Magna Carta: why didn't King John keep his word?

Summary

HistoryExtra Podcast Summary

Episode: Magna Carta: Why Didn't King John Keep His Word?

Date: February 22, 2026
Host: Emily Briffetts
Guest: Professor Nicholas Vincent

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Overview

In this penultimate episode of HistoryExtra’s Magna Carta series, host Emily Briffetts and medieval historian Professor Nicholas Vincent explore the chaotic aftermath of the sealing of Magna Carta in 1215. They analyze why King John was never likely to keep his promises, how political realities undermined the Charter, and how its terms shifted in subsequent reissues—eventually transforming from a failed peace treaty into a constitutional totem. The discussion illuminates the roles of the barons, the Church, and foreign powers in this critical chapter of English history and traces Magna Carta’s evolving legacy through later centuries.

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Key Discussion Points

Did Anyone Think Magna Carta Would Stick?

[02:34–04:09]

• Immediate Doubt: Both parliament and barons regarded the Charter as unlikely to be honored.
• Prof. Vincent: “I very, very much doubt that anyone believed that it would be kept. They knew their king only too well.” (03:00)
• Weak Sanctions: The Charter’s enforcement provisions were innovative (e.g., 25 barons authorized to rebuke or even rebel if John defaulted), but ultimately lacked effectiveness.
• Key Point: The realists of the time understood John could claim compulsion and seek papal rescission.

Limitations of Royal Authority

[04:10–06:55]

• Radical Experiments: Evidence of a brief, failed “dual control”—with both King and barons issuing instructions after Runnymede.
• Quote: “There are now 26 kings in England, the 25 barons and the King. That was never going to work as a system.” (05:30)
• Unenforceable Terms: Neither side honored key terms (e.g., the expulsion of foreign officials, control of London/Tower of London).

Collapse of Peace and Road to War

[06:55–09:30]

• Window Dressing: Token efforts by John concealed continued resistance to the Charter.
• Papal Annulment: The Pope annulled Magna Carta (late August 1215) and excommunicated leading rebels, making reconciliation nearly impossible.
• Quote: “It was pretty obvious by mid-August... the Pope actually annulled the Charter at the end of August.” (07:10)

The First Barons’ War & French Invasion

[09:30–15:36]

• King’s Advantages: John had more resources, castles, and could recruit foreign mercenaries.
• French Involvement: The barons invited Prince Louis of France (future Louis VIII) to invade England.
• Northern Campaigns: John suppressed threats from Scotland and Wales, but retreated from fighting Louis.
• John’s Death: After disastrous campaigning (losing his baggage in the Wash), John died in October 1216, leaving the throne to his 7-year-old son, Henry III.
  • “The big difference here was generally they were rising on behalf of an alternative king...In terms of track record, the barons were well aware of the fact that time ran for the king.” (16:12)
• Reissuing the Charter: Magna Carta was reissued, with “obnoxious bits” removed, to legitimize the young king.

Barons’ Legitimacy Problems

[15:36–17:45]

• Traitor Accusations: Barons found themselves seen as oath-breakers (“proditores”) for working with the French.
• No Grievance Against Henry III: With John gone, the barons struggled to justify their cause.

The Changing Document: Charter Reissues

[20:12–23:45]

• Edits Over Time: By 1216, 1217, and especially the 1225 definitive version, Magna Carta became more constitutional than revolutionary.
• Content Removed: Clauses on Scotland, Wales, Jewish debt, and baronial right to rebel were deleted.
• Constitutional Legacy: The 1225 version, not the 1215 original, underpinned centuries of law.
  • “So it's the 1225 Charter that is the thing we recognize as Magna Carta today.” (23:25)
  • Only four original clauses remain on the statute book, including Church and City of London liberties, and guarantees of justice.

Magna Carta’s Limitations and Legacy

[24:52–29:00]

• Constitutional Developments: Later 13th-century statutes—the Provisions of Oxford, Statute of Marlborough—far more relevant to changing the balance of power.
• From Law to Symbol: Magna Carta became “increasingly a historical relic of enormous mystical significance” (25:30), invoked as a totem rather than an enforceable contract.
  • “If you try and deal with kings, in the end, you're not really going to get anywhere. And the only thing you can do ultimately is kill the king.” (30:23)
• Shifts in Political Practice: Rather than limiting royal power, unresolved crises led to regimes deposing or killing kings (e.g., Edward II, Richard II).

