Does Magna Carta matter today?

Added: 2026-05-14

[00:00:00]Whatever the professional historians say, it is almost impossible to get out of the public mind certain ideas. So as far as most people are concerned, habers corpus, parliament, right to trial by jury, all those things are somehow in Magna Carta. They're not really.

[00:00:18]>> Politicians invoke it, [music] activists wield it, and legal thinkers debate what it can still offer our modern world. But what does Magna [music] Carta actually mean today? I'm Emily Briffitz and I'm joined by historian Professor Nicholas [music] Vincent.

[00:00:34]In this fourth and final episode of our series on the charter, we're going to be considering its long afterlife, tracing how a narrow medieval settlement morphed into a legendary document that still [music] speaks to our ongoing struggle over power, justice, and freedom.

[00:01:01]Welcome back to this our fourth episode, Nicholas.

[00:01:04]>> Hello.

[00:01:04]>> It's a pleasure to have you back. We are going to be talking all about the legacy of Magna Carta. This is something we've been building to over the course of the series and it's something that keeps coming up again and again. But if we go back to the 13th century, what was the immediate impact of Magna Carta on the 13th century mindset?

[00:01:24]>> It's there constantly when people object to a king or what a king is up to. They are aware that there is a precedent set by Magna Carta and that this in in a sense is an ongoing process. And you begin to get the emergence of these books of statutes, books of law. Before this, we don't really have books of law.

[00:01:49]We've got guides how you do the law, but we haven't actually got the laws themselves in book form in quite this way. But from the 13th century onwards, we get books in which the latest laws laid down by the kings of England are set down in writing and they always begin with Magna Carta. It is the great great great grandfather of all law ever since in English terms. So it' be fair to say that it became very much a part of English political life even if the clauses themselves didn't >> very much so for that that's the reasons we've discussed earlier that it it's now hardwired into the English sense of identity that there is this thing called Magna Carta that kings are placed under the rule of law that we are people who are entitled to certain rights and liberties and that Magna Carta in some way that probably people don't actually understand the details here, but in some way Magna Carta's got something to do with that.

[00:02:50]>> Do you think that those present at Runny in 1215 would expect us to still be talking about Magna Carta today?

[00:02:57]>> No, I don't think they would have had a clue that that was where things were going because they were negotiating a piece and in some ways they were negotiating a piece that might have been very temporary. Um, but then we go back to something we said earlier on. they were aware that something important was happening because they did keep lots of the bits and pieces the sort of um relics that were knocking around on the table at Runny.

[00:03:25]Um and all the chronicers at that time realized that this meeting between king and realm is of significance. So they knew that something had happened but they wouldn't have had a clue that the longer term echoes of all of this. At what point did it lose its practical significance? What could we give a rough time frame for that?

[00:03:47]>> Well, it's it's an interesting question whether it's ever entirely lost its practical significance because it still comes up in political debate today. Um, and maybe it's been mythologized, but um really uh into the 1960s that debate over um right of navigation, the the um common property that um is not to be exploited for anyone's particular gain, that was still being litigated in English courts. Um, judges on the whole will tell you that um any um defendant or who uses Magna Carta in court almost certainly doesn't know what they're talking about. It's always um those who represent themselves who cite Magna Carta and it's it today in law it's uh it doesn't [clears throat] really have much um day-to-day relevance in the way the courts function. But um uh certainly through the 13th century by the end of the 13th century in specific terms it's all a bit archaic and it doesn't really necessarily talk to the specific points that are for uh of particular topical concern in dealing between the crown and the realm. So you could say by the late 13th century it was already in many ways out of date. But as I say, you know, even [clears throat] into the present day, it remains part of debate even though it doesn't necessarily answer some of the questions people want answered.

[00:05:16]>> The last three episodes we've been focusing majorly on the Middle Ages. If we step away from those for a brief while head towards the early modern period, where does Magna Carta go there?

