KING JOHN reached Runnymede on 10 June, and there began five
days of intensive negotiations with the barons. On the meadow, we
are told, the barons "gathered with a multitude of most famous
knights, armed well at all points, and they remained there, having
fixed tents. But the King and his men dwelt in the same meadow in
pavilions."
The royal pavilions, high like circus tops, will have towered
over the mass of baronial tents. The King almost certainly returned
to Windsor each night. He will hardly have felt safe among those
well-armed and recalcitrant knights.
On Monday 15 June 1215, the King sealed his agreement with the
barons. Next Monday, 800 years later to the day, the Queen and
other members of the Royal Family will be at Runnymede. In the name
of the nation, three people will address the gathered guests: the
Archbishop of Canterbury; the Master of the Rolls, who is the judge
in charge of civil justice in England and Wales; and the Prime
Minister.
In 1215, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Stephen Langton, was one
of the main mediators between John and the barons; "the Master of
the Rolls" is an office first recorded in the 13th century; the
Prime Minister inherits an office that has emerged, without any
statutory prescription, over recent centuries.
It is in itself a token of the continuity of government in this
country that these three will address a direct descendant of King
John. It is a token of the strength of our evolving constitution
that they will do so in unqualified loyalty to the Sovereign, who
has served her people for more than 60 years. It is also a token of
Magna Carta's own significance that its most famous words are on
the statute book to this day:
"No free man shall be taken or imprisoned or dispossessed or
outlawed or exiled or in any way ruined, nor will we go or send
against him, except by the lawful judgment of his peers or by the
law of the land.
"To no one will we sell, to no one will we deny or delay right
or justice."
YET this still leaves an uneasy question. To what end are we
celebrating Magna Carta: what good will be in place in 2020 or 2025
that would not be in place without such celebrations?
Anniversaries have a civic value. They remind us as nations and
communities who we are, and can reinforce that identity. All of us
in England and throughout the Common Law world who share in the
Charter's legacy can claim a share in its history, too, even if our
own ancestors - whether 800 years ago or 80 - had no connection
with England.
Equality before the law, fair trial, constitutional and fiscal
restraints upon the executive - all these can be traced in a direct
line back to Magna Carta. And all of us who value these rights are
united in the debt we owe to the generations of politicians and
jurists who have secured and developed them.
What we share is not just Magna Carta, but the structure of
checks and balances on power which has been built on its
foundation. On the tortuous and contested journey towards the
rights we enjoy today, Magna Carta is now an icon of that journey's
start, not of its destination. The Charter's beneficiaries were the
"free men" of England: more than half of England's households were
probably free by 1215 - the Charter was not an oligarchic coup -
but we were a long way from the protection that the law now gives
to all those who live here.
The rights of (noble) women were extended in the Charter, but
remained to our ears derisory. The two clauses on the Jews will
send a shiver down our spine; the 13th century was not a good time
to be Jewish in England, and Magna Carta only deepened their
oppression.
Even the first of the two great clauses on justice may have been
designed simply to give the barons the rights in court before the
King himself (who was under the notorious influence of his cronies
from France) that the barons' own tenants enjoyed before the
barons. The clause's importance grew over the centuries. Edward III
glossed it in six statutes, the most famous in 1354:
"No man of whatever estate or condition that he be, shall be put
out of land or tenement, nor taken nor imprisoned, nor
disinherited, nor put to death, without being brought in
answer by due process of the law."
This, too, may have been issued just to clarify the Charter
itself: noblemen, as well as mere freemen, were protected. But what
a grand statement of principle the clause had now become,
protecting men of all estates with that still-famous phrase "due
process of the law".
No wonder the clause would be wielded in 17th-century England by
the opponents of royal absolutism, and in 18th-century America by
those who saw in English rule little more than tyranny. Judgment on
barons by baronial equals was now due process subject to Habeas
Corpus.
In this 17th-century reading, those clauses on justice have
spread round the world in every Common Law constitution and in
every human-rights instrument of the 20th century. They are the
bedrock on which, 800 years after Runnymede, much of the world's
freedom is built.
WHY should the Church be celebrating the Charter? We could
simply be sanctifying a current constitutional cause. Or we could
perhaps just see, in a tidy convergence of principle and
self-interest, that the Church's best hope of security and freedom
lies in the equality of all citizens, whatever their faith, before
the law.
We have better grounds than these, however. Archbishop Langton
was central to the drafting of Magna Carta and to its sealing. Two
archbishops and seven bishops - and, I am glad to say, my
predecessor as Master of the Temple at the Temple Church - advised
the King to grant the Charter.
To ensure the Carter's safety from suppression by royal officers
who were now subject to its discipline, the copies were entrusted
to cathedrals. From 1225 onwards, the Charter's promulgation was
accompanied by rituals of excommunication imposed on anyone who
broke the Charter's terms. By 1253, the sentence of this
excommunication was read out in parish churches across England, on
Sundays and feast-days, accompanied by lighted candles and the
ringing of bells.
In 1279, the Archbishop of Canterbury, John Peckham, ordered his
clergy to explain the sentence to their parishioners, and had
copies of Magna Carta fixed to church doors. In the 14th century,
William of Pagula included the Charter in his manual for parish
priests. It was now part of the clergyman's job description to know
the charter, and to publicise and enforce it.
The late Sir James Holt, doyen of historians of the Charter,
wrote in 1992: "The men who were responsible for the Great Charter
of 1215 asserted one great principle. In their view the realm was
more than a geographic or administrative unit. It was a community.
As such, it was capable of possessing rights and liberties which
could be asserted against any member of the community, even and
especially against the King."
IT IS not the Sovereign now who threatens our rights and
liberties; on the contrary, she will on Monday represent their most
powerful protection. We in the Church threaten no excommunication
now, nor wield candles or curses against those who breach the
Charter's terms. Lessons drawn from so long ago are more rhetorical
than practical.
But the Church's part in the creation, promulgation, and
enforcement of the Charter offers an inspiration of its own. We in
the Church know, better than most, the power and importance of
foundational texts re- interpreted and selectively re-applied,
generation by generation. The Charter still calls on us to build
out of our country's disparate components a single, peaceable, and
just community, with all the courage and insight of Archbishop
Langton himself.
The Revd Robin Griffith-Jones is the Reverend and Valiant
Master of the Temple, at the Temple Church, London. Magna
Carta, Religion and the Rule of Law, edited by Robin
Griffith-Jones and Mark Hill, is published by Cambridge University
Press.
The Temple Church is hosting, until the end of the year, an
exhibition on Magna Carta. www.templechurch.com