by Dan Jones
In the eighteenth century, this attitude would become a matter of literally world-changing importance. No tax without consent; no imprisonment without due process. These were the issues that lay beneath the declaration and achievement of independence as the American colonies wrenched themselves free from British rule. Magna Carta had been published in the colonies as early as 1687, and just under a century later, as revolution swept through North America, it was to Magna Carta that men turned once again for their inspiration. In October 1774 the delegates to the first Continental Congress of the thirteen discontented colonies explicitly justified their gathering to express grievances by claiming that the colonies were acting simply ‘as Englishmen, their ancestors in like cases have usually done’.11
When independence had been won, and the newly formed United States of America was busily willing itself into constitutional existence, Magna Carta was again a model. The American Bill of Rights – ratified in 1791 and consisting of the first ten of James Madison’s list of constitutional amendments designed to limit the powers of state over citizen – echoes Magna Carta in several places. The Fifth Amendment states that no person should be ‘deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation’. Compare the first half of this with Clause 39 of Magna Carta in 1215: ‘No free man is to be arrested, or imprisoned, or disseized, 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.’ Then compare the second half with Clause 30: ‘No sheriff or bailiff of ours, or anyone else may take any free man’s horses or carts for transporting things, except with the free man’s agreement.’ The similarities are striking. So too with the Sixth Amendment of the American document: ‘In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury.’ What is this if not a reformulation of Clause 40 of Magna Carta 1215 – ‘To no one will we sell, to no one will we deny or delay, right or justice’? It is perhaps no surprise that since the earliest years of the United States’ existence, its citizens have looked upon Magna Carta with an almost Cokean enthusiasm, which was marked in 1957 by the erection of the only permanent monument to Magna Carta at Runnymede – paid for by the American Bar Association.
By the nineteenth century, therefore, Magna Carta was enshrined in Western political thought as being a document of great and formative importance to modern ideas of freedom. It has remained so ever since – and small parts of the charter can still be found embedded in the constitutions of nations connected with the former British Empire, from Canada to Australia (where a 1297 edition of the charter is on display in Parliament House in Canberra) and New Zealand. Original editions of the charter are highly prized and extremely valuable: during the Second World War the Lincoln copy of Magna Carta 1215 was kept safe in Fort Knox; in December 2007 a copy of Magna Carta 1297, complete with the seal of Edward I, was bought at auction in New York for an astonishing $21.3 million.
A testament to the power of Magna Carta in America. This illustration (1772) depicts John Dickinson, author of Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania in the 1760s and the man who became known as the ‘Penman of the Revolution’. His writings were instrumental in building dissent against British rule in the years before the American Revolution. While his hand clasps a manuscript of his own writings, he leans upon a book entitled ‘Magna Charta’ (sic) as his foundation.
It is true that the majority of Magna Carta’s clauses and the circumstances of its creation have long ceased to be politically or legally important, or have been superseded by more recent legislation. Certainly, those clauses that were most important to the handful of English barons who rebelled against King John in 1215 have no bearing at all on life in the twenty-first century. We no longer concern ourselves with feudal dues, or forest laws, or the niceties of levying scutage; and even the grander, catch-all phrases concerning life and liberty have been superseded in English and Scottish law by newer legislation, including the European Human Rights Act.
All the same, a very small number of the charter’s most sweeping phrases continue to exert influence. It is still striking to see, when we look at the European Human Rights Act or the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights, how closely the language of Magna Carta continues to inform our basic legal protections. Here is Article 5 of the European Human Rights Act: ‘No one shall be deprived of his liberty save… in accordance with a procedure prescribed by law.’ And here is Article 9 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a document that was described at the time of its conception by its champion, Eleanor Roosevelt, as ‘the international Magna Carta for all men everywhere’: ‘No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile.’ Once again, these are echoes of the famous Clause 39 of Magna Carta 1215. It is not only impossible, but probably fatuous, to imagine that the men who stood in Runnymede in June 1215 imagined that the text they were thrashing out might, in 800 years time, be employed in the defence of the rights of the poorest and meanest citizens in countries in every corner of the world. But that is the way it turned out.
