Magna Carta

Dan and leading medieval historians explain everything you need to know about Magna Carta...and the story is more dramatic than you might think. Magna Carta sprang from an England on the brink of civil war; the feeble king John left grappling for control after a disastrous defeat in France in the early 13th century and a baron's rebellion in England. It was forged at a standoff on the banks of the Thames in 1215 and still provides the basis of law for most of the English-speaking world today. With thanks to Dr Michael Livingston, Dan Jones and Dr Jess Nelson. This episode was produced by Mariana Des Forges and edited by Dougal Patmore with additional production from Mark Edger. Click here to listen to Dan's explainer on William the Marshal. https://podfollow.com/dan-snows-history-hit/episode/ed69faf5b894fc869714fee230a500b6607fc97d/view Click here to listen to Dan's explainer on Richard the Lionheart. https://podfollow.com/dan-snows-history-hit/episode/d0223200b6f42bc95f2d93a8a05397038b4f13b4/view You can sign up to watch Dan and Dr Michael Livingston's documentary series on Magna Carta on https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. We'd love to hear your feedback - you can take part in our podcast survey here: https://insights.historyhit.com/history-hit-podcast-always-on. You can also email the podcast directly at [email protected] mailto:[email protected]. 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.

• 0:00Dan Snow?

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• 0:32Speaker 01

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• 1:02Speaker 02

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• 1:45Speaker 02

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• 1:51Speaker 03

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• 2:32Speaker 03

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• 2:56Dan Snow?

  We counted the sets of security doors as we passed through them. Reinforced, pass key protected. In the end, we worked out there were at least four layers of security for one of the most important documents in history. As we got through the final set of doors, we entered the strong room. There were manuscript boxes and tubes lining the shelves. In the middle, there was a down lamp that was sending a splash of light onto one particular box that had been laid out there, like a patient on a surgical table. Behind us, a climate control unit hummed and rumbled. They ended up working rather harder than usual to maintain

• 3:39Dan Snow?

  the humidity levels as we all piled into the room. With a nod, the careful curators lifted the top off the box. They removed the further protective sheet and unveiled the manuscript that lay beneath. We were now in the presence of Magna Carta.

• 4:03Dan Snow?

  It might be the most famous medieval manuscript, but it's certainly not prettiest. There are no illustrations in the margins or fancy calligraphy. The copy that we were looking at had sat in a provincial library for centuries. It had got wet there. It rotted a little bit, so there were a few holes. Now expertly patched up by the team at the National Archives. It looks like one solid mass of text. At the bottom, it has faded 13th-century ribbons that are still attached, and they used to support a large wax seal, one on which the image of the king himself was stamped. This Magna Carta was issued by the king, but in

• 4:45Dan Snow?

  the presence of the great men of the realm, a who's who of the powerful political elite of the 13th century. It's a very frail thing, showing its age at 800 years old. But it's also evidence of just how mighty the humble pen can be. The words formed by that pen, the words that make up Magna Carta, they are a thing of remarkable strength. But the strength doesn't lie in the physicality of that manuscript. It's a strength that we give it, we endow it with strength by believing in those words.

• 5:26Dan Snow?

  If we stop caring, if we stop believing in it, then it's just a scrap of ancient charter. And there are plenty more of those in this building. Magna Carta matters, I think, because generation after generation of us have chosen to make it matter. Magna Carta is one of our foundations. We have made it so, we've made it a cornerstone of a world in which we believe that even the sovereign is subject to the law. In the world that we've built, you can fight the government in a court and you can win. You can demand due process. You can expect that your property, your money, your family, they're all going to be free from arbitrary seizure.

• 6:10Dan Snow?

  But that's as a result of a process that stretches back to the earliest moments of our species. As soon as we had voices to remonstrate with the leader of the pack. And that's a story, it's a battle that remains unfinished today. Magna Carta is something that people return to again and again. Opponents of Henry III, of Emma II, of Richard II, opponents of Charles I, opponents of George II, the American revolutionaries, they were all influenced by Magna Carta. In fact, those American founding fathers specifically incorporated its spirit as they put pen to paper in Philadelphia 250 years ago.

• 6:52Dan Snow?

  Gandhi asked the British for the protections of Magna Carta. Mandela cited it when he was on trial for murder. Its spirit infused those who drafted the UN Declaration of Universal Human Rights.

• 7:07Dan Snow?

  And the story of how all that came to be is as dramatic as any I've ever told on this podcast. It's a story that springs from an England on the brink of civil war, of a feeble king at disastrous defeat in France, a man whose desperation to prove himself on the battlefield turned his nobles against him in a fierce rebellion, of a capital city seized and a monarch left grappling for control, and a standoff on the banks of the Thames that forged the path of our histories. It's an essential story. It's the story of how we normies, how we little people, hold our leaders to account,

• 7:48Dan Snow?

  how we persuade our rulers to exercise restraint, ideally even to regard themselves as bound by law and traditional practices, to treat us with justice. And indeed, it's in Magna Carta that you read the famous line, "To no one will refuse or delay right or justice." Those are the words. That's the idea that people fought and died for 800 years ago, and they still do today. You're listening to Dan Snow's History, and this is the incredible story of Magna Carta.

