronouns universally. And so Magna Carta rights have been seen to apply to women as well as to men. But one of the things that happens over the 13th and 14th century is this language of this distinction between free and unfree in the language of the charter starts to be watered down and actually obliterated. So it just starts to talk about men instead of free men. those really evocative ones, the ones that are still, you know, have power of law today, come to have this more universal meaning attributed to them. And that's, as I say, that's something that's happening in the medieval period. It's not a modern reinvention.

It's something that is a part of what's going on with these reissuing confirmations of the charter over the 13th, 14th century. The other thing that's happening as well is it's not just sort of a document that is being, you know, circulated amongst the elite. It's also something that is going out, being confirmed, circulated in courts of law. So it's also got a kind of broader audience to it and a broader kind of reception to it as well, so that it's getting embedded in a broader sense in terms of the national culture.

And Teg, also, can I just ask, so Magna Carta blocks off all these wheezes that John has been using to raise money. So is it a coincidence that it's in the decades and then the centuries that follow that you start to get the rise of Parliament and the idea that the King has to turn to Parliament to raise money. So in that sense, is Magna Carta, although it doesn't mention Parliament, could it be considered one of the kind of key influences on the growth of the parliamentary system in England? Yeah, I think so in terms of that, as you say, in that kind of check on, you know, rural power to raise money, which is obviously one of the critical things,

the critical functions of, you know, the medieval and early modern parliament. And one of the things that then comes to be seen as, you know, one of the things that that charter of 1215 is embodying, even as you say, it doesn't actually, you know, use the language of this institution at this stage isn't in existence so yeah and ted um if it's a crucial turning point my sense and maybe i'm wrong is that it comes around about the 17th century when when magna carta really becomes enshrined um as this sort of people start to argue that it's the foundational text of kind of english liberty is that that right? Is it

sort of in the era of the Civil War and the sort of the protectorate and sort of the idea of Magna Carta being linked to the kind of good old course? Am I making that up? No, I think it is incredibly important in the rhetoric of Parliament and those who are resisting Charles I's personal rule, Charles I's government in the 1620s and then during the Civil War in the 1640s. And there was an argument that really Magna Carta is really reinvented in the 17th century, primarily by the English common law jurist Sir Edward Cook, who talks about Magna Carta in these glowing terms as the fountain of all the fundamental laws. So when is he doing that?

So this is in his Institutes, which are posthumously published in 1642, but he's written much earlier. And actually he is himself a victim of raw power in that it's actually Charles I and his government that suppresses the publication of the Institutes because they see it as a kind of politically dangerous text as one that's sort of laying out limitations on raw power. So 1642, the start of the Civil War,

and you have a king who, like John, has been resorting to all kinds of taxation wheezes and he was then faced by civil opposition and he loses london yes so were these analogies that were pressing home so there are 1640s there are there are some yeah i mean there are some fairly stark parallels there um uh i, I don't think actually Charles gets compared to John personally that much, although subject to the previous Rest Is History podcast, he was compared to Nero. Oh, the luxurious.

Yes. The luxurious man of taste. Yes, I suppose he was. Yes, exactly, for being a luxurious essay. That's right. So it is very much part of the political discourse of the 1640s. And it's something which is being invoked, I think, in even broader ways in the 1640s too.

So if you look at the way in which the level of john lilburn uses magna carta he starts to talk about magna carta as embodying birthrights so so this is something you know magna carta is basically distilling the innate rights of the englishman the freeborn englishman's rights are, you know, written within Magna Carta. So we kind of get this extension of Magna Carta from, you know, this document into something that is an embodiment of the innate birthrights of the freeborn Englishman. So at that point, people like John Lilburn and the Levellers, so we talked about them, didn't we, Tom, on our Cromwellian podcast. So at that point, are they talking about a Magna Carta that exists in their imagination, basically? I mean, have they read it? Are they aware of all the stuff about the weirs? Or have they just invented this sort of imaginary Magna Carta that they think enshrines this sort of, you know, anti-Norman yoke Anglo-Saxon liberty. But the Norman yoke, I mean, that's separate again, isn't it?

