iPaulina

A 20-minute drive along an un-trafficked motorway wouldn’t have been so bad if it hadn’t been for a rather terrible bout of car sickness; so, I sat there, swallowing pills and staring out of the window at undulating hills and seas of cars. It was just off the M25 when I saw a sign: ‘Site of the Magna Carta’, in swirly letters resembling a Blackadder FTC font. I blinked at it, then the unassuming plain of grass it signposted. It was adorned not even by a tree or a squirrel, with bits of mud exposed to non-existent sun. There weren’t even any tourists armed with white take-away boxes of too-oily fish and chips and I-heart-London T-shirts; we drove past the site seamlessly. Yet, we don’t drive past the Magna Carta in everyday life. Instead, we choose to go on and on about how the Magna Carta changed the course of British justice, about how it is essential to our present lives. The fact that this article exists is proof of how much it has permeated our society. 

The Magna Carta was indeed signed in Runneymede, half-way between Windsor and Staines, in the ‘rather warm’ month of June. It came as a result of growing discontent amongst barons with their unpopular king, King John. Although there are accounts of King John being fair and generous, he was a terrible military leader who lost great swathes of England’s territory in mainland Europe, namely Normandy and Anjou, to the French king. In an economy almost entirely dependent on agriculture, and a society structured by feudalism (where land meant power), military failures were especially detrimental. Meanwhile, military successes increased national pride, secured the support of nobles hoping to gain more land, and meant that the ruler was lauded as brave and warrior-like: Richard I, successful in war, was known as the ‘Lionheart’. John, his brother, contented himself with the less appealing epithet of ‘Lackland’; however, he took the maxim ‘never give up’ a little too seriously. He continued to wage war against France, attempting to regain the land he had lost. These military expeditions called for military expenditure, funded through taxation. King John raised taxes on everybody in his kingdom, but it was the barons who had the most voice to protest, which they were more than ready to use.

There had been conflict between the barons and King John hitherto. The latter, firmly believing in the divine right of kings, felt the barons had too much power, while the barons thought the king was excluding them from decision-making; taxation was but a catalyst to the build-up of tension. The king sensed the barons beginning to prepare for a rebellion in the North, but, in light of his military weakness, he did not fight them. Instead, he met them on that very field in Runneymede and signed the treaty this article is centred on: the Magna Carta.

Clauses in the Magna Carta that are still relevant today include one on the freedom of the English Church and another on the privileges of towns such as the city of London. They are not thoroughly grand or monumental, unless allowing ‘all ancient liberties and customs’ is a symbol of growing tolerance for different cultures? A bit of a stretch. There is one clause that we continue to parrot today that perhaps you will recognise: ‘No freeman shall be taken, imprisoned, disseised, outlawed, banished, or in any way destroyed, nor will We proceed against or prosecute him, except by the lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land’. In other words, people have to be properly tried; they cannot simply be seized by anyone, not even the king. This clause is often lauded as the foundation of the legal justice system, and it would seem to be the first example in English history in which everyone is given a right to defend themselves. Unfortunately, the word freeman has acquired a sort of double meaning over time. Medieval peasants were, given the almost forced nature of their labour, not considered freemen; therefore, ninety percent of the population would have been completely unaffected by the clause we so cherish.