• 8:33Dan Snow?

  In the decades before Magna Carta, at the end of the 12th century, Western Europe, well, there was a lot of chaos around. There was almost constant war and fragile alliances. The kings wore crowns on their head, but power was not guaranteed by this alone. A monarch who failed to assert himself quickly found his influence slipping into the hands of ambitious nobles, or family members, or local warlords. And this was particularly true in what we call the Angevin Empire, the Plantagenet Empire, the realm that spanned Ireland, England, Wales, and parts of France, ruled over at its height by Henry II and his Queen Eleanor of Accretaine. Theirs was the empire that, when it worked as it should, stretched from the Scottish

• 9:17Dan Snow?

  border to the Pyrenees, from Ireland to the Alps.

• 9:23Dan Snow?

  And in fact, at its height, Henry II commanded more of France than the French king himself. But even Henry had to worry about that elite class of nobles, the barons who stone castles dominated the skyline, the lords who within those castles could command private armies of knights. They were the men whom the king depended on for his armies, for his rule, but they were also men with a fierce streak of independence, who could topple a king or undermine him if they were so inclined. And that streak of independence was exacerbated by the drama that lay at the heart of the Plantagenet family. Henry II's family was plagued by bitter rivalries. He had four sons that

• 10:06Dan Snow?

  survived into adulthood. Henry the Young King, Richard the Lionheart, and Geoffrey of Brittany repeatedly turned against their father and some each other, and they're often in open rebellion, sometimes encouraged by their mother Eleanor. John, the youngest, well, he grew up in the shadow of these larger-than-life figures in a family that was dazzling at its peak, but was often brought down by mistrust and ambition. There's a prologue to this podcast I'm doing now. Well, there's a couple, really. I did one recently on Richard the Lionheart, which I've put in the show notes for you to find. But you also might want to listen to the one on William the Marshal, who played such a key role right throughout this period. But if you don't want to listen to those

• 10:48Dan Snow?

  episodes, then I'll give you the pricey here. John took over the throne from his childless brother Richard in 1199, after Richard was killed or mortally wounded during a siege. He inherited an Angevin empire that was in absolute crisis. The King of France had sought any opportunity to chip away at the lands of the King of England. And it required someone of Richard the Lionheart's charisma and martial abilities to hold it together. Sadly, though, for the Plantagenet family, John was, well, he was not his brother Richard. In fact, he became known as John Lackland, because he hadn't been expected to inherit anything at all from his father Henry. But really, the name ended up as an appropriate royal epithet, because over the years of his rule,

• 11:33Dan Snow?

  He lost a lot of land. From the moment he took the crown, things started to unravel. And I'm joined now by Dr. Michael Livingston. He's going to help me here explain what puts England on the road to Magna Carta. Mike Livingston, great to have you on the podcast.

• 11:49Speaker 04

  Thanks for having me, Dan. This is awesome.

• 11:50Dan Snow?

  Okay, who was the worst king in English history and why was it King John?

• 11:55Speaker 04

  We think of John as being worse than he was, but he was still really bad. That's what it's worth.

• 12:00Dan Snow?

  Poor guy. His dad's a bit of a hero. His mum's a bit of a hero. Henry II, Eleanor of Aquitaine, they have carved out this giant Western European empire. His big brother, Richard, is a total baller, legendary crusader, I mean, just like a hero. And then Richard dies without heirs. Well, tell me about John coming to the throne. How's that all work out?

• 12:21Speaker 04

  You know, Richard, he dies in 1199, rather young. And there's what's sometimes called the first hundred years war, this Angevin-Capetian conflict over like, who's in charge of all these lands in France? And the French kings, the Capetians, well, all the lands in France are ours. But all these, like more than half of the Kingdom of France, as we conceive of it, is at this point held by English. And what are those lands, right? Are those lands now English? Or are they French lands that are being held by the English? And there's a central conflict there. And Richard dies with all of this unresolved. And who's going to be the heir? It appears that as he's kind of going

• 13:01Speaker 04

  down, Richard says his brother should be the heir, John, supposedly, according to John. But John's not the only game in town. Prior to this point, the assumption really would have been that Arthur of Brittany, a young lad, he's the nephew of King Richard, so grandson of Henry II, would have been the sort of designated heir. And you don't have these sort of strict Rules about who comes and goes on the throne like we have now. So Arthur Brittany was a potential claimant and many people thought like the guy who would have been king here. And yeah, at this point, by one sort of scheme of how you designate the king, he should be the guy.

