The Great Charter

The meadow lay flat and green beside the River Thames, between Windsor and Staines. In June 1215, it was crowded with tents, horses and armed men.

On one side was King John of England, with his advisers. On the other were the barons, the great landowners of the kingdom, who had rebelled against him. Between them, clerks bent over long sheets of parchment, writing carefully in Latin with goose-feather pens.

The meadow was called Runnymede. And the agreement made there would become one of the most famous documents in the world: Magna Carta, the Great Charter.

A king in trouble

John had become king in 1199. He was clever and hardworking, but many of his subjects distrusted him.

In 1204 he lost Normandy, the rich lands in France that English kings had held for generations. Determined to win them back, he spent years raising money, and he squeezed it out of his barons in every way he could, with heavy taxes and huge fines. He seized lands and castles, and sometimes took the sons of nobles as hostages to make sure their fathers stayed loyal. People felt he used the law as a weapon, punishing whoever he pleased.

He also quarrelled with the Pope over who should be Archbishop of Canterbury. For several years, church services across England were largely stopped, and John himself was excommunicated.

Then, in 1214, his great campaign to win back his French lands ended in defeat. He came home with no victory and no money.

Rebellion

For many barons, it was too much. In May 1215, a group of them renounced their loyalty to the king. They marched on London, and the city opened its gates to them.

John could not defeat them quickly. So, through messengers, the two sides began to negotiate. On about 15 June 1215, they met at Runnymede, and the king accepted the terms that became Magna Carta. Over the following days, the barons renewed their oaths of loyalty, and copies of the charter were made and sent out across the country.

Despite the famous paintings, King John did not sign it. Agreements like this were sealed, with the king's great seal pressed into wax and attached to the parchment.

What it said

Magna Carta is long, and most of it is about the problems of its own time: how much a baron's heir should pay to inherit his lands, the rights of widows, the removal of fish weirs from rivers, the use of forests, and the standard measures for wine, ale and corn.

But a few of its promises reached much further.

In one famous clause, the king promised that no free man would be arrested, imprisoned, stripped of his property, outlawed or exiled, except by the lawful judgement of his equals or by the law of the land. In the next, he promised that he would not sell justice to anyone, and would not refuse or delay it.

The great idea behind these words was simple, and very powerful. The king was not above the law. He had to follow it too.

Another clause set up a council of twenty-five barons, with the power to take action against the king if he broke his promises.

Failure

The peace did not last. Neither side trusted the other. Within weeks, John asked the Pope to cancel the charter, and in August 1215 the Pope declared it invalid. England fell into civil war, and the rebel barons even invited a French prince, Louis, to come and take the throne.

Then, in October 1216, King John fell ill and died. His son, Henry, was only nine years old.

A charter that would not die

The men governing England for the young King Henry III did something surprising. To win back the support of the barons, they reissued Magna Carta in his name, in 1216, again in 1217, and in a final version in 1225. Some clauses were dropped and others changed, but the heart of it remained. The 1225 charter became part of English law.

Over the centuries, kings were asked again and again to confirm it. In the 1600s, English lawyers who opposed the power of the Stuart kings held it up as proof of ancient liberties. English settlers carried its ideas to America, where they helped to shape the United States Constitution and its Bill of Rights. In the twentieth century its spirit was remembered when the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was written.

It is important to be honest about its limits. In 1215, most people in England were unfree peasants, and Magna Carta offered them very little. Its makers were powerful men protecting their own interests. Yet its words were written in a way that later generations could claim for everyone.

Four copies of the 1215 charter survive. Two are in the British Library in London, one in Lincoln Castle, kept by Lincoln Cathedral, and one in Salisbury Cathedral. Of all its clauses, only three are still part of the law of England today, including the promise that no one will be denied justice.

At Runnymede, the meadow is still green and quiet beside the river. It is a strange thing to stand there and think that an agreement which failed within a few months could still matter more than eight hundred years later.

Want to read more?

David Carpenter's Magna Carta includes the full text in English with a clear explanation of every clause. J. C. Holt's Magna Carta is the classic history, and the British Library's Magna Carta: Law, Liberty, Legacy is a beautifully illustrated guide.