Magna Carta 1225

What's the true story behind the Magna Carta, and how did a 17-year-old King Henry III shape a document that impacted the course of history? Matt Lewis is joined by Professor David Carpenter to explore the origins of the Magna Carta, finding out how it laid the foundations for a new way of living for all subjects, from the protections offered to 'merry widows' who gained the right to manage their own estates, to protections of life for poachers. This episode sheds light on how these and other clauses of the Magna Carta shaped English law and governance, influencing modern concepts of individual rights and limited government. MORE Myths of Magna Carta: https://open.spotify.com/episode/7xatVZ23U0HqXyXZl2xCtg King John: Worst Medieval Monarch? https://open.spotify.com/episode/2O5vN33xBGeREbv250bwvC Gone Medieval is presented by Matt Lewis and edited by Amy Haddow. The producer is Rob Weinberg. The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff. Gone Medieval is a History Hit podcast. You can take part in our listener survey here: https://insights.historyhit.com/history-hit-podcast-always-on Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Matt Lewis?

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• 2:43Matt Lewis?

  Hello, I'm Matt Lewis. Welcome to Gone Medieval from History Hit, the podcast that delves into the greatest millennium in human history. We've got the most intriguing mysteries, the gobsmacking details and latest groundbreaking research, from the Vikings to the printing press, from kings to popes to the crusades. We cross centuries and continents to delve into rebellions, plots and murders, to find the stories, big and small, that tell us how we got here. Find out who we really were with Gone Medieval.

• 3:29Matt Lewis?

  Few documents have left as indelible a mark on history as Magna Carta, but the story we remember of King John reluctantly sealing the Charter at Runnymede in 1215 was only the beginning. Let's go back 800 years. The year is 1225. The realm, still reeling from civil war, teeters on the brink of chaos. The king is the 17-year-old Henry III, son of the despised King John. It's he who will truly cement Magna Carta's place in history. A decade has passed since John's ill-fated charter. That document, annulled by the Pope, ignored by both Crown and barons, lies in tatters.

• 4:13Matt Lewis?

  But from its ashes, a new Magna Carta will rise.

• 4:18Matt Lewis?

  Henry faces a crucial decision. The kingdom needs money and the barons hold the purse strings, but they demand something in return, a reaffirmation of their rights and liberties. And so, on February the 11th, 1225, Henry III does what his father never truly did. He freely issues Magna Carta, not under duress, but as a mutual agreement between king and subjects. This is the Magna Carta that will endure. The 1225 Charter, issued by Henry's own will, becomes the definitive version. It's this document that will be reissued time and again, eventually finding its way into English statutory law.

• 5:03Matt Lewis?

  But why does this matter? What makes the 1225 Magna Carta so pivotal? How did a young king's decision shape the course of English law and lay the groundwork for modern concepts of individual rights and limited government? To tell the story of Magna Carta, not as you think you know it, but as it truly unfolded, I'm joined by David Carpenter, Professor of Medieval History at King's College, London.

• 5:36Matt Lewis?

  Welcome back to Gone Medieval, David. It's fantastic to have you with us again.

• 5:39Speaker 04

  Thank you, Matt. I'm privileged to be back so soon after the King John one.

• 5:45Matt Lewis?

  Yeah, it's always a pleasure to talk to you. I think, having spoken about King John, we sort of skirted around Magna Carta a little bit in discussing him. So I thought we'd come back and talk about Magna Carta, and specifically, kind of the anniversary this year of the 1225 reissue, which in many ways, I think you might frame as the Magna Carta.

• 6:06Speaker 04

  Yes, I mean, contemporaries, it's well worth thinking about, never regarded the 1215 Charter as Magna Carta. It was never called Magna Carta in the medieval period and beyond. It was always called the Charter of Runnymede. Magna Carta was Henry III's Charter of 1225. Now contemporaries were well aware that that was based, there are also significant differences on the Charter of 1215, but that didn't stop them calling the 1215 Charter the Charter of Rallymead and 1225 is Magna Carta.

• 6:39Matt Lewis?

  Yeah. So if we just wind the clock back to 1215 for a moment and force ourselves to think about King John again, as much as we don't like to think about King John too much, why was the original sealing of that document at Runnymede, why was that a groundbreaking moment in 1215?

• 6:58Speaker 04

  It was a groundbreaking moment, not in 1215. In 1215, the Charter was a complete failure. It was a groundbreaking moment because the Charter was revived during the minority of Henry III and then leads to the final definitive version in 1225. But at the end of 1215, you would have thought the Charter was a failure without a future. I mean, King John had conceded it because he thought it'll bring peace, the rebels will lay down their arms and that will be that. He never thought they would actually manage to enforce the poisonous contents. So when he discovered that they were going to enforce those contents to the letter and beyond, he got the Pope to quash the Charter. But the rebel barons

• 7:41Speaker 04

  also abandoned the Charter in a way because they thought, well, good that the Charter is, we can't hold John to its terms, we must go down another route. And so they deposed John, as far as they were concerned, they deposed him, offered the throne to the eldest son of the King of France, Louis. Louis comes to England in 1216, carries all before him, gets control of London, gets the allegiance of the great majority of the barons. But he had no brief for Magna Carta. His view was that, you know, you don't need Magna Carta with me as a benevolent capiscean king. So the Charter seemed finished at that point.

• 8:16Matt Lewis?

  And is it fair to say then that the furore in 1215 around Magna Carta, the barons imposing it on John, its failure and ultimately their own abandonment of it too, contributed to what we remember as the First Barons' War and this sort of effectively a civil war in which John is deposed and replaced by a French opponent?