[00:05:28]>> Uh, well, there are a number of things that really it becomes a very very hot potato if we jump forward a bit. So when the Steuarts come in after6003, Scots kings who believe in the absolute right of kingship, um James the first would quite happily be an absolutist monarch. Um, English lawyers, English constitutionalists, if you like to call them that, people like Ebu Cook site Magna Carta as an indication of an ancient constitution uh largely a figment of their imagination, but as an ancient constitution that no king has the right to challenge. So, Magna Carta enters the whole debate that leads onto the civil war and is brandished by parliament during the course of that civil war as a totem of liberty.

[00:06:20]It's brandished again in the 18th century. I'm sure we're going to talk about the American colonists in due course, but um even in England in the 18th century, John Wilks and the right to as it were speak against the crown, the right of the citizen to um express freedom of opinion. Wilk sites Magna Carta. Charles James Fox, the great statue in Bever Square, um shows Charles James Fox holding Magna Carta. So the wigs at the end of the 18th century who are as it were on the side of liberty even perhaps on the side of the French revolutionaries the French revolutionaries adopt certain ideas from Magna Carta. Um so um in the um declaration of the rights of man that idea that the sovereign power is not to go against the people saved by the law well that's written into even into French law and after the defeat of um Napoleon uh the restoration of the bore bonds um the French kings issue lang they issue their shot constitutionel uh both in uh 185 and again in 1830 trying to place French law under something a bit like English law, you know, like sort of growing something in a greenhouse and transplanting it from England to France. the chartists who want universal suffrage, who want people, everybody to have the right to vote. Um 1840s, 1830s,4s,50s.

[00:08:01]Um they they are chartists because they believe in the charter and their charter in a sense goes back to the great charter of the 13th century.

[00:08:13]Um after the first world war, Winston Churchill says that England and America are united by their documents of liberty, by their love of liberty with Magna Carta as one of the foundational documents of this English-speaking union. And then even in the mid 1940s when the United Nations was being set up and the declaration of human rights um uh they again go back to Magna Carta clauses 39 and 40 uh on the uh the right to justice and the right to place the sovereign power under the rule of law.

[00:08:54]So in all of those instances it's continued to resonate down the centuries.

[00:08:59]>> Now you're totally right. we do need to talk about um the US. What led American colonists to claim Magna Carta as their inheritance?

[00:09:09]>> I think the key point there is that the American colonists are not actually American to start with. they are English and they believe that they are freeborn Englishmen and they have all the rights that go with being freeborn Englishmen and therefore um parliament's attempts to tax them are contrary to their rights as freeborn Englishmen um and they have a right to representation which of course they're denied because they have no parliamentary representation themselves.

[00:09:38]So we get the irony of the American Revolution where they see themselves as loyal subjects of the crown. It's not the king who's the object of their disaection. It's Parliament that they see acting against their rights that they they would regard as going back to Magna Carta.

[00:09:59]>> And it would be fair to say that this has become quite a big part of their constitution. Magna Carta is enormously significant in America. I think even more so than is the case in this country. It's venerated in America to an extraordinary extent. The number of buildings in America, the number of state um legislatures or state courouses that have illustrations of Magna Carta um from the 19th century through to really very recent times. uh of images of John holding the charter, images of John sealing the charter and of course in terms of their constitutional documents um the use of that idea of due process and then the incorporation of the entire text of Magna Carta into the state legislation, the state constitutions of 17 of the United States. Now in in this country in the United Kingdom from the 19th century gradually various clauses of the charter were slowly done away with they are silently disposed of and removed from the statute book. So we're now down to four clauses that are law in England today. Uh whereas in America because of its incorporation into those state constitutions, you could say that the whole thing is still up and running there in America.

[00:11:27]In practical terms, quite what that means is another matter. But there's a lot more of it actually that's still on the statute books in America than is the case in this country. And when it comes to this, we need to talk about this idea that we've spoken about in previous episodes that this is a constitutional document that deals with these ancient personal liberties. Why has the myth that that is what Magna Carta is about been so pervasive? I suppose simply through the the number of times that the power of the sovereign has been challenged um both in this country and in America and that idea that we got is not necessarily true but the idea that we got there first that one of the rights of freeborn English people the Anglo-Saxon world if you want to term it like And here I'm using it in a very general sense. I realize that it has a lot of pjorative meanings that term, but that's not the sense I'm using it. The Englishspeaking version of history says that liberty is hardwired into our rights. Now, there are all sorts of ironies to that. So, for example, America remained a slaveowning nation after the Declaration of Independence.

