Magna Carta Join Curators Vanessa Wilkie and Mary Robertson for a Join Us for an Outdoor Screening of the Animated Classic Private Tour of the Exhibition

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Curator tour Family Movie Night: “Robin Hood” July 16 (Thursday) 4:30-5:30 p.m. Aug. 29 (Saturday) 7—9:30 p.m. Magna Carta Join curators Vanessa Wilkie and Mary Robertson for a Join us for an outdoor screening of the animated classic private tour of the exhibition. “Robin Hood” from Walt Disney Productions, with pre- Law and Legend, 1215–2015 Members: $15. Non-Members: $20. show activities and entertainment. Bring a blanket and Registration: brownpapertickets.com or 800-838-3006. picnic to enjoy on the lawn. Members: $10; Non-Members $20. Ages 2 and under Movie Night: “The Adventures of free. Tickets: brownpapertickets.com or 800-838-3006. This exhibition celebrates the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta by exploring Robin Hood” the language and ideology of constitutionalism (both written and unwritten) and July 31 (Friday) 7p.m. Public Lecture: Supreme Court Justice the rule of law. While the cornerstone of the exhibition is The Huntington’s 13th- Inspired by the exhibition “Magna Carta: Law and Stephen Breyer century draft of the Magna Carta, the exhibition’s themes move beyond Medieval Legend, 1215–2015,” The Huntington presents a special September 23 (Wednesday) 7:00pm England to explore the relevance of Magna Carta to later English history, the history screening of the 1938 classic film “The Adventures of The Court and the World: The Supreme Court’s New Robin Hood,” starring Errol Flynn. Prior to the film, Trans-national Role—Supreme Court Justice Stephen of the United States, and the modern world, with items drawn entirely from The Oscar-winning visual effects designer Craig Barron will Breyer will speak about the many ways in which American Huntington’s collections. give a special presentation on how some of the visual judges, when interpreting American law, must take ever effects were created in the film. greater account of foreign events, law and practices—the Rothenberg Hall. Members: $9. Non Members: $13. subject of his new book. On the cover: Rare draft of Magna Carta, from an English statute book, 13th century. Below: Illustration of King John and the barons Registration: brownpapertickets.com or 800-838-3006. Rothenberg Hall. Registration: huntington.org at Runnymede from Raphael Holinshed’s Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland, 1577. Lecture Series: Magna Carta Aug. 20, 27, September 3 (Thursdays) 10 a.m.-noon Join curators Vanessa Wilkie and Mary Robertson for this three part lecture series that explores some of the major themes of the exhibition. This series also examines the iconic status of the idea of Magna Carta in the modern world, from the United Nations Universal Declaration of This exhibition is made possible by the generous support Human Rights of 1948 to representations of the original of Hahn & Hahn LLP. document and “Bad King John” in popular culture. The curators also wish to acknowledge Craig Barron, Vince Beggs, Members: $60. Non-Members: $75. Tracey Garvin, Constance Jordan, Daniel Powers, and Westlaw for Registration: brownpapertickets.com or 800-838-3006. sharing their expertise. Magna Carta Law and Legend, 1215–2015

June 13-Oct. 12, 2015 | Library, West Hall 1151 Oxford Road | San Marino, California 91108 | huntington.org The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens Related Events

