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- [00:00]
A
We heard you. Nine years of bring back the snack wrap and you've won. But maybe you should have asked for more. Say hello to the Hot Honey snack wrap. Now you've really won. Go to McDonald's and get it while you can. Welcome to the History Extra podcast. Today we've got the second episode of our Sunday series on Magna Carta, a document whose real contents, it turns out, may differ somewhat from those of today's popular imagination.
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B
Magna Carta may be associated today with power, liberty and freedom, but these weren't quite the concerns on the cards back in 1215. So what did the barons really demand of King John? What can this document tell us about the lives of those living in medieval England? And was it really all that unique? I'm Emily Griffith and I'm joined today by Professor Nicholas Vincent for this second episode on this significant charter. Together, we'll be delving into the archive to uncover the real Magna Carta clause by clause, and exploring why it's not quite the Liberty Manifesto of legend. Welcome back to the podcast, Nicholas.
- [01:14]
A
Thank you very much.
- [01:15]
B
So today we're really going to be getting to grips with the documents sealed in 1215. First off, we're talking about Runnymede. What location are we actually talking about? Can we actually pinpoint an exact location if people wanted to visit?
- [01:28]
A
Well, you can gather from the name Runnymede that it's a meadow and it sits on the Thames at the bottom of Cooper's Hill between Staines and Windsor. And Staines seems to be where the barons hung out, and Windsor was where the king was. And we have to imagine that meadow really under canvas with an awful lot of tents and pavilions there in June, nice time of the year. June 20, 1215. Today, there are all sorts of things on that site. There are two entrance lodges as you come onto the meadow, and then you go across the meadow and you can see this temple of liberty, paid for by the American Bar Association, a rotunda. And there are a series of things there that supposedly mark the site. There was an article by Tim Tatten Brown published in 2015, the 800th anniversary, that showed actually, they got the wrong place. So the 18th century maps show that Longmeadow at that stage was actually called Runnymede, and what is now Runnymede was called Longmeadow. So somehow they flipped those two. But the key point about it is that it lies on the frontier between the king and the barons, and it lies on the frontier between four English counties and three or four English Dioceses. So everyone's got a stake here.
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B
That really helps us situate ourselves in the moment. Now, let's zoom in right on that. We've got John and we've got the barons coming into these negotiations. What did both parties think they were achieving at this point in time?
- [03:09]
A
The barons, I think, thought that they were going to get their agenda, their constitution, if you want to call it that, across. The King, I think, thought he was going to buy himself some breathing space. So the King wanted an end to the war and wanted to secure London and the Tower of London and access to potentially foreign allies. Whether he had any intention of actually sticking by the terms of this charter from the word go is highly debatable. And that, of course, was always in the back of the mind of the barons. This is a very, very untrustworthy King. How can you nail him down to keep the terms of the peace to which he's agreeing?
- [03:53]
B
How exactly was the charter drawn up? What was that process?
- [03:58]
A
There's an extraordinary thing survives in the British Library. It's just a little booklet that's got copies of the charter, the Coronation Charter of Henry I, the Coronation Charter of King Stephen, the Coronation Charter of Henry ii. And we think that that was one of the things that was carried on to the site. So you've got to imagine people there with an awful lot of documents, all busily negotiating a piece. They've got this draf that probably was devised beforehand, the so called unknown charter. We've got the terms of the agreement that we call the Articles of the Barons. That is a sort of draft of what became Magna Carta. So you've got to imagine an awful lot of scribbling going on at this time too. And one assumes also that there'd been quite a lot of prior negotiation. So many of the things that were on the table at Runnymede had already been the topic of discussion between the King and the court and the barons over the past six months, 10 months since the King had returned from France.
- [05:03]
B
So we're not talking about a single day affair here. It's been building.
- [05:07]
A
Yeah. And the negotiations here go on for quite a long time. So we're talking over a week, 10 days, a little bit longer than that. And really the date that's given, the 15th of June, is the date almost certainly when the thing was signed. And the peace that emerged from it didn't really begin for some while after that. So we're talking about maybe a fortnight under canvas where the King comes and goes from Windsor and the Barons are camped out on this meadow.
