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Authors: Michael Wood
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peasants was exclusively against the oppressions of royal agents. They were protected from the king so that they could be exploited all the better by their lords.
Against its meagre concern for women and peasants, the charter catered abundantly for the great players. It gave freedom to the Church (which held over a quarter of England’s land), and reiterated John’s promise that bishops and abbots could be elected free from royal interference, thus dealing with a major grievance. The Church was to play a key part in publicizing John’s charter and in supporting the later versions made by Henry III. London, as we have seen, was the great baronial base. Its population early in the thirteenth century was perhaps as high as 40,000, making it Britain’s largest city. The charter protected the privileges of all the kingdom’s cities and boroughs but London’s alone were mentioned by name, and it received an additional promise that it should be free from arbitrary taxation.
Most striking of all was the charter’s treatment of the knights. In the 1200s there were about 5,000 of them in England’s counties, the backbone of local government. One contemporary chronicler, Ralph of Coggeshall, averred that all the barons who remained loyal to John were deserted by their knights; an exaggeration, but it shows the flow of the tide. The charter laid down that the king’s judges hearing assizes in the counties were to sit with four knights of each county, elected in the county court, a testimony both to the self-confidence of the knights and their determination to control the workings of justice in the localities. Another clause empowered twelve knights in each county, again elected in the county court, to investigate and abolish the evil practices of the king’s local officials. The zeal with which the knights went about their work was a major factor in John’s decision to abandon the charter.
Above all, the charter met the grievances of the earls and barons. There were around a dozen earls in the early thirteenth century, and something between one hundred and two hundred barons. Tiny numbers, but they controlled a large part of the country’s wealth, and had mostly been in rebellion. Not surprisingly, they stamped their mark on the charter’s early clauses, making it very much a baronial document. Thus Chapter 2 , as we have seen, fixed the relief of earls and barons at £100. Chapter 4 protected baronial lands from exploitation by the king when they were in his hands during the minority of an heir. Chapter 14 vested the power to consent to taxation in the hands of a largely baronial assembly. Indeed, only the greater barons, lay and ecclesiastical, were to receive individual letters of summons to it. The implication was that the earls and barons, commanding the allegiances of their tenants, could answer for the realm.
The charter thus reflected the structures of power in English society. It was also the product of ideas. The king should govern lawfully for the good of his people. He should only punish individuals after having obtained a judgement of their peers. A king who defied these principles could be regarded as a tyrant, and might be restrained or even deposed. By 1215 such concepts had a long pedigree and were commonplace among John’s opponents. They were sharpened and refined by the archbishop of Canterbury, Stephen Langton, an internationally famous academic, who played a key role in brokering the 1215 settlement, and in supporting the charter thereafter. It was these ideas, enshrined in the charter, that formed its essential legacy, a legacy first for England, and ultimately for the United Kingdom as a whole.
* * *
Britain in the age of Magna Carta was full of contrasts, with profound differences in social structure between the uplands of Wales and Scotland and lowland England. Hence the way the English, living in nucleated villages and eating bread – product of their great corn-growing fields –
Against its meagre concern for women and peasants, the charter catered abundantly for the great players. It gave freedom to the Church (which held over a quarter of England’s land), and reiterated John’s promise that bishops and abbots could be elected free from royal interference, thus dealing with a major grievance. The Church was to play a key part in publicizing John’s charter and in supporting the later versions made by Henry III. London, as we have seen, was the great baronial base. Its population early in the thirteenth century was perhaps as high as 40,000, making it Britain’s largest city. The charter protected the privileges of all the kingdom’s cities and boroughs but London’s alone were mentioned by name, and it received an additional promise that it should be free from arbitrary taxation.
Most striking of all was the charter’s treatment of the knights. In the 1200s there were about 5,000 of them in England’s counties, the backbone of local government. One contemporary chronicler, Ralph of Coggeshall, averred that all the barons who remained loyal to John were deserted by their knights; an exaggeration, but it shows the flow of the tide. The charter laid down that the king’s judges hearing assizes in the counties were to sit with four knights of each county, elected in the county court, a testimony both to the self-confidence of the knights and their determination to control the workings of justice in the localities. Another clause empowered twelve knights in each county, again elected in the county court, to investigate and abolish the evil practices of the king’s local officials. The zeal with which the knights went about their work was a major factor in John’s decision to abandon the charter.
Above all, the charter met the grievances of the earls and barons. There were around a dozen earls in the early thirteenth century, and something between one hundred and two hundred barons. Tiny numbers, but they controlled a large part of the country’s wealth, and had mostly been in rebellion. Not surprisingly, they stamped their mark on the charter’s early clauses, making it very much a baronial document. Thus Chapter 2 , as we have seen, fixed the relief of earls and barons at £100. Chapter 4 protected baronial lands from exploitation by the king when they were in his hands during the minority of an heir. Chapter 14 vested the power to consent to taxation in the hands of a largely baronial assembly. Indeed, only the greater barons, lay and ecclesiastical, were to receive individual letters of summons to it. The implication was that the earls and barons, commanding the allegiances of their tenants, could answer for the realm.
The charter thus reflected the structures of power in English society. It was also the product of ideas. The king should govern lawfully for the good of his people. He should only punish individuals after having obtained a judgement of their peers. A king who defied these principles could be regarded as a tyrant, and might be restrained or even deposed. By 1215 such concepts had a long pedigree and were commonplace among John’s opponents. They were sharpened and refined by the archbishop of Canterbury, Stephen Langton, an internationally famous academic, who played a key role in brokering the 1215 settlement, and in supporting the charter thereafter. It was these ideas, enshrined in the charter, that formed its essential legacy, a legacy first for England, and ultimately for the United Kingdom as a whole.
* * *
Britain in the age of Magna Carta was full of contrasts, with profound differences in social structure between the uplands of Wales and Scotland and lowland England. Hence the way the English, living in nucleated villages and eating bread – product of their great corn-growing fields –
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