The Fate and Memory of Magna Carta

[31:20–35:09]

• Surviving Documents: At least four 1215 originals exist today, with more from later reissues.
• Popular Memory: Magna Carta’s meaning was widely misunderstood even in later Middle Ages, yet it persisted as a touchstone for liberty—especially during Stuart-era debates.
• Quote: “Many people imagine things are there that aren't, but in the very process of imagining that, they're creating an idea of liberty as an aspect of English law.” (35:10)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On enforcement:
  “The Charter had authorized these 25 barons... allowing them to rebel against the King if he failed to implement the Charter. They could seize the King's castles, they could do anything except actually kidnap the King and his family.” — Emily Briffetts, [03:18]
• On power-sharing:
  “There are now 26 kings in England, the 25 barons and the King. That was never going to work as a system.” — Prof. Nicholas Vincent, [05:30]
• On the ultimate lesson:
  “If you try and deal with kings, in the end, you're not really going to get anywhere. And the only thing you can do ultimately is kill the king.” — Prof. Nicholas Vincent, [30:23]
• On Magna Carta’s symbolic role:
  “It becomes a totem... something that everyone's heard of. They might not actually know what's in it, but they imagine that as a result of this they do have certain privileges and rights.” — Prof. Nicholas Vincent, [35:09]

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Key Timestamps

• [02:34] – Public skepticism of the Charter’s enforceability
• [04:10] – Barons’ efforts to check John’s power
• [05:30] – “26 kings” & the impossibility of dual control
• [07:10] – Papal annulment dooms peace
• [09:37] – Key stages in the Barons’ War; French intervention
• [15:36] – Barons’ challenge after John’s death
• [20:12] – The shift from 1215’s treaty to later constitutional law
• [23:25] – 1225 as the definitive Magna Carta
• [25:30] – Magna Carta as “a historical relic of mystical significance”
• [30:23] – The recourse of deposing/killing kings
• [33:49] – Magna Carta’s enduring but misunderstood reputation
• [35:10] – The function of Magna Carta in constructing the idea of English liberty

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Closing Insights

This episode details how Magna Carta, an “impossible” peace treaty, failed in its immediate aims due to royal resistance, weak enforcement, and continued war—yet ultimately attained mythic status as a foundational document of English liberty. The Charter’s later reissues, purged of their more radical elements, cemented its long-term legal relevance, while its legend fueled centuries of debates on the limits of power and the rights of subjects.

Next episode: The far-reaching afterlife of Magna Carta and its global impact.

Transcript

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[Emily Briffetts]

Welcome to the History Extra Podcast. It's the third episode today of our Sunday series on Magna Carta, and we're going to be exploring the Charter's immediate

[Professor Nicholas Vincent]

turbulent aftermath as King John was poised to have his seal pressed into the wax of a document that would reverberate for centuries to come. Did he understand the ramifications it would have? And what were the chances he would keep his word? I'm Emily Briffetts and I'm joined by historian Professor Nicholas Vincent in this penultimate episode. We're following the tumultuous years that followed immediately after 12:15, from war to negotiation, as well as the repeated re issuing of the Charter's ideals. Welcome to this episode, Nicholas. It's a pleasure to have you back.

[Emily Briffetts]

And for me too.

[Professor Nicholas Vincent]

So in this episode we're going to be looking at the immediate aftermath so when the seal was pressed into wax in 1215, did anyone believe this oath would be kept?

[Emily Briffetts]

I very, very much doubt that anyone believed that it would be kept. They knew their king only too well.

[Professor Nicholas Vincent]

Now, we touched on this last episode, so I'm sure this might be a slight touch point. Again, in this episode, was there any penalty set out if this promise was not kept?

[Emily Briffetts]

There's an attempt at the end of the charter to ensure that the King couldn't appeal to any other authority against the terms of the charter. And the target of that is the pop cause everybody knew that the King would appeal to the Pope. The King had taken vows as a crusader, he was under the protection of the papacy, and he would clearly try to say that this was something that he'd been compelled to do. And in a sense, from that point onwards, it's obvious that the thing isn't going to work. But also, the charter had authorized these 25 barons, and we know their names from separate documents that survive. We know their names apart from us, because they begin issuing letters in their own authority, allowing them to rebel against the King if he failed to implement the charter. And they could seize the King's castles, they could do anything except actually kidnap the King and his family. So there is an attempt to impose a degree of sanction to prevent the King from going against the charter's terms. But it must have been obvious to any realist that this wasn't really going to work.