• 8:33Speaker 04

  Yeah, the barons deposed him and offered the throne to Louis. Of course, John and his supporters didn't accept that, so John was not actually replaced. As you say, it leads into a civil war. I mean, what saved the Charter was John's death on that great storm howling round Newark Castle in October 1216, because he leaves a nine-year-old son in an absolutely desperate position. And the nine-year-old son, Henry III's supporters, above all William Marshall, Earl of Pembroke, the Regent, the aged Regent, this doyenne of chivalry, as he portrayed himself, and the papal legate

• 9:15Speaker 04

  Guala, they realised the only way to survive with Louis controlling more than half the country, controlling London, was to make a complete reversal of government policy. John had rejected the Charter. What Guala and William Marshall do is that they now accept it. They accept what John had rejected, but also Louis was ignoring. And so, shone of its most radical aspects, they issued a new version of the Charter. And you know, that's a fundamental decision in the whole later constitutional history of England, history of the world. I particularly think that the papal legate took a very brave initiative there, because the Pope condemned the Charter.

• 9:59Speaker 04

  There was no way Guala could actually consult the Pope about this total change of policy. I'd love to have seen the letter he wrote explaining himself, but he would have said, look, this is just a necessity. It's the only way that the young king can survive. So in November 1216, from Bristol, this new version of the Charter is issued. And I think it did have a profound effect. There were no immediate desertions from Louis.

• 10:28Speaker 04

  But at the decisive Battle of Lincoln in May 1217, the rebel barons on Louis's side didn't fight very hard. They sort of struck token blows and then all surrendered. Not one of them was killed. And that was because they knew their cause was won. You know, there's now an innocent boy in place of a malevolent king, but the Charter is now in place. And that was confirmed at the end of the war, as part of the final peace settlement, a new version of the Charter was issued in November 1217. So that's the second version of the of the Charter.

• 11:06Matt Lewis?

  And I guess it's interesting to think that that seems to have been a straight pragmatic decision, that the only, or at least the best way to end the civil war that was threatening the Angevin crown at that point, was to acknowledge and accept Magna Carta. But it also required the circumstances in which the king is a nine-year-old. You know, John had objected to it because it impinges so much on a king's authority. So having a nine-year-old allows it to fall into place. Having someone as respected by both sides as William Marshall allows it to come together. So it's an interesting combination of factors that come together to allow it to be reissued in a pragmatic way to end the war.

• 11:42Speaker 04

  Yeah, I completely agree about that. I wouldn't talk about reissue. It's a new version. So it is quite significantly different from the 1215 Charter. But I'd never thought of that before, really, Matt. And that's quite right, isn't it? It was, there was no king to object. Henry III, nine, has to go along. But it'd be interesting to think, if John had had a of-age son, what line, what input he would have had into those crucial decisions. I think for William Marshall, it was probably an easy decision, because, you know, a great baron, he's going to benefit from the baronial chapters in the Charter just as much as any rebel would. And in fact, when he died and his son succeeded him in

• 12:26Speaker 04

  1219, the inheritance tax he paid was not the hundreds or thousands of pounds which John would have demanded, but merely a hundred pounds in accordance with the Charter. And so William Marshall's descendants immediately benefited from Magna Carta and probably could see that coming up. So it was both pragmatic, but also self-interested. It saved the dynasty, but it also, in a sense, saved themselves.

• 12:54Matt Lewis?

  And you mentioned that this was effectively a new document because it was stripped of some of the most controversial elements of 1215. What were the striking things that were missing and what were perhaps the most striking things that were still there?

• 13:05Speaker 04

  Yeah, well, the most striking thing which was missing was something called the security clause. And that was there in the 1215 Charter, and that appointed 25 barons to actually enforce the Charter. So if John broke it, they were empowered by John himself to seize John's castles, to seize his lands, and to force him to keep the Charter. They also had a wider brief in that they could put right any malpractices which came to their notice. Now, that was a way of therefore enforcing the Charter, and of course, it showed deep suspicion as to John's veracity, John's honesty in actually agreeing it. But

• 13:46Speaker 04

  now that chapter was left out, and that meant that the subsequent versions, the 1216 Charter, the 1217 Charter, and then on to 1225, have no constitutional means of actually enforcement. It didn't mean to say they weren't going to be obeyed, because the sort of general political climate made for obedience to at least some of the chapters, but there was no actual 25 barons any longer who are going to force the king to keep it. So in that sense, the 1216, 1217 versions on on to 1225 much weaker. But, and here we come to the introduction of the actual name Magna Carta. From 1217 onwards, the restrictions are much tighter

• 14:30Speaker 04

  and more extensive, because alongside the original Charter, a new Charter altogether was issued in November 1217, governing the running of the Royal Forest, and that's called the Charter of the Forest. And it's only at this point that the term Magna Carta is introduced. It's introduced to distinguish the physically larger Charter from the smaller Charter of the Forest. So there's a wonderful copy of the proclamation of 1218 when the term Magna Carta first appears, and there's this little arrow on Under the line in which the clerk thinks, how am I going to describe the big charter? And he thinks, oh, I'll call it Magna Carta and so a little arrow and above the line.

• 15:13Speaker 04

  And that's the very, very first appearance of the term Magna Carta. Little did the clerk know it was going to go around the world. But what it meant was not that this is a grand, high status charter. It just meant it's physically bigger than the physically smaller charter of the forest. So David Cameron ought to remind you that because remember he got into trouble because he couldn't actually remember or think on an American TV interview. What Magna Carta meant, he should have, I'm sure if he'd thought about it more, he would have realised it. It meant great charter. And then if he'd been really knowledgeable, he would have gone on to explain what that actually meant in twelve eighteen. Though of course in later generations, it was thought of in terms of its wonderful status.

