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mobile.com. Magna

1:06

Carta is perhaps one of the best known

1:09

medieval documents. And as a

1:11

result, it has an outsized mythology to match

1:13

its fame. But is it really

1:15

the levelizing document we portray it as? I'm

1:18

Dr. Eleanor Janaga. And today on

1:20

Gone Medieval from History Hit, we're bringing

1:22

you an episode from our sister podcast,

1:24

American History Hit, where I

1:26

joined Don Wildman to talk about what

1:29

I believe to be one of the most

1:31

overrated medieval charters and how

1:33

something that only ever guaranteed rights

1:35

for an insignificant handful of people

1:37

was built up into a revolutionary

1:39

document hundreds of years later

1:41

by Americans. It's a

1:44

story of riches, rich people

1:46

and righteous myths that I

1:48

cannot wait to dig into. Greetings,

2:00

listeners. This is American History Hit,

2:02

and I'm your host, Don Wildman.

2:04

Welcome. June

2:07

15, 2023, which

2:09

passed about a month ago as

2:11

I speak, just marked another anniversary

2:13

of an age-old document scribed with

2:15

quill pen upon parchment, one

2:18

which many say was fundamental to the

2:20

rule of law in the United States,

2:22

essential in the thinking and legal grounding

2:24

of our nation. But I'm

2:27

not speaking of the Declaration of Independence

2:29

or the Constitution or the Bill of

2:31

Rights or any of the amendments to

2:33

the Constitution, although again, many would source

2:35

those documents to this earlier one. I

2:37

am speaking, of course, of the Magna Carta,

2:40

written over 800 years ago in 1215, presented late upon a table in Runnimede,

2:47

England, to a disgruntled English regent,

2:49

King John, who was forced

2:51

by the threat of civil war to

2:53

broker a peace with rebellious English barons

2:55

that would entail him signing off on

2:58

a document written by their side that

3:00

held within it certain guaranteed

3:02

rights and liberties which those barons

3:04

saw necessary to maintaining a balance

3:06

of power. Sound familiar?

3:10

It was not the first time a document of this nature

3:12

had been signed in England. It would not be the last.

3:14

But there was something that was importantly

3:17

unique about this one, different in

3:19

ways that we will discuss today

3:21

with Dr. Eleanor Janaga, an

3:23

American medieval historian who lives in England. She

3:26

is a guest teacher at the London School of

3:28

Economics, an author and a broadcaster. She

3:30

is an expert in all things medieval. And

3:32

more importantly than all that, she is the

3:34

co host of the history hit podcast Gone

3:36

Medieval. Excellent. You should listen to it. Hello,

3:38

Eleanor. Welcome to our podcast. Don, thank you

3:40

so much for having me. It's an absolute

3:43

pleasure to be here. Our

3:45

subject today is right in the

3:47

pocket of our transatlantic employer, the

3:49

Magna Carta, this thoroughly English matter 800

3:52

years ago that somehow had much to do with the founding

3:55

of the United States or did it depends

3:57

on who you talk to or who you Google. Some

3:59

say And we can certainly include

4:01

Benjamin Franklin in this group that

4:04

the very roots of the American Liberty

4:06

tree, the metaphorical one, the rights

4:08

of our founders and stated in our original documents

4:11

are nourished by the soils of this

4:13

medieval moment in English political life. There

4:15

is basic language lifted straight from the

4:17

Magna Carta or its descendant documents, right?