• 13:46Speaker 04

  Richard says it should be John. Either man is facing an amazing opponent, which is Philippe the second of France. And as he has been for generations, essentially, he starts playing these guys off each other. And he says, okay, John, I'm actually going to support Arthur Brittany for the throne of England. So your throne is now subject to question. And Arthur Brittany will support the fact that all these lands on the continent are really French and the English are just holding them. And when that happens, John is in such a weak position already that he kind of doesn't have a lot of cards that he can play. And he ultimately agrees to the Treaty of Le Goulet, which is sort of not a treaty a

• 14:25Speaker 04

  lot of people think of, but it's really important because in this treaty in 1200, John says that those lands, everything except for Gascany, so Normandy, all these other lands in France are really French lands. And I'm only holding them in a kind of feudal relationship with the King of France. Big win for Philippe, big win. And enormous problems back home. The barons are furious that he's done this, but it makes the whole Arthur Brittany thing kind of go away a little bit, but also gives Philippe more cards to play because he can now say, I don't think you're doing what you're supposed to do in this relationship and I can take those lands back, which he then does.

• 15:05Dan Snow?

  So John's already on the back foot. Is he fit to be king? Like, does he have the temperament, the political skills, the military skills to be king in this period?

• 15:13Speaker 04

  This is a really hard question to answer because John, his reputation is so tainted so quickly. And he's working from such a back foot that it's kind of hard to negotiate like what reality was. Was John capable of being a good king? Maybe. I mean, I don't know. I don't think Richard the first was a good king. So there you go. And he's like held up as one of the great kings. And I'm like, he was not a good king for England. I don't know. The idea that John was sort of intrinsically bad, I don't think is quite fair. But at the same time, he's absolutely and incredibly outgunned by being up against Philippe the second. Philippe the second is a fantastic king. And he gets the job done.

• 15:56Dan Snow?

  And that job is he recovers, or he conquers that French land that's being held by the kings of England, either, as you say, in a feudal relationship as kind of dukes of Normandy and dukes of Anjou, or as kings of England. Anyway, that gets resolved pretty quick in the beginning of 13th century because Philippe just blitzkriegs through it, right?

• 16:15Speaker 04

  Now that he has the English king saying, oh, these lands are really French. I'm just holding them. He's got an excuse. Philippe, yeah, comes storming in. It takes some time. The big thing he's really got to take is Chateau Gaillard. And that siege is a long, drawn out siege. Though, once he takes Chateau Gaillard in 1204, that's it. I mean, he just blows right over Rouen, and he's got it all. And now John is in the position of having started off weak, and then makes this treaty to kind of save his skin, loses all this stuff again, right? And he goes from being John Lachland, right? He went John Lachland because of the earlier agreements, how the father had disseminated the lands to the sons. He

• 16:58Speaker 04

  was Lachland. Now everybody's just started calling him Soft Sword with the, you know, wink, wink implication of what that means, that he's got a soft sword, this fellow, which is fantastic.

• 17:09Dan Snow?

  Can you imagine being younger brother to the Lionheart, and your nickname is Soft Sword? I mean, it's too much. It's too much. Okay, so how does he respond? He's determined to prove his sword has got steel in it. And he tries to build up a war chest, right? He wants to reconquer that land.

• 17:24Speaker 04

  Yeah, you're getting money. And well, where are you going to get the money from? Well, I can't get it from these lands that have been taken. I got to get it from back home. And that means getting it from the barons. In England, and this is the source of the major conflict is him trying to get money to go back. And always that's running afoul of the barons, like, we've given you enough money and you haven't used it. Well, why would we want to give you more? In addition to that, he's also present in England in a way that kings of England hadn't been for a while, right? Richard did not spend hardly any time in England. England was just something he was using to fund his continental empire. John doesn't have that anymore. He's there

• 18:05Speaker 04

  and he's now actively getting money and actively engaging in the politics of the barons and nobody likes that.

• 18:14Dan Snow?

  Let's just quickly look at the way that he's raising money because he's taking advantage of sort of customary ways of raising money, but he's kind of turning the screws, right? He's just perhaps not unlike Charles the first in the 17th century. He's riding his prerogatives as hard as he can.

• 18:28Speaker 04

  He really is not inventing new ways of doing this. He's using the old mechanisms, but he's just trying to squeeze more out of the system, right? The system has given, you know, X percent that he's like, well, let's just dial that up, right? You know, let's crank it up because I need it. If I'm going to get these lands back, I need an army and I'm going to need to have the logistics to transport that army and feed that army. I need the money. And there is this kind of growing concern that even if we give you the money, are you going to do anything good with it? Right? Is this going to lead to anything good? And that struggle is valid, I think. I mean, I think John is not a terrific military leader. He's, I don't think as bad as people kind of want to picture

• 19:12Speaker 04

  him, but do you think the barons probably got a little bit of a sense of the wind? We give this guy a clean check, he's going to probably waste a lot of it. And that then causes an initial breach between the crown and subjects that then gets even more complicated with what happens with the church.

• 19:30Dan Snow?