Or is it the same thing? Well, no, they're bound together. And, you know, to answer, you know, your question, Dom, they're not kind of making it up in the sense that Lilburn is getting his Magna Carta from Cook's Institutes, which is, you know, he reads this voraciously as this sort of, you know, text which is detailing all of the rights and liberties that English people enjoy through the common law, Magna Carta being, you know, one of the fundamental

documents and distillations of this. And he's also taking Cook's view of Magna Carta, which is that Magna Carta is not new law. Magna Carta is a restatement of fundamental laws. Which goes back to the Anglo-Saxon. Yes, absolutely. In his view. Yes, yes. So, you know, this Norman yoke, you know, the conquerors laws that are introduced, Magna Carta is a kind of reaffirmation of those earlier Anglo-Saxon freedoms and liberties. That's the Magna Carta ball.

Yes. Because that's clearly not true, is it? I mean, Magna Carta has nothing to do with ancient liberties of Anglo-Saxon free-balling. No, no. But that's also the Magna Carta. Am I not right in thinking, Ted, that that is also the Magna Carta that has gone to america so the americans who are interested in their their sort of intermingled american and english or british history they love magna carta the american bar association paid for you know the sort of runny mead stuff didn't they and they've always been fascinated by that and their magna carta is some ways, it's the 17th century kind of level of Magna Carta rather than the 1215 Weirs Magna Carta. Yeah, yeah, certainly. I mean, I think, yeah, it's the Magna Carta that supposedly guarantees no taxation without representation. It's the Magna Carta that,

you know, guarantees the rights of representative assemblies. And yeah, definitely not the Magna Carta that's sort of about preventing people from being forced to build bridges. Although, I mean, if an American president forced Americans to build bridges, I'm sure we wouldn't hear the end of it. Getting Magna Carta out for that. Yes, yes.

And does it have an... What kind of influence does it have on the idea of a constitution for the americans is does it have any influence at all or is that lurking at the back of their minds yeah i mean i think it's seen as you know a literal influence on on parts of the american constitution um in particular the fifth amendment um and so i mean so that's not giving evidence against yourself, is that right? Yes. You take the Fifth, yeah. Yeah, yeah. And similar kinds of direct influences have been seen

in Universal Declaration of Human Rights and also obviously through their connections to Britain, the Indian Constitution, Canadian Constitution, various other Commonwealth countries, their constitution. So it has had a genuine influence on constitutions across the world and upon important statements of individual rights and liberties. Because you see, Ted, I was so convinced you were going to just come on and say it's all bunk.

But you're going all Wilmsden Churchill. Sorry. English-speaking people. I love it. I love it. Yes. I have it. I've actually got it tattooed on my head.

I was to open this shirt. But do you know who he reminds me of? So in the early 80s, Margaret Thatcher gave – Laurence van der Post came to Downing Street, and she showed him around Downing Street, showed him all the busts and stuff. And she said that what she really liked about being British was that if you went into the pub,

you would hear people talking about Magna Carta and habeas corpus and the rights of the freeborn Englishman. And I never thought I would say this, but Ted is basically Margaret Thatcher in this podcast. So you really... You love all that stuff about individual liberty and it's extraordinary yeah absolutely yeah yeah yeah and what do you think i'll go on set well i was going to say you know i think uh you know as thomas pointed out i um i did spend some time

on a blog that i no longer keep up sort of talking about magna carta balls and sort of you know and i think some of these kind of anti-lockdown you know um sightings of Magna Carta would fit neatly into that description but I think on you know I also don't want to kind of poo-poo the significance of this document uh either and or you know the the importance of the idea of individual liberty that it that is influenced and that it supports and I think actually if there's one thing to kind of take away from all of the anti-lockdown stuff and i would say first of all just you know i think lockdowns are an important public health measure that have had to be put in place but i think there is an important thing underneath this which is actually um what limitations are there on on the executive power in the UK to do certain things that it deems to be necessary in an emergency?