4:20

That's right. The most important thing that you

4:22

could say about Magna Carta and its influence

4:25

is particularly on the Bill of Rights. And

4:28

that really, it's kind of enshrined

4:30

specifically from the 20th clause of Magna

4:32

Carta. The most important thing here, which

4:35

is, for a trivial offense,

4:37

a free man shall be fined only

4:39

in proportion to the degree of his

4:41

offense and for a serious offense correspondingly,

4:43

but not so heavily as to deprive

4:46

himself of his livelihood. And

4:48

this is a really interesting one because Magna

4:51

Carta in many ways is overblown

4:53

in terms of what it means in

4:55

an English context, right? Because essentially,

4:58

it's a document that was created because of,

5:00

again, the threat of civil war, just

5:02

as you said, between a collection of

5:04

barons here in England and King John

5:06

I. But it really

5:08

only pertains in most

5:10

senses to those barons, right? And when

5:13

people read things like this, they say,

5:15

oh, yes, well, free men really should

5:17

have particularized rights. And what Magna Carta

5:19

was doing was it was establishing what

5:21

all of these people within England could

5:24

expect to see in

5:26

terms of how justice would be meted out on

5:28

them. And that's all well and good. But

5:31

there aren't very many free men

5:33

in England at that time. About

5:36

70% of the population are serfs

5:39

in England, which is kind of unfree person. Well, this

5:41

is one of these discussions that

5:43

we have to be careful about the

5:45

modern sensibility versus the context of those

5:47

times. That's an ongoing dilemma

5:49

in this day and age. Let's

5:51

start this conversation at a very

5:53

basic place. Magna Carta means great

5:56

charter. In 1215, a guy

5:58

named King John was struck a

6:00

looming civil war based on taxation

6:02

and all sorts of problems that these barons.

6:04

And by barons, I mean people who

6:07

are controlling great swaths of land. They

6:09

would be like governors of American states, would be

6:11

some kind of equivalent, I suppose. And they had

6:13

all gathered, as one

6:16

does, to say to this guy supposedly in charge, we need changes,

6:19

and we need to bake them into a

6:21

document that you sign that guarantees us that you

6:24

will not cross a certain line. What was that line

6:26

that you were in charge of? What

6:29

was that line most clearly? So

6:31

most clearly, what they really wanted was

6:34

to be in charge

6:36

of judicial things within their own

6:38

counties, as it were. So

6:40

if you are, for example, I don't know, the

6:42

Baron of Oxfordshire, pulling one off the

6:45

top of my head, what you want

6:47

to be sure is that you're the person who's beating out justice, for the

6:49

most part, in Oxfordshire,

6:52

right? You don't want it to be that if

6:54

there is some kind of land dispute between yourself and

6:58

another landowner, that the king comes in and

7:00

makes those decisions. And this

7:02

is, in many ways, a really common thing

7:04

in the medieval period. You

7:07

generally see, just as a general, very slap-dash rule

7:09

of thumb, in

7:11

the countryside, nobles control things, and they control

7:13

their own land, they bring in their own

7:15

taxation, they oversee the course. But

7:18

in cities, it's the king, and the king

7:20

is kind of an overarching thing, and the barons

7:23

have to kick up money to them. But

7:26

King John, he's in the process of attempting to sort

7:28

of consolidate more legal rights at

7:30

the time. We're coming out of

7:32

a period of some

7:35

light chaos, let's put it that way. The

7:37

period of the anarchy when no one really knew who was the king is only a

7:39

generation behind. There

7:42

was rather a lot of wars between King John's mother,

7:44

Eleanor of Aquitaine, and his father, Henry II. And

7:48

so John is in here saying, all right, we're cleaning the house, this

7:50

is what it's going to mean to be a

7:52

king, and we want to establish this. But the barons are sort

7:54

of like, no, mate, there are what you often

7:57

call customary rights, or custom

7:59

rights. customary laws that we

8:01

want seen to. And what

8:04

is interesting about this is it is a way

8:06

of enshrining these things that were sort of

8:08

how things were done for the

8:10

most part, and actually writing it down in one

8:13

place instead of just saying, well, this is the

8:15

way things have always been done. Everybody knows this.

8:17

I mentioned in the opening that this was not

8:19

the first time or the last time that this

8:21

kind of thing happened. And in fact, the Magna

8:23

Carta did not work out well, it was violated

8:26

almost immediately by King John, right? He goes over

8:28

their heads straight to the Pope and says, they

8:30

made me do this come to my side and

8:32

they nullify this thing, right? Yeah, absolutely.

8:34

Because the Pope can and it establishes a difficult

8:36

relationship, right? Because kings can go directly to the

8:38

Pope because that's the boss of kings. We could

8:40

all agree that there's one guy more important than

8:42

the king and that's the Pope. Well, he works

8:44

for the king of kings. Exactly. And he's the

8:46

one who if God is the reason why you

8:49

get to be king, then you're going to have

8:51

to go talk to the mediator of God, right?