  To make a long story short, King John clashed with, well, with everyone but the Church in 1205 in particular, over the appointment of the new Archbishop of Canterbury. John rejected the Pope's choice, Stephen Langton, and Pope Innocent III retaliated by closing the Churches of England, suspending the sacraments and excommunicating John calling for him to be deposed. Now, this is a PR nightmare that John made worse by escalating. He seized lots of the Church's money, which infuriated the Pope still further, but after a while, he backtracked in a desperate attempt to convince the Pope to come alongside him as an ally. He was in trouble.

• 20:13Dan Snow?

  In a dramatic and probably humiliating act of submission, he accepted Stephen Langton as Archbishop, and he ended up ceremonially surrendering England and France to the Pope as papal fiefs, territories under the official spiritual rule of the Pope. As I said, the whole thing was a PR, well, in the real world, strategic disaster for John. It really solidified in people's minds that he was at best weak and malleable, but at worst, a sort of deviant heretic. If we scoot forward to 1212 now, John's in a position where he's unpopular with the English barons. He's lost his lands in France, including Normandy. His relationship with the Church is clinging by a thread. He's looking for a way to retrench, to build his power, to prove that he's the kingdom

• 20:55Dan Snow?

  England needs, and so he decides to roll the dice. He decides to gamble. He's going to try and recoup all his forfeited family lands in France from the French king. And that's when we get probably the most important battle in English history that you've never heard of.

• 21:11Speaker 04

  This is such a massively important battle, and most people don't know about it. It is incredible. You know, what John realizes, to his credit, and again, I'm not a John truther, John's a bad guy. But to his credit, he realizes, look, I'm not the only one who has something against Philippe the Second of France. Philippe the Second of France is pushing against kind of everybody around him and really, really kind of throwing his weight around. And to this point, nobody's been able to stand up to him. And John starts putting together a sort of Avengers team here, if you will, of folks who don't like Philippe. And let's all get together. And we may have

• 21:52Speaker 04

  differences between us, but you know who we really hate? That guy. Let's get that guy. And in particular, he gets a deal made between himself, Otto the Fourth, who's one of the two claimants to be the Holy Roman Emperor, Philippe is supporting his rival, Ferrand of Flanders, who is the Count of Flanders, under the auspices of the French King, Renaud de Boulogne, a whole bunch of people in the Low Countries, a whole bunch of leaders in the Low Countries. Let's all get together, band together, and let's get Philippe. And this leads to the Battle of Bouvines in 1214, which John's not actually there. So he funds most of this, arranges most

• 22:34Speaker 04

  of this, but isn't actually at the fight, because the idea is, we'll take sort of a pincer effect of invasions to really mess up Philippe's intention to defend against this. So John actually invades from the opposite side, from the south and west, invading towards Paris. And the plan is that while he's doing that, all the rest of this crew is going to invade from the northeast. And that's kind of like pincer Philippe. And unfortunately, the rest of the team doesn't get together in time.

• 23:08Dan Snow?

  In the southwest of France, King John landed at La Rochelle and began his advance. But the decisive clash took place far away. It took place in the north, in Flanders, where so many decisive moments in European military history do take place. It was on a hot Sunday afternoon. The French king's army were returning eastward from a raid into Flanders. They crossed a bridge at the village of Bouvines, just outside modern Lille. And the Imperial Allied Army, led by Holy Roman Emperor Otto the Fourth, and Count Ferrand of Flanders, and William de Longspay, he was in command of the English forces, they emerged suddenly from the forest of the south. And there, in the fields by the bridge, the battle is fought.

• 23:50Dan Snow?

  Brutal intimate combat, hand-to-hand slaughter. Knights using heavy lances for that initial charge, shattering them against enemy shields, then drawing swords, maces, axes for close combat. Infantry meanwhile, fighting with their spears and their pikes, archers with their crossbows. At one desperate moment, the King of France was hauled down, saved by the heroism of his bodyguard. For four or five hours, the fight rages in the summer heat. Steel on steel, there's mud and blood and chaos, but in the end, French discipline and cohesion carry the day. The Count of Flandre is taken prisoner, so was William Longspain. The Holy Roman Emperor, Otto, flees. Several hundred mercenaries from Brabant are butchered after the surrender.

• 24:33Dan Snow?

  The coalition hastily stitched together only days before, just shatters in defeat. Against all odds, King Philippe of France has snatched a crushing victory. When word of the disaster reaches John in the south, well, the plan is over, it collapses. He disappears back to the coast. His lands in France are now certainly lost. Any prestige he had left utterly destroyed. And in England, the barons who bore the cost of this failed war began to plot rebellion. This is just disastrous for John, right? It's the second time he's lost a pile of money and has been completely bested on the battlefield.