[00:12:52]The Jamaican slave owners of the British Empire used Magna Carta to justify slavery because Magna Carta does set aside certain groups within society and say that merchants are entitled to this and knights are entitled to this and essentially peasants are entitled to this. So it seems to recognize social divisions and therefore those who wanted to argue in favor of slavery were able to say that slavery itself is part of Magna Carta. So uh you get the use of Magna Carta as a very divisive weapon.

[00:13:27]um you you find the same thing that within the British Empire if you're Irish or Indian or not as it were English um you you don't have the right to appeal to Magna Carta in the same way that you would do if you were freeborn English citizen. So if you're an Irish person or an Indian person living under English rule, under English law, um there's a degree of discrimination against you that goes back to that idea that English liberties are in some ways special and they're not extended to everybody.

[00:14:00]So the the the great point there is that Magna Carta can be used both by the radical what we might call the left today and in many ways by the conservative right. So it's a symbol both of radical rebellion against the state or the crown or whatever we want to call it and at the same time of tradition and the good old days and a return to the proper old laws of the past.

[00:14:27]>> How have modern historians critiqued popular perceptions such as this surrounding the charter? You know the idea that it gave freedom for all instantly in 1215. I think the the key point there is that um whatever the professional historians say it is almost impossible to get out of the public mind certain ideas. So as far as most people are concerned habers corpus parliament right to trial by jury all those things are somehow in Magna Carta they're not really you can sort of make an argument that some of them are almost half there but they're not really there. to actually remove that from popular consciousness I think is virtually impossible.

[00:15:07]What's changed if we look over the last h 100red years or so is a far greater understanding of the context of Magna Carta of the reign of King John of the personalities involved of the formation of this perennial coalition there's wonderful work being done on the the the detailed politics of the 13th century uh I think there's there's also as in all these things fashion change.

[00:15:39]Uh so if you went back to the 1920s30s, there grew up this idea that Magna Carta was a purely bonial, selfish, oligarchic sort of thing and it had no relevance.

[00:15:53]Well, that went away in the 1950s after the Second World War. The idea that in some way England is best or the Anglo-Saxon English-speaking world have something that others don't have. and Magna Carta might be part of it. And then again, you could go on to more recent times when there's a tendency to knock the charter and to say actually most of it's mythologized and lots of things that people think it ought to be there aren't really there. So these things always they come and they go, but the charter itself has remained a topic of debate really since the 13th century.

[00:16:30]It's it's difficult to think of. I don't think there is a century since 1215 where Magna Carta hasn't been at the center of English political debate.

[00:16:40]>> Are there any other big myths that have grown up around Magna Carta that you think we should point to, bust, critique, challenge? Oh, I suppose the idea that in some way it's all been done and that we don't need to continue to protect some of those rights and liberties that the charter in some eyes guarantees.

[00:17:03]So, you know, the the the price of freedom is eternal vigilance.

[00:17:08]If we just assume it's all there, then [clears throat] I think problems arise. or if we believe that we've somehow reached a a situation of constitutional perfection where these things they were all done a long time ago because that's not how the law works. Um, I'm afraid that a lot of people today don't actually understand the basis of their constitutional history, right, whatever it might be.

[00:17:41]And we live in a very dangerous world where there are all sorts of groups that want to use totems of the past like Magna Carta um to argue particular points of view. I give you a recent instance, the right to trial by jury.

[00:17:56]There are some who say that the right to trial by jury is hardwired into Magna Carta. There are some who say that Magna Carta is all about speeding up justice so that you are you shouldn't have justice delayed. Well, they're both right and they're both wrong. Um but they're both using Magna Carta to score party political points.

