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Magna Carta’s delusional modern tale
Highlights
The Magna Carta, on which King John placed his seal 800 years ago today, is synonymous in the English-speaking world with fundamental rights and the rule of law. It’s been celebrated, and appropriated, by everyone from Tea Party members to Jay Z, who called his latest album “Magna Carta Holy Grail.”
The Magna Carta, on which King John placed his seal 800 years ago today, is synonymous in the English-speaking world with fundamental rights and the rule of law. It’s been celebrated, and appropriated, by everyone from Tea Party members to Jay Z, who called his latest album “Magna Carta Holy Grail.”
But its fame rests on several myths. First, it wasn’t effective. In fact, it was a failure. John was a weak king who had squandered the royal fortune on a fruitless war with France. Continually raising taxes to pay for his European adventures, he provoked a revolt by his barons, who forced him to sign the charter. But John repudiated the document immediately, and the barons sought to replace him. John avoided that fate by dying.
The next year, his young son reissued Magna Carta, without some of the clauses. It was reissued several times more in the 13th century — the 1297 version is the one on display in the National Archives and embodied in English law. But the original version hardly constrained the monarch.
A second myth is that it was the first document of its type. Writing in 1908, Woodrow Wilson called it the beginning of constitutional government. But in fact, it was only one of many documents from the period, in England and elsewhere, codifying limitations on government power.
A third myth is that the document was a ringing endorsement of liberty. Even a cursory reading reveals a number of oddities. Why, then, is Magna Carta so revered? The story begins in the early 17th century, when members of Parliament and the famous jurist Sir Edward Coke revived the document in their struggle with the Stuart monarchs.
They argued that free Englishmen had enjoyed a set of rights and privileges until they were disrupted by the Norman Conquest of 1066. Magna Carta embodied these rights, so it was held up as a model of a glorious past and part of an “ancient constitution.”
In reality, Magna Carta was a result of an intra-elite struggle, in which the nobles were chiefly concerned with their own privileges. When they referred to the judgment of one’s peers, for example, they were not thinking about a jury trial. Indeed, in 1215, the jury trial as we know it did not exist; guilt was often determined by seeing how suspects reacted to physical ordeal.
Magna Carta inspired Gandhi for liberty of land, says UK
The Magna Carta, hailed as the cornerstone of parliamentary democracy, inspired legends like Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela for liberty to their lands and people, Prime Minister David Cameron said on Monday as Britain marked the historic charter's 800th anniversary. UK’s royalty converged at the famous meadow Runnymede, where King John had met disgruntled barons and agreed to a list of basic rights on June 15, 1215 were first enshrined.
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