The historical importance of some documents is immediately obvious. The American Declaration of Independence, for instance, was printed in newspapers all over Europe as soon as it arrived there, about August 10, 1776. The United States Constitution, on the other hand, needed to prove itself before its significance could be judged. But it soon did so as the American republic stabilized and grew prosperous under it. It is now the oldest constitution of a sovereign state in the world and has deeply influenced constitutional law everywhere.
Then there are documents that seemed at the time they were written to be instant dead letters, only to slowly grow into unexpected importance over decades and centuries until they reached iconic status. There is no better example of this than Magna Carta, which on June 15 turned 800 years old. It is now the most famous medieval document in the world. But soon after it was signed, on the Island of Runnymede, in the river Thames near Windsor Castle, it seemed to be of no importance whatsoever, nothing more than a failed attempt to settle a political dispute.
King John was one of the worst English sovereigns in history, as despotic as he was incompetent. After inheriting the throne from his brother Richard the Lionheart in 1199, by 1204, he had lost most of England’s French possessions, including the duchy of Normandy. For 10 years he struggled to regain them, taxing his barons to pay for the campaigns. He also employed many other arbitrary means of raising money, such as seizing lands on the death of the owner and making the family buy it back from the crown.
Dianne Ingram | Bergman Group
Decisively defeated at the Battle of Bouvines in 1214 by the French King Phillip II, John had no option but to sue for peace and agree to pay Phillip compensation, requiring still more taxation. But the barons had had enough of this arbitrary rule by the king. John’s great-grandfather, King Henry I, had issued a “Charter of Liberties” on his accession in 1100. It guaranteed the property and personal rights of his barons. The barons now demanded that it be revived. John met with them in London in January and tried to play for time. He offered to submit the baronial grievances to an arbitration council, with Pope Innocent III as supreme arbiter. But the barons knew that John was close to the pope (the king had made himself a papal vassal two years earlier) and refused.
John then asked Stephen Langton, archbishop of Canterbury, to negotiate. The king met with the barons at Runnymede on June 4, and over the next 10 days, Langton worked out the text and details of the document, which the king agreed to on June 15.
But as soon as the pope heard about it, in August 1215, he immediately annulled the charter and suspended Langton as archbishop. England soon slid into civil war. The rebel barons even invited Louis, the son of King Phillip II of France, to take the English throne, and Louis invaded.
John died the following year, and his nine-year-old son, Henry III, took the throne, with William Marshall, one of the great men of medieval English history, acting as regent. In an attempt to win over the rebellious barons, Marshall reissued the charter of 1215, although with some clauses removed.
The war sputtered on until 1217, when Prince Louis agreed to end it and give up all claims to the English throne, provided that the rebel barons get their lands back and that the charter be reissued.
Magna Carta was now embedded in English law. In 1225, in return for taxes worth 40,000 English pounds, Henry again reissued the charter; this time, he said that it was being issued by his “spontaneous and free will” and sealed it with the royal seal.
Henry’s son, Edward I, also reissued the charter in 1297, and this is still part of the statute law of England, although many of its provisions have been repealed.
Thus, Magna Carta became the foundation of that uniquely English concept, personal liberty. Because of Magna Carta, Englishmen (or at least, at that time, property owners) had rights that even the king was bound to respect. Within a century, Parliament began to develop and law became something that was not just the work of the king, but of the “king in parliament,” a fundamental difference.
Over the centuries, Magna Carta profoundly influenced the English Bill of Rights of 1689, such political philosophers as John Locke, James Madison and the other American Founding Fathers, and the American Bill of Rights. After all, Jefferson’s immortal “all men . . . are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” is but the distilled essence of Magna Carta.
Thus, Magna Carta, thought a dead letter two months after it was written, lived on to become nothing less than the birth certificate of the rule of law.
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