[00:18:20]And um I think that uh really that that's the key point that unless we actually continue to debate these things and actually think about them with a with a degree of depth of understanding, there is a risk that the all those things we take for granted will somehow just vanish before us. I would urge anyone who doesn't know what's in the charter to read the text. It's not it's not exactly half a minute. Uh it it's got its high points and its low points and it's got an awful lot of language there, technical legal terminology of the 13th century that won't mean very much to people. People on the whole aren't really worried about pichipe today for instance. But I I would urge anyone who's interested to read the text because it must be about the most famous document in the history of the world that no one's ever read.

[00:19:12]>> Are there any particularly good additions that people could go and read?

[00:19:16]>> Oh um well I you know there are great books on Magna Carta if you want to understand about the reign of King John.

[00:19:23]JC Holtz the Northerners is a great book. David Carpenters's Penguin book on Magna Carta. Uh some of us in this room have themselves written short introductions to Magna Carta. So that there's no shortage of literature on it.

[00:19:38]Um The Reign of King John is of enduring fascination and there are all sorts of good books that you could go away and read about it.

[00:19:46]>> And is it possible to get up close with a version of Magna Carta at all? You can see Magna Carta in the British Library as long as you don't go armed with a pickaxe, which um has happened recently.

[00:19:59]You can go and see it in Salsbury Cathedral as long as you don't go armed with a pickaxe, which has happened recently. And you can go and see it at Lincoln. So, uh they all display their Magna Cartas. The Bodian Library in Oxford has got more original Magna Cartas than any other collection.

[00:20:17]Um uh you can see it in Durham. uh in America you can see it in the national archives in um the ratunda in um Washington.

[00:20:29]Um, you can go to Canberra in Australia where in the 1950s a small school in Somerset found that it had a Magna Carta in rather strange circumstances and sold that on to the Australian uh, well, it's actually not quite clear who they sold it to, the National Library or the Senate, but in the Senate in Canberra, you can see Magna Carta on display and you can go to Raleigh or you could go to any of those other great sites that play a role like Rochester Castle. You see Rochester Castle with those three towers that are identical and then the tower that John knocked down when he besieged the castle. You have it in front of you as a living memorial of what happened in 1215.

[00:21:15]>> To go back to your point about the legacy of this and how it's been used in the modern world, can a medieval document ever remain relevant without being misrepresented?

[00:21:26]I think probably not. Um but then you know think of world religions. They're all based on books that were written long long before the middle ages.

[00:21:35]In some cases books that are really very much read by those who think they know what's in them. Um so all things as it were change their meaning over time. And we we've talked about that haven't we when we've talked about liberty. So the meaning of liberty in Magna Carta as a sort of franchise that belongs to particular individuals well by the 17th century that's coming to mean a very different sort of liberty the sort of freedom to which we feel that we're entitled liberty under the law. So that very word has changed its meaning but it doesn't in any way reduce its relevance.

[00:22:15]So in a sense it's the the swanky word would be the polyvolence the the multi-acceted meaning of something. Um over time uh these things actually acquire a richness of interpretation that when they were crudely put down on parchment in 1215 they they didn't actually possess. So in a sense you could argue that it's even more important now than it was in 1215.

[00:22:43]Is there say a modern equivalent of it?

[00:22:46]>> Very hard to think of anything. The only the only thing that I don't even know if it's any longer taught as such, but the 1832 great reform act that extended the franchise and as it were began to bring a [clears throat] larger part of the population within the right to vote. The 1832 Reform Act is in many ways seen as a totem of liberty in in a slightly similar way. I think to an older generation, a much older generation, 1688 the glorious revolution, uh the way in which the the Steuart absolutism was kicked out and Protestant liberty was declared that too might be seen as equivalent to Magna Carta. But I think in terms of the the way that Magna Carta resonates around the world, it's very difficult to think of of anything quite like that. It's only three and a half thousand words. It's not some great book of scripture. Um, but it it is generally recognized throughout the world as being important often by people who've never actually read it.

[00:23:58]>> What lessons would you say that be more than more than just Magna Carta itself, but the Magna Carta story offers for contemporary debate? You know, if you were to say design a modern charter, what do you think Magna Carta can teach us? I mean that's a very personal assessment that you're asking for.