*
One of the great paradoxes of Magna Carta is the fact that the less relevant most of the document’s words become to modern life, the greater the reverence that attaches to its name. ‘Magna Carta’ is today used as a byword for all types of aspiration to freedom, liberty and (quite erroneously) democracy. When Nelson Mandela made the case for his commitment to democratic ideals during his Rivonia Trial in 1964, he told the court: ‘The Magna Carta, the Petition of Rights, and the Bill of Rights are documents which are held in veneration by democrats throughout the world.’12 Mandela’s cause was noble, but in truth the link between Magna Carta and democracy is really no more than assumed and associative. No clause of the charter mentions, or was intended to promote, anything that we would today consider ‘democratic’; indeed, the idea of democracy was alien and would quite possibly have been offensive to the wealthy, oligarchical and largely self-interested barons who opposed King John in 1215.
Nevertheless, men and women all over the world continue to venerate Magna Carta as a founding text of Western liberal democracy, not always with completely convincing results. In 2014, for example, Prime Minister David Cameron promised, in a speech, to make every schoolchild in the United Kingdom study Magna Carta, saying that ‘the remaining copies of that charter may have faded, but its principles shine as brightly as ever, and they paved the way for the democracy, the equality, the respect and the laws that make Britain’.13 In fact, precisely the opposite is true: many of the remaining copies of the charter are in good condition, while most of their principles are now obsolete, and the clauses have nothing to do with democracy, equality or respect.*2 But this sort of political platitude is commonplace, and it speaks to the myth of Magna Carta that has developed during the last 800 years. At times that myth can have great political potency: Magna Carta’s ancient proclamations against detention without trial were instrumental, in 2008, in defeating the Labour government’s Counter-Terrorism Bill, which sought to extend the period for which a person could be imprisoned without charges from 28 to 42 days. At other times, it is used in ways that are rather confused.
This confusion tends to be greatest when Magna Carta is invoked for causes besides the more general ideals of liberal democracy or freedom from tyranny. A ‘Magna Carta for the Web’ is regularly called for now, to challenge both official (and often covert) monitoring and surveillance of online communications and also the rising power of supra-national organizations – Google, Facebook, Apple, and so on – which are thought to be exercising new and unchecked control over private data, freedom of information and personal reputations.14 There have been calls in recent years for a Magna Carta for disabled people, for medical banking, for American coal miners and for Filipino call-centre workers.15 Most amusingly, in 2013 Magna Carta even found its way into mainstream p
opular culture in the title of one of Jay-Z’s hip-hop albums, Magna Carta Holy Grail, which sold more than 2million copies in the United States during the months following its release. Quite what the phrase ‘Magna Carta Holy Grail’ is supposed to suggest remains obscure – perhaps the artist’s desire to rewrite the rules of commercial activity in the music industry. But look past the bathos and we can reflect that it is extraordinary that the phrase ‘Magna Carta’ has gained such popular currency across the world that it can be co-opted with apparent seriousness into the posturing and sloganeering of mainstream American pop music.
This, then, is where we stand. The second decade of the twenty-first century, accompanied by loud and vigorous discussion, marks the 800th anniversary of an agreement that was born out of two generations of opposition to the excesses of early Plantagenet government during the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries; this deal, and the parchment on which it was written, came to define nearly a hundred years of political conflict between English kings and their noblemen, and has since passed into the realm of myth and legend, its name called on in support of all manner of movements in which authority is challenged or restrained by the people.
As time goes by, Magna Carta’s name will undoubtedly continue to be hitched to causes both noble and absurd. One thing, however, is certain: the fame and the symbolic importance of this hard-born charter is as great now as at any time in its history. Few other documents can claim such revered status, and few will again. Certainly this would have come as a surprise to the men who stood at Runnymede in June 1215 and thrashed out an unsatisfactory peace treaty. But it is a fitting testament to their struggle.
*1 The comparison was not entirely misguided. In many ways Charles I acted and suffered just as John did. He was wilful, obstinate and autocratic. His own misdeeds – which were ample – were compounded by those committed by his predecessors. And in the end, he died during the course of a war largely of his own making against his own people. In that sense it is fitting that Magna Carta was revived during Charles’s reign.
*2 David Cameron would have been better to follow one of his predecessors as prime minister, Winston Churchill, who wrote that Magna Carta was ‘the foundation of principles and systems of government of which neither King John nor his nobles dreamed’.
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We hope you enjoyed this book.