• 15:58Speaker 04

  So from twelve seventeen onwards, we have two charters, Magna Carta and the Forest Charter.

• 16:05Matt Lewis?

  And God medieval listeners are now equipped better than David Cameron was to explain what Magna Carta is and why it's called that.

• 16:12Speaker 04

  The other central way in which the twelve twenty five charter was different from all its predecessors. And helped its implantation into English political life and embedded in English society. Was that for the first time, the church comes in full square behind the charter. And what Archbishop Langton did was to promulgate sentences of excommunication against all who break the charter. And that had never been done before. The church, no sentences of excommunication were promulgated in twelve fifteen, twelve sixteen or twelve seventeen. And I think the way Langton was able to do that because he thinks this is now it.

• 16:56Speaker 04

  This is now a consensual document which everyone agrees about. It's not a partisan document. And so the sentences of excommunication go on twelve thirty seven, twelve fifty three and so on. I think he was quite sincere in accepting the charter.

• 17:15Speaker 04

  Even though he lacked the grip on the drive to actually set in place a mechanism to enforce it. On the other hand, twelve twenty five doesn't quite finish the question about validity, because the king is still underage. He doesn't actually become twenty one till twelve twenty eight. So the final cap came in twelve thirty seven, again in return for another tax, in which Henry confirmed the charter of twelve twenty five, although, as he says, I was then underage. So you know, you could say twelve thirty seven puts the final icing on the cake of twelve twenty five. But most people seem to be quite happy

• 17:59Speaker 04

  with twelve twenty five, whereas the twelve twenty five charter was copied again and again and again, with its witness list, the statement about the tax and so on. The twelve thirty seven letter, which Henry says, you know, it's valid, although I was then underage, that was very rarely copied. So people seem on the whole to have thought twelve twenty five was it and was enough.

• 18:21Matt Lewis?

  It's always struck me, and I don't know whether you think I'm in the right ballpark about this, but for most people in England in twelve seventeen perhaps, Magna Carta would have felt like something with some lofty ideals that was really aimed at the barons, but the Charter of the Forest was something that would have affected the day to day life of ordinary people much, much more. It's kind of restoring a lot of rights to more ordinary people. Is that fair?

• 18:44Speaker 04

  I don't think that is entirely fair, Matt, if I might say so. First, Magna Carta, yes, certainly, it's often been branded and lampooned as a selfish, baronial document. And it's perfectly true that the very early chapters, and they come first, benefit the great barons. But from the word go, it had a much wider reach than that. And I think that was why it survived. It survived because it doesn't have, it's not just a baronial document, it's not just sounding out some sort of high principles in a vague way, it's regulating in a very nitty gritty way, the whole Operations of royal government, of course, finance, justice, local government and so on.

• 19:30Speaker 04

  And who benefits beyond the Great Barrens? Obviously, there's a crucial chapter on the church, crucial chapter on London. Magna Carta was treasured in London. All the regulations about justice and local government benefit wide sections of society. And sorry, that also comes about twelve seventeen. Because I said in some ways with no security clause, twelve seventeen is weaker. But actually, a whole new chapter was introduced in twelve seventeen into Magna Carta itself, not the Forest Charter, regulating the running of local courts, the county and hundred courts. And things like the view of Frank Pledge, that would have benefited even unfree peasants.

• 20:10Speaker 04

  Um. So the Charter from the from the word go has this, even more in twelve seventeen, has a wide breach. About the Forest Charter, I know that's often said, but actually, the key chapters in the Forest Charter really benefit great men more than anybody else. Because the key thing was to reduce the area of the royal forest. And why was the royal forest so unpopular? It meant that if you had your own wood within the subject of forest law and within the bounds of the royal forest, and that's the key thing, that many landowners had their own land and their own woods within the royal forest. It it meant you couldn't cut down trees, you couldn't exploit the land without being punished.

• 20:55Speaker 04

  And equally, you couldn't hunt the various restricted beasts of the forest. So what these great landowners want to do is to reduce the area of the royal forest so they can exploit the woodland more vigorously. So in some ways, far from actually protecting the environment, as people sometimes say about the Forest Charter, it was actually meant to allow landowners to exploit the environment more intensively. So I'm not quite sure about the Forest Charter like that, but it is true that. There was one important chapter in it which would have benefited ordinary people, poachers, because it said that no one was to lose life or limb any longer for a forest

• 21:38Speaker 04

  offence. And that would, I think you're right, go right down in society, because the people most likely to lose life and limb are poachers, and they're most likely to be peasants. And so peasants, I think, did benefit from that chapter in the Forest Charter.

• 21:55Matt Lewis?

  Yeah. So as we move towards 1225, and we're here to talk about a 1225 issuing of Magna Carta, what are the problems that linger from 1217? Why are we getting into the 1220s and finding that it's being revisited?