• 25:17Speaker 04

  He's taken all this money that he's squeezed out of all these guys, and he's put it into this grand alliance, "This is gonna happen, this is gonna do it, guys." And it utterly fails. Not only does he kind of fail to get his objectives, the other crew all fail, and Philippe comes out of this stronger than ever. He's now Philippe Augustus, which is a pretty good title to be getting, and he's now got his thumb on everybody in Europe. Yeah, John is absolutely hat in hand when he comes back to England, and has the temerity when he comes back to be like, "All right, well, let's start getting some money. Like, I'll get them in the fourth quarter." Like, "No, you will not, man, this is done."

• 25:57Dan Snow?

  He's right where I want him. He's right where I want him.

• 25:59Speaker 04

  They'll never suspect it now. Yeah, the barons are just furious, absolutely furious at this. Like, this is the last straw, and essentially go straight into rebellion, right? The First Baron Revolt pops right out of this.

• 26:16Dan Snow?

  Moral Magna Carta coming up after this.

• 26:26Dan Snow?

  This episode is brought to you by TikTok. I never thought about the history of coffee. You make it, you drink it, nothing more to it. Then I've had a TikTok video about how people in the 1700s would pour their coffee into saucers to let it cool before drinking it. I love that sort of discovery, a detail, but suddenly you're imagining how people lived and drank and socialised. Now I wonder what will baffle historians about us. Mugs. It's a ceramic vessel, but crucially, it has a handle. Well, that's the joy of TikTok, folks. You look for one thing and find yourself somewhere completely different. Your next discovery is waiting on TikTok. Learn more at tiktok.com/discovermore. This episode is brought to you by Decagon.

• 27:11Dan Snow?

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• 27:56Dan Snow?

  across every conversation, helping to power millions of conversations every day. Ready to transform your customer support? Go to decagon.ai/dansnow to see what Decagon can do for your team. That's decagon.ai/dansnow. Check Decagon out at decagon.ai/dansnow.

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• 28:50Speaker 02

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• 29:32Speaker 02

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• 29:48Dan Snow?

  Our spring 1215, John's failures are manifest. They piled high. He'd lost Normandy in his French lands. He'd been utterly smashed at Bouvin the previous summer. There was no hope of recovery. English barons had been bled dry by John's relentless taxation to fund his wars and had suffered from his personal acts of cruelty. They're angry and they're disillusioned. The barons met in January 1215 and they swore an oath to resist the king and raise their banners in rebellion. At first, John seems to have the advantage. He has loyal mercenaries. He's got the backing of the Pope. The rebels attacked Northampton but failed to capture the castle. And without a secure base, their uprising looks like it's going to collapse. But do they turn back? Do they give up?

• 30:32Dan Snow?

  No, they do not. They do not. They risk all. They dial it up to 11. They set their sights on an even bigger prize, the biggest of them all, London. On the 17th of May 1215, the rebel army approaches the capital. And Londoners, merchants, aldermen, citizens, they'd long resented John's heavy taxation and arbitrary justice. Londoners always had a slightly uneasy relationship with the King of England, and they threw open their gates. They took great pleasure in assisting the barons to enter the city. And so the barons faced little resistance. Indeed, the chroniclers suggest it was a sort of popular uprising. There were people surging into the streets and attacking royal officials and welcoming the rebels as liberators. This is a proper disaster for John.

• 31:15Dan Snow?

  London, his most important city, now in rebel baron hands. The wealthiest city in the kingdom, gone. A king without his capital is weak. And it's particularly valuable for the barons, symbolically but also logistically. They've got a secure base they can negotiate from. And in the days that follow, more and more nobles desert John and join the rebel cause. The rebellion is spreading, and John now faces the very realistic prosperity of civil war. He agrees to meet with the barons in a meadow outside the capital to negotiate a way forward. One that doesn't involve full-scale war, lots of bloodshed. That's why in the summer of 1215, the two sides met in a field in Runnymede, now just

• 31:58Dan Snow?

  outside the commuter town of Staines, on the banks of the Thames, in a standoff that would ultimately produce one of the most important documents in the English-speaking world. I followed in their footsteps. I headed to Runnymede, and there I met medieval historian Dan Jones, who picks up the story.

• 32:16Speaker 06

  All right, Dan, pay you a picture. What was this place like in 1215? Well, in 1215, I mean, the landscape broadly the same. You've got Coopers Hill over that side, and you've got the River Thames, which is just beyond the A308 here. You didn't have Heathrow Airport in the distance, obviously, you do now. But this was a meadow, and it's flooded by the River Thames, so it can be quite boggy underfoot. So when it gets wet, it gets really, really wet. And that's quite important in the story of Magna Carta, and why it was chosen as the negotiation venue. There's a school of thought that says this is a good place to meet if you don't want things to escalate into a battle, because if this ground gets wet, it's way too marshy to be fighting a battle. Presumably, the Thames is also very important, right? That's a great artery of England at this point.

