Aims
This course aims to:
- demonstrate how Magna Carta arose out of the political struggles of King John’s reign
- show how understandings of Magna Carta have changed over the centuries
- indicate how and why Magna Carta is still important today
Content
Magna Carta – Latin for the Great Charter – is perhaps the most famous document in English history, universally seen as having laid the legislative foundations of personal freedom in the English-speaking world.
The Charter was agreed at a meeting held at Runnymede in 1215 to end the civil war brought about by King John’s misrule. Paradoxically, however, instead of ending the war, it simply started another - the war of Magna Carta. By the time of King John’s death in October 1216 the Charter seemed a failure, a document destined to be forgotten. Yet in the minority of the reign of John’s son and successor Henry III, it was to experience an extraordinary revival. Dusted down, abbreviated and reissued by the Regent, William Marshal, and the papal legate, Guala, it was to form the basis for a new political dispensation.
Such was the Charter’s prestige and importance in the Middle Ages that, whenever there was a political crisis, the first demand of any opposition was for its reissue. Over time, however, the Charter’s relevance was to become less. Stage by stage, parliamentary legislation took the Charter’s place as the most effective means by which arbitrary kingship could be curtailed. It was only in the political crises of the 17th century, in the reigns of James I and Charles I, that the Charter was once again to take centre-stage in the nation’s political life. The formidable lawyer Sir Edward Coke, champion of the ‘ancient constitution’, found in the Charter’s terms precisely the text that he needed to legitimise his assault on what he considered Stuart tyranny. Since the 17th century, the Charter has never really looked back. The celebrations staged in 2015 to mark the 800th anniversary of its making, culminating in a visit to Runnymede on anniversary day itself by HM the Queen, reaffirmed its central position in English national life.
The course will examine the history of the Charter from its beginnings in the 13th century down to its reinvention in the 17th and its role in the creation of human rights legislation in more recent times. The first class will look at the physicality of the Charter: that is to say, at the four surviving ‘originals’, thinking about how they came to be written, distributed and preserved. Next, consideration will be given to the origins of the Charter in the tangled politics of John’s reign, focusing on the tensions that arose between the arbitrary character of the king’s rule and the yearning of his subjects for fairer, more regular governance. The third class will take the form of an examination of the most important clauses of the Charter, including the famous clauses 39 and 40, considering what they said and the grievances that they were concerned to address. The fourth class will look at the sequel to the celebrated meeting at Runnymede – that is, at the collapse of the settlement agreed there, the Charter’s resurrection in Henry III’s reign, and the emergence of what was to be the final form of the Charter in 1225. The final class will examine the political rediscovery of the Charter by Sir Edward Coke in the 17th century and its elevation to the status of a national icon by the constitutional writers in the century that followed.
Presentation of the course
Teaching will be by means of informal lectures at which questions and discussion will be encouraged.
Course sessions
- Anniversaries and texts
- The making of the Charter
- Clause by clause
- Reissue and survival
- Icon and myth
Learning outcomes
You are expected to gain from this series of classroom sessions a greater understanding of the subject and of the core issues and arguments central to the course.
The learning outcomes for this course are:
- the ability to evaluate and interpret the clauses of Magna Carta
- the ability to reflect critically on changing interpretations of the Charter and its meaning
- the ability to comprehend the relationship between a document and its place in historical time
Required reading
*Carpenter, David, Magna Carta (Penguin Classics, 2015), which prints the text of the Charter and offers a full contextual discussion of its contents