• 22:08Speaker 04

  That's an absolutely key question. And the answer can be given by one of John's most rebarbative ministers, whose name was William Brewer. Matthew Paris St Albans said, Brewer by name and Brewer by nature. He'd been a baron of Dixiech, a very unpopular sheriff. Anyway, at a great council meeting in January 1223, he actually said, none of these charters are valid. They've all been extorted from the king by force, by war. That was clearly the case in 1215. In a way, though, you could say it was the same of 1216 and 1217, because, you know, they're clearly the products of war. So Brewer said, you know, you don't

• 22:50Speaker 04

  have to obey them. Now, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Stephen Langton, key figure in the conceiving the 1225 charter, sort of hurried him away and told him to shut up, and, you know, don't disturb the peace of the kingdom. But there is that doubt about the validity of the 1216 and 1217 charters. And there was another reason for doubt, which, of course, the king is underage. He's nine in 1216, 10 in 1217. He has no seal of his own. So who has sealed the 1216 and 1217 charters and the Forest Charter of 1217? It's not the king at all. It's William Marshall as regent and Guala as papal legate. So, you know, there are really serious doubts.

• 23:36Speaker 04

  As to the validity of the twelve sixteen twelve seventeen charters. And I think that's the background to what happened in twelve twenty five. I think Stephen Langton as Archbishop of Canterbury has a very strong ideological attachment to the Charter and his biblical studies, Book of Samuel, make him believe profoundly in a kingship limited by law. The Justiceier Hubert de Burgh, later Earl of Kent, who's in charge of government but a close ally of Langton, he has no ideological attachment to the Charter, but he realizes it's a practical necessity. Now, all this comes together in twelve twenty five, when in a way Langton, I think, sees

• 24:18Speaker 04

  his chance of resolving all these doubts about the Charter. And not for the first time, the exigencies of the dynasty's continental empire impact on English political life and on Magna Carta. Just as the twelve fifteen charter, in a way, the product of that was the huge amount of money John had taken from the kingdom in order to try and recover Normandy. And that creates all the financial grievances. So in twelve twenty five, what has happened is that the King of France has overrun Poitou and is threatening the dynasty's one remaining continental possession, Gascany.

• 25:00Speaker 04

  So a gigantic effort is going to be needed in twelve twenty five to actually preserve Gascany, possibly recover Poitou. And the only way to do that is to levy a great tax on the kingdom. Now, that tax is simply unobtainable without the general consent of a great council, what would later be called Parliament. And so what Hubert de Burgh and Langton, Archbishop Langton, conceive is a deal in which the tax will be granted, and it was a huge tax, in return for a concession of the Charter. Now, this puts the Charter on a totally different level from the previous charters

• 25:45Speaker 04

  because clearly it's a freely entered bargain between the king.

• 25:50Speaker 04

  And the kingdom. No one any longer can say that it's been extorted from the king by war and by force. And there are a whole series of ways in which in the Charter itself, the Charter of twelve twenty five, this is actually demonstrated. So texturally and visually, the twelve twenty five Charter is looks quite different from its predecessors. And that's why it's able to survive and become the final definitive version of the Charter.

• 26:25Matt Lewis?

  Yeah. Do we have any sense in that period in twelve twenty three to twelve twenty five, as all of this crisis is beginning to unfold and we're moving towards this new issue of Magna Carta, of how Henry felt about it? Do we see maybe, is he encouraging William Brewer to ask questions about the validity of the Charter? Or would he have been horrified that the the piece was being rocked by someone?

• 26:48Speaker 04

  Well, that that's a really good question. And actually, we do know that the account of William Brewer's remark is in chronicler Roger of Wendover. And he says the king actually intervened and said verbally, what I have conceded, I will stand by. And that's actually Henry the Third's really first political pronouncement. And I think in making that, he was probably very influenced by Langton, who'd already shut Brewer up, and by Hubert de Burgh. But that's really key thing. And I think Henry was a willing participant in the grant in twelve twenty five. And that takes us to the actual Charter itself. There were two things in it

• 27:32Speaker 04

  which indicated Henry's consent. The first was there was a new preamble, which said that the king had now granted this Charter out of his spontaneous and free will. And that that had not been in any previous charter and hadn't been in the Charter of 1215. And secondly, it's authenticated with his seal. The king now has the seal and perhaps the most beautiful original at Durham Cathedral. The great seal of Henry perfectly preserved still hangs behind it. Admittedly, the archivist at some point spilt ink all over this lovely 1225 original. But still the seal is still there.

• 28:13Speaker 04

  So, you know, looking at the Charter, reading the preamble, looking at the seal. No one could any longer doubt, or at any rate, the doubts were much less, that the king had consented to it. And there was one other very crucial thing, which I think Langton must have thought of this. The fact that it was conceded in return for the tax is actually stated in the Charter itself. So the final bit of the Charter says, we have made these concessions because everyone in the kingdom, everyone has granted us this tax. And I think that was absolutely crucial. And I think one way you can see that is in recent research.

• 28:57Speaker 04

  In a lot of research has gone into collecting unofficial copies of the Charter made in the 13th century. And what you find, some people who'd actually first of all copied the 1217 Charter, which of course hasn't got this thing about the tax. And then they doctor it and they alter it to include the statement about the tax at the end. So people absolutely realise how utterly vital this bargain, this concession was. And as I said, and the unofficial copies show that.

• 29:42Matt Lewis?