• 33:00Speaker 06

  Yeah, so you've got upriver that way is Windsor. That's where the King's Castle was. Downriver that way is Staines, which happens to be where I live. And that's where the barons were. Now, that's not random. Staines had a bridge, it was called Ad Pontes in Roman times, and that bridge was one of only a few on this stretch of the Thames. So it was possible around here to get from one side of the Thames to the other. It was possible for the king to get from his castle here by boat, and the barons to get here by horse or by boat as well. So it was a good convenient meeting point. There's more to it as well. This was neutral territory. It was land that was owned by Westminster Abbey. It's not baronial land, and it's not royal land either. So it's also a place where there are four counties that all come together:

• 33:44Speaker 06

  Surrey, Middlesex, Berkshire and Buckinghamshire. So it's really a kind of liminal space. It's on the edge between a whole bunch of different jurisdictions. There's some thought that the name Runnymede, Ronnymed, comes from an old English phrase meaning the meadow for taking counsel or discussion. That's not totally certain. It may be given that name because of the Magna Carta negotiations.

• 34:08Dan Snow?

  And what had it been like that June? Are people setting up camps, or are they all just coming here for that key day?

• 34:12Speaker 06

  Well, no, we know from a chronicler's account that the barons and the king's men came armed, and they set up tents. So you can sort of imagine, I mean, this is a high-level political negotiation, but there are tents everywhere. It's a sort of cross between, imagine Glastonbury times Davos, that sort of thing. So you've had pavilions, tents here, little breakout groups discussing all sorts of aspects of the detail of Magna Carta. Really what was at issue was whether the barons could accept this deal or not. So you've got lots of different groups, all discussing different points within the agreement. The king coming down, he comes down at least three times from Windsor here to Runnymede by boat. So when he pitched up, that would have been a bit of a hullabaloo, I think.

• 34:58Dan Snow?

  It's Dr Michael Livingston again.

• 35:00Speaker 04

  As luck would have it, the person put in charge of negotiations is the Archbishop of Canterbury. The rebels know that he doesn't like the king, so he might be on our side and help us out, which he basically is. But from the king's standpoint, well, he's part of the papacy and I'm in good with the Pope now, so that'll work as a negotiator.

• 35:19Dan Snow?

  They're there for about a week, but for the best, maybe five days or something?

• 35:22Speaker 04

  Yeah, well, the agreement is struck in five days. Now, there's been some preliminary work to get to that point, so that when the the barons show up, they're able to present a list of demands. It's called the Articles of the Barons. We still have a copy of this, which is, here's all the stuff we're mad about. It's not the Magna Carta yet. It's not that formal document. Those five days are the certain negotiations to move it from, we don't like how you look, to something that actually works better as a formal charter. And Archbishop of Canterbury is very important in that. Stephen Langton is very important in that. But it's, yeah, the 15th of June, we've got an agreement. We've got what is now called the Magna Carta, kind of nailed down, and oaths are sworn, copies are made

• 36:04Speaker 04

  on the 19th, and away they go, hither and yon.

• 36:08Dan Snow?

  What's in there, Mike? 63 clauses? What's in there?

• 36:11Speaker 04

  The Magna Carta, the Great Charter, this amazing document that has, has got an amazing place in history, and yet hardly anybody knows what's in it these days. It has a lot of protections that are promised in it, for the Church, for the Barons. This is very much a, you've gone the wrong way, King John. It's very directed at him. We're going to get protections to the Church, protections to the Barons. There's gestures towards judicial reform, protections from false imprisonment, from delayed trials, for instance. You can kind of see in it a lot of what John had been doing, right? John had been taking taxes, you know, more than they thought he should be taking. So we got rules in there, very

• 36:56Speaker 04

  important. We got rules about how much you can tax us and under what conditions. And it also outlines mechanisms for baronial consent of the king's acts. So you now have sort of written up, we get to have a say. So not necessarily in everything, but we get to have a say. Magna Carta becomes unique, certainly in legend.

• 37:21Dan Snow?

  This is always seen as a huge milestone. There is a clause in here that's bonkers, isn't it? The 1215 version of Magna Carta, which says that there's a committee of barons who will keep an eye on this. And in the event of it not being adhered to, they will lead a rebellion. You know, so it legitimizes rebellion against the king. That's pretty radical.

• 37:39Speaker 04

  Clause 61, the security clause. Yeah, this is the thing that is shocking, I would say, about the Magna Carta. Pretty much everything in it, you can be like, oh, that was in this Charter of Liberties. That was already done over in Europe somewhere. None of it is beyond the pale or surprising. But yeah, that clause 61, most agreements like this have some kind of security clause, right? Meant to enforce the agreement, right? But the way that this is constructed, as you just said, by creating this group of barons who have a direct and really heavy handed ability to restrict and control the king's actions. I mean, it's a recipe for disaster is what it is. It's an absolute recipe for disaster. And then in fact, yeah, all goes sideways.

• 38:27Dan Snow?

  Listen to Dan Snow's history, Talking Magna Carta, more coming up.

• 38:38Speaker 02

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• 39:21Speaker 02

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• 39:27Speaker 05

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• 40:07Dan Snow?