[Professor Nicholas Vincent]

And as we've said in the last episode, there were certainly some loopholes or weaknesses in the charter, weren't there?

[Emily Briffetts]

Well, above all, the fact that it's clearly, whatever it might say, we have granted this of our own free will. It clearly was something that the King didn't want terribly to do. And therefore the King actually was in a quite a happy position because he could, you know, know that immediately afterwards, he could always get the charter rescinded on the basis that it had been done under compulsion in practice.

[Professor Nicholas Vincent]

How far did the charter actually limits royal authority in that immediate aftermath?

[Emily Briffetts]

Well, this is interesting. So I think this is one of the most important discoveries of the last 10 or so years. We found in Lambeth Palace a letter that was clearly issued by the barons immediately after the settlement at Runnymede, appointing knights in the counties to investigate the King's misdeeds. Now, we've always known that there was an inquest like that, but what actually this shows is that there was a truly revolutionary settlement, or at least an attempt at that, of dual control, whereby the King and the barons were both issuing instructions to the localities immediately after June 1215. And that obviously was never going to work. One of the contemporary chroniclers says, you know, There are now 26 kings in England, the 25 barons and the King. That was never going to work as a system. But the barons did actually make a go of it, or at least try to make a go of it. There were certain agreements also reached at Runnymede that aren't in the charter itself. The most important of them concerns the City of London. There's this so called treaty over the city whereby the barons agree that the Tower of London would be handed over to the Archbishop of Canterbury as a neutral arbiter, and that London itself would be then surrendered to the King. And under the terms of the charter, the King had agreed to expel all of these alien cronies who were in charge of many of the counties of England, including the Sheriff of Nottingham. What's obvious immediately after Runnymede is that neither party was prepared to budge on that. So the King didn't depose these sheriffs and the Londoners didn't hand over the city, because in both cases, those were too significant bastions of royal or baronial authority. They were too important to the two opposed sides. So from the word go, it was clear that the actual terms of the charter were going to be almost impossible to enforce.

[Professor Nicholas Vincent]

This was a peace treaty. But this peace wasn't to last, was it?

[Emily Briffetts]

No. I mean, it's a moot question how long it lasted. Officially, the war was considered to restart in September, but already by mid August it was clear that the King wasn't keeping the terms of the charter. And certainly it was clear that the barons hadn't surrendered London. And the Archbishop of Canterbury also wouldn't give up custody of the Tower, nor would he surrender Rochester Castle, which is crucial to communication between London and the continent. So I think it was pretty obvious by mid August and also by that stage, because the Pope actually annulled the charter at the end of August, it takes perhaps three, four, five weeks for an envoy to travel from England to Rome to deal with the Pope. So probably immediately after Runnymede, the King had already written off to the Pope with an example of the charter saying, look, get me out of this.

[Professor Nicholas Vincent]

John's basically laying his cards out pretty plain that he's not going to be following this.

[Emily Briffetts]

Yes. I mean, there are token measures taken and there were a series of specific ameliorations in favour of particular barons, the restoration of things that were regarded as outrageously done by the King, so that there is a period immediately after Runnymede where there is a bit of window dressing to make it look as if things are being done, but the underlying causes really don't change. So it's actually simply delayed the resumption of war.

[Professor Nicholas Vincent]

So how exactly does this crisis, this moment of crisis, slide into war?

[Emily Briffetts]

The immediate prompt here is the issuing of the Pope's annulment of the charter at the end of August. Now, that won't have reached England until sometime after. But what did reach England even before that, was the Pope's determination to suspend the Archbishop of Canterbury and to excommunicate most of the barons who made up the 25. So we get the publication at the beginning of September by the King's agents within the Church. There's a papal representative in England, there's the Bishop of Winchester, there's the Abbot of Reading. Reading Abbey is a major royal foundation. They excommunicate under papal authority, the leaders of the rebellion and also various of those within the Church who are seen as on the baronial side. And from that point onwards, really there's not going to be any reconciliation.