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• 32:55Speaker 04

  I think it's interesting, because in many ways, including that element of the taxation at the end, frames this Magna Carta much more like a contract. There is an offer, there is acceptance, and there is consideration there. So you could frame it as a legally binding contract that has been made. The king has got something in return for giving it. Sure. And I think, just to add to that, it was very soon regarded in the later 13th century as the first statute. This is the first statute law. And I think the criteria of that were, one, that it was sealed by the king. But secondly, that it was conceived in a parliament. It's an act of parliament, in a way. It's shown in the huge witness list. Now, that was the other most striking

• 33:38Speaker 04

  physical attribute of the 1225 Charter, which sets it apart, again, from all its predecessors, 1215, 1216, 1217. There's no witness list to speak of at the end. Whereas at the end of the 1225 Charter, there's this huge list of all the people who've witnessed it, all the people who've Consent to it. It's clearly been agreed in a prototype parliament. And it's it's laid out that first of all, there's Archbishop Langton and all the bishops. Then there are all the abbots. Then there's Hubert de Boer heading all the earls. And then there are all the barons. And then the date is given 11th of February at Westminster in the ninth year of the king's reign, 11th of February 1225.

• 34:22Speaker 04

  So, you know, I think the witness list, again, which people copied again and again because they realised how very important the witness list is, which and it included, of course, both rebels and loyalists. So, you know, the whole community have come together. Of course, it's all men. There are no women there, and they are all great nobles. But nonetheless, this is the the top of the political community as it then was in 1225. And they're all supporting the Charter. And that's how it survives. It survives because all later kings, they just confirm the 1225 Charter. That's the last version.

• 35:03Speaker 04

  The Edward the First, 1297, 1300, he confirms the Charter of his father, sets out the whole text and then with his own witness list, and then later kings all do the same. It's chapters of the 1225 Charter, which are still on the Statute Book of the United Kingdom today. When in 2015, the Lord Chief Justice protested against the government's scheme to charge court fees to bring litigation into the civil courts. And he said, this is against Magna Carta. What he was talking about was chapter 29 of the 1225 Charter, in which it says justice is not to be sold. So that's what's gone down the ages.

• 35:49Speaker 04

  And as I say, of course, until late on, no one thought of King John's Charter as Magna Carta at all.

• 35:56Matt Lewis?

  Yeah, fascinating. And I guess the big difference seems to be that in 1225, the king is kind of on board. Do we have a sense whether Henry was really happy to have all of this confusion cleared up once and for all? Or was he sort of less grudging than his father, but still not keen on the idea?

• 36:16Speaker 04

  I think Henry III throughout his reign was committed to the Charter, however much there were complaints that it was not obeyed. And I mean, there are other cases where the famous sentence of excommunication against all who break the Charter in 1253. And Henry stands there with his hand on his heart and says, I have sworn this as a consecrated king and as a knight, and I will believe it. What Henry lacked was the will to actually create the administrative structures by which in detail the Charter might be enforced. But I think his rule in some ways was congruent with the Charter.

• 37:00Speaker 04

  It was certainly very, very different from his father.

• 37:04Matt Lewis?

  And if we were to broadly divide the people of England at this point into three, so we've got the nobility, the church and the ordinary people.

• 37:11Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 37:12Matt Lewis?

  What would be the highlight of the 1225 issue for each of those three parties? How are they benefiting? What is it that brings consensus from all of those groups?

• 37:19Speaker 04

  I think you've got a really important point there because the Charter does reach out to wide sections of society. If it hadn't have done, it would never have survived. For the great nobles, the great barons, the first chapters are absolutely the vital ones. And I think one more than any other was that it fixed the inheritance tax called the relief of a baron and an earl at a hundred pounds. That was a colossal change because King John and his predecessors, Richard and Henry II, had often charged thousands of pounds for barons to inherit their land. So for it now to be a hundred pounds is a dramatic change. Reduces both the king's revenue, but also his power.

• 38:04Speaker 04

  What John sometimes did was to charge colossal reliefs, which he knew couldn't be paid, and so seize somebody's castles as security for payment or until you do pay. So the king is reduced both in terms of revenue and in terms of. Power. So that's for great nobles. Now, for the church, obviously, chapter one is absolutely vital, for it guarantees the freedom of the church, and the church appealed to that again and again throughout the 13th century, when it thought the royal government was impeaching on the liberties of the church. We talked about ordinary people. Of course, they break down into a whole series of groups, and in particular, fundamental distinction between

• 38:47Speaker 04

  the free and the unfree. Now, that was another important change, because the 1215, 1216, and 1217 charters had only been granted to people who were free. So, difficult to work it out, the division between, but, you know, a very large slice of the population, perhaps half, were unfree peasants, who technically speaking, they were gaining nothing from the charter. But in 1225, and again, I think we can see Langton's influence, the old preamble was left there, but there was a new preamble, which said the liberties are being granted to everyone in the kingdom, everyone in the kingdom. Now, to what extent was that in

• 39:29Speaker 04

  any way true? Well, the local government chapters, and remember, they were beefed up in 1217, I think they do benefit wide sections of society. They certainly benefited knights and freemen, but in regulating the running of the local courts, and in particular, things like the view of Frank Pledge and so on, unfree peasants too would benefit from that. So I think even down to the bottom layers of society, there is something for the unfree, and by the end of the century, some peasant communities were indeed appealing to the charter. Well, you might ask also about women. Now, that's a nuanced thing. In one sense, women

• 40:14Speaker 04

  were put on a very lower level. The charter is granted to free men, or granted to men, homo. Did that include women? Well, of course, it could do, because homo, as in the Bible, and this was Contemporary well aware of this could mean person, human being, it could be non-gendered. And I think if you'd asked the drafters of the Charter, does homo mean people? Or I think they would probably have said, yes, that these chapters do benefit women, particularly free women. Now, within that context, yeah, there are specific, very important chapters which benefit widows.