- [05:37]
B
Can we get a sense of the negotiating dynamics at all?
- [05:41]
A
Not necessarily, save for the fact that everybody knew that this was something really quite significant. And we know that because these documents actually survive. Not the Magna Carta, which we're going to come on to, but things like the Articles of the Barons or that little booklet in the British Library. What that suggests, I think, is that even those who were there knew that these documents mattered and that they were worth keeping, that they were, as it were, relics of something really rather momentous that was taking place.
- [06:13]
B
Who exactly wrote the charter? Can we pinpoint the penman?
- [06:16]
A
Essentially, no, though. When we come on to the charter itself, which was sent out to all of the counties of England, probably broadcast for keeping in the cathedrals of England, there seem to have been 14 of these original Magna Cartas that were sent out in 1215 after the negotiations. There we do get a sense of who actually copied it out. And it's the scribes attached to the bishops who are central to all of this. Whether the king had. The king was quite happy to say, yes, I'll do this fine, you know, let's get on with it, let's have a peace. So he could actually muster his forces and then get his own way. But the king probably had absolutely no intention of publishing the document. The king was obliged to publish it by the barons and by the bishops who then physically have the charter.
- [07:11]
B
Mr. Narut, I think when we envisage medieval documents, there is a certain perception in popular culture of what that might look like when we're talking about the charter that was present at the time, what did that look like? Can we get a view of that?
- [07:25]
A
It's about the size of an ordinary television screen as a piece of parchment. It's written on animal skin, it's written on sheep skin parchment, which is the standard material that's used for documents. Years ago, I did an interview with a little old lady who explained that her particular Magna Carta was a town copy, was written on mole skin, and it was the only one written on mole skin. And I had to explain, really, that if you think about a mole, you can't get anything much like Magna Carta out of a mole. But, no, we're talking about a sheep here. The actual terms of the document are limited by the size of the skin of a sheep that you can get off that part of a sheep from which the parchment comes. So it's actually physically limited by sheep. It's sealed in wax, so beeswax with a Colored seal of the king, probably one of them green and the rest of them a sort of red color. It doesn't really look particularly impressive. It's by no means the longest charter issued by a king of England. The much, much larger documents still survive of Henry ii, Richard I and John. And it doesn't look, as it were, anything very special, but in terms of its significance, of course it is very special.
- [08:48]
B
Before copies were made and disseminated, are we talking about one single document that was sealed or were there multiple versions?
- [08:56]
A
Well, we know that the article of the Barons, the articles of the barons, which is the document, the draft immediately before the issue of the charter, and some of the wording did get changed between that and Magna Carta, we know that that was sealed by the King, so there probably were sealed drafts around on the field of Runnymede. And I love that in 2015 when they issued a special coin from the Royal Mint to commemorate this, of course you've got King John with his large quill pen signing the document. Well, of course that's nonsense. The King probably to authenticate the charter, all he had to do was to hold the charter in his hand and maybe just pass his hand over it and say, yes, I authenticate this. And then somebody a great deal more mechanical came along and actually physically attached the King's two sided seal. King's two sided seal, sort of round thing, about the size of an ordinary wine glass and top of a wine glass. But it's physically quite difficult to get that attached to a piece of parchment. So there's an officer of the Chancery who would do that mechanical, as it were, dirty work.
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B
I think we're going to be busting some myths like that in this episode. What about Magna Carta? The term Magna Carta gets thrown around. What does it actually mean?
- [10:19]
A
Well, David Cameron was asked that, if you remember, on American radio and couldn't answer it, though I think he probably did know the answer. It just means the big charter and it doesn't get called that at the time. It's called the Charter of Runnymede. If it's called anything, it gets called the big charter after 1217, when the king issued a smaller charter over those parts of the realm of England that are considered to fall under the law of the forest. So we get this thing called the Forest Charter, the smaller charter. And it's at that point that the Chancery begins using the term Magna Carta to describe the bigger thing that covers the rest of the realm.