  Throughout the negotiations, King John obviously just tried to reel out of everything. He doesn't really want to be there. He certainly doesn't approve what he's being asked to sign up to in Magna Carta, especially this security clause. The whole time, he's writing letters to Pope Innocent III, complaining that the barons are trying to make him agree to something he doesn't want to agree to. He's signing up under duress, and he doesn't plan to stick to it. And the Pope repays his new servant, John, by declaring the whole thing null and void. Magna Carta, so celebrated by subsequent generations, in its first iteration only lasts a few weeks. The barons are furious, obviously. They resume their hostile takeover. England collapses into the First Barons' War.

• 40:51Dan Snow?

  John marches hither and thither. He targets the estates and castles of rebel lords. He makes a pretty good go of it. The rebels realize they can't defeat John alone, so they seek outside help. Shockingly, they turn to King Philip of France's son, Louis, who in 1216 sails to England with an army. Louis quickly captures Winchester, much of the southeast. It isn't long until Louis has control over half of the English kingdom. He hangs out in London, where the barons proclaim him King of England, although he's never crowned. But then the rebel cause takes a major hit because in October 1216, King John did the best thing he could possibly do and died unexpectedly. He's about 49 years old. His son, Henry III, is just nine years old and he takes the throne.

• 41:36Dan Snow?

  And the protector, his protector, the Regent of England, the Guardian of England, is of course, you'll know from listening to my recent podcast, the seasoned legend, the greatest knight in Europe, William the Marshal. His military reputation and his political shrewdness helps to win back many of the barons from Prince Louis. Remember, folks, that my two-hour mega explainer, my record-breaking two-hour podcast on William the Marshal is in the show notes. It will tell you why the marshal is truly the goat, no question. But for the purposes of this story, I'll just quickly say the marshal curries favor with the barons by reissuing a revised Magna Carta in November 1216. He removes some of the more radical elements, but he keeps its spirit of reform. And that gesture works.

• 42:20Dan Snow?

  It wins over some barons, but also it breathes new life into this Charter of Liberties. Now, the war will drag on for another year or so. In 1217, the marshal won a crushing victory at the Battle of Lincoln, a French fleet's destroyed off sandwich, and Prince Louis abandons his claim and returns to France to tail between his legs. Magna Carta, though, reissued again by William the Marshal in 1217, and again in 1225 by Henry III himself. These reissues proclaim the freedom of the English Church, the right to justice, a fair trial for all free men, and seeks to limit the king's absolute power through the requirement

• 43:00Dan Snow?

  for consent when it comes to raising money, and calls for establishment of a council so that they can advise and guide the king and ensure that the king follows the rules. It's really these versions, the 1217 and then the 1225 versions, that are the foundations of the rule of law in England and for much of the English-speaking world today. As I mentioned at the start, I went to see an original in the National Archives in Kew. It's under the care of Dr Jess Nelson, Head of Collections at the Archives. A big moment. Wow, thank you very much. So that's in very good condition, I'd say.

• 43:35Speaker 07

  It's not bad for 800 years old.

• 43:39Dan Snow?

  So this is 1225. Were lots of these sent out, I mean, do we think, to sort of counties' religious establishments?

• 43:48Speaker 07

  Absolutely. So we have lots of evidence for Magna Carta being sent out all around the kingdom to be proclaimed by the, in particular by the sheriffs, the king's local officials in the counties, and bringing people together to read them so that they would be familiar with the contents. Of course, we wouldn't expect everyone to remember every single clause. You know, it's a lengthy document, that would be impossible. But I think that there is certainly evidence, we have evidence, that people kind of understood the gist of it, and they knew that the document existed. There was also an onus on clergymen to make sure that their flocks were familiar with Magna Carta, because there was a pronouncement from the church that infringement of Magna Carta could result in excommunication. So in order to avoid infringing it accidentally, you had to know what was in it.

• 44:28Dan Snow?

  So this is 10 years after the original Magna Carta. Why is it being reissued?

• 44:33Speaker 07

  So the 1215 Magna Carta, as I'm sure you've covered, came out of the very individual circumstances of John's reign. And it was, in a lot of ways, kind of forced upon John as a bit of a peace treaty to try and prevent a civil war between John and his barons. And in that, it was a failure. The 1225 Magna Carta is very different circumstances. Henry III is king. He's still a young man, he's still within his minority, but he's beginning to take a more active role in government. So he's 17 when the 1225 Magna Carta is issued. And it's issued under his own great seal. So it's a real statement from Henry III about his kingship and about the way that he wants to rule, that he's going to be more conciliar than his father, that he's going to be, in effect, a better king than his father, although, of course, he doesn't say that in the document, and that he wants to kind of take the barons with him.

• 45:18Speaker 07

  I mean, the exact kind of circumstances, he needs money, as medieval kings very often did. His French lands have been invaded, and he needs to raise money to try and recapture those. So he grants Magna Carta in exchange for a taxation, in effect.

