Magna Carta – Law, Liberty, Legacy
Exhibition at the British Library
MEMS Visit in May 2015
Magna Carta - One of the 1215 surviving copies1
A group of us from MEMS visited the Magna Carta exhibition in May
and agreed it was an excellent exhibition. The British Library has
brought together a wide range of incredible artefacts from the
thirteenth century to the present day to explore the history and
impact of the Magna Carta during this 800th anniversary year.2 The
layout of the exhibition is well considered: it is divided into sections
which flow readily from one aspect to the next and which tell a
comprehensive story:
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King John, his rule and the rebellion
The granting of the Magna Carta
Revival and Survival
English Liberties
Colonies and Revolution
Radicalism and Reform
Empire and After
Magna Carta in the Modern Age
Magna Carta Revealed
One of the most important things about the exhibition is how
it challenges our many ideas and thoughts about the Magna Carta. I
was surprised at my lack of knowledge as to the whole national and
international historical and political significance of the Magna Carta
1
‘Of the surviving 1215 copies, this document alone is written in landscape
format; King John’s seal is no longer attached, but a central slit at the foot
apparently shows where the seal-tag was located. The medieval provenance of
this copy of Magna Carta is unknown, but it has a curious later history. According
to one account, it was discovered in a London tailor’s shop, before being
presented to Sir Robert Cotton (1571-1631) by Humphrey Wymes of the Inner
Temple on 1 January 1628/9. Cotton’s manuscripts later entered the British
Museum (now the British Library), and this Magna Carta has been on regular
display since 1857.’ Extract from the collections on-line catalogue for the
exhibition www.bl.uk/collection-items/magna-carta.
2 For details of all the exhibits see: www.bl.uk/magna-carta/collection-items
and how its influence has remained so powerful down the centuries.
I think that the way the exhibition is compiled certainly challenges
our perception of law and liberty and the overriding political legacy
of the charter. A comment included in the exhibition guide
summarises the ethos of the exhibition very well - Chief Justice Lord
Bingham wrote: ‘the significance of Magna Carta lay not only in
what it actually said, but in what later generations claimed and
believed it had said’.3
There are items on loan from Canterbury Cathedral. The items
include the vestments (mitre, slippers, buskins (boots) and stole,
regarded as outstanding examples of medieval English embroidery)
and crozier of Hubert Walter, who was Archbishop of Canterbury
and Chancellor of England under King John and which were found in
Walter’s tomb when it was opened in the nineteenth century.
The buskins
3
Magna Carta in the Modern Age – Exhibition Guide
The Crozier – a detail of the handle
On display is also a seal press which was made for the monks
of Canterbury Cathedral around the year 1232. The Magna Carta
was sealed not signed and the value of the Canterbury press is to
show how the impression on both sides of the Great Seal of England
would have been created and how it was used to attach the seals to
the Magna Carta documents. The seal was the most vulnerable part
of any medieval document and, only one of the four surviving 1215
Magna Carta documents, retains any trace of its original seal.4
4
www.bl.uk/collection-items/canterbury-seal-press
The Great Seal of King John
A further exhibit on loan from Canterbury is a letter dated 5
September 1215 which commanded Stephen Langton, Archbishop
of Canterbury, to excommunicate nine of the rebel barons together
with six clerics, on the grounds that they had violated the terms of
Magna Carta.5
For me one of the most startling exhibits was the
executioner’s axe that was made for the execution of the Cato
Street conspirators. In May 1820 a group of political radicals plotted
to assassinate the British prime minister and his cabinet. However
they were betrayed and arrested. Five of the ringleaders were
sentenced to be hung and then beheaded posthumously and this
axe was commissioned for the purpose. However, the axe was
never used and in front of a crowd of some 100,000 people outside
the gates of Newgate Prison the men’s heads were removed by a
masked barber-surgeon using a knife.6
http://britishlibrary.typepad.co.uk/digitisedmanuscripts/2015/03/canterburycathedral-and-magna-carta.html
6 www.bl.uk/collection-items/axe-created-for-the-execution-of-the-cato-streetconspiracy-ringleaders and www.bl.uk/collection-items/an-authentic-history-ofthe-cato-street-conspiracy.
5
There are many audio and visual displays and films showing
various aspects of the exhibition’s themes and one of my favourites
was a short film dating to1899 showing an extract from
Shakespeare’s play of the poisoning of King John and for such an
early film it is cleverly constructed. Although the film is silent the
passion and horror of this moment is well-depicted in the action and
the actors’ faces.
The way that the Magna Carta has been used over the
centuries to make political points and its use by political satirists
was well considered in the displays. Below are just three of the
illustrations that I found especially pertinent. There were many
more.