- [11:04]
B
Excellent. Now I think we should probably zoom in on the clauses themselves, find out actually a little bit more about what this document contains. So how much of the charter was a reaffirmation of older rites from sort of earlier documents, and how much of it was actually new clauses put in place by the barons at this time?
- [11:25]
A
Most of it is freshly minted, although you can actually trace some of the terms here back to the coronation charters of previous kings, where they promised to rule well. And in certain respects, for instance, the treatment of widows and orphans, they had made specific promises, particularly in the case of Henry I, we're talking about a document written in Latin, was probably negotiated in French, and that little booklet in the British Library is important because it gives the terms of the earlier coronation charters both in Latin and in French. So almost certainly we're talking about an elite that is definitely bilingual, probably trilingual. Some of them probably can speak English, subjects speak English, and they can probably have some dealings with those beneath them. About three and a half thousand words of heavily condensed Latin in a modern edition. We're talking about seven, eight pages, perhaps of text. And what's remarkable here is that everybody knows about Magna Carta. Everyone's heard of it, people refer to it constantly, politicians are constantly referring to it. Very, very few of them have ever actually read the text. It's divided up now into about 60 clauses, 61, 62 clauses. It's got a preamble, the title of the king, I, John, we John, King of England, Duke of Normandy, Duke of Aquitaine, Lord of Ireland, and so on it goes. And it's got at the end, the date at Runnymede on 15 June, 1215. Between that, about 60 clauses. Most people imagine that there are all sorts of things in this document that aren't actually there.
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B
So I think clause 39 is the one that's very often quoted. What was this clause and what does it actually mean in contemporary standards?
- [13:19]
A
Well, you want to take the two clauses together, 39 and 40, and those numbers, of course, are a later invention. But in the charter itself, this comes about two thirds of the way through the document. So we begin with a promise that we will not deny or delay judgment justice to our subjects. To paraphrase, that's actually an older promise that occurs in ecclesiastical documents from the 1190s onwards. So the Church promises that it will not delay or deny justice. And then we've got a clause that says we will not go against or ruin or seize the property of our subjects, save by judgment of their peers. And then there's a word In Latin, V E L vel, which can be translated as or. And can be translated as. And so we will not do this save by judgment of your peers and. Or by the law of the land. Now, who are your peers? Think of a pack of cards, a pair of twos, a pair of threes, a pair of aces and a pack of cards. That word pair is the word that's being used here. So a peer is your equal. And it's from that that people today construe the idea that there's an idea of trial by jury here, that you have the right to be tried by your equals. But actually at the time it says by your equals, and you could translate it as or by the law of the land. But what is the law of the land? The law of the land wasn't at this time written down. So although this. This clause is absolutely central to our understanding of placing the king under the rule of law. King will not act arbitrarily against his subjects as so many Plantagenet kings in the past had acted. What he's actually agreeing to there is very far from clear. For a start, who's your peer? You're very rich, Emily. I'm very poor. So are you my equal? I'm an earl. But you're a mere townswoman of the City of London. Are you my equal? So who your peer is is not defined. The law of the land. What is the law of the land? Who actually makes the law of the land? Well, the king. See, what you could say here is that the king is agreeing to rule by his own rules. So although these two clauses, 39 and 40, have rung down the ages and been used again and again and again as a means of binding the sovereign power to obey the rule of law, they are in many, many ways extremely woolly.
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B
I feel like there's lots of room for uncertainty. There is that the case across the entire charter is that.