[Professor Nicholas Vincent]

We don't have time today to cover all of this particular war, but would you mind charting the major moments for us?

[Emily Briffetts]

Okay, so three chief stages. The thing to bear in mind throughout is that the King always has a great advantage in terms of military strength. So the King controls the majority of castles in England at any one time. And he has financial resources that are, even if you combine 25 barons that are greater than those 25 barons combined. So the King always has the advantage. And he can call in foreign mercenaries from the continent, he can call in money and soldiers from Ireland. Ireland is under his authority to begin with. The barons are obliged really to call for assistance. And they go to the arch enemy of the King of England, the King of France. And the King of France sends his eldest son, the future King Louis viii, to England. So there's a French invasion of England and French troops begin arriving in the rebel stronghold in London. From the autumn of 1215 onwards, the king himself, King John, went up north to contain the threat from Scotland. There's a threat of an invasion both by the Scots and the Welsh. And John got almost as far as Edinburgh, and clearly that was a great success. That was a military victory for the John at a very difficult time of the year. So we're in mid winter here. That's even now, pretty chilly time up there in Scotland. But John contains the north, the French invasion then takes off in a major way in the spring of 1216, when the Dauphin, the eldest son of the King of France, Louis, arrived at Sandwich, Sandwich Bay. John was there to meet him with his army, but again refused to do battle. Just as in the 1190s, just as in Normandy, in 1203, 1204, just as in 1214, before and after the Battle of Bouvines, offered the chance to lead his troops in battle, John refused. So effectively, he ran away. And as a result of that, the French then occupied most of southern England. So John at this stage was restricted really to the far west, based at the Bishop of Winchester's castle at Taunton and in other points west. Most of England east of that was under baronial occupation. Where that would have gone, I don't know. Relations between the barons and the French weren't necessarily very good, because the French, obviously, a French army, well, they wanted certain things out of this too. They expected to get territory, they expected to get lands, they expected to get conquests. And they were hereditary enemies of this Anglo Norman baronage, so perhaps relations within that group would have broken down. The king campaigned vigorously, perhaps too vigorously, because in the midst of that campaigning in October 1216, just a year after this renewal of war, in the summer of 1215, in October 1216, John tried to cross that estuary that we call the Wash, between King's Lynn and the Lincolnshire coast. The exact circumstances here aren't clear, but. But things obviously went wrong. And a few days later, having lost his baggage train, we talk about the Crown Jewels, but we don't really know what was lost. And an awful lot of the accounts of that are actually based on the idea of Pharaoh crossing the Red Sea. When Moses escaped from captivity, Pharaoh and his chariots went into the sea. There's an awful lot of biblical referencing there, biblical metaphors for what had happened to John. But John then ended up in Lincolnshire, fel ill at Newark in Lincolnshire, and died in mid October. And that, of course, transformed everything. From the baronial point of view, it could have been seen as a great turning point for them, because the King was now dead. He left a boy of seven as his heir, a boy king. Never a good thing to have with most of the country under baronial control. From the royalist point of view, though, from the point of view of the king's supporters, it removed, as it were, one of the chief sticking points to the whole problem, which was the evil personality of John. And John had committed the care of this boy ultimately to the papacy. So the boy was seen as being placed directly under the protection of the Church. And it's from that point onwards, really, that the royalists begin to recover authority. And it's in those circumstances, Emily, of course, that Magna Carta then comes back into the story, because the supporters of this boy king reissued the charter, taking out an awful lot of the more obnoxious things as far as the King was concerned, from the charter of 1215, but reissued it now as a manifesto of good government for the future. There were then a series of campaigns led by the boy kings supporters. The barons were defeated in battle at Lincoln in 1217, and then the attempt to reprovision them from France by sea was defeated off the coast at Sandwich by the royalists. The rebel fleet was sunk and in those circumstances, the Dauphin, the heir to the King of France, was obliged to abandon London. Effectively, the barons had lost the war and again Magna Carta was reissued, rather similar to the reissue of 1216 now as a manifesto of good government.

[Professor Nicholas Vincent]

I think there's some, certainly some moments in there that often get forgotten about the potential of the French invasion. Being one of them with a young boy king on the throne, Henry iii, what really was the Baron's argument now? Did they have a leg to stand on?

