Magna Carta
The most famous charter in English law was a failed peace deal, scrapped by the Pope within ten weeks. So why is it still quoted 800 years later?
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Quick Facts
- What it was
- A charter of rights and promises forced on King John by rebel barons
- Date
- 15 June 1215
- Where
- Runnymede, beside the Thames near Windsor
- Original clauses
- 63, written in Latin
- Key mediator
- Stephen Langton, Archbishop of Canterbury
- Annulled
- 24 August 1215, by Pope Innocent III
- Surviving 1215 copies
- Four: two at the British Library, one at Lincoln, one at Salisbury
- Final medieval form
- The 1225 reissue, confirmed into statute law in 1297
The one-sentence version
In June 1215, rebel barons forced King John to agree that even a king must obey the law, and then the deal collapsed almost immediately. John had taxed heavily to pay for wars in France, lost Normandy, and squabbled with the Pope. In May 1215 the barons seized London. With his capital gone and support draining away, John met them in a meadow at Runnymede and put his seal to their demands.
The king who never signed
John didn't sign his name. Medieval kings sealed documents, and the wax seal was the proof. The charter was then copied out by royal clerks and sent around the kingdom. The people at the centre of it were an odd mix. Robert Fitzwalter led the rebels, and gave himself the title Marshal of the Army of God. Stephen Langton, the Archbishop of Canterbury, did much of the negotiating and helped shape the demands. William Marshal, one of the most respected knights in England, stayed loyal to the king and later saved the charter's reputation.
Two clauses that outlived the quarrel
Most of the 63 clauses deal with feudal gripes: inheritance payments, widows' rights, debts to moneylenders, even the removal of fish weirs from the Thames and Medway. Clause 35 demanded standard measures for wine, ale and corn. But two lines still ring. Clause 39 said no free man could be seized or imprisoned except by the lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land. Clause 40 promised: to no one will we sell, deny or delay right or justice. The security clause, number 61, was the one John couldn't stomach. It let a committee of 25 barons override him by force if he broke the terms. No king was going to accept that for long.
Ten weeks, a pope and a civil war
Pope Innocent III declared the charter null and void on 24 August 1215. It had been extracted by force, he said, and it insulted the crown. Civil war, the First Barons' War, followed. John died at Newark in October 1216, leaving a nine-year-old son, Henry III. That was the charter's lucky break. William Marshal, ruling for the boy king, reissued a trimmed version in 1216 and again in 1217, minus the clause about the barons policing the king. A separate Charter of the Forest was issued alongside it, and the bigger document became the Great Charter, Magna Carta, to tell them apart. The 1225 version became the standard text, and Edward I confirmed it in 1297.
Myths versus reality
The popular picture is of freedom and democracy born in a meadow. The reality is more modest. The charter protected the rights of free men, a minority in 1215, and above all the barons' own interests. It did not create Parliament, and it did not invent trial by jury. It earned its legend later. In the 17th century, lawyers such as Sir Edward Coke dug it out to argue against the Stuart kings' claims to absolute power. From there its ideas travelled to colonial America and into later bills of rights. The principle mattered more than the original text: the ruler is under the law, not above it.
Where you can see it today
Two 1215 copies are kept at the British Library. One of them was damaged in a fire in 1731, and restoration attempts in the 1830s harmed it further, leaving its text largely illegible to the naked eye. The other copy escaped that fire. Lincoln Cathedral's copy is displayed at Lincoln Castle. It was sent to the United States in 1939 for the New York World's Fair, stayed there for safekeeping through the war, and was held at Fort Knox. Salisbury Cathedral's copy is shown in its chapter house. At Lacock Abbey in Wiltshire you can see a facsimile of its 1225 Magna Carta; the original is held at the British Library. Runnymede itself is a quiet, grassy stretch by the Thames with a memorial to the charter put up by the American Bar Association in 1957. It is one of the few places where a medieval argument about power is still easy to picture.
Notable people
- King John
- Stephen Langton
- Robert Fitzwalter
- William Marshal
- Pope Innocent III
- Henry III
- Edward I
- Sir Edward Coke
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