June 13-Oct. 12, 2015 | Library, West Hall 1151 Oxford Road | San Marino, California 91108 | huntington.org The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens print. Holinshed’s famous Chronicles—a 1577 history Upon Elizabeth’s death, her Scottish cousin, James When American colonists argued that the English liberties, freedoms, and rights, it also has assumed of England, Scotland, and Ireland—present a remark- Stuart, ascended to the English throne. While the crown denied their rights and exploited their an iconic status in the past two centuries. Modern Eight hundred years ago on June 15, 1215, in kings at their coronation and in times of political ably balanced account of the events of 1215, and Tudor monarchs had relied on the relationship liberties, they pointed to Magna Carta, believing leaders, activists, and artists constantly rely on it as a a meadow called Runnymede not far from England’s unrest, securing its iconic status. When the new young law students accepted the spirit and precedents between the monarch and Parliament, the Stuarts the document empowered them to rise up against powerful source of human rights and inalienable Windsor Castle, discontented and rebellious feudal representative institution of Parliament evolved in the of the Great Charter with little debate. But the onset ruled by divine right and believed kings to be above an oppressive English state. In 1776, Thomas Paine liberty. Political cartoonists from James Gillray in barons forced King John to issue a Great Charter (in mid-13th century, Magna Carta was considered to be of the English Reformation brought surprising the law. Throughout the first half of the 17th century, called for Americans to convene a conference and 18th-century England to Paul Conrad in 20th-century Latin a “Magna Carta”) addressing years of financial the first English statute, giving it even greater legislative opportunities for a different approach to Magna English Parliament clashed with the Stuart kings, frame a continental charter along the lines, he said, America included references to Magna Carta in their exploitation, military failure, and arbitrary government force; thereafter it appeared at the beginning of any Carta. Because King John’s original dispute with his demanding the monarch obey the laws of the land, of England’s Magna Carta. When the framers of the drawings. The ancient document is malleable, and under a treacherous, cruel, and tyrannical king. Some collection of Parliamentary acts. barons had involved first his defiance of, and later his recognize the authority of Parliament, and acknowl- U.S. Constitution met, they did not specifically throughout the past three centuries, people have of the 63 chapters of the charter promised carefully submission to, the powerful Pope Innocent III, the edge that English subjects held certain liberties and reference Magna Carta, but by the late-18th century, repurposed it to suit their own needs and add defined reforms of recent abuses and added rights Henry de Bracton (d. 1268), the medieval lawyer king could be useful to Protestant propagandists as an freedoms. In 1642, Sir Edward Coke, the famous Enlightenment thinkers believed in the virtue of historical significance to their arguments. Even the and privileges beyond standard practice for specific whose treatise on English common law was the early opponent of the Catholic church: he resurfaces common law judge and leader of the opposition, written constitutions as a clear declaration of U.S. Supreme Court has referenced Magna Carta— groups, mostly the wealthy and socially privileged standard interpretation during the Middle Ages, had in John Bale’s polemical morality play “King Johan” evoked Magna Carta as the ancient constitution that freedoms and liberties. The English had their Magna 187 times, in fact, since 1794. The rights promised in classes. Others were more esoteric, focusing on issues clearly absorbed Magna Carta’s fundamental lesson as the improbable hero and victim of the papacy, and protected the English from tyrannical kings, and in Carta, the Petition of Right, and the Bill of Rights; the Great Charter have not always been fully realized, pertaining to a feudal world. Still others were directed when he wrote, “the king ought to be under no man, Magna Carta is never mentioned. Nor did it appear doing so, he firmly reestablished the Great Charter as Americans drafted their Constitution, they but over the past 800 years, the celebrated document at “all free men”—a relatively small portion of the but under God and the law.” During the reign of in the new craze for historical drama in Shakespeare’s as the center of English law. In the 1760s, William imported core concepts from Magna Carta, such has proved a powerful weapon in the ongoing population comprising barons, knights, and the free Edward III (1327–1377), new laws further refined time: both his play about John’s reign and the source Blackstone, the great legal scholar, famously put as the rule of law, due process, and habeas corpus. struggle for justice. peasantry—and would form the solid foundation of and expanded the reach of the original grant: Chapter on which it was based forward this notion by These represent important continuities between the an Anglo-American legal tradition that has endured 29’s famous “judgment of his peers” and “the law of neglected the Great building on Coke’s English and American legal traditions. Exhibitions commemorating Magna Carta’s 900th for 800 years: the principles that not even a king was the land” were interpreted to guarantee a trial by jury Charter. But if it seemed a reinterpretation of Magna anniversary will likely be quite different from those above the law, that no man should be deprived of his and due process, while “all free men” was broadened dead issue to the general Carta in his Commentaries While Magna Carta, like the American Constitution, of today as thinkers and societies continue to life, liberty, or property except by the judgment of to include “any man [or woman], of whatever estate public, change was on the laws of England. remains a working document in debates about reimagine this document and debate its place in his peers and the law of the land, and that all were or condition he may be.” coming: the enhanced Blackstone’s book was a the world. Fueling such worthwhile discussions is entitled to free, prompt, and impartial justice under authority of Parliament best seller in the United perhaps Magna Carta’s greatest contribution to history. that law. The evolution of that tradition over eight By the time the Tudor dynasty rose to power in 1485, after the break with Rome Kingdom and the American centuries is the subject of the exhibition, “Magna Magna Carta seemed an established and uncontro- provided an alternative colonies, and it continues Vanessa Wilkie, William A. Moffett Curator, British Carta: Law and Legend, 1215–2015.” versial fixture of English law and government, kept check on the powers of to occupy shelf space in Historical Manuscripts alive by lawyers and historians in a new world of the monarch, and by the law libraries on both Mary Robertson, Former Chief Curator of Manuscripts In the 250 years that followed Queen Elizabeth’s death sides of the Atlantic. Runnymede’s historic in 1603, politicians accord, the Great Charter turned once more to the traditionally was confirmed lessons of Runnymede. and reissued by later medieval