[Emily Briffetts]

It's a very interesting question. And also of course, there's seen as acting in cahoots with a foreign power, with the King of France. And therefore they are actually, in the eyes of many people, traitors. They are proditores, they are actually oath breakers, conspirators against the King. It's another reason why the Pope is going to support this new boy king. And as you quite rightly ask, do they actually have any grievance against Henry iii? No, it's all against his father. So in a sense that makes the baronial cause even more diffic to support. And it's clear that there's always, always the resources are on the side of the King. Time always runs for the King. The longer this goes on, the greater the tensions between the invading French and the barons in London. The barons in London, increasingly, you know, they want to get on with their baronial stuff. They don't really want us to sit there in London waiting to see what will happen. So I think from that point of view also the momentum passes very much into the royalist camp. And remember always that this isn't the first rebellion in English history. People talk about the first barons war, but there had been plenty of other wars in the past where barons had risen against the King. The big difference there was generally they were rising on behalf of an alternative king. So in the 1170s, Henry II faced a rebellion by his son, with baronial support for those sons. So there is a difference here, that the barons are fighting, as it were, at least to start with, for their own cause. But all those rebellions of the past had always ended with the king coming back. So in, in terms of track record, the barons were well aware of the fact that time ran for the king.

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[Professor Nicholas Vincent]

With the reissuing of the charters, how did the terms, the clauses, change with those?

[Emily Briffetts]

So a large part of the charter, about 2/3 of it, stays, and there are minor alterations to it, but. But on the whole, it's the text of 1215, about 2/3 of it, but all of the specific detail that had been there, say, about the Scots and the Welsh and about the King's foreign assistance and his cronies and Jewish debt and various other things, including actually that clause that, that the King would take counsel over the issuing of tax. All of that was removed. So, in a sense, the more obnoxious elements, as far as the Crown was concerned, the Crown was now in charge of the charter, using the charter as its own instrument, as it were dressing itself in the baron's clothes, all of the more obnoxious bits of it were taken out from the Crown's perspective. And it turns from being a simple peace treaty, which is what it started as at Runnymede, it turns into something much more like law or constitution.

[Professor Nicholas Vincent]

So is this probably more what people are referring to when they're thinking about Magna Carta, this more constitutional side of it?

[Emily Briffetts]

Well, they've got to be very careful what they're reading. So if you read John's charter of 1215, of course that isn't the law as it is today. The 1216 reissue, the 1217 reissue, and then when the King became of age, he did it prematurely. But in 1225, various people around him declared the King to be of age and the charter was reissued in a definitive form, very similar to 1217, a little tinkering around the edges. And it was issued specifically in return for a grant of taxation by the realm. So it now becomes a consensual thing where the King, in return for supply from his realm, issues what is effectively law. And it's that 121225 version of Magna Carta that then, as it were, is renewed again and again at all points of political crisis in the 13th century. Last time, it was reissued and sent out into the country in 1300, and pretty much every time Parliament was then reopened thereafter. In general terms, the King would agree that the terms of Magna Carta should subsist, that he would stick to the terms of this document. So it's the 1225 charter that becomes the definitive legal text.

[Professor Nicholas Vincent]

So are we celebrating the wrong Magna Carta then?

[Emily Briffetts]

In many ways. And really all of the hullabaloo that was made in 2015, 800 years, in many ways, that really should have taken place in 2025, because it's that charter of 1225 that is the definitive version. And of the. By this stage, There are about 40 clauses to Magna Carta. So we've lost about a third of the charter's original 60 clauses, including, of course, that clause that said the barons could rebel. That's never going to wash. But of those 40 clauses, there are still four that are on the statute book, and they're on the statute book today from the 1300 reissue of the 1225 charter. So it's the 1225 charter that is the thing that we recognize as Magna Carta today.

[Professor Nicholas Vincent]

And out of curiosity, though, I'm sure this is something we're going to come into next episode. What are those four clauses?

[Emily Briffetts]

So the clause saying that the Church is to have its liberties, that the City of London and effectively all other cities throughout England are to have their liberties and customs intact, so guarantee the rights of the Church, guarantee the rights, if you like, of the City of London, which isn't necessarily the most popular aspect of British society, even now. And then the two clauses that we've talked about already, that the king will not delay or deny justice or sell justice, and that people are entitled to justice, that the King will not go against them or ruin them, save by judgment of their peers and. Or the law of the land. And those four clauses are still on the statute.

