Magna Carta (1215): King John, the Barons and the Rule of Law

Magna Carta, or the “Great Charter”, was a grant of rights and liberties agreed by King John of England with his rebellious barons at Runnymede, beside the River Thames, in June 1215. It was meant as a peace treaty and failed within months. Yet its core idea, that the ruler is subject to the law, made it one of the most influential documents in the history of government.

Background: an unpopular king

John became King of England in 1199. In 1204 he lost Normandy, the heartland of his family’s lands in France, to King Philip II. Determined to win it back, he raised money through heavy and often arbitrary demands on his barons, including scutage (a payment in place of military service), large fees and fines, and the seizure of land.

John also quarrelled with Pope Innocent III over the choice of Stephen Langton as Archbishop of Canterbury. The Pope placed England under an interdict, suspending most church services, from 1208, and excommunicated John in 1209. John submitted to the Pope in 1213.

The final blow came in July 1214, when John’s allies were defeated by the French at the Battle of Bouvines. His plan to recover Normandy collapsed, and his authority at home was badly weakened.

The barons’ rebellion

In May 1215 a group of barons, led by Robert Fitzwalter, formally renounced their loyalty to the king. On 17 May they seized London. With the capital lost, John agreed to negotiate.

The two sides met at Runnymede, a meadow between the royal castle at Windsor and the rebel base at Staines. Archbishop Stephen Langton played an important role as a mediator. The terms were agreed and the charter dated 15 June 1215, and the barons renewed their oaths of loyalty a few days later, on 19 June.

What the charter said

Magna Carta was written in Latin. It is now usually divided into 63 clauses, though the original was a continuous text. Many of them dealt with specific grievances of the time, such as inheritance payments, the rights of widows, fish weirs on rivers and the royal forests.

For example, the charter fixed the “relief”, the fee an heir paid to inherit a barony, at £100, ending the king’s habit of demanding huge and unpredictable sums. Widows were not to be forced to remarry, and the guardians of underage heirs were not to strip their lands. Other clauses promised standard measures for wine, ale and corn throughout the kingdom, the removal of foreign mercenaries, the release of hostages, and justice for the Welsh and for the King of Scots. The very first clause confirmed the freedom of the English Church, and another protected the ancient liberties of London and other towns.

A few clauses expressed principles of lasting importance. Clause 39 declared that no free man should be arrested, imprisoned, stripped of his property, outlawed or exiled except by the lawful judgement of his equals or by the law of the land. Clause 40 promised that the king would not sell, deny or delay justice to anyone. Clause 12 required “common counsel” of the kingdom before most new taxes could be levied.

Clause 61, the so-called security clause, set up a council of 25 barons with the power to seize the king’s lands and castles if he broke the agreement.

It is important to remember that Magna Carta mainly protected free men, and above all the barons. Most people in England were unfree peasants, known as villeins, and gained little from it directly.

The charter was not signed but sealed with the king’s Great Seal, and royal clerks then wrote out copies, called engrossments, to be sent to sheriffs and bishops across the country so that it could be read out in public.

By the numbers

Key people

King John (reigned 1199–1216) was an able administrator but distrusted by many of his barons, who resented his heavy financial demands, his treatment of hostages and his military failures in France.

Stephen Langton, Archbishop of Canterbury, helped broker the settlement. Some historians believe he influenced the charter’s general language about justice and the rights of the Church, although his exact role is debated.

Robert Fitzwalter led the rebel barons and styled himself “Marshal of the Army of God”. Pope Innocent III, by then John’s feudal overlord after the king’s submission in 1213, condemned the charter as shameful and illegal.

William Marshal, an elderly and widely respected knight, served as regent for the young Henry III and oversaw the reissues that saved the charter from oblivion.

Failure and reissue

The peace did not last. John asked Pope Innocent III for help, and on 24 August 1215 the Pope declared the charter null and void. Civil war, known as the First Barons’ War, broke out. The rebels invited Prince Louis of France to become king, and he landed in England in May 1216. John fought back, besieging and capturing the rebel-held Rochester Castle in late 1215, but much of the south-east remained in rebel and French hands.

John died at Newark in October 1216, leaving his nine-year-old son Henry III as heir. To win back support, the young king’s regent, William Marshal, reissued Magna Carta in November 1216, without the security clause. A further version followed in 1217, together with a separate Charter of the Forest; from then on, the larger document was known as Magna Carta. Henry III issued the definitive version in 1225, and Edward I confirmed it in 1297.

The reissues worked. Royalist forces defeated Louis’s supporters at the Battle of Lincoln in May 1217, and the Treaty of Lambeth in September 1217 sent Louis home. The 1225 version was granted in return for a tax, setting a lasting pattern in which kings confirmed the charter when they needed money. Disputes over royal power and taxation under Henry III later led to the parliament of Simon de Montfort in 1265.

Myths and facts

Myth: King John signed Magna Carta. The charter was sealed, not signed, and no original copy carries John’s signature. Paintings of John signing with a quill are later inventions.

Myth: Magna Carta gave rights to everyone. It protected “free men”, a minority of the population, and many clauses served the interests of the barons and the Church.

Myth: Magna Carta created trial by jury and habeas corpus. The phrase “lawful judgement of his peers” did not mean a modern jury trial, which developed later. Habeas corpus, the right to challenge unlawful detention in court, grew up separately and was strengthened by the Habeas Corpus Act of 1679.

Myth: there is one original document. No single master copy is known. The surviving 1215 texts are engrossments made by royal scribes, and each is slightly different in size and layout.

Timeline

• 1204: King John loses Normandy to Philip II of France.
• 1214, 27 July: John’s allies are defeated at the Battle of Bouvines.
• 1215, 5 May: Rebel barons renounce their allegiance to John.
• 1215, 17 May: The rebels take control of London.
• 1215, 15 June: Magna Carta is agreed at Runnymede.
• 1215, 24 August: Pope Innocent III annuls the charter.
• 1216, 18–19 October: King John dies at Newark.
• 1216, 12 November: William Marshal reissues the charter in the name of Henry III.
• 1225, February: Henry III issues the definitive version of Magna Carta.
• 1297: Edward I confirms the charter, the version that later entered the statute book.

Legacy

Four original copies of the 1215 charter survive: two in the British Library, one at Lincoln Cathedral and one at Salisbury Cathedral. Three clauses of the 1297 version are still part of the law of England and Wales.

In the 17th century, lawyers such as Sir Edward Coke used Magna Carta to argue against royal power, and it went on to influence English colonists in North America. Its ideas echo in the United States Constitution and the Bill of Rights, especially in the Fifth Amendment’s guarantee of due process of law. Coke’s interpretation also shaped the Petition of Right of 1628, which Parliament forced on Charles I.

Most of the charter’s clauses were repealed in the 19th and 20th centuries as they became obsolete. In 2015, for the 800th anniversary, the four surviving 1215 copies were brought together for the first time at the British Library. In 1957 the American Bar Association built a memorial at Runnymede in its honour.

In the 20th century Magna Carta became an international symbol. When the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted in 1948, Eleanor Roosevelt, who chaired the committee that drafted it, expressed the hope that it might become an international Magna Carta for all people. Copies of the charter have since toured the world and drawn large crowds.

Why it matters

Magna Carta began as a failed deal between a troubled king and his nobles, a century and a half after the Norman Conquest had reshaped England’s ruling class. Over time it became a symbol of the rule of law, of limits on government power and of the right to fair justice, ideas that remain central to democracies today.