- [16:06]
A
Yeah. I think if you ask me as people, what's in Magna Carta, those who know a thing or two will tell you it's about the rule of law and making the king obey the law. What the Americans would call due process, and there is an element of that. So the king does agree that he will not act arbitrarily, though the precise terms there are a bit. A bit woolier. But most people also tell you that trial by jury is there, it actually isn't. They'll tell you that habeas corpus is there, and habeas corpus is actually a 15th century statute. It's a writ. It's not there in Magna Carta at all. There's nothing about habeas corpus. Habeas corpus. The king won't just lock you up and not put you on trial. It's not there. He says that he won't delay justice, but that isn't quite the same thing as habeas corpus. They'll tell you that Parliament is there. Well, there is in the 1215 Magna Carta of King John, an agreement that taxation will involve negotiation. But he doesn't say anything about Parliament. And the very first time that we begin talking about Parliament, where people are talking together, a talking shop, well, that doesn't really enter the rhetoric of the court till the 1230s and doesn't really become a reality until the 1250s where the king is obliged to summon these things called parliaments. So most of what people think is in there isn't. And then there are things in there that nobody really expects. So the. The obvious ones there are the. The clause about the fish wes on the river's Thames and Medway that the king will prevent the building of these fish wares. They'll all be destroyed throughout those rivers and all rivers in England. What on earth does that mean? We might come back to that. There are clauses on the interest that can be charged by the Jews on loans that they make, which are very alarming in the world in which we live, where the bank expects to have its interest paid. Well, Magna Carta actually makes that very difficult. In certain circumstances, there are limitations on the ability of women to plead in court, which I think in our world would be regarded as extremely retrograde, really limiting the power of women to do anything in court, save in certain circumstances. And then, of course, this wasn't devised as a constitution. It was devised as a peace treaty. So there's a whole lot there about the Welsh and the Scots and about the expulsion of the king's foreign mercenaries, his French favorites, all of whom are named, named specifically. Girard, Daffy, Engelard de Sigoni, Philip, Marc. All these people are named one by one, which nobody really expects that the king will expel all foreign mercenaries who have come to the injury of the kingdom. That's really an extremely xenophobic part of the charter. I would urge anyone who's interested in the document actually to read it, because most people who talk about it simply have read it.
- [19:20]
C
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- [20:46]
A
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B
Do you think the fact it was a peace treaty and not a constitution shaped the document it came to be, but also that maybe is a misunderstanding that we have today.
- [21:57]
A
Well, it certainly makes it very difficult as the basis of a constitution. So as a peace treaty, of course, it failed, as I'm sure we're going to go on to explore. So, in terms of law, King John's Magna Carta was law for about 12 weeks across the summer of 1215. It then dies. The Pope annulled it. The King refused to implement many of its terms. The barons didn't keep their side of the agreement. They would surrender London, the Archbishop of Canterbury would surrender the Tower of London and so on. None of that happened. The King didn't expel his foreign mercenaries. So in terms of law, as a peace treaty, it failed miserably. And many of the terms there, of course, then become redundant. So the specific terms about the peace with the Welsh and the peace with the Scots, well, that didn't apply when the charter was eventually reissued. So there's a great deal in that Magna Carta of 1215 that is not in the Magna Carta, of which parts are still on the statute book today.
- [22:58]
B
Some of these clauses, as you've said, have received this real celebrity status. You mentioned some previous that are maybe not those that have received so much attention. Which ones do you think that we should be speaking about today? Fish whiz, for example?
- [23:11]
A
Well, fishwares is very interesting because it looks like the most trivial thing under the sun. So what is a fish ware? It's a way of putting stakes in a river so that the fish swim into this construction and can't swim out again. The river pushes them further and further into this fish trap. And that obviously mattered to the Londoners who wanted to keep open the navigation of the Thames. The Thames is slowly silting up over time. It's why the University of Oxford comes into existence, because Oxford, which was originally navigable from London, is increasingly not. So there's an awful lot of cheap property going in London. We talk about industrial blight in the 1980s. Well, that's what happened to Oxford, which is why it then gets filled up with all these clerks looking for cheap rental property. But you can see it in trivial terms. You could see it also in personal terms. Why the Thames and the Medway? Well, they're both important to the Londoners, but the Medway was very important to the Archbishop of Canterbury, who was there at Runnymede, and he had a major estate at Maidstone on the Medway, and therefore the navigation of that river mattered to him. You can see it in Those specific, very personal, you could almost say selfish terms in terms of one particular pressure group. But it's also about public property. So the public navigation of rivers, the fact that you can't use the river for your own benefit, that you can't just construct what you like on a river and call it your own, that's still a very important topic in law today. And I get asked quite a lot of questions by people who are litigating, who are at law, about Magna Carta. And although that clause actually is no longer on the statute books, it was revoked, I think, in the 1960s. It still occurs frequently in litigation today when people are trying to build themselves nightclubs on islands in the middle of rivers or moor their boat in the middle of the river. Public navigation, the existence of public property, lies behind that in a way that you might not expect.