[Professor Nicholas Vincent]

Now, we've spoken about the 1215, the 1216, the 1217, 1225. Are there any other charters around this period that we should be aware of that we're perhaps get overlooked in the face of Magna Carta?

[Emily Briffetts]

There were a series of attempts because the longer time went on from 1225, the less relevant some of the terms of Magna Carta are to current issues. So the real issues in the 13th century turn on things like the king's personal patronage, who he can promote at court. It's still an issue today in many ways. They turn on things like provision. The king can seize goods to pay for his walls and to supply his court. Well, that becomes a burning political issue later in the 13th century. They're not in Magna Carta. So Magna Carta becomes increasingly a historical relic of enormous mystical significance. Its specific clauses become Less and less relevant to political deb. And the real constitutional arguments here begin to take form in the 1250s. There's a rebellion against Henry III in 1258, a whole series of legal provisions called the Provisions of Oxford, later on the Provisions of Westminster, later on the so called Dictum of Kenilworth, later on the so called Statute of Marlborough, we begin to get the issuing of what we would regard as statutory law by Henry III and then by his son Edward I, who issues a whole series of statutes. Today, very, very few people know about any of that, but that in constitutional terms is probably even more significant than what in Magna Carta were rather, by this stage, frozen archaic provisions relating to the circumstances of the early 13th century that didn't necessarily have much application by the 1250s, 60s.

[Professor Nicholas Vincent]

So of course, we've had John's reign, we're now in Henry's reign. How does this play out?

[Emily Briffetts]

Magna Carta is very important under Henry III and is regularly reissued, but by this stage, it's increasingly a totem rather than actually something of immediate, specific circumstantial significance. What becomes important is parliament and the determination that the king must take counsel with his barons and that the king must appoint the right sort of people to offices. Well, 1225, Magna Carta doesn't do that. And then under the first, again, Magna Carta is of very great significance at moments of constitutional crisis. 1297, when the king is in Flanders fighting his wars against the French, his son, the future Edward ii, is obliged to reissue Magna Carta to reassure the realm of England that the king will rule well. And then when the King returned in 1300, he was made to reissue it for a last time. But again, the terms of the charter aren't really any longer specifically circumstantially relevant to what's going on. They are, by this stage, utterly totemic.

[Professor Nicholas Vincent]

Magna Carta obviously has a really long afterlife, and this is something we're going to come onto in our final episode. But did 12:15, did the Magna Carta at this time open the door essentially on challenges to royal authority? What can it tell us about power and authority in this period?

[Emily Briffetts]

So there are those who say, you know, Magna Carta changed everything. It placed the king under the authority of the law. The king is obliged to obey the law, due process. Daddy. Da. The reality is that it didn't actually do anything to prevent bad kings. There are some terrible kings later on. It's there in the background as a sort of warning, but it doesn't actually change anything. And What I suppose it showed, really, is that if the King just waited things out, he would probably be able to get away with it. You know, John died in the middle of the war, but by that stage, you could say he was winning the war. Henry iii in the 1250s, was obliged to issue a whole series of provisions. But just as those around him had turned Magna Carta into a royal manifesto, from being a baronial insistence to being something that the King was volunteering to his realm, so Henry III's son, Edward I, took an awful lot of those baronial demands of the 1250s and turn them into an agenda supporting the king. So parliament becomes something that the king manipulates. So I think what those constitutional crises of the 13th century show is that if you try and deal with kings, in the end, you're not really going to get anywhere. And the only thing you can do ultimately is kill the king. King. And that's, of course, where things change in the 14th century. So having failed, really, in 1215 to impose their will on the king, and having failed in the 1250s to do the same, and having failed again in the 1290s to do the same, the barons, or whatever we're going to call them, the political elite, come up against an incompetent king in the early 14th century, which they do in the person of Edward II, who is the great grandson of King John, the grandson of Henry iii, the son of Edward I, Edward ii, who is a terrible king. What do they do in 1327? They depose him and then they kill him. What do they do at the end of the 14th century with an equally appalling tyrant, Richard II? Well, they depose him and then they kill him. Him. And that leads on to the killing fields of the 15th century, where, again, the only way to deal with Henry VI or later on, Richard iii, is either to take them prisoner and lock them up or to kill them. So we get this idea very, very popular in France, that the. The French adore their kings and the kings of England get killed by their own people. What typifies the English? The English kill their kings, but they do so because they've learned the lessons of the 13th century, Magna Carta onwards, that it's almost impossible to bind a sovereign to their own word in the longer term.

