The Magna Carta - the document that told a King that he was not above the law.

By Chris Livemore

On the 15th of June 1215, in a meadow beside the River Thames called Runnymede, a very unpopular king met a very angry group of barons and signed a document that changed the course of human history. I remember the story from a very interesting talk during my university law course way back in 2002 (perhaps the only constitutional law lecture I can still remember!).

It was not a dignified moment. King John had not come to Runnymede willingly. He had been dragged there by rebellion, financial ruin, military humiliation, and the comprehensive collapse of the goodwill of almost everyone he governed. He signed under duress and started working to undo it almost immediately.

And yet, eight hundred and eleven years later, it is still considered one of the foundational documents in the development of constitutional government and the rule of law.. Referenced in the American Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and every significant democratic charter that followed thereafter.

Not a bad legacy for a peace treaty nobody intended to keep.

Who was King John?

John became king in 1199 when his brother Richard I, Richard the Lionheart, died without an heir. He inherited a kingdom in financial difficulty and immediately made things considerably worse.

Over the course of his reign, a combination of higher taxes, unsuccessful wars, and conflict with the Pope had made him deeply unpopular with his barons and the country as a whole.

He taxed them heavily to fund repeated military failures in France. He manipulated the legal system for personal gain. He fell out spectacularly with Pope Innocent III, who responded by placing England under interdict, which meant no church services, no sacraments, no Christian burials for six years! The relationship could not be described as rosy.

By 1215, the barons of northern England had reached their limit. They marched on London. John, outmanoeuvred and running out of allies, agreed to negotiate. He met the barons at Runnymede and, under conditions that gave him very little choice, sealed the Great Charter, which in Latin was called the Magna Carta.

What was it?

The Magna Carta contained 63 clauses aimed at limiting the King's power, among them, the right to a fair trial, the principle that no free man could be imprisoned or punished without due process of law, and the establishment that the king himself was subject to the rule of law. Effectively it introduced two fundamental principles that would form the cornerstones of modern democracy - Due Process and the Rule of Law.

Clause 61 stated that a committee of twenty-five barons could meet and overrule the will of the king, a serious challenge to John's authority as ruling monarch. It was a game changer.

It also established the right of widows to choose not to remarry, prohibited bribery and official misconduct, and guaranteed the rights of the Church. It was sent to every county in England to be read aloud, since most people could not read.

Did It Actually Work?

Initially, catastrophically no. King John renounced the charter as soon as the barons left London. The Pope, who had his own reasons for wanting to keep English kings powerful, annulled the document, calling it illegal and unjust. England moved to civil war. The barons even offered the throne to Prince Louis of France, who was declared king in London in May 1216.

John died in October 1216, of dysentery, rather than revolution, which is either fitting or anticlimactic depending on your perspective. And death by revolution may have been more pleasant! His nine-year-old son Henry III inherited the throne. His regents, recognising that reissuing the Magna Carta would help stabilise the kingdom, published revised versions in 1216, 1217, and 1225.

The charter became real not because John honoured it, but because his successors found it useful.

Does it matter today?

Very, very, very much so. By declaring the sovereign to be subject to the rule of law and documenting the liberties held by free men, the Magna Carta provided the foundation for individual rights in Western legal systems and jurisprudence.

In practice, the Magna Carta did not greatly limit the power of medieval kings, but by the time of the English Civil War, it had become an important symbol for those who wished to show that the king was bound by the law.

America's Founding Fathers, drafting a Constitution for a new democracy in the 1780s, reached back to the principles established in a meadow in Surrey in 1215. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, signed in 1948, does the same.

The idea that nobody, not even the most powerful person in the land, is above the law, that idea came from a very bad king having a very bad reign having a very bad meeting at Runnymede.

Interestingly 4 of the 63 clauses in the Magna Carta remain in force today: (I) Freedom of the English Church (Clause 1); (II) Liberties of the City of London (Clause 13); (III) Right to Due Process and Lawful Judgment (Clause 39); and (IV) Justice for all without Delay (Clause 40) - although technically it is 3 clauses as a few of the above merged in 1297.

Jack, for the record, has always understood this instinctively. It is essentially the entire moral framework of every quest he goes on. The right thing is the right thing. Even when it's inconvenient. Even when you're the most powerful person in the room. You still need to follow the rules (politicians should really take note of this blog...).

Join Jack's Shield Wall at thegoodknightbook.com/shield-wall. New members this month receive a free Guide to Medieval Insults. King John would have had several opinions on all of them. ⚔️🏰