Genealogical chronicle of the Kings of England, illuminated manuscript on vel- lum. England, late 15th century.

Members’ copy of the U.S. Constitution, printed by the Constitutional Convention for members of Congress, 1787. Parliament of England and Wales, The Petition of Rights. London, 1642. print. Holinshed’s famous Chronicles—a 1577 history Upon Elizabeth’s death, her Scottish cousin, James When American colonists argued that the English liberties, freedoms, and rights, it also has assumed of England, Scotland, and Ireland—present a remark- Stuart, ascended to the English throne. While the crown denied their rights and exploited their an iconic status in the past two centuries. Modern Eight hundred years ago on June 15, 1215, in kings at their coronation and in times of political ably balanced account of the events of 1215, and Tudor monarchs had relied on the relationship liberties, they pointed to Magna Carta, believing leaders, activists, and artists constantly rely on it as a a meadow called Runnymede not far from England’s unrest, securing its iconic status. When the new young law students accepted the spirit and precedents between the monarch and Parliament, the Stuarts the document empowered them to rise up against powerful source of human rights and inalienable Windsor Castle, discontented and rebellious feudal representative institution of Parliament evolved in the of the Great Charter with little debate. But the onset ruled by divine right and believed kings to be above an oppressive English state. In 1776, Thomas Paine liberty. Political cartoonists from James Gillray in barons forced King John to issue a Great Charter (in mid-13th century, Magna Carta was considered to be of the English Reformation brought surprising the law. Throughout the first half of the 17th century, called for Americans to convene a conference and 18th-century England to Paul Conrad in 20th-century Latin a “Magna Carta”) addressing years of financial the first English statute, giving it even greater legislative opportunities for a different approach to Magna English Parliament clashed with the Stuart kings, frame a continental charter along the lines, he said, America included references to Magna Carta in their exploitation, military failure, and arbitrary government force; thereafter it appeared at the beginning of any Carta. Because King John’s original dispute with his demanding the monarch obey the laws of the land, of England’s Magna Carta. When the framers of the drawings. The ancient document is malleable, and under a treacherous, cruel, and tyrannical king. Some collection of Parliamentary acts. barons had involved first his defiance of, and later his recognize the authority of Parliament, and acknowl- U.S. Constitution met, they did not specifically throughout the past three centuries, people have of the 63 chapters of the charter promised carefully submission to, the powerful Pope Innocent III, the edge that English subjects held certain liberties and reference Magna Carta, but by the late-18th century, repurposed it to suit their own needs and add defined reforms of recent abuses and added rights Henry de Bracton (d. 1268), the medieval lawyer king could be useful to Protestant propagandists as an freedoms. In 1642, Sir Edward Coke, the famous Enlightenment thinkers believed in the virtue of historical significance to their arguments. Even the and privileges beyond standard practice for specific whose treatise on English common law was the early opponent of the Catholic church: he resurfaces common law judge and leader of the opposition, written constitutions as a clear declaration of U.S. Supreme Court has referenced Magna Carta— groups, mostly the wealthy and socially privileged standard interpretation during the Middle Ages, had in John Bale’s polemical morality play “King Johan” evoked Magna Carta as the ancient constitution that freedoms and liberties. The English had their Magna 187 times, in fact, since 1794. The rights promised in classes. Others were more