8:53

But it also makes sense from

8:55

a church standpoint that you don't

8:57

really want individuals on the lower positions

8:59

saying, Oh, we get to write down

9:02

what rights are and who has what rights because

9:04

the church, again, the Pope wants to be

9:07

the king of all the church, right? What

9:09

if your local archbishops start trying to pull

9:11

this and say, Oh, actually, we don't really

9:13

want Rome looking in on what's happening in

9:15

Canterbury. So it's a kind of existential crisis

9:17

for the Pope as well. And

9:19

so that's quite interesting, right? Because

9:21

we tend to say, Oh, yeah, and

9:23

Magna Carta came in and then it

9:25

established that everybody has rights. It was

9:27

like, well, one, not everybody has rights

9:29

to basically off the books almost immediately,

9:32

from a real legalistic standpoint. And

9:34

that means a lot coming from the church as

9:36

well, because it's the best legal structure in

9:38

the Middle Ages. Like really, the way to think about the

9:40

church is, sure, it's a moral standpoint,

9:42

but actually what it's doing is establishing the

9:45

laws of what it means to be a

9:47

Christian. So the thing that really

9:49

binds Europe together is this concept of Christendom and

9:51

a concept that the Pope really does have

9:53

a say in these things. So to us,

9:55

it's kind of shocking. When you hear that

9:57

you say how can the Pope come in

9:59

and nullify. legal document? And the answer is

10:01

pretty easily. He's got the means to do it. We're

10:04

edging into a very interesting conversation that has

10:06

to do with more European history than anything

10:08

else, which I find fascinating in that you

10:11

basically have the parade of empires through the

10:13

centuries. And Christendom is one of those empires.

10:15

I mean, it has a different sort of

10:17

gestalt to it, but it's definitely the biggest

10:20

one of all that ever comes along. But

10:22

let's tie this back to American history.

10:24

In a sense, the Magna Carta is

10:26

cited, as I mentioned in the opening

10:28

by none other than Benjamin Franklin. But

10:30

more in a document, it's on the

10:32

front page of the 1774 journal of the Continental

10:36

Congress, the first Continental Congress. It's the record of

10:39

what happened in that first meeting in which grievances

10:41

were laid out towards the British Empire. And at

10:43

the bottom of that page, if you just Google

10:45

it up, you'll see this is a nice little

10:47

logo, a little stamp that has the picture of

10:50

a sort of pillar. And then

10:52

weirdly, it looks like a kind of animal. It's

10:54

got all these legs. Indeed, the legs are actually

10:56

arms and hands that are holding on to

10:58

this pillar. The saying that's there

11:00

refers to the fact that all of

11:02

these different hands, all these different agents

11:05

will be leaning on this central pillar,

11:07

that pillar being the Magna Carta, which

11:09

indeed is even cited at the bottom

11:11

of the pillar. So the new Congress,

11:13

the Continental Congress is citing that particular

11:15

document at the time, already hundreds of

11:17

years in the past, as

11:19

a central tenant of what they were

11:22

complaining about. Was this a

11:24

propaganda idea? Or was this actually true? I

11:26

think that it's a little bit of both.

11:28

I think that what they are doing, I

11:30

mean, this is a really clever bunch of

11:32

guys, especially Ben Franklin, I love his ways,

11:34

right? And so what they want to do

11:36

is they want to say, okay, well, this

11:38

is the legal idea that we want. How

11:40

do we go about establishing that? Right?