- [25:22]
B
Are there any other clauses that you think it's really worth drawing attention to highlighting for listeners?
- [25:27]
A
Well, there's that clause, we will expel the foreign mercenaries. And also this list of names. Gerard Dathay, Engelard Sigourney, Philip Mark. If you read the charter, you probably don't know who any of those people are, but Philip Mark, you do know, because he's the Sheriff of Nottingham. These are the. The king's henchmen who are made sheriffs leaders for the king of the various counties of England. And they're terribly important in terms of the military structure of England, the cronyism around the king. And of course, the Sheriff of Nottingham then becomes one of the leading figures in the Robin Hood legends. So, in a sense, you've got Robin Hood there in the charter. You've also got the recognition that Welsh and Scots law in some ways are already independent of the laws of England. So the fact that these two principalities, these two kingdoms, Scotland, Wales, are being treated in a particular way, the fact that the Welsh marches aren't actually part of English law, that they're to be treated in a slightly different way, that's also a sign that we haven't yet reached a stage where England has one law. So there is an awful lot there that you might not expect. You've also got the clause at the very beginning, which again, is still on the statute book today about the liberty of the Church. And I think what's really interesting there is the way that the Church gets in first. So when we talked about who negotiated the charter, well, the bishops clearly were in there, and they get their clause in at the very beginning. And what they say there is also very interesting because they say that they're to have this pretty much regardless of what next happens. So the rest of it is governed by the ongoing dispute between the king of the barons and the war that's broken out, that's been recognized as breaking out, but that clause is set apart. So no matter what happens to the peace, the liberty of the Church is to be guaranteed at all costs. So, in a sense, the bishops get it both ways. Whatever the outcome of this, the liberty of the Church, the freedom of election, the rights of the Church to decide its own leadership, all of that still on the statute book today, is put in there at the very beginning.
- [27:41]
B
So we've had clauses for the Church, we've had negotiation from the barons. Was this a charter for all? Or did perhaps raise the concerns of certain groups in society?
- [27:51]
A
The critics of Magna Carta often say, oh, it's only a selfish document for the barons. It only benefits a small oligarchic elite at the top end of society. Now, there is some truth in that, because a great deal of it is about the negotiations over certain feudal privileges that the king claims to. To be able to exercise and that the barons resent. So about a third of it is regulating those sorts of problems. Those clauses about not selling or delaying justice, those clauses about your right to trial by your equals and. Or the law of the land, well, that's extended to all free men. Free men. But we think by this stage, the word men here means persons, so it probably means men and women. Free men and women. Well, it's almost impossible to calculate, but let's say 20% of the population would consider themselves free. Those who live in towns are free. Those who have their own freeholdings are free. 80% of the population live as serfs, as peasants, who in many ways are the property of the great land owners. So you could say that 80% of the population is excluded from the charter. And yet the charter also includes a clause that all the liberties and rights and so forth that have so far been recognized, that are extended by the king to his barons will now be extended by them to their subjects. Some people say, well, that was insisted upon by the Church. But there you've got the opening up of this liberty, if you like, this sense of right you've got that opened up possibly to everybody. So that just as all free men, by a later stage, comes to mean everybody, everybody has rights under this charter. So that clause extending it to the subjects of the subjects of the king, perhaps makes it far more universal than you might otherwise suppose.
- [29:59]
B
So if this is perhaps more universal than we might initially expect. What struggles or concerns of the age really, really jump off the page.