[00:24:20]There's a great debate at the moment about whether we need a written constitution and there are those who say that we do need a written constitution and you can see in recent years there has been a certain amount of constitutional crisis.

[00:24:32]The obvious instance of that is Brexit and the the fallout from Brexit and the degree to which Parliament was as it were wandering in the dark over how to actually organize its own affairs. So there are some who would say that a written constitution is the answer.

[00:24:50]Isn't it at the same time interesting that the two key clauses of Magna Carta, we will not delay or or sell or deny justice and that you have certain rights that the crown cannot simply prosecute you or or destroy you save by the judgment of your peers or the law of the land. Those are very very woolly clauses and you know the the the envelope is pushed very very wide there.

[00:25:20]So in a sense the most significant parts of Magna Carta are the least specific and the most specific like the business about expelling the sheriff Nottingham and getting rid of KD's fishes on the Medway. Um they're the the ones of least relevance. So what I suppose it suggests is that if you have a constitution don't expect the constitution to answer all your problems. And bear in mind also that that idea that we live under the rule of law, North Korea has a constitution. The Soviet Union had a constitution. 1936 constitution of the Soviet Union. Um and uh basically those constitutions say you will live under the rule of law and law is what we say it is. So uh even the idea of the rule of law can mean various things to various people.

[00:26:15]>> [sighs] >> So is there a lesson there? Yes. That um if we believe that we are a freedom loving people living under the rule of law and that we've done so for the last 800 years quite successfully and although there have been a few hitches along the way on the whole things have worked out in the end. We may behave in future in ways that are subtly different from countries where what you've had for the last 800 years is the rule of the mighty and the sense that might is right and that um the only way that a country can work effectively is under the rule of a rather more repressive regime.

[00:26:58]Um I think that that that's not a bad lesson to learn from Magna Carta. Going back to our charter, the one we've been looking at throughout this series, the Magna Carta, [gasps] how has this document been commemorated in centuries gone by or perhaps reinterpreted?

[00:27:17]>> So, people collected it, as we've said, from a very early date and that went on really into very modern times. Um Horus Walpole, son of the great prime minister Robert Walpole. Um he couldn't get a hold of Magna Carter, but he had a forest charter, the little charter, um in his holy of holies at Strawberry Hill. So he collected it as a token of what at that stage was um his own political ideas of liberty and the the the resistance to the tyranny of the crown. Um so uh both as an object and as an idea um Magna Carta has been of great significance >> and we've obviously seen the 800th anniversary in the last decade.

[00:28:03]>> Yep. So for the 800th anniversary in 2015 there was enormous worldwide celebration of this thing uh and uh you know pretty much on every continent including even the people's republic of China on the anniversary date itself 15th of June 2015 the queen the prime minister the archbishop of Canterbury all came to Ronny to the site where the charter was signed and there were speeches and there was a great deal of celebration. ation and there was a significant American involvement in that. The queen came to Runny from Windsor Castle which is where King John had come to Runny from in 1215. The prime minister came from Whiteall from London which is where the baronss came from in 1215. The Archbishop of Canterbury came from his house at Lambeath Palace which is where the then Archbishop of Canterbury Steven Langton came from in 1215. In other words, there's an incredible continuity there to English history despite all the constitutional upheavalss of the last 800 years. So, in a sense, uh what you got there was a a celebration of the past, but also a looking forward. Who could have predicted in 2015 some of the constitutional crises on both sides of the Atlantic since then? So, um you know, uh watch this space. I suspect Magna Carta is going to carry on having a relevance for some considerable time to come. I won't be around for the 16th 100th anniversary of Magna Carta, whenever that is, but um I wouldn't be surprised if it's still being celebrated even then.

[00:29:46]>> I've got to ask you this as a little bit of a little curiosity.

[00:29:50]What have been some of the perhaps most interesting representations or uses of Magna Carta that you have seen? perhaps something a little bit bizarre or not what you'd expect.

