Magna Carta
15 June 2015 is the eight-hundredth anniversary of the agreement by John, king of England,
to a document, written in Latin like all English administrative documents of the time, that
came to be called the Great Charter of Liberties, in Latin Magna carta libertatum – and that
is now known throughout the English-speaking world as, simply, Magna Carta. It marked a
truce in a rebellion against the king by many of his most powerful subjects, a rebellion that
originated in the king's ever increasing demands for money along with what were seen as
other manifestations of unacceptable tyranny, a breach of the tacit agreement between ruler
and ruled in the Middle Ages that underlay the oath the king took on his coronation.
The truce did not last long. Hostilities had all but resumed by the time John's
diplomacy succeeded in getting the pope to annul the charter on 24 August. The importance
of the charter lay in the future. For the rest of the thirteenth century it was seen as a definitive
– and very detailed – statement of the duties of the king, the rights of his subjects, the limits
of royal power, and it was reissued, with successive changes in detail, in 1216, 1217 (with a
supplementary charter covering the laws of the forest), 1225, 1237, 1253, 1265 and 1297.
The text of 1297 was taken as a statute, a document of permanent validity, and now, formally
entered on the Statute Roll as a part of the laws of England, Magna Carta ceased to be an
immediate political issue.
Shakespeare's play, The life and death of King John, written in the 1590s, does not
once mention Magna Carta. This could not have happened a couple of generations later, when
the powers of the Crown were again seen as an urgent problem; constitutional lawyers now
looked back to Magna Carta and made much of it as the basis of the rights of the subject.
From then on, it has been indissolubly linked with the name of King John, its issue seen as
the outstanding event of his reign.
What in fact did Magna Carta say? It is quite long – over 3500 words – and its editors
divide the document of 1215 into sixty-one clauses.1 Some dealt with the events of that year:
'We will remove completely from their offices the kinsmen of Gerard de Athée' (c.50), 'We
will at once return all hostages and charters delivered up to us by Englishmen as security for
peace or for loyal service' (c.49). Others dealt with contemporary local problems: 'No town or
1
Quotations from Magna Carta are taken from the translated text in G.R.C. Davis, Magna Carta (London:
British Museum, 1963).
person shall be forced to build bridges over rivers except those with an ancient obligation to
do so' (c.23), 'All fish-weirs shall be removed from the Thames, the Medway, and throughout
the whole of England except on the sea coast' (c.33). Others again dealt with questions that
were relevant to the thirteenth century but that were of scarcely more than antiquarian interest
even in the seventeenth: 'Ordinary lawsuits shall not follow the royal court around, but shall
be held in a fixed place' (c.17), 'People who live outside the forest need not in future appear
before the royal justices of the forest in answer to general summonses' (c.44).
However, not a few of Magna Carta's clauses could be taken out of the context of the
early thirteenth century and given an application that still resonates today. 'In future no
official shall place a man on trial upon his own unsupported statement, without producing
credible witnesses to the truth of it' (c.38), 'We will appoint as justices, constables, sheriffs, or
other officials, only men that know the law of the realm and are minded to keep it well'
(c.45), 'For a trivial offence, a free man shall be fined only in proportion to the degree of his
offence, and for a serious offence correspondingly, but not so heavily as to deprive him of his
livelihood' (c.20). And, above all, 'To no one will we sell, to no one deny or delay right or
justice' (c.40).
What has all this got to do with Sigillvm? It is simply that in popular belief, enshrined
in word and picture, King John authenticated Magna Carta by signing it, by writing his name
in his own hand. We don't have to look far to show this. Eleanor Farjeon spelled it out in a
memorable poem:
But the Barons, standing by,
Eyed him with a baleful eye;
Not a finger did they lift;
Not an eyelash did they shift;
But with one tremendous roar,
Even louder than before,
“Sign! Sign! Sign!” they said,
“SIGN, KING JOHN, OR RESIGN INSTEAD!”
- Eleanor Farjeon (1881-1965)
We see it in a romantic picture that illustrated J.W.E. Doyle's Chronicle of England B.C 55 –
A.D. 1485 (1864): John, surrounded by his stern-faced barons and ecclesiastical dignitaries,
writes at the foot of the document with a quill pen.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d6/A_Chronicle_of_England__Page_226_-_John_Signs_the_Great_Charter.jpg
This is just one of a host of similar images that appear in a web search for 'The signing of
Magna Carta'.
It is, of course, absurd. It would be 150 years before documents could be
authenticated by an autograph signature – the sign manual. In 1215 the way to authenticate a
document was to seal it – and this is what King John did. Not, of course, in person, but it is
just conceivable that he ordered the Chancery clerks to affix his seal in his own presence –
and in the presence of those of his subjects who may well have looked just as grim and
unyielding as in the picture that illustrates Doyle's book.
If this is what happened, though, it is not at all clear what that primary document was.
In the British Library is an undated document (Additional MS. 4838), now known as the
Articles of the Barons, that is headed, in Latin, 'These are the points (capitula) that the barons
seek and that the king concedes'. It is in effect a draft of Magna Carta and differs in some
details from the final text. This final text is dated 15 June 1215 and our knowledge of it rests
on transcripts in some monastic cartularies (collections of copied documents) but above all on
four copies that survive from those that were sent out to the king's local representatives –
mostly the sheriff of each county – and possibly to some others who may have paid to have
them made. Of our four copies, technically known as engrossments, two are in the cathedral
archives at Lincoln and Salisbury, and two are now in the British Library; of these, one
(Cotton Charter xiii.31a) had been sent to the Cinque Ports, privileged coastal towns of southeast England, but the addressee of the other (Cotton MS. Augustus ii.106) is not known.
Making these copies will have taken some time, and despite the date in the text, none of them
was sent out before 19 June, when the first letters were sent instructing the local officers to
publish Magna Carta – that is, to read it out publicly mostly, we may assume, in the shire
court. The document may than have been confided for safe-keeping to a local ecclesiastical
custodian, whence the copies in cathedral archives; we know this had happened on other
occasions.
King John used only one Great Seal throughout his reign. From three of our four
copies of Magna Carta it has been lost; this is neither unusual nor remarkable. The copy sent
to the Cinque Ports retains its seal, but the document suffered badly in the fire of 1731 that
destroyed some of the Cotton manuscripts and damaged many more, and all that survives of
the seal is a burnt fragment. However, the seal that was attached to the Articles of the Barons,
struck in uncoloured wax, survives though it is now detached from the document; again this
was not an unusual occurrence.
Figures 1-2: Casts of the obverse (left) and reverse (right) of the Great Seal of King John. © John Cherry 2015.
That contemporary Latin sources can use the word signare in referring to the sealing
of a document may underlie the strange belief that King John signed Magna Carta with an
autograph signature. It is an extraordinarily persistent error.
P.D.A. Harvey
12 May 2015