• 40:55Speaker 04

  And widows, and these are basically high status widows, are not to be forced into remarriage by the king. And they're also to have their landed estates, their dower inheritance, marriage portion, without having to pay for it. Those were very important chapters and very different from what had happened before. Because John had charged the widows huge sums of money to stay single, not be forced into marriage, or had just forced them into marriage. Whereas now, they don't have to. And that was another chapter which was obeyed. And there were lots of merry widows in the 13th century who used that chapter to stay single and to run their large estates for themselves. So in that sense, and that has been called, you know, a stage in the emancipation of women.

• 41:41Speaker 04

  On the other hand, the Charter did place women on a lower level than men when making accusations of homicide. So this is chapter to fifty-four of the twelve fifteen Charter, and it was carried over to all the subsequent things. So if, Matt, you accuse me of killing your brother, I am arrested before trial. Indeed, if you accuse anyone of homicide, they are of any kind of homicide, they're arrested by trial. But if a woman accuses me of killing her brother, I'm not arrested before trial. The only circumstances in which, if a woman accuses someone of homicide, the person is arrested pre-trial.

• 42:23Speaker 04

  The only circumstances are if the accusation is that the person has killed her husband. And indeed, in some legal texts, that was drawn even more. Narrowly, the husband has to die in your arms. In other words, you have actually to witness the killing of your husband. It's no good for simply saying, oh, my husband's body has been drifting down a river, where I found it in a field, and I accuse Matt Lewis of killing him. That wouldn't do. You would have to be able to say, Matt Lewis, in an affray, and I was there, killed my husband. So women are definitely put on a lower level than men. There's a suspicion about the veracity of women in the Charter.

• 43:06Speaker 04

  Instead, that's the only clause where the name woman appears, feminine, feminine. So it's a nuanced picture. But the Charter does reach out, as I said, in different ways and different levels. Obviously, the barons gain most, but the local government clauses, the clauses on justice, benefit knights, free men, even to some extent peasants. The chapter on amersments, which means fines, actually goes all through society. Earls, barons, churchmen, merchants, free men and villains are all there in that chapter.

• 43:41Matt Lewis?

  And I guess cycling back to the Church a little bit, the inclusion of the freedom of the Church is hugely significant. I mean, it shows Langton's probable influence and input, but this is also the settling of an argument that had been going on for more than half a century, which had ultimately culminated in Thomas Becket's murder, about whether the king had authority over the Church in England. So the Church is finally getting that question settled once and for all with the agreement of the king.

• 44:06Speaker 04

  Yes, I mean, the king's rights over the Church are still there, and he could have a lot of influence over appointments to bishoprics in particular. He still, and this isn't challenged, can take the revenues of a bishopric in a vacancy, although he's supposed to fill up the vacancy very, very quickly. But there is a huge area, partly from the Becket dispute, where the king's government does not interfere. And of course, the most famous was criminal clerks. So the clerks accused of serious crime throughout the 13th century until The reign of Henry VIII. If they're accused of crime, they hold up their hands and say,

• 44:49Speaker 04

  I'm a clerk, and then they go off and are subject to ecclesiastical jurisdiction. So a clerk accused of murder or robbery or anything like that would not be punished in the secular courts. There might be a pre-trial in the secular courts so that the ecclesiastical authorities knew who just exactly what the person had done, but they were routinely then handed over, I mean, to the ecclesiastical authorities, to an agent of the bishop. That was the result of the Becket dispute, and yes, the Church vigorously defended that liberty, that privilege, under the terms of Magna Carta. So Magna Carta does confirm this separation between ecclesiastical

• 45:33Speaker 04

  and secular jurisdiction. I've always slightly puzzled why Langton didn't actually have that confirmed specifically in the Charter, but he probably thought what he had was enough. I mean, he was very disappointed, I think, Langton, in that that chapter was actually slightly weakened, as between 1215 and 1216. 1215, and Langton must have put this in, John says, I guarantee the liberty of the Church, and I also confirm the Charter I issued earlier about the free elections, so that the Church can freely appoint its own bishops. So that was put into the 1215 Charter. It was left out of the subsequent ones, I think, because in the circumstances of the 1216 Civil War, free elections might mean just

• 46:18Speaker 04

  freedom to appoint John's opponents. I think Langton would have loved to have got it back in, and he did actually say, I'm slightly disappointed about the 1225 Charter, despite his great achievement. I think Langton is a great hero here, in a way. I mean, he's a very sided man. I mean, he could be ruthlessly pragmatic and actually profited from one of John's most notorious exactions, in that a large amount of the notorious 20,000 mark fine made by Geoffrey de Mandeville to marry the Countess of Gloucester was actually assigned to Langton as compensation for all the damage done to the Church. So Langton actually had no qualms, or he may have had qualms, but he in the end

• 46:58Speaker 04

  decided to profit from one of John's, you know, most exacting financial impositions on a great baron, which Magda Carter itself would certainly have forbidden. And yet, on the other hand, I think he did believe ideologically in the charter and no one did more to try and preserve the 1215 peace, the 1215 charter than Langton. I mean, in a very statesmanlike way, he on the one hand tried to tell the barons, don't take too much, and yet on the other hand, supported the barons in trying to force the king to keep the charter. It was really statesmanlike. It all collapsed in the end, but I've always very admired that.

• 47:39Speaker 04

  And then I'm certainly in 1225, he with Hubert de Mer crafts this deal, which actually does preserve the charter as a consensual document which the whole kingdom can support. So I think, you know, a very great deal was owed to this remarkable man.

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• 49:31Matt Lewis?