[Professor Nicholas Vincent]

So such an interesting long aftermath, and we're talking more about that next episode. But in terms of the document itself, what happens to that?

[Emily Briffetts]

Well, that's also very interesting. So I think it's a sign that people realize it's a very significant piece of parchment that it is preserved. So we don't really know exactly how many Magna Cartas were issued in 1215, but there were probably 1415, maybe a few more, maybe 20, 25, we don't know. But even if it was that many, we still got four of them. One in Lincoln Cathedral, one in Salisbury Cathedral, one that was at Canterbury Cathedral and is now in the British Library, one that's in the British Library. We don't know where it came from, but it almost certainly came from another cathedral. So these were preserved as relics. The 1216 charter, well, that didn't last very long. It only lasted a year. There's only one of those original charters of 1216 that's in Durham Cathedral where they seem to have collected and kept everything for the rest. A bit like the telephone directory or the Yellow Pages. When you get this stuff, you know, you get the latest edition, you chuck all the old ones away. So in many places, what they kept were the 1297 or the 1300 charters. So we've got four of 1215, but we've now got seven or eight of the 1300 charters. But this explains why, you know, the confusion arises when people say, oh, well, we found a brand new Magna Carta, an unknown Magna Carta in an archive somewhere, as does occasionally happen what, what we're find. There are later reissues of the charter, particularly that, that issue of 1300, which if you like, is the most up to date version. That's the latest version of the Yellow Pages or the Radio Times that's come through the letterbox. People hold on to that. But it explains why there are original Magna Cartas. Perhaps there were originally 200 or so of the things made, maybe a few more, but we've still got 26 of them. Only four of those are from the issue of 1215 and the others come from these later reissues.

[Professor Nicholas Vincent]

What about popular memory in contemporary terms? Were people still thinking, still talking about Magna Carta in the years following?

[Emily Briffetts]

People were talking about it, but I think they were increasingly unaware of what was actually in it or the historical circumstances of its making. It does come back into political debate regularly in the 13th and 14th centuries, obviously during the reign of Henry III, but even as late as the reign of Richard II, there's a copy in a book in Gloucester which clearly dates from Richard II's reign, where they're reading the 1215 Magna Carta to see whether there are provisions there that can be used against Richard II in the late 14th century and thereafter as a control on later kings. Kings the Tudors, and especially the Stuart kings of England after the Stuart Succession in 1603, Magna Carta remains a topic of considerable historical debate and used really to say that England has liberties. England enjoys a degree of freedom under the law. England has placed its kings under a degree of restraint to restrain what might otherwise be the absolutism of kings like James I and Charles I.

[Professor Nicholas Vincent]

As a final question to you then, Nicholas, how does the aftermath of 1215 really help us understand the longer term legacy of the Charter?

[Emily Briffetts]

I think the transformation of the charter into a totem, so something that everyone's heard of. They might not actually know what's in it, but they imagine that as a result of this they do have certain privileges and rights. And I think that's one of the key things about Magnus after Many people imagine things are there that aren't, but in the very process of imagining that they are creating an idea of liberty as an aspect of English law that sets English law in many ways apart from legal systems elsewhere. So that if you've lived for centuries now in a country or under a system of law where you believe that liberty and the rule of law, due process and binding the sovereign authority to respect for the law is part of your birthright, then perhaps that actually itself alters behavior and the way that we think about ourselves as a freedom loving libertarian people with certain protections under the law alters the whole dynamic of the way the political system operates.

[Professor Nicholas Vincent]

That was Professor Nicholas Vincent, professor of Medieval History at the University of East Anglia. He was speaking to me. Emily Brifitts Fancy going beyond the podcast if you're curious to learn more about Magna Carta and the world in which it originated. I've put together some essential reading, listening and viewing from the History Extra archive to help deepen your understanding. You can find a link to that in the description of this episode.

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