Magna Carta

MAGNA CARTA was issued by King John in June 1215, under compulsion from his barons. From the time of its issue it became a symbol to barons and people alike, and king after king, throughout the middle ages, was expected to confirm it. Its clauses were regarded with veneration long after they were out of date, and men read into them meanings which would have surprised their original drafters. Seventeenth century lawyers, ignorant of the law of the early 13th century, knowing nothing of the conditions of the time, saw in the charter a solemn grant to the people of England of rights which the Stuart kings were withhold ing. Trial by jury, the principle of habeas corpus, the right of parliament to control taxation, all these were thought to have been secured by Magna Carta. Even the great historians of the last century wrote of the charter with more enthusiasm than judgment. Modern criticism has done much to put it in its rightful per spective, but many writers have gone too far in their destructive criticism. It has often been suggested that the charter was drawn up in the interests of the barons alone, and that other clauses were inserted merely to attract support. There is an element of truth in the charge. The barons were naturally more interested in defin ing their own position than in securing advantages for the bor oughs, or freedom of election for the Church. That the king him self, that contemporary chroniclers, that foreign observers, should describe the charter as an agreement between king and baronage was almost inevitable, for the barons supplied the motive force by which the king was brought to terms. Their relations with the king were the shifting sand on which feudal society was built, and the charter of necessity dealt at greater length with them. But an examination of the history of John's reign, of the circumstances leading to the issue of the charter, of the charter itself and the other documents which belong to the period of negotiation, show that those who drafted the charter took pains to secure through it, not only baronial demands, but administrative reforms.

The relations between king and baronage had never been pre cisely defined. The charter issued by Henry I. at his coronation covered only a small part of the field, and did not name the amount of the relief nor deal with the military service due from the king's tenants. The legal changes of the 12th century Meant that the king's court had more power than ever before, while the baronial courts were losing business to it. On the whole the barons favoured the new methods of procedure. They were willing to submit to the firm rule of a king who should keep the under standings that governed their relations with him. So long as their reliefs were reasonable, so long as the king behaved with reason with regard to his rights of marriage, did not take excessive scut ages, or insist on too much military service, they would not rebel. They might and did complain of acts of oppression, of the rigidity of the forest laws, but there had been no general antagonism.

between Henry II. and any class of his subjects. Richard I. pre pared the way for the charter by his continual demands for money. His crusade meant a heavy drain at the moment of his accession ; his ransom meant another extortion, four years afterwards ; and then his war with Philip of France began. But the country was well goyerned by the civil service created by Henry II.

The Grievances Against John.

John inherited the fruits of his brother's policy. The possessions of his house in France were lost to Philip Augustus. Continual and increasingly heavy scutages, accompanied by fines ne transfretet taken from barons who did not accompany the king on his campaigns, irritated the baronial and knightly class, particularly as Normandy seemed permanently lost. The great inquest of service of 1212 increased their unrest by suggesting that the king intended to exact all that was his due, and a scutage at three marks on the knight's fee for the expedition which ended in disaster, in 1214, determined their opposition. The Church was alienated by its treatment during the Interdict, when its property was taken into lay hands and its rev enues went to the royal treasury. The quarrel with the Church reacted on the general administration. The last eyre of John's reign was that of 1208; the exactions of local officers, therefore, went uncorrected, and the pleas which should have come before the judges went unheard. This collapse of the judicial adminis tration must have done more than anything else to bring the masses of men over to the baronial side. Royal rights with regard to purveyance (q.v.), bridge and castle building had been stretched to the utmost by John's servants, and there existed no machinery to enforce upon royal officials payment for the food, carts, or timber which they took for the king's service. Distrusting his barons, John relied on mercenaries, and rewarded them with posi tions in the local government of England. They cared only for the king's interests and nothing for the welfare of their shires. Against John many men desired vengeance for personal reasons. William de Braiose was driven into exile, his wife and son starved to death because they knew that John himself had murdered his nephew, Arthur. It was unsafe for contemporary chroniclers to tell too much of the scandals of John's private life. But there seems no doubt that the baronial leader, Robert fitz Walter, wished to avenge his daughter, possibly the daughter that another rebel, Geof frey, earl of Essex, had married. Many barons had been forced to pay far higher reliefs than had been customary. John had tried to forestall active measures against him by demanding hostages from all prominent barons. The appointment, on the eve of John's departure for his last foreign expedition, of Peter des Roches, bishop of Winchester, to the justiciarship vacated by the death of Geoffrey fitz Peter was a further grievance, for Peter was before everything, the king's man.