  Yeah, and having got the 1225 Magna Carta issued, sealed, accepted by everybody, I guess we then need to think a little bit about what the sprawling consequences of that are and how difficult it is to measure the importance of the 1225 Magna Carta. I mean, is it the beginning of Parliament? Because when we see Parliament being set up, it's initially always this balance of if you want taxation, we want reforms against the Charter, which is essentially the basis on which Magna Carta is issued money in return for reform of behaviour. So it's almost setting a template for Parliament?

• 50:07Speaker 04

  Yeah, well, I think it was in a way. And you could say that the Charter of 1215 has the first constitution for Parliament because Chapter 12 says no taxes to be imposed without the common consent of the kingdom. And then Chapter 14 goes on to define the assembly which can give that consent. It's largely a baronial assembly, but you know, you could say that's the first constitution for Parliament. Now, more generally going on after 1225, of course, there's a huge debate then and now as to how far the 1225 Charter made a difference. Is it, say, a watershed between lawless and lawful rule?

• 50:50Speaker 04

  Or is it simply, you know, high sounding principles which made no difference? I think it does have a profound influence on the development of what you might call the tax-based parliamentary state. And that appears for the first time in the reign of Henry III. King John's son appears in the 1240s. Twelve fifties, twelve sixties and on into the reign of Edward the first. So how does Magna Carta influence that? I think in two ways. First of all, it did stop up traditional sources of revenue. And thus weakened the financial position of the king. And we've seen that with the inheritance tax as just one example.

• 51:33Speaker 04

  And so that meant the king became all the more needed. Henry the third needed in a way his predecessors had not done to the same extent. Needed general taxation to plug the gap. So Magna Carta makes it the king more dependent on general taxation. The traditional sources of revenue are no longer so lucrative. And there was a broader reason for that too, which was the decline of the revenue from lands. The huge landed estate inherited with the chief obtained with the conquest. Had all been given away in the twelfth century. So the king now needs general taxation. But that's where Magna Carta kicked in again.

• 52:14Speaker 04

  Because Magna Carta is just seen said, you can't have general taxation without the consent of what in effect was parliament. Now, curiously enough, that chapter was left out. The chapter on general consent was left out of the subsequent charters. It's not there. But I don't think that made much difference because everyone still knew about this chapter. The twelve fifteen charter was still copied a great deal. And in practical terms, the king could get no tax without general consent. So I think that in those two ways, in reducing the traditional source of revenue. And saying if you want taxes, you have to get general consent.

• 52:54Speaker 04

  Magna Carta does lead on to the development of the tax based parliamentary state. Which we see emerging in the rest of the of the thirteenth century. I think it did have a profound influence on the whole operation of English politics. And if you like, on the future of, um, quotes, the constitution.

• 53:16Matt Lewis?

  And I guess to some extent it slightly changes the nature of English kingship for the rest of the medieval period and up until the civil war and things like that maybe, in that it's almost like a fairy step towards a constitutional monarchy. The king is restrained, we've now established the king is beneath the law, which is what John had sort of been fighting against. The king can only sort of rule in almost partnership with this emerging body of parliament. I'm overstating it slightly, I'm not saying that parliament suddenly becomes hugely powerful and the king hugely valued, but can we see it as a fairy step towards a change in English monarchy?

• 53:51Speaker 04

  Yeah, no, certainly. I mean, the monarchy from the mid 13th century onwards into the 14th century and beyond, I mean, it's very, very different from what it had been in the 12th century, partly because of Magna Carta, the king is subject to the law. I mean, he may often break the charter, but nonetheless, the principle is there. It's a very important principle. It's asserted not in, as I said, high sounding platitudes, but across the whole nitty gritty of royal government and in a way which appeals to many sectional society. But secondly, you know, from the reign of Henry III onwards, from the 1240s, 1250s, 1260s, kings need taxation from parliament. And so they have to negotiate, make concessions

• 54:34Speaker 04

  and so on. Some were better at that than others, but the parliamentary, the term parliament first appears in 1237, is given increasingly to great assemblies from 1240s, 1250s onwards. 1258, there's the first, if you like, constitution of parliament, it's to meet three times a year to discuss the great affairs of the kingdom. The kingship, the reign of Henry III onwards is very different from what it had been before, which doesn't say that the kings before, of course, going back to Anglo-Saxon times, had needed the consent of great assemblies to legislate, to make war in practice, of all kinds of things. What's different is that we now have the great lever of parliamentary power down the ages.

• 55:20Speaker 04

  Which is that from the twelve forties onwards, kings need taxation which only parliament can grant. And so Parliament from the twelve forties onwards is perfectly capable of saying yes, but no, unless you make all these concessions. And that remains true until, well, it's always remained true after that. Whereas the twelfth century kings, partly because they had this huge landed estate, partly because they were not restricted by Magna Carta, they didn't need taxation from Parliament in exactly the same way. So it's a profound change. I always think one way, summing it up, is that if you look at, it's a document called the Fine

• 56:03Speaker 04

  Rolls. The Fine Rolls are fascinating documents because they record all the offers of money to the king for concessions and favours. If you look at the fine roll of King John in the twelve hundreds, I mean, up to around twenty, twenty-five, thirty thousand pounds are offered to him, sometimes in gigantic sums of money to recover his goodwill, to escape his anger, to inherit land and so on. Gigantic sums of money are being offered to him by great nobles. If you turn it on to a hundred years later, to Edward the First, who is in some ways just as masterful a king as King John, in place of about twenty thousand pounds, twenty-five thousand pounds being offered to him, it's just two or three thousand

• 56:46Speaker 04

  pounds. I mean, the king no longer has the ability, other than perhaps, you know, occasionally under the dispensers later on Edward the Second, but look what happened to them, has the ability to, you know, extract large sums of money by his force and power from his subjects. And I think that is again a profound difference and also one which is due to Magna Carta. I always remember my old supervisor, a doctor, John Presswitz, once said to me, the difference between the Middle and Late Middle Ages is in the Middle Ages, he's talking about the twelfth century, I suppose, the barons owed money to the king. In the later Middle Ages, the king owed money to the barons. And that was because, you know, who was now

• 57:31Speaker 04

  having to pay them to do all kinds of military things and so on. It's a very big difference. Which isn't to say, of course, that clearly under Edward the Second, Richard the Second, you know, the king could act in an arbitrary and tyrannical way. But then, you know, they often precisely said to be breaking Magna Carta, which is the

• 57:55Matt Lewis?