- [30:08]
A
So I suppose, what does the sovereignty of the Crown actually mean? And it's still obviously a debate today. And that controls a great deal of what's in Magna Carta, both in terms of controlling the economic power of the Crown, to what extent can it actually profit at the expense of its subjects? And also, is there such a thing as public property that lies beyond the power of any individual sovereign to control? So the fact that the charter insists, John's Magna Carta, that the King will in due course deal with the problem of the forest, this is large parts, not just of trees, but large parts of the country that are moorland or wetland or marsh that are set aside for the King's hunting. Well, even in that part of the world where the King claims to be, as it were, absolute lord and master, there has to be a limitation on what the King can do. So I think in terms of sovereignty, and of course that includes placing the King under the rule of law, the degree of arbitrary power that is allowed to a sovereign is central to this document. We're talking about Middle Ages. The King is sovereign under God. The King is God's appointed right hand to rule the realm. But what does that actually mean in his dealings with his subjects? And that's really where Magna Carta is of significance and rings down the ages in terms of constitutionalism, in terms of.
- [31:52]
B
Talking about the sovereignty of the monarch. Were there any clauses that focused on the enforcement of the document, making sure, sure that John stuck to this deal? Essentially?
- [32:01]
A
So it's there from the very start. People don't trust John. John doesn't trust anybody, so why should they trust him? It's there from the very opening, from the preamble, the, the beginning of the charter, where the King says, we have granted this to God. It doesn't say, I've granted it to the men and women of the realm of England. I have granted to God that the Church will be free. So God is above the King King. And if you give something to God, you can't just take it back. If you give land to build a monastery, you can't 20 minutes later turn up and say, oh, actually I want it back because I'm going to build myself a stables for my horses. So even at the very beginning, there's an awareness on behalf of those who think they might benefit from this, that the King could easily turn around and renege on the terms. And then at the end of the charter. Clause 61, the so called securities clause of the charter, is an attempt actually to bind the king to the charter's terms. It's a very crude attempt. It says that if the king fails to implement the terms of the charter as he has agreed, 25 barons can rise up and hold him to these terms. They can effectively ransom him as long as they do not physically harm him or his family. But they can essentially occupy his castles, rebel against the king in law, and bring the king to terms where he implements the charter, the securities clause. And of course, in that clause lies the undoing of John's Magna Carta. Because anything that you enter into under that degree of compulsion does not have the force of law. If I insist, I bring in a priest and insist on marrying you here and now, that is a false marriage. It's done under compulsion. If you are obliged to sign away your livelihood, it's being done under compulsion. And very, very quickly after this, the Pope annuls the whole thing on the basis that it includes compulsion. New no Pope, no foreign ruler, is going to accept an agreement where you actually allow your barons to rebel against you. You are the representative of God on earth. You can't have a situation where you are compelled by rebellion to do things you don't want to do. So, in a sense, in trying to oblige the King to obey the terms of the charter, the barons actually ensure the charter's undoing.
- [34:49]
B
How far does the wording of the charter reflect the time that it was written in?
- [34:53]
A
Well, it's written in very straightforward, but technical Latin, the Latin of the law. But then, of course, you don't necessarily have to have professional lawyers. There were professional lawyers, but you didn't have to have professional lawyers to do that, because the barons and the King constantly dealt with the needs of their own courts, where they were using these sorts of terms, liberties and customs, consuetudines, and all of these sorts of terms, terms cropped up regularly in their daily dealings as lords and kings. So it's written in a very fluent legal terminology that by this stage was generally agreed. If I can say, Emily, there are obviously terms there that probably have changed their meaning. Peers today, we think, are those people in the House of Lords. You know, they're the toffs at the top end of society. In the Magna Carta, that's not. Not what that term is taken to mean. And although there's a debate over it in the 1220s, in the next 10 years or so, over whether it does mean the great Lords. Lords should be tried by lords, knights by knights, peasants by peasants, that ends up as appear as your equal. So that term is potentially misleading. The other one that's potentially very misleading is libertas, libertates, liberties or liberty. Today, that means for us freedom, the right to liberty, life and happiness. Well, that's not what this means. In the early 13th century, liberty is a private franchise. It's your own jurisdiction within your own lands that's being respected here. So the liberty of the Bishop of Durham is the entire part of Durham and Northumberland that the bishops of Durham control. The liberty of the Archbishop of Canterbury is the lands that the Archbishop of Canterbury controls through his own courts. So liberty doesn't necessarily mean what later constitutionalists might like it to mean.
