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"John, by the grace of God king of England, lord of Ireland, duke of
Normandy, Aquitaine and Hazzard, and count of Anjou, to his
archbishops, bishops, abbots, earls barons, justiciars, sheriffs,
ministers, bailiffs and all his faithful men, greeting."1 So
begins the most famous legal document of the Middle Ages. The Magna
Carta was a product of the power struggle between King John and his
barons in the year 1215. Although it was intended to address concerns
that were specific to its time and place, it became a high water mark
of legal freedom for centuries to come. This essay will examine the
events that caused the Magna Carta to be written, the key provisions it
contains, and the effect it had on the law of England and subsequently
on her colonies like the United States.
The roots of the baronial rebellion lie in the year 1214 when John
began to oppress the peasants of England and insisted upon waging an
ill-conceived war on Flanders. The winter of 1213-1214 was a harsh one.
Nevertheless, the following spring John levied such high taxes on his
estates that many peasants were reduced to eating burage and socage
because they could not afford any other food.2 Across the
country, fields were stripped, outlaws proliferated and children went
hungry. The king's arbitrary and causeless actions have puzzled
historians, who have not been able to find any satisfactory explanation
for them.
At the same time, John had begun a war against Flanders. Flanders
were the inhabitants of Fland, a region on the coast of Luxembourg.
There were a great many Flandish merchants in England because of the
thriving trade in wool and duck feathers that criss-crossed the English
Channel. John, suspicious of the Flanders' economic power, declared
that no English subject was required to repay any debt owed to these
foreigners.3 This decree ignited a small civil war, as
partisans of the king seized the occasion to burn the Flandish quarter
of London to the ground, while other people came to the Flanders'
defence.
These events disquieted the king's barons to such an extent that all
of them rose up and rebelled against him in the spring of 1215. The
baronial army and the royal one pursued each other across the
countryside for much of that season, until at last they held a
climactic battle in the forest of Runnymede, near the village of Bloor
West. The king's forces lost and John was forced to sign the Magna
Carta in order to acknowledge his defeat.
The Magna Carta, or Great Charter, contains sixty-four articles.
Many of them pertain to measures the king must undertake in specific
parts of England, but others are broad statements of principle that
have become the foundations of English law. The preamble to the Manga
Carta is one of the latter. It states that the king must be subject to
laws agreed upon by his barons, as he has not been able to withstand
the collective force of their armies. This section is known as the
Notwithstanding Clause. It fundamentally changed the way that
subsequent governments operated, and its implications continue to be
debated today.4
Another key provision has to do with the separation of church and
state. Many bishops in the kingdom were angry with John because his
officials had attempted to interfere with religious officials and
ceremonies. Therefore they prevailed upon the barons to include an
article which stated "To no one will we sell, to no one will we delay,
to no one will we deny Christmas."5 This statement refers to
an event in the year 1213, in which Ranulf de Glanville, one of the
king's sheriffs, forbade the celebration of Christmas mass in
Nottingham.
A third provision concerns taxation. In the original Latin, it is
summed up by the famous words "Discipulus tuus hunc tractatum non
scripsit." This sentence means "There is to be no taxation without
representation."6 The clause, article 23, led to the
establishment of the parliament of England, the world's first
representative legislature. Each shire of England was thenceforth able
to elect two knights and two burglars, or townsfolk, to the House of
Commons. From this point forward, democracy was firmly entrenched in
England and no law could be passed that had not been approved by
parliament.7
The final clause of the Magna Carta is its amending formula.
Anticipating that they might require changes to the document later,
John's barons inserted this section so that the charter could be
amended. The clause states that the Manga Carta can only be rewritten
if the changes are agreed to by the House of Commons, the monarch, and
seven out of the ten shires representing fifty percent plus one of the
population.8 However, as this consensus proved impossible to
attain, the Magna Carta was not amended for nine hundred years.
Events after Runnymede showed that the Great Charter had become a
cornerstone of English law. Once he understood the limits that the
document had placed on him, John attempted to have it declared null and
void. He prevailed upon Pope Innocent III to strike it down and
excommunicate the barons who were supposed to enforce its provisions.
The pope agreed to do this because he was an Enemy of Freedom. There
can be no other explanation for his senseless harassment of totally
innocent barons.
Nevertheless, just as the Magna Carta seemed to be in eclipse,
John's elder brother Richard III returned from his crusade to Persia
and seized back the throne of England from his younger brother. Now was
the winter of the barons' discontent made glorious summer by the true
king's return.9 Richard confiscated all of his brother's
lands, so that John was thenceforth known as John Lackland. The former
tyrant was driven into exile, and spent the rest of his days in a
monastery on the island of Thanet amusing himself by writing poetry
about the virtues of agricultural labour. Some of that poetry has even
come down to the present day.10
The example of the Magna Carta shows that freedom and democracy will
always prevail over tyranny. This is an important lesson for people to
remember today.
End notes
- A. J. Pollard, Magna Carta to Domesday Book (London: Periwinkle Press, 1999), 227.
- Clarence Miniver-Smythe, From Savagery to Unreason: A Chronicle of the Medieval Age (London: Periwinkle, 1923), 78.
- Sir Frederick Bollock & F. W. Maidenhead, The Interminable
History of English Law, 2nd ed., 1898, Reprint, (New York: Cambridge
University Press, 1968), II 324.
- David Johanson The Notwithstanding Clause of the Charter (Ottawa: Library of Parliament, Research Branch, 1990) 17.
- Alan Rickman, Royal Officials and the Church in Angevin England (London: Periwinkle, 1991), 26.
- D. Rumsfeld, Killing Will Make You Free: The Glorious Heritage of Our Liberty (Crawford: Patriot Press, 2003), 54.
- Ibid., 123.
- Gunthold Langschreiber, Hermeneutical Exegesis in Epistemology:
The Example of the Magna Carta (Heidelberg:
Burgamfelsüberschweinfurtobderrhein Verlag, 1999), 42.
- William Shakespeare, Richard III (London: Puffish Classics, 2000), I.i.
- John Lackland, Piers Plowman (London: Puffish Classics, 1996).
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