• 45:31Dan Snow?

  But he's not at the tip of a spear. This is him saying, "I'm graciously issuing this."

• 45:36Speaker 07

  Absolutely, he's not under duress, he's very clear about that. One of the lines of Magna Carta, it says that he's issuing this from his spontaneous goodwill. So he's doing this of his own volition. He's not under pressure in the way that his father was.

• 45:48Dan Snow?

  So the words are different in this Magna Carta to the 1215 one?

• 45:52Speaker 07

  Yes, so there's lots of small differences and then there's some sort of big differences as well. Obviously, it's issued under Henry's name. He talks about how it's being issued from his own goodwill. It's addressed to everyone, whereas the 1215 Magna Carta is addressed to free men. So that's quite a big difference. One big omission is the security clauses, it's called. So this idea that 25 of the leading barons would effectively be put to kind of check the power of the king. So that's gone.

• 46:18Dan Snow?

  That you're actually allowed, rebellion is legitimate.

• 46:21Speaker 07

  Exactly, in, you know, if you're violating the times of Magna Carta. So that's gone.

• 46:25Dan Snow?

  So that's gone.

• 46:25Speaker 07

  Absolutely, so that's a really big thing. And a new inclusion, which wasn't in the 1215 original or in the later ones before 1225, is a really long witness list. So it's got a wonderful witness list of the great and the good who are witnessing this charter that Henry is issuing. And that includes the leading secular and the leading ecclesiastical men of the kingdom. And what you see in that witness list, which is kind of really telling, that's down here at the bottom, yeah. Which is really fascinating, is you get people witnessing the charter who were on John's side, but you also get people witnessing who were anti-John, including Robert Fitzwalter, who was the leading rebel baron. So it's a real kind of coming together of people who'd been on opposing sides not very long before. And they're all witnessing together, there's a lot of goodwill for Henry's reign.

• 47:08Dan Snow?

  So this is almost an expression of the entire ruling elite, king, nobles, church, coming together to say, "This is how we all think this country should be ruled."

• 47:17Speaker 07

  So you can absolutely see it as a coming together of people wanting Henry III's reign to be different and wanting it to work.

• 47:24Dan Snow?

  Although today, nearly all of Magna Carta's original 63 clauses have been repealed or superseded by subsequent legislation and have effectively fallen to disuse, the principles, the ethos of it, remains. Today, the Charter is important less for the direct legal force of its clauses than for what it means, its symbolic power. It embodies an idea that no one should be punished without the judgment of the law, that justice can't be just bought and sold, or denied or delayed, you've got to be able to access judgement, seek redress, and that essential belief that the king, the government, the president, whoever it is, they are subject to the law, they do not stand above the law. And that

• 48:06Dan Snow?

  is an idea that around the world, people are still fighting for today. Here's Dan Jones again.

• 48:13Speaker 06

  It's definitely important in and of itself, and it is this like political puzzle they get a stage closer to solving, which is how do you make the king behave himself?

• 48:23Dan Snow?

  So far, what they're wrestling with here is what we're all wrestling with, and we've been wrestling with since the beginning of time, is how do you, how do you try and restrain those who have all this power over us? What can we do about it? Ask normies?

• 48:36Speaker 06

  Right, right, right. It's the, it's the big question. You know, you need people to run society, you need governments, you need, if it's going to be a monarch, you need kings, you need these offices, otherwise you basically have sort of tribal anarchy at best. But once you put in place kingship institutions, you're still reliant on the, effectively, the good faith of the people in office. Here's the thing that Magna Carta is really trying to wrestle with. It's not necessarily so much that the king is riding roughshod over the law, although he is, it's that he's riding roughshod over conventions, over things that have been taken as read within normal political operations. And that's

• 49:20Speaker 06

  what's so difficult about what they're trying to do, because a convention, a sort of standard of good behaviour, is the thing that really makes constitutions work and makes politics work.

• 49:33Dan Snow?

  Well, folks, that brings us to the end of this episode of Dan's History on Magna Carta. It's a subject very close to my heart. It's a subject that feels important today as the rule of law is challenged on every continent. Something, I'm afraid, that feels more important than it did when I first studied it back in the 1990s. In a changing world, Magna Carta is a fixed point, a polar star.

• 49:59Dan Snow?

  Thank you so much to my guests, Dr. Michael Livingston, Dan Jones, Dr. Jess Nelson. If you want more on Magna Carta, which of course you do, you can check out our two-part documentary on our History Hit TV player, which features me and Mike Livingston. And you can sign up to watch that in the show notes too, lots in the show notes today. Check it all out. Thanks for listening, folks. See you next time.

• 50:34Speaker 05

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• 51:04Speaker 02

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• 51:45Speaker 02

  Subject to credit approval. Apple Card, issued by Goldman Sachs Bank USA, Salt Lake City Branch. Terms and more at applecard.com.

• 51:55Dan Snow?

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