[00:30:04]>> I was told of a guide to one of the Magna Cartas in a cathedral library who explained to the audience that Magna Carta is written in this very small handwriting because it is the only charter written with a robin's feather and those sorts of things I love where people as it were invent things that go with the charter. I found a great sense of irony in the invitation by the Chinese government to display Magna Carta in 2015 up to the point where they realized what was actually in the document at which stage it only became visible in the British whatever it was consulate uh because it wasn't as it were for popular release.

[00:30:51]Um, I love some of the ongoing mystery over where some of these charters have ended up. So, we know, for instance, that there was an original of the 1225 charter that was displayed in the 18th century. It's probably still somewhere to be found, but we still don't quite know where it was. Um, we've in recent years a couple of the charters that are, as it were, in the wild have been tracked down, but I'm sure that there are more yet to discover. And pretty much year by year, somebody somewhere turns up something interesting from an archive that, as it were, alters and ina some cases transforms our understanding of the individual details of what happened in John's reign. And long may that continue.

[00:31:44]As a final question to you then Nicholas, what do you think will be the lasting significance of the Magna Carta over the next century? Will it still matter and in what form?

[00:31:54]>> Only way I can see it mattering in the future and let's hope that that is the way things go is that we continue to see ourselves as a freedom loving land of liberty.

[00:32:08]um that we continue to see ourselves as bound to the past in some ways obliged to the past and yet not afraid of radical solutions to future problems. So power is there to be challenged always.

[00:32:24]Um power is not simply to be accepted for what it is. Um it's always there um to to be questioned. Um and we need as it were to continue that vigilance towards a a state authority that otherwise threatens the very things that we believe Magna Carta stands for. What was done there was really quite extraordinary that they were challenging the the sovereign authority of the crown even the sovereign authority of the pope later on. Um uh as to the relevance well part of it is that you just can't predict these things. You know who would know that what happened at Runny Me? Who would have ever heard of Runny Me before or after? Um but somehow some events stick. It's a bit like memory, isn't it?

[00:33:18]You know, weird things stick in your mind. not necessarily the most important things, but when we think of our own individual pasts, we remember certain moments or certain incidents which probably aren't the most important, but they're the ones that somehow registered.

[00:33:37]So, there's that that there's the as it were the accidental, the serendipitous aspects of Magna Carta. And then as to the relevance of the Middle Ages more generally, well, there's this point about continuity, but there's also this point about the way that we ourselves reinterpret the past. So the Middle Ages, as we understand them now, are very different from the way that the Middle Ages were understood, say, in the 1930s or in the 1830s or in the 1730s.

[00:34:08]and and I'm sure they would will continue to be very different into centuries to come. As to their relevance, well, just think, you know, how do we create our sense of identity?

[00:34:21]It is precisely by gathering up those individual points of memory. And as a node of memory, um, Magna Carta really is one of those. And not only is it one of those points of significance, but it's a particularly happy one because it celebrates something that we all seem to think is really rather significant.

[00:34:41]Constitutional liberty does seem to matter to a large number of people. I remember a few years ago, no names, but uh a home secretary under a previous government saying about the last thing on earth anyone wanted within this country was more medieval historians.

[00:34:57]And I was able actually to confront that person in a lift once and said [laughter] when he said, "And what do you do?" I said, "Well, I'm a medieval historian."

[00:35:05]Um, it is remarkable how many people remain fascinated by events of the distant past, not just the Middle Ages, but antiquity and the Greeks and the Rens and everything else. And these things do matter. They really do matter.

[00:35:20]They are part of our um, you know, our sense of our own being.

[00:35:26]Um, and uh, although our interpretation of them changes over time, they'll continue to matter, I hope, for a very long time to come.

[00:35:34]>> Thank you for joining me on this series, Nicholas. It's been an absolute pleasure having you on.

[00:35:37]>> Thank you very much.

[00:35:39]>> Fancy going beyond the podcast? If you're curious to learn more about Magna Carta and the world in which it originated, I've put together some essential reading, listening, and viewing from the history extra archive to help deepen your understanding. You can find a link to that in the description of this episode.