As Americans ponder the thinly-veiled urgings of radio and television talk-show hosts toward mayhem, and the civil discord inspired by the increase of crude religious fundamentalism everywhere, it’s a good time to remember the events of this date at Runnymede in 1215. There, infuriated by increasing taxes, summary imprisonment, and presumptions upon the church, English barons waylaid King John and forced him at swordpoint to affix his seal to a guarantee of freedoms which, even today, 8-centuries later, remain the cornerstone of our assumptions about the governments of free men.
Someone, probably the Archbishop, stated briefly the terms that were suggested. The King declared at once that he agreed. He said the details should be arranged immediately in his chancery. The original “Articles of the Barons” on which Magna Carta is based exist today in the British Museum. They were sealed in a quiet, short scene, which has become one of the most famous in our history, on June 15, 1215. Afterwards the King returned to Windsor. Four days later, probably, the Charter itself was probably engrossed. In future ages it was to be used as the foundation of principles and systems of government of which neither King John nor his nobles dreamed.
Winston Churchill, The Birth of Britain
Much of The Great Charter is today anachronistic, specifications for matters of concern in a feudal world that no longer exists. But others are immediately vital.
The Great Charter guarantees freedom of religion:
FIRST, We have granted to God, and by this our present Charter have confirmed, for Us and our Heirs for ever, that the Church of England shall be free, and shall have all her whole Rights and Liberties inviolable. We have granted also, and given to all the Freemen of our Realm, for Us and our Heirs for ever, these Liberties under-written, to have and to hold to them and their Heirs, of Us and our Heirs for ever.
The Great Charter protects the owners of property against its seizure by the state without compensation:
28. No constable or other bailiff of ours shall take corn or other provisions from anyone without immediately tendering money therefor, unless he can have postponement thereof by permission of the seller.
30. No sheriff or bailiff of ours, or other person, shall take the horses or carts of any freeman for transport duty, against the will of the said freeman.
31. Neither we nor our bailiffs shall take, for our castles or for any other work of ours, wood which is not ours, against the will of the owner of that wood.
The Great Charter guarantees due process, a jury of one’s peers, and habeas corpus:
36. Nothing in future shall be given or taken for a writ of inquisition of life or limbs, but freely it shall be granted, and never denied.
38. No bailiff for the future shall, upon his own unsupported complaint, put anyone to his “law”, without credible witnesses brought for this purposes.
39. No freemen shall be taken or imprisoned or disseised or exiled or in any way destroyed, nor will we go upon him nor send upon him, except by the lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land.
40. To no one will we sell, to no one will we refuse or delay, right or justice.
In the event John proved, like most politicians, to have a casual attitude toward his promises. But, once graven in the public imagination, the expectation of the guarantees would not go away and, however imperfectly, they were implemented piecemeal over the course of centuries. The work culminated with an English Bill of Rights in 1689, and its principles became the model a century later for the American Bill of Rights.
Today, in even the United States, the prerogatives of the citizenry are under assault to a degree not seen in generations. On the right, terrified by an explosion of knowledge that has killed all phantasms but their own carefully cultivated demons, evangelical fundamentalists agitate for reversion to no less than the theocracy of the Middle Ages. On the left, collectivist fantasies stand to impoverish us while expanding government’s interests to include the minutiae of daily life in the name of the public purse. From the widening ends of the political spectrum there issues an unending demand for power whose fulfillment leads inevitably and invariably toward the very depredations which inspired the Magna Carta.
Some lessons, it appears, must constantly be learned anew.
However casually we accept the guarantees of the Bill of Rights as a birthright, claiming those liberties was brave work in 1215, and 1689, and 1787, and they demand our protection still. We will learn during the next few years of re-ordering our finances, defending ourselves against religious fundamentalists at home and abroad, and the mad cacophony of petit demagogues whether or not we are fit heirs of all that we’ve been given.
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