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The Magna Carta (“Great Charter”) of 1215 was one of the most important documents in the history of constitutional government. Issued by King John of England at Runnymede on June 15, 1215, under pressure from his rebellious barons, the Magna Carta set out a series of principles — the rule of law, the protection of the rights of free men, the limitation of royal taxation, the right to due process — that would shape the development of English constitutional government and influence political thought throughout the Western world. The Magna Carta was reissued and confirmed many times in the following centuries, and it became a symbol of the rule of law against arbitrary royal power.
See the article above; the modern constitutional reputation of the charter is treated separately from the medieval text.
Causes of the Magna Carta
The causes of the Magna Carta are rooted in the long conflict between King John and his barons, and in the broader conflict between royal power and feudal privilege in medieval England. John had come to the throne in 1199, and he had quickly alienated many of his subjects through a series of military failures, heavy taxation, and arbitrary justice. The loss of most of the English possessions in France — the Duchy of Normandy, the County of Anjou, and much of Aquitaine — was a major humiliation that damaged the king’s reputation and encouraged his enemies.
The conflict between John and the Church was a major factor in the crisis. John’s dispute with Pope Innocent III over the appointment of the Archbishop of Canterbury led to John’s excommunication and to a papal interdict on England in 1208. The interdict suspended all sacraments and religious services in the country, and it produced widespread social disruption. John eventually submitted to the pope in 1213, and he accepted the kingdom of England as a papal fief, but the humiliation damaged his reputation further.
The military failure at the Battle of Bouvines in 1214 was the final humiliation. The battle was a decisive French victory over the English and their allies, and it ended John’s hopes of recovering his French possessions. The defeat encouraged the barons to rebel against John, and they gathered arms in the spring of 1215. The rebellion culminated in the meeting at Runnymede on June 15, 1215, where John agreed to the terms of the Magna Carta.
Content of the Magna Carta
The Magna Carta is a long and complex document of 63 clauses, and it addresses a wide range of issues relating to the feudal relationship between the king and his barons, the administration of justice, and the rights of free men. The clauses include provisions on the following matters: the protection of the rights of the Church; the protection of the rights of the free men of the realm; the regulation of royal taxation; the administration of justice; the regulation of royal officials; and the resolution of disputes between the king and his barons.
The most famous of the clauses is clause 39, which states: “No free man shall be arrested or imprisoned … except by the lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land.” This clause is often cited as the foundation of the right to due process and the protection against arbitrary imprisonment, and it has been interpreted as a major step in the development of the rule of law. The Magna Carta also established the principle that the king himself is subject to the law, and that the king cannot arbitrarily override the rights of his subjects.
The Aftermath of the Magna Carta
The Magna Carta was immediately controversial, and its implementation was difficult. Pope Innocent III declared the charter null and void in August 1215, on the grounds that it had been extracted by force and that it infringed on the rights of the king. The rebellion of the barons continued after the signing of the Magna Carta, and civil war broke out in England in 1216. The death of King John in October 1216 brought his son, Henry III, to the throne, and the new king reissued the Magna Carta in 1216, 1217, and 1225, with some modifications. The 1225 version of the charter became the standard text, and it was reissued many times in the following centuries.
The Magna Carta became a symbol of the rule of law and the limits of royal power in the centuries that followed. It was invoked by the English Parliament in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries as a foundation for the parliamentary government. It was invoked by the American colonists in the eighteenth century as a foundation for the American constitution. It was invoked by democratic reformers around the world as a symbol of the limits of governmental power. The Magna Carta remains a major symbol of the rule of law and the protection of individual rights in the modern world.
Sources
Principal sources used in this article:
- Robert Bartlett, England Under the Norman and Angevin Kings (Oxford, 2000).
Further reading:
- Jean Dunbabin, France in the Making, 843–1180 (Oxford, 1985).
For a recent single-volume synthesis with full scholarly apparatus, see the relevant chapter of Barbara H. Rosenwein, A Short History of the Middle Ages (University of Toronto Press, 2014).