  That 1225 issue, it feels like when we think about that document that is important around the world, that becomes foundational to constitutions of other countries, and that people are always seem to be quite keen to quote, often incorrectly today, we're really talking about the 1225 reissue of Magna Carta. So why do we still think of 1215 as the Magna Carta?

• 58:19Speaker 04

  Right, well, it took an awful long time for that to happen, because when the famous lawyers Edward Cook and co cited Magna Carta to resist the tyranny of the Stuarts, they still cited the 1225 Charter. They hardly mentioned King John, and indeed in Shakespeare's King John, there's no reference to the Charter at all. No one particularly thought of King John as associated with the Charter. Now, that all finally changed in the middle of the 18th century, due to a great lawyer called William Blackstone. And Blackstone was the first person to actually sort out and print the texts of all the various versions

• 59:04Speaker 04

  in 1759. So he actually printed the texts of 1215, 1216, 1217, both Magna Carta and the Charter for us, and 1225. So he finally sorted it all out. And he simply decided to call the 1215 Charter, no bones about it, Magna Carta. And I think that his reason for that was perfectly reasonable. He said, well, all the others are founded on the 1215 Charter, so let's call it Magna Carta. And that stuck. From there onwards, because Blackstone was so dominant, he finally sorted it all out. Everyone started to call the 1215 Charter

• 59:48Speaker 04

  Magna Carta. So if we come on to the last century, one of the most famous books written about Magna Carta by J. C. Hulke came out in 1265. Subsequent editions, Magna Carta, it's essentially a book about the 1215 Charter, and that's true of all books since. And it's perfectly reasonable, in a way, in that, as I say, that the 1225 Charter is clearly founded on 1215, although, as we've seen in our discussion, it has profound differences. It didn't alter the ultimate legal position, though, because, as I said, what's on the statute book today is still not the 1215 Charter, it's the Charter of 1225. I mean, there are only a few chapters left still there,

• 1:00:30Speaker 04

  but they are from 1225, not 1215. But it's due to Blackstone that this change took place.

• 1:00:38Matt Lewis?

  Fascinating how these things happen. And I wonder if we could just end on, putting to bed once and for all, what chapters of Magna Carta, the 1225 version, are still on the statute book today?

• 1:00:49Speaker 04

  Oh, golly. Of course, this changes, and I'm not sure I necessarily have checked up. I think there's the preamble, there's the chapter on the church, and then I think there's the chapter, the most famous chapter, which was 3940 in 1215, it becomes 29 in 1225. And that's no free man is to be outlawed, imprisoned, be deprived of property, or any way proceeded against, say, by the lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land. And then the next one, which is what the Lord Chief Justice appealed to in 2015,

• 1:01:29Speaker 04

  no one is to be denied justice, no one has to pay for justice, justice will not be delayed, anything like that. In the mid 14th century, no free man was glossed as no one of any condition. So it was made broader. And that gloss is normally always taken with no free man. And as I've said also, no free man, it is homo, no libahomo, but probably includes women. As well, but maybe your viewers will be able to go online. If you go online under Magna Carta repeal, or I think you can actually see this. And maybe I got that

• 1:02:13Speaker 04

  wrong. I wonder if the chapter on London is still there. Maybe not. I thought if I was a London, I wish it would be. But anyway, I'm not sure.

• 1:02:22Matt Lewis?

  Fascinating. That's a rabbit hole for all the listeners to go and have a dig through now to find out if they can work out how much of the 1225 issue is on the statute books. But if ever you're quoting the 1215 Magna Carta to give you some kind of rights, you're clearly wrong, because that is not on the statute books. Well, thank you so much for joining us again, David. It feels like we could have prolonged this conversation to at least twice its length, because it's so fascinating to get into the detail of hows and whys and the people that were all involved that either made this happen or allowed it to happen. So thank you so much for your time. It's been absolutely fascinating.

• 1:02:54Speaker 04

  Well, thank you, Matt. I really enjoyed it as always.

• 1:02:58Matt Lewis?

  You can hear David's previous visits to Gone Medieval to talk about Henry III, and most recently, King John, in our back catalogue, along with a recent episode Eleanor did about the myths that surround this seminal document. There are new instalments of Gone Medieval every Tuesday and Friday, so please come back and join Eleanor and I for more from the greatest millennium in human history. Don't forget to also subscribe or follow us on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts and tell all of your friends and family that you've gone medieval. You can sign up to History Hit to access hundreds of hours of original documentaries with a new release every week and all of History Hit's podcasts

• 1:03:39Matt Lewis?

  ad free. Sign up now at historyhit.com/subscribe. Go on, you know you want to. Anyway, I'd better let you go. I've been Matt Lewis and we've just gone medieval with History Hit.

• 1:04:16Speaker 07

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