Dan Jones’ next book, 1215, will be released in Summer 2015
For more information, click one of the links below:
Appendix I – The Text of Magna Carta
Appendix II – The Men of Magna Carta
Appendix III – The Enforcers of Magna Carta
Appendix IV – Timeline: 800 Years of Magna Carta
Notes on the Text
Further Reading
Index
Picture credits
Acknowledgements
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Dan Jones
Also by Dan Jones
An invitation from the publisher
Appendix I
The Text of Magna Carta 1215
Table of Articles
Latin
English
Preamble
Preamble
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Johannes Dei gratia rex Angliae, dominus Hiberniae, dux Normanniae Aquitanniae, et comes Andegaviae, archiepiscopis, episcopis, abbatibus, comitibus, baronibus, justiciariis, forestariis, vicecomitibus, praepositis, ministris et omnibus ballivis et fidelibus suis salutem. Sciatis nos intuitu Dei et pro salute animae nostrae et omnium antecessorum et haredum nostrorum, ad honorem Dei et exaltationem sanctae ecclesiae, et emendationem regni nostri, per consilium venerabilium patrum nostrorum, Stephani Cantuariensis archiepiscopi totius Angliae primatis et sanctae Romanae ecclesiae cardinalis, Henrici Dublinensis archiepiscopi, Willelmi Londoniensis, Petri Wintoniensis, Joscelini Bathoniensis et Glastoniensis, Hugoni Lincolniensis, Walteri Wygornensis, Willelmi Coventrensis, et Benedicti Roffensis episcoporum; magistri Pandulfi domini papae subdiaconi et familiaris, fratris Eymerici magistri militiae Templi in Anglia; et nobilium virorum Willelmi Mariscalli comitis Penbrociae, Willelmi comitis Saresberiae, Willelmi comitis Warenniae, Willelmi comitis Arundelliae, Alani de Galweya constabularii Scottiae, Warini filii Geroldi, Petri filii Hereberti, Huberti de Burgo senescalli Pictaviae, Hugonis de Nevilla, Mathei filii Hereberti, Thomae Basset, Alani Basset, Philippo de Albiniaco, Roberti de Roppel, Johannis Mariscalli, Johannis filii Hugonis et aliorum fidelium nostrorum:
John, by the grace of God King of England, Lord of Ireland, Duke of Normandy and Aquitaine, Count of Anjou, to his archbishops, bishops, abbots, earls, barons, justices, foresters, sheriffs, reeves, officers and all his bailiffs and faithful subjects, greetings. Know that, for the sake of God and for the salvation of our soul and the souls of all our ancestors and heirs, to the honour of God and the exaltation of the holy Church, and for the reform of our realm, by the advice of our venerable fathers Stephen, Archbishop of Canterbury, Primate of All England and Cardinal of the Holy Roman Church; Henry, Archbishop of Dublin; William, Bishop of London; Peter, Bishop of Winchester; Jocelin, Bishop of Bath and Glastonbury; Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln; Walter, Bishop of Worcester; William, Bishop of Coventry; and Benedict, Bishop of Rochester; Master Pandulf, subdeacon and confidant of the lord pope; Brother Aymeric, Master of the Knights Templar in England; and the noble men William Marshal, Earl of Pembroke; William, Earl of Salisbury; William, Earl Warenne; William, Earl of Arundel; Alan of Galloway, Constable of Scotland; Warin FitzGerald; Peter FitzHerbert; Hubert de Burgh, Seneschal of Poitou; Hugh de Neville; Matthew
FitzHerbert; Thomas Basset; Alan Basset; Philip d’Aubigny; Robert de Roppel; John Marshal; John FitzHugh and other of our faithful subjects:
1 In primis concessisse Deo et hac praesenti carta nostra confirmasse, pro nobis et haeredibus nostris in perpetuum, quod Anglicana ecclesia libera sit, et habeat jura sua integra, et libertates suas illaesas; et ita volumus observari; quod apparet ex eo quod libertatem electionum, quae maxima et magis necessaria reputatur ecclesiae Anglicanae, mera et spontanea voluntate, ante discordiam inter nos et barones nostros motam, concessimus et carta nostra confirmavimus, et eam obtinuimus a domino papa Innocentio tertio confirmari; quam et nos observabimus et ab haeredibus nostris in perpetuum bona fide volumus observari. Concessimus etiam omnibus liberis hominibus regni nostri, pro nobis et haeredibus nostris in perpetuum, omnes libertates subscriptas, habendas et tenendas, eis et haeredibus suis, de nobis et haeredibus nostris.