And this is something that's come up before in terms of statutes, you know, Defence of the Realm Acts during the two world wars and how those impinged upon individual liberties. And, you know, what are the barriers to a government doing that basically well because the anonymous of bethune make fabulous okay anonymous chronicler who rode in the the train of whatever it was the duke of bethune or whatever uh said of king john that he was a very bad man and whenever he could he told lies rather than the truth so i guess the key to magna carter is to try and stop bad men who tell lies rather than the truth from having their evil way that would be that would be the the enduring perspective of magna carta and perhaps you know in in 2021 that's just as important as it was in in 1215 you can say yeah yeah absolutely yeah so the the um we've looked at the influence of Magna Carta on America

and on various Commonwealth countries, but what about Britain itself? So what's the kind of line of inheritance that takes us from the 17th century through to 2021 and the use of Magna Carta in lockdown disputes? Yeah, yeah. I mean, it still has a – think it's it's got so embedded partly as a result of this, you know, enormous discussion in the 17th century, but also, you know, as a result of its late medieval circulation, it's got so embedded in kind of, you know, the English kind of historical memory that is continuing to be invoked by radical figures in the 18th century. So John Wilkes refers to it in his campaigns for press freedom. And it also gets invoked by radical movements in the late 18th and early 19th century.

So the London Corresponding Society members refer to Magna Carta as giving them the sort of authority for their campaigns for manhood suffrage, and the same with the Chartists on into the 19th century. And I think there's a few things here that are going on here. One is actually just the sort of the prominence of Magna Carta as a constitutional document as a reference point. But the other thing is actually also rhetorically the value of something like Magna Carta. And I think this is something you can see in modern invocations of it as well, that Magna Carta is a really useful reference point if you want to say, I'm arguing for these rights, and they are my rights anyway, because I am a freeborn Englishman, or I am a freeborn Englishman or I am a British citizen.

So you don't have to say, I need these things because the French revolutionaries are arguing for them. And, you know, therefore, you know, run risk of being declared unpatriotic or run risk of being declared responsible for the terror or, you know, any of those other things, you can paint yourself as a good, authentic, John Bull, you know, traditionalists in arguing for these things because these things are embodied in Magna Carta. So it's a really useful, I think, rhetorical tool has been over centuries for movements for kind of political reform and constitutional change. Because it was the kind of intersection point between David Davis and Tony Benn, wasn't it? What was it? There was 48 day detention? 48 days detention, yes. That was under the Blair government?

Yes, yes. And was it, you know, invoked to sort of, you know, the ushering in the death of Magna Carta, which again is, you know, again is an interesting kind of historical echo because very similar things are said about the revocation of habeas corpus in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, partly in reaction to the activities of groups like the London Corresponding Society. And do you think with Brexit and perhaps the withdrawal from European Court of Justice and all that kind

of thing, will the significance of Magna Carta as a kind of totem of English justice and liberty increase again, do you think? Yes, I think that has sort of, you know, heightened the emphasis upon it again, because of this sort of sense in which this is something that is uniquely ours and it's not you know we're not kind of invoking some kind of airy fairy concept of natural rights or you know universal nonsense liberty it's all weird these are these are these are real you know proper concerns yeah i border yeah I think we I think we've basically done

I think we have done it I've just got one last question so there are four there are four copies of it

so there's no there's no one kind of master version is that they were just loads that were all of equal status and they all got

sent out perhaps to cathedrals or whatever so there are there are two in the British Museum British Library two in the British Library museum british library two in the british library one in lincoln and one in salisbury which is the best so which is the best and why is it well i think tom i should i should let you argue that argue that point yeah it's salisbury guys

i've seen the lincoln one i think the lincoln is the lincoln one not the oldest have i made that up yeah they're all the same i mean i think it Lincoln... Is the Lincoln one not the oldest? Have I made that up? Yeah. They're all the same. I think it's definitely Lincoln. No, I think it's... There we go. I think the question is...

I think the question is in Salisbury. Tom, the question is in Salisbury. Ted is the expert and Ted is the same. Lincoln, what I will grant to Lincoln is it's had the most interesting afterlife. Because I think it got sent to America during the Second World War. Yeah, I think that's right. It was sent to Canada. Was it America?

Yeah. And he got stuck there, I think, and kind of ended up in Australia and he just made it back to Lincoln by the skin of his teeth. What a happy story. What a story of terrible jeopardy and a nice resolution.

But the one in Salisbury has been there the whole way through. So in a sense, it's the most true-born... I see. All right, stop it. So I think that's a good note on which to end

thank you so much for coming on and putting us right about Magna Carta so we have decided Magna Carta did not die in vain and

thank you to Ted and we will see you all next time for another fascinating glimpse of history goodbye bye bye history. Goodbye. Bye-bye.

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