French and English Liberty poster 17927
7
‘Engraved by Thomas Rowlandson (1756-1827) in 1792, this print was much
reproduced by loyalist propagandists in England, to challenge the French
Revolution abroad and parliamentary reform at home. First printed in the
aftermath of the September Massacres and the arrest of King Louis XVI of France
(r. 1774–92), the print contrasts the virtues of ‘British Liberty’ with the dangers
of Jacobin ‘French Liberty’. Comprising two roundels, the print depicts Britannia
on the left holding ‘Magna Charta’ and the scales of Justice, with the noble lion of
England reposing peacefully at her feet. On the right, a gruesome French Medusa,
carrying a trident impaled with hearts and a severed head, tramples a
decapitated corpse underfoot, with a man hanging from a lamp-post in the
background. The lesson was clear: ancient British liberties, deriving from Magna
Carta, were equated with ‘justice’, ‘prosperity’ and ‘happiness’, while revolution
led to ‘misery’, ‘injustice’ and ‘ruin’. The viewer was asked to decide, ‘Which is
best?’’ Extract from: www.bl.uk/collection-items/illustration-contrasting-britishliberty-with-french-liberty.
27 January 1911 Votes for Women Newspaper illustration8
Cartoon by Chris Riddell, published in The Observer, after the 2010
General Election9
On the day that we visited there was on display for the first
time a major new piece of art associated with the Magna Carta. This
took the form of an embroidery conceived by Cornelia Parker. It
was entitle Magna Carta (An Embroidery) and was based on the
Wikipedia article on Magna Carta as it appeared on the document’s
8
‘Established in 1907, Votes for Women was the official newspaper of the
Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU), which campaigned for women’s
suffrage in Britain. The issue for 27 January 1911 depicted the barons presenting
Magna Carta to King John, with an accompanying essay outlining ‘How Militant
Methods Won the Great Charter’. By claiming Magna Carta to be the product of
aggression, both the artist Alfred Pearse (1855-1933; under the pseudonym ‘A
Patriot’) and essayist Joseph Clayton legitimised the suffragettes’ increasing use
of direct action. The front page image of King John was pasted into this
scrapbook owned by the suffragette, Maud Arncliffe Sennett (1862-1936). 11
months later, Sennett herself was prosecuted for breaking the windows of the
offices of the Daily Mail, because the newspaper had failed to report the holding
of a WSPU rally.’ Extract from: www.bl.uk/collection-items/cartoon-captionedmagna-carta-in-publication-votes-for-women.
9 ‘Following the 2010 General Election, which resulted in a hung Parliament, the
Conservative Party agreed to form a coalition government with the Liberal
Democrats. At the outset the partners in the Coalition were keen to publicise the
values they shared and the measures they would implement jointly in
government. Their optimism was a cause for comment in the press and formed
the basis of this cartoon by Chris Riddell, published in The Observer, which drew
on the symbolic power of Magna Carta. Here, the leader of the Liberal Democrats,
Nick Clegg, sits on the knee of the Conservative leader, David Cameron,
confidently announcing that the ‘Coalition blueprint’ for government is ‘more
significant than Magna Carta’ and other major events in British history. The plan
they hold alludes to future cuts in spending, but the spectre of a double-dip
recession looms large.’ Extract from: www.bl.uk/collection-items/cartoonentitled-coalition-blueprint-and-featuring-david-cameron-and-nick-clegg.
799th anniversary. It is a remarkable piece of work not simply for
what it represents in terms of the history of the Magna Carta but
also for the means and method of its creation. It was stitched by
many hands as a ‘snapshot of where the debate is right now’. Many
of those who were involved in its creation are prisoners who were
under the supervision of Fine Cell Work. Fine Cell Work is an
enterprise which was established to encourage prisoners to leave
prison with the means and skills to stop offending.10
I revisited the exhibition again with some of my family during
the half-term break and found even more to fascinate me. On this
occasion we ventured into the shop - and here we travelled from
the sublime to the ridiculous when we came across the Magna
quacka rubber duck! (I confess I did buy a couple of these for my
family.)
I do, however, remain bemused by the detail given in the
British Library on-line shopping catalogue – which states:
Our exclusive Magna quacka rubber duck is sure to add some
cultural contemplation to your bath time. Wearing a medieval hood
and holding a 'Magna Carta' scroll it makes an ideal souvenir to
mark the 800th anniversary of the creation of this important
document.11
I leave you to make up your own minds about this aspect of
‘cultural contemplation’ – but I would suggest that if you get the
chance you visit this excellent and thought-provoking exhibition. I
10
11
www.bl.uk/cornelia-parker
www.shop.bl.uk/mall/productpage
am sure you will find plenty to inspire and surprise you – even if
you do not visit the shop!
Julia Cruse
Friends of MEMS