- [37:04]
B
How far do you think that historical context is perhaps overlooked when people focus in on this idea of liberty and equality, do you think it distorts the meaning of the original charter?
- [37:16]
A
Undoubtedly. And people all over the place today always go to Magna Carta to find their rights. That clause 61 wonderful in Covid. Frequently, people who did not want to obey Covid restrictions cited clause 61 of Magna Carta reported widely in the newspapers, more or less week on week. They kept their shops open on the basis that Magna Carta gave them the right not to obey the law. Law. If they thought that the law itself was being made against their interest, that's obviously a distortion of what it actually says in Clause 61. And they ignore the fact that Clause 61 was law in England for only about 12 weeks in the summer of 1215. But that's a classic instance of people looking for all sorts of rights that aren't actually there.
- [38:07]
B
So if you were an average person living in 1215, would Magna Carta have really made that much difference to you?
- [38:15]
A
No. Except, I suppose, save for perhaps a few. Maybe this war between the King and the barons is going to come to an end, and therefore my property and my pigs and my cattle and my corn and my apples and everything else aren't going to be pillaged by one or other of those opposing. So in terms of restoring peace, there may have been a collective sigh of relief later on. Peasants do begin to use Magna Carta and we do get litigation later in the 13th century, where it is being used to secure certain rights against certain exploitative landlords. But at the time, no, this really is of concern to the political elite who've gone to war with one another.
- [39:00]
B
As a side note, Magna Carta is seen as one of the most significant, if not the most significant, documents in English history. Was it all that unique at the time?
- [39:10]
A
Well, in European terms, no. This is a period of lawmaking, and there are plenty of other instances across Europe. Even we talked last time about Simon de Montfort. Simon de Montfort, in 1212, issued a charter for the inhabitants of southern France, the Statute of Pamier, that grants that they're not to be arrested arbitrarily, that the king will, or in his case, the duke will not delay or deny justice to his subjects, that the Church is to have liberties. So many of the terms of Magna Carta are actually already in circulation in Sicily. Frederick ii, more or less the same time, issues a series of laws for his kingdom in southern Italy and Sicily. The Hungarian Golden Bull of about the same time appears to be a series of concessions issued by the King of Hungary to the great men of Hungary, including certain restrictions on foreigners, on aliens, just as there are those in Magna Carta. So in those terms, no, it's part of a wider European system of lawmaking. What is, I think, unusual here, though, is the degree to which it actually places the sovereign power of the crown under the rule of law. You could say that of the Golden Ball, though. The Hungarian thing, though, that actually is a slightly different creature. But it isn't true of most previous coronation charters issued by English kings. And although rebellions had succeeded in the past in forcing kings into concessions, nothing in English history had ever previous to this been quite so detailed, going clause by clause by clause through the king's rights over the property and the inheritances and his taxation powers over his barons.
- [41:09]
B
So here we have it. We're at Runnymede, we've got the charter sealed. What was the immediate political message that this sent out to the king, to the barons to the realm more widely?
- [41:20]
A
Peace. Peace. What do they do at Runnymede? The king invites the barons up to his castle, up to Windsor. Off they go, and they have a great big banquet, and in theory, everything is forgiven and everyone gets back to doing things as they've done them before. So that's the immediate mess. But then, of course, things go a little bit strange thereafter.
- [41:43]
B
Things are gonna take a bit of a turn for the worse now. That's all going to come up in our next episode. Thank you very much for joining me today, Nicholas.
- [41:50]
A
Thank you.
- [41:52]
B
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. 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.