11:43

And these guys have legal training, they know exactly

11:45

what's going on. And so they're like, well, what

11:48

we have to do is we've got to reach

11:50

back into law, and find where we can go

11:52

to back us up, back up our positions. And

11:55

so the natural place that you

11:57

flow to from that is going

11:59

to be... Magna Carta, you

12:01

know, you could make an argument for English common

12:03

law, for example, which is more like the law

12:05

for every man. But

12:07

Magna Carta has big sweeping

12:10

ideals. And it's about governance

12:12

more specifically. And that's what matters to them,

12:14

right? Because if what we're doing is we're

12:16

establishing that there is a relationship

12:19

between powerful people

12:22

who make laws and enact

12:24

the law and a king,

12:26

then Magna Carta is the obvious place to go. But

12:29

it's also quite interesting because one of the

12:31

things about this is they've in a way

12:33

gone and found something that was really obscure

12:35

at the time, because people in England were

12:37

like, what? Who's got Magna Carta? And Ben is

12:40

in here reaching out like, ha ha, I've got

12:42

here I am with Magna Carta. And English people

12:44

are like, I haven't seen that in

12:46

centuries. So they actually kind of revive

12:48

what is a pretty obscure document at

12:51

the time, which I absolutely love. It's

12:53

such a particularized lawyer move, like such a way

12:55

of outflanking. So I do think that they say,

12:57

oh, yeah, and that's great, because we can draw

12:59

off of this. But I think that they had

13:02

the idea in the first place and went back

13:04

to go find something. Maybe I'm just a

13:06

historian. And that's what I want to see. Right. No,

13:09

I totally agree with you. And that actually

13:11

came to me doing some reading

13:13

on this subject, poking around trying to figure out

13:15

why the Magna Carta even mattered at this point,

13:17

how could it have been so popularly known when

13:19

they didn't have the resources? People

13:21

are illiterate everywhere. And suddenly this thing

13:24

that's written down on parchment matters as

13:26

much as it does. It had

13:28

to have been a maneuver. It had to have been a

13:30

move done by this bunch of

13:32

lawyers, as you say, to say, aha, hold

13:34

on, you guys. You're treating

13:37

us unlike English citizens. You're

13:39

treating us in such a way that we

13:41

have reasons to complain, reasons to meet, reasons

13:43

to write down our grievances. And

13:46

here, look at your own document that

13:48

actually instates these very rights in

13:50

your own history. So take that, King.

13:53

We're throwing it right back at you with your own

13:55

stuff. And this was really a gotcha

13:57

moment, wasn't it? Or at least intended to be. Oh

14:00

god, absolutely. They've pulled this out and they're just

14:02

saying, look, everything that we're complaining about, you can

14:04

see it right here. Plus, it's

14:07

got this amazing kind of modern gloss,

14:09

a real enlightenment move, because they're saying, okay, well,

14:11

here we are, we're free men. And by this

14:13

time, everyone can kind of agree that they're such

14:15

a thing as a free man. And

14:18

you are not acting in this particularized way.

14:20

Whereas medieval people would be like, oh, sorry,

14:22

I wasn't talking about you. I

14:24

was talking about these 12 guys, the barons,

14:26

and what their rights are. We were talking

14:29

about fishing weirs. I don't know what does

14:31

this have to do with some kind of

14:33

sure, wealthy lawyer in America, but that doesn't

14:35

interest me. And so it's a real

14:37

brilliant gotcha, you know, saying, well, I think we've

14:39

all agreed that we moved on. We all agree

14:41

that there are free men and that this is

14:43

what we are. And yet you have misapplied

14:46

these things. It's a masterful dig, I have

14:48

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18:00

13th century, this is not going to

18:02

be something that is like huge on Diderot's

18:04

list or something like that, but it becomes

18:06

very interesting and important to them after

18:09

it's cycled through the Americans. And once you

18:11

get the kind of American mania going on

18:13

over in France after the Declaration of Independence,

18:15

after the Constitution and the Bill of Rights,

18:18

when Lafayette and all of his friends are

18:20

hanging out helping to fight the war, and

18:22

the French go, hang on, wait a minute,

18:24

how come you're rebelling against your terrible king

18:26

and now we've got a terrible king? And

18:28

they start looking towards these same ideas. And

18:31

then they find it very compelling, obviously, but

18:33

most French people don't speak English at the

18:35

time, you know, English speak French, it's the

18:37

lingua franca for a reason. So it has

18:40

to come through the American consciousness,

18:42

and then back out again, in order

18:44

to be absorbed into the Enlightenment. And

18:46

then you see the very same things

18:48

be reinterpreted as the universal rights of

18:50

man, in all these other ways. But

18:53

it's this kind of very specific

18:56

framework and it's something that America really did.

18:58

It's not an English thing. That is a

19:00

fascinating subject, the dynamic between the French and

19:03

the Americans at this point, and

19:05

how we kind of leapfrog them in terms

19:07

of revolution. And then they do their own

19:10

just afterwards. But the truth is

19:12

the two are part of the same dynamic that's

19:14

happening in the world at the time. Boy,

19:16

there's a lot of strands to this conversation that

19:18

I would love to spend hours discussing. But

19:21

really, what's interesting to our audience, I

19:23

think, is the fact that the Americans

19:25

who are making this new country are

19:27

really the ones who are promoting this

19:30

idea most dramatically in the world. But

19:32

we might be confused as to why.

19:35

It wasn't necessarily to break from the

19:37

English crown, it was to defend themselves

19:39

in the argument that the English crown

19:41

was misunderstanding their relationship to the American

19:43

colonies, that they had warped this

19:45

relationship in such a fashion that it needed

19:48

to be corrected and straightened out. That's all

19:50

really the biggest thinkers were trying to do

19:52

in 1774. There were a lot of radicals

19:54

who were thinking otherwise, that would certainly happen

19:56

pretty quickly. But nonetheless, there was a lot

19:58

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32:03

love of home. Thank

32:08

you for listening to this episode of Gone

32:10

Medieval. Please follow this show wherever you get

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for just one pound a month when

32:32

you use the code medieval at checkout.