esoteric, focusing on issues clearly absorbed Magna Carta’s fundamental lesson as the improbable hero and victim of the papacy, and protected the English from tyrannical kings, and in Carta, the Petition of Right, and the Bill of Rights; the Great Charter have not always been fully realized, pertaining to a feudal world. Still others were directed when he wrote, “the king ought to be under no man, Magna Carta is never mentioned. Nor did it appear doing so, he firmly reestablished the Great Charter as Americans drafted their Constitution, they but over the past 800 years, the celebrated document at “all free men”—a relatively small portion of the but under God and the law.” During the reign of in the new craze for historical drama in Shakespeare’s as the center of English law. In the 1760s, William imported core concepts from Magna Carta, such has proved a powerful weapon in the ongoing population comprising barons, knights, and the free Edward III (1327–1377), new laws further refined time: both his play about John’s reign and the source Blackstone, the great legal scholar, famously put as the rule of law, due process, and habeas corpus. struggle for justice. peasantry—and would form the solid foundation of and expanded the reach of the original grant: Chapter on which it was based forward this notion by These represent important continuities between the an Anglo-American legal tradition that has endured 29’s famous “judgment of his peers” and “the law of neglected the Great building on Coke’s English and American legal traditions. Exhibitions commemorating Magna Carta’s 900th for 800 years: the principles that not even a king was the land” were interpreted to guarantee a trial by jury Charter. But if it seemed a reinterpretation of Magna anniversary will likely be quite different from those above the law, that no man should be deprived of his and due process, while “all free men” was broadened dead issue to the general Carta in his Commentaries While Magna Carta, like the American Constitution, of today as thinkers and societies continue to life, liberty, or property except by the judgment of to include “any man [or woman], of whatever estate public, change was on the laws of England. remains a working document in debates about reimagine this document and debate its place in his peers and the law of the land, and that all were or condition he may be.” coming: the enhanced Blackstone’s book was a the world. Fueling such worthwhile discussions is entitled to free, prompt, and impartial justice under authority of Parliament best seller in the United perhaps Magna Carta’s greatest contribution to history. that law. The evolution of that tradition over eight By the time the Tudor dynasty rose to power in 1485, after the break with Rome Kingdom and the American centuries is the subject of the exhibition, “Magna Magna Carta seemed an established and uncontro- provided an alternative colonies, and it continues Vanessa Wilkie, William A. Moffett Curator, British Carta: Law and Legend, 1215–2015.” versial fixture of English law and government, kept check on the powers of to occupy shelf space in Historical Manuscripts alive by lawyers and historians in a new world of the monarch, and by the law libraries on both Mary Robertson, Former Chief Curator of Manuscripts In the 250 years that followed Queen Elizabeth’s death sides of the Atlantic. Runnymede’s historic in 1603, politicians accord, the Great Charter turned once more to the traditionally was confirmed lessons of Runnymede. and reissued by later medieval

Genealogical chronicle of the Kings of England, illuminated manuscript on vel- lum. England, late 15th century.

Members’ copy of the U.S. Constitution, printed by the Constitutional Convention for members of Congress, 1787. Parliament of England and Wales, The Petition of Rights. London, 1642. Related Events

June 13-Oct. 12, 2015 | Library, West Hall 1151 Oxford Road | San Marino, California 91108 | huntington.org The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens