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Authors: Michael Wood
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be £100, not the thousands of pounds sometimes demanded by John. It facilitated the spread of the common law and made justice less open to bargaining or bribery. It gave the gentry concessions they could exploit to make the running of local government more acceptable. Above all it asserted a fundamental principle: the king was subject to the law, the law that Magna Carta had made. As a result, arbitrary rule became more difficult and resistance to it more legitimate.
In 1214 John’s long-planned campaign to recover his continental empire had ended in disaster with his allies decisively defeated at Bouvines. John returned to England a sitting duck, his treasure spent. Suspicious and untrustworthy, a womanizer and a murderer, he was loathed by many of his barons. His huge financial exactions over several years had antagonized the wider political community. By early 1215 a large group of barons, many from the north, where his rule had seemed particularly severe, were in league, and were demanding reform. They were abetted by Scotland’s King Alexander and Llywelyn of Wales.
John played for time and summoned a council to meet at Oxford towards the end of April. Instead the barons met in arms at Stamford in Lincolnshire, from where on 5 May they renounced their allegiance to the king, the beginning of civil war. The war was transformed within a fortnight by the Londoners letting the baronial rebels into the city – its walls and wealth protected the baronial cause, and made any quick royalist victory impossible. Yet baronial victory too could not be quick. John retained his castles, many commanded by ruthless military experts. Shrewd use of patronage meant he also retained the loyalty of some of the greatest barons. So the result towards the end of May was a truce and the start of the negotiations that ended with the charter at Runnymede.
The charter was the product of the way John and his predecessors has ruled since the Norman Conquest. It also reflected the nature of early thirteenth-century English society, in part through its omissions. Take the place of women in the charter: they certainly appeared, for important clauses secured for baronial widows their dowers and inheritances and protected them from being forced into remarriage by the king. The clause reflected that baronial women did have property rights: they could inherit land; they received as dower a portion (usually a third) of their husband’s lands on his death. The clause had a real effect and the thirteenth century was graced by large numbers of baronesses who spent years as widows controlling extensive lands.
Yet the charter did nothing to alter the inequalities between men and women. Women only inherited if they had no brothers. They virtually never held office, and, for all their influence behind the scenes, played virtually no public part in politics. No women featured in the list of those who had counselled John to concede the charter. The clauses in the charter itself were designed not to liberate women, but to protect their male children from having their mother’s property carried off by second husbands.
Even less privileged were the peasants. They made up perhaps 75 per cent of the population, half of them ‘villeins’, which meant they were legally unfree. Peasants featured in Magna Carta – the stipulation that sheriffs should not force men and villages to work on bridges dealt specifically with their predicament. So did the clause which laid down that fines imposed on villeins were to be reasonable and assessed by men of their neighbourhood. To no one, John promised in one of the most famous clauses, would he sell, deny or delay justice. But there lay the rub, for it was the law itself that made half of the peasantry unfree, leaving them excluded from the king’s courts and at their lord’s mercy in anything concerning the terms on which they held their lands. The charter did nothing to alter this. Indeed, the protection it did afford
In 1214 John’s long-planned campaign to recover his continental empire had ended in disaster with his allies decisively defeated at Bouvines. John returned to England a sitting duck, his treasure spent. Suspicious and untrustworthy, a womanizer and a murderer, he was loathed by many of his barons. His huge financial exactions over several years had antagonized the wider political community. By early 1215 a large group of barons, many from the north, where his rule had seemed particularly severe, were in league, and were demanding reform. They were abetted by Scotland’s King Alexander and Llywelyn of Wales.
John played for time and summoned a council to meet at Oxford towards the end of April. Instead the barons met in arms at Stamford in Lincolnshire, from where on 5 May they renounced their allegiance to the king, the beginning of civil war. The war was transformed within a fortnight by the Londoners letting the baronial rebels into the city – its walls and wealth protected the baronial cause, and made any quick royalist victory impossible. Yet baronial victory too could not be quick. John retained his castles, many commanded by ruthless military experts. Shrewd use of patronage meant he also retained the loyalty of some of the greatest barons. So the result towards the end of May was a truce and the start of the negotiations that ended with the charter at Runnymede.
The charter was the product of the way John and his predecessors has ruled since the Norman Conquest. It also reflected the nature of early thirteenth-century English society, in part through its omissions. Take the place of women in the charter: they certainly appeared, for important clauses secured for baronial widows their dowers and inheritances and protected them from being forced into remarriage by the king. The clause reflected that baronial women did have property rights: they could inherit land; they received as dower a portion (usually a third) of their husband’s lands on his death. The clause had a real effect and the thirteenth century was graced by large numbers of baronesses who spent years as widows controlling extensive lands.
Yet the charter did nothing to alter the inequalities between men and women. Women only inherited if they had no brothers. They virtually never held office, and, for all their influence behind the scenes, played virtually no public part in politics. No women featured in the list of those who had counselled John to concede the charter. The clauses in the charter itself were designed not to liberate women, but to protect their male children from having their mother’s property carried off by second husbands.
Even less privileged were the peasants. They made up perhaps 75 per cent of the population, half of them ‘villeins’, which meant they were legally unfree. Peasants featured in Magna Carta – the stipulation that sheriffs should not force men and villages to work on bridges dealt specifically with their predicament. So did the clause which laid down that fines imposed on villeins were to be reasonable and assessed by men of their neighbourhood. To no one, John promised in one of the most famous clauses, would he sell, deny or delay justice. But there lay the rub, for it was the law itself that made half of the peasantry unfree, leaving them excluded from the king’s courts and at their lord’s mercy in anything concerning the terms on which they held their lands. The charter did nothing to alter this. Indeed, the protection it did afford
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