800th anniversary of Magna Carta

The 800^th anniversary of the Magna Carta is coming up June 15.  I had an aunt who got into genealogy and found out my 23 generations-ago great grandfather was a French Norman who had signed the Great Charter.  What’s more, for 4 centuries thereafter my ancestors had French names.  Yikes!  I’m one of them!  I told this to Lynn Comeaux in New Orleans and he laughed.  “Oh, don’t take it so hard.  You can tell cool Cajun jokes like all the rest of us.”  At which point I had heard a couple of great Cajun stories in Oklahoma and the guys in LA had not heard them.  They laughed so hard and kept repeating them all the time in fond memory.

            Meantime I got interested in the Magna Carta. This historic document, sometimes called the foundation of liberty, had a crazy history that is almost as much illumination as the principles of limited government, parliament, habeas corpus and trial by jury that we now remember it for. 

King John gets a bad rap in some ways.  He was no more of an ass than the average European king.  Henry II, his father was one of the great kings of England.  A somber astute administrator, he married Eleanor of Aquitane who was, I swear, the world’s first feminist and adventuress.  With Eleanor’s kingdom in southern France and the Norman kingdom in northern France, John came to the throne owning everything from Scotland to the Spanish border, but he couldn’t control the nobles who each had their own little baronies.  His brother Richard the Lionhearted, often romanticized with bravado, had been like mom the adventuress.  He’d bankrupted the country and gone off on a crusade that ended badly.  Nobles were ticked over the taxes.  When Richard died of an arrow in a siege, John became king.  He wasn’t so tyrannical but was a sharp-tongued, insulting asshole with hardly a smidgeon of faith. (like his dad Henry II, who never darkened a church door)

And he had a huge problem.  Normans were vassals of the French king, even though they had conquered England.  The French king, Phillip Augustus, was ambitious to reclaim all of ancient France as his domain.  First John secured the right to divorce Isabel of Glouchester and marry Isabella of Angouleme from Pope Innocent III.  The English nobility were ticked off again that this new king had rejected one of their number to marry a continental girl and appealed to Phillip for redress.  Phillip called John who refused to meet him in Paris. The French court declared Normandy, Maine, Anjou and Touraine forfeited and started a war. John had to pass heavy taxes to fight to retain northern France lands.

Meantime John got himself in trouble with the Pope.  He quarreled with the bishops over their choice to name a new archbishop of Canterbury.  Pope Innocent III, trying to quell the argument nominated a Frenchman, Stephen Langton.  John threatened that if he didn’t get his way, he would take church property and privileges.  The Pope hit back with an interdict (Papal ruling that a certain territory could not have valid forgiveness in the masse).  John ignored this and confiscated all the church lands. 

He might have won his argument but he had lost the support of the nobles (and my granddad).  He neglected his second wife and had numerous mistresses and illegitimate children.  He jailed Jews trying to milk them for money—but that meant that they couldn’t lend to the public as usual.  He added insults to taxes to support his coming war.  In 1213, the Pope used his last resort, excommunication and a decree of deposition (released king’s subjects from allegiance and declared king’s property the spoil of whomever could conquer it).  Papal support was music to Phillip Augustus’ ears.  Then John discovered that his excesses had lost him support of the nobles in the fight to save his French possessions. He was in a fix.  So he struck a deal with the Pope.  He would let Stephen become archbishop, would swear allegiance and pay tribute to the Pope instead of the French king Phillip, in exchange for the Pope relaxing his decrees. 

Smooth move but it didn’t win any of the nobles or bishops over.  They demanded he return to the laws of Henry I which had limited the power of the king.  They assembled a collective army and marched on the Thames.  Now John was in a real pickle with rebellious nobility and a French war impending. 

So at Runnymede on the Thames, June 15, 1215, John made his great surrender and signed the Magna Carta.  The first article was that the Church of England would be free.  The idea that the church, and Christians by extension, should be free to practice their faith, rings through in USA’s first amendment.  And it implies that the king is not absolute but limited—limited government.  Article 12 was no taxes except by a council of 25 advisors of the king, the forerunner of parliament. This power of the purse by a legislature is the founding principle of separation of powers in a republic.  Art. 36 says you can’t be long imprisoned without a trial—habeas corpus.  And article 39 says trial by jury must be possible.  Finally, articles 40 and 60 say essentially that everyone is under the law, a founding principle of our judicial system.  With this, John placated his nobles and got his army to go to war with Phillip. 

A funny thing happened on the way to the foreign encounter.  John had no intention of obeying the agreement and got his new buddy, the Pope to declare it void. Some of the nobles asked Louis, son of Phillip to come invade England and they would crown him their king.  Louis invaded but John destroyed his invasion.  Then a few months later, John died of dysentery or was it poisoning?

The Pope feared he’d lose his tribute.  So he slyly named William Marshal earl of Pembroke regent to rule until young Henry III could come of age.  With one of their own at the top, the nobles got in line of support and then to everyone’s surprise, William turned out to be a tremendous regent.  For a long time, nobles and kings all over Europe had squabbled and signed documents, but then in the next breath had forgotten what they had signed.  William reinstated Magna Carta, and it lasted.  It lasted because it defused the rebellion of the nobles, so kings saw it as a powerful tool.

 Louis went back to France.  Phillip died.  Henry came of age and built Westminister Abbey.  His son, Edward I (1272-1307) became one of the most successful in English history, reorganized the army, instituted a new defense force called a militia (unwittingly creating a military base for a republic) and abolished both papal and French suzerainty over England. Most of all, Edward organized the council of Magna Carta into what we now know as English parliament.

The Brits say that Magna Carta was just the beginning, that the principals had to be fought for again and again over their history.  And so as I sit here faxing letters to get our Representatives to allay Obama from tearing down church highway signs all over America, from  handing the vote over to illegals, I think they are quite right.   Freedom never comes free.