Historian and Author Dan Jones Says the Genetics of the Magna Carta Are

HISTORY Birth of Liberty Historian and t was 16 years ago when Dan Jones People would have felt the practical effects of walked into his supervisor’s office at the the Magna Carta very powerfully in the back author Dan Jones University of Cambridge to begin work half of 1215, but not as if they were emanci- on his history degree. He was to receive pated or granted a long schedule of rights. Its says the genetics an essay question each week, the first one being, failure in late August 1215 produced a vicious I“What was the issue between King John and the civil war with foreign nationals that, through no of the Magna Carta barons?” fault of their own, saw their property destroyed are embedded in “I thought it was going to be three days’ and their families murdered by mercenaries. As work and I’ll never have to think about the a result the barons invited a new king to come the Declaration of Magna Carta again,” Jones says. over from France the following year. Well, not quite. Jones, a London-based Independence and journalist, historian and author, wrote the What was the role of the Church of England in recent book “Magna Carta: The Birth of Lib- Magna Carta? other great founding erty” (Viking, $27.95) to coincide with the One of the reasons King John had built documents. 800th anniversary of the document known as up so much hostility in the country was his the “Great Charter.” treatment of the church in an age when the politics of the church were very close to the The Magna Carta was a peace treaty brokered politics of the state. John was able to divert in 1215 between England’s King John and 100,000 pounds of church wealth into his own rebellious barons. It was in force for about two war chest. He didn’t seem to be worried about BY MARK WOLF months, then was reissued several times over the excommunication until the point that it looked next few years. It stands as one of history’s most as if the pope was working with the French influential documents. Why does it endure? king to depose John as an excommunicate, as The afterlife of the Magna Carta is the a heretic. John decided for entirely pragmatic key, the constant reinvention and transfor- reasons that excommunication had to end. mation of a symbol of values and ideas that has transcended those 800 years of history. It What were John’s motives for agreeing to the asks questions that had been thought about Magna Carta? before the Magna Carta and that we’re think- I have no doubt that he was just stalling ing about today: How much tax do we want to for time. He had to come to the negotiating pay? What is the power of government agents table because the barons had managed to take to arrest certain groups of citizens? Do we want London, and he was cut off from his treasur- to pay for costs of fighting foreign wars? All ies at the Tower of London and Westminster. these questions have remained relevant, and we He needed time to gather his forces against find them all in one place in the Magna Carta. his enemies. It would have represented the most astonishing change in character to have When it was first issued, the Magna Carta applied granted the Magna Carta and really to have to only about 20 percent of the population. Did meant it. That was not his style, and I don’t it have any impact on the lives of regular people believe anyone believed he had any intention of in 1215? honoring his oath. It applied only to free men; it didn’t apply to women, although women are mentioned, You chronicle a particularly brutal battle, John’s Mark Wolf is an NCSL publications editor. mostly as widows. It didn’t apply to the unfree. defeat in the Battle of Bouvines in northern France JULY/AUGUST 2016 52 STATE LEGISLATURES HISTORY Magna Carta in 1215. What was the nature of warfare then? years earlier. The text, which is so sort of Battles were very rare. They were technical in many instances suddenly burns extremely uncertain affairs and no one bright. There are those incredible clauses— The Magna Carta, often called the “Great wanted to fight them. The risk of com- that no man will be exiled or outlawed, Charter,” is considered the foundation of manders and leaders dying was great. except by the law of the land or judgment the American constitutional system. Siegecraft was the way things proceeded. of his peers, and that no man will be denied Reluctantly ratified by England’s King John It was a much more stable way of fighting the right of justice. My sense is that, at the on June 15, 1215, it was written to appease in which rules could be laid down. It was time, these were kind of vague fumblings barons unhappy with the king’s rule and effectively a war of attrition. They were for an underlying principle. Partly because disproportionate share of power—much rarely able to knock the castle down. It of the vagueness of those clauses, they’ve like the Declaration of Independence did was just a waiting game. Either the attack- come to be timeless and they’ve done a with King George III more than 500 years ers would go away, or the inhabitants of good job enduring as the guiding ethos later. The 3,600-word Latin document the castle would surrender. The siege of of the government: It should proceed by was the first official contract between Rochester castle [in southeastern England, the rule of law and should provide justice government and the governed and also in 1215] proceeded differently because equally and impartially. The Magna Carta introduced the concept of equal rights John, to his credit, managed to actually is a good place to start in searching for his- under the law—that no one, not even the bring down part of the castle by tunneling torical examples of subjects standing up to king, is above the law. It is the basis for underneath and burning it out with pig fat. a king who was in their view a tyrant. The several current constitutional liberties and That was a pretty extraordinary thing to American founders looked upon the exam- legal procedures, such as trial by jury, due do. One of the reasons I enjoyed writing ple and drew upon the language. process, right of rebellion and the ban on about this particular year was its extraordi- cruel and unusual punishment. nary military action. Rochester castle was What is the Magna Carta’s legacy? —Duranya Freeman stunning as a siege, and provides a great In terms of its broader legacy, it is means of getting inside the business of amazing how many different directions warfare: What actually happens in a siege? the Magna Carta has shot off in, how and possibly because we are closer in time What are you really throwing in those cata- many times it has been invoked over the and in mindset to the Founding Fathers pults? Bee hives? Dead animals? Messages? years, from the Founding Fathers to Nel- than we are to the rebel barons of the 13th son Mandela [in his 1964 trial] to Eleanor century. It’s almost like the genetic code of Why have so many founding historical Roosevelt in the Universal Declaration of the Magna Carta exists in the fragments documents explicitly paraphrased the Human Rights after World War II. Per- that you see embedded in these great doc- language of the Magna Carta? sonally, I find the language of the founding uments that brought the United States into The Declaration of Independence fol- documents of the U.S. to be much more existence. lowed near-identical complaints made moving, elegant, beautiful and poetic, pos- against King John in the Magna Carta 561 sibly because they were written in English, Go to ncsl.org/magazine for more information. STATE LEGISLATURES 53 JULY/AUGUST 2016.

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