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The clauses of Magna Carta
A number of Magna Carta’s core principles are still fundamental to English law, but the majority of the charter’s clauses in 1215 dealt with specific medieval rights and customs.
Magna Carta as agreed at Runnymede in 1215 includes provisions that are still fundamental to English law. Clauses 39 and 40, for example, forbid the sale of justice and insist upon due legal process. Clause 14 of the 1215 Magna Carta springs the idea of no taxation without representation as a means of obtaining popular consent. Besides such general principles, however, Magna Carta also articulates a number of points that to a modern audience might appear inconsequential or simply bizarre.
Free navigation on English rivers:
Clause 33 of the Magna Carta required the removal of all fish dams from the Thames, Medway and all other rivers of England. As the dams slowed the flow of water, they led to the silting up and closure of waterways vital to London's trade. In this way the extensive use of fish-weirs represented the negation of free navigation. Therefore the freedom of navigation guaranteed by article 33 remains, even today, a very controversial principle. Consequently, it remains one of the most cited clauses of the Magna Carta.
Standardization of weights and measures:
Clause 35 of the Magna Carta requires standard weights and measures for grain, wine, beer, and cloth. For trade to flourish, commercial trust was essential. To ensure this, the buyer and seller had to work according to universally agreed measures. It is an intriguing fact that, of all the principles enunciated in the Magna Carta, as well as those relating to justice and due process, it is this idea of setting weights and measures that has been most enthusiastically adopted in the constitutions of the new North American colonies.
Magna Carta as a peace treaty:
Much of Runnymede's Magna Carta concerned the specific affairs of royal and baronial forces in the summer of 1215. Hence clauses 57-59, dealing with Welsh and Scottish hostages, and attempts to appease the Welsh in their demand to be tried under Welsh law rather than English law. More specifically, alongside the general promise in clause 51 that the king had expelled from England "all foreign knights, archers, their attendants and mercenaries", we find a detailed commitment in clause 50 to remove eight appointed Frenchmen from office, together with the broods.
The word "brood" here is deliberately disparaging, generally reserved for the peasant lineage. Even so, the men named were far above peasant status. These were the king's most loyal policemen. In England, thanks to royal favor, they acquired land and status.Their names may not be familiar today but their offices are nonetheless well known: Constable of Windsor, Constable of Bristol and, most importantly, in the case of Philip Mark, Sheriff of Nottingham . Here Magna Carta names one of the most famous figures in the myths and legends of Robin Hood.
Magna Carta’s reactionary clauses regarding Jews and women:
Magna Carta is often seen as a radical or even revolutionary settlement. However it can be read as highly conservative. Clauses 10 and 11, for example, attempt to limit the amount of money payable in interest on debt to Jews. Yet the Church forbade Christians from lending money to each other at interest. Interfaith loans, on the other hand, were exempt from these restrictions. As a result, the lending of money became a major Jewish venture, and the Jews themselves were positively encouraged to act as bankers, not least as a means of bringing further profits to the crown. In the summer of 1215, the Magna Carta attempted to put an end to this.
Magna Carta in context
From the medieval Church to money-lending, feudal rights to the royal forest, discover how Magna Carta was both influenced by, and impacted upon, the institutions and customs of its day.
Despite the enduring legacy of the Magna Carta and its enduring message, much of the 1215 document dealt with issues that concerned the people and institutions of medieval England. Now let's see the historical context in which the events of 1215 took place and how the document changed the customs of the time.
Feudal rights and obligations
The feudal system was the structure that governed all landholdings in medieval England. Everyone in this hierarchy had rights and duties that were governed by established customs.
The king was entitled to many customary payments from his tenants in chief. She could demand money for her eldest daughter's wedding or when the heirs of her tenants inherited their properties and she could control the marriage of her tenants' widows and heirs.
King John (has repeatedly violated the limits of traditional practice by exploiting his feudal rights to excess. Over a third of the 63 clauses of the Magna Carta of 1215 dealt directly with these rights, defining and limiting the extent of the king's authority.
Justice
King John's father, Henry II, introduced sweeping judicial reforms and laid a solid foundation for the future justice system in England. On the contrary, John regularly abused the judicial system to suppress his opponents and extort income from the barons. The judicial system and feudal law were two of the main issues addressed in the Magna Carta, and the most famous clause concerned justice:
No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled, or deprived of his standing in any other way, nor will we proceed with force against him, or send others to do so, except by the lawful judgment of his equals or by the law of the land.
The medieval church
For a long time, King John was in dispute with Pope Innocent III over the election of a new archbishop of Canterbury. When John refused to recognize the papal candidate, Stephen Langton, the dispute escalated. In 1212, faced with the threat of a French invasion, John was forced to make peace with the Church. This capitulation after years of bitter strife proved to be a shrewd political act once King John was forced to grant the Magna Carta.
Debt and money-lending
Medieval Christians were forbidden to lend money at interest, while Jews were free to make such loans. The king and barons depended on Jewish usurers because they needed financial credit, but the king also plundered Jewish wealth through punitive levies and confiscation of assets. Despite this, the Magna Carta did not prohibit the restitution to the Crown of the debts owed to the Jews. The Magna Carta, in fact, implicitly allowed the seizure of assets for the payment of debts, nor did it prohibit imprisonment for debtors.
The royal forest
During the 12th century, King John’s predecessors, and especially his father, Henry II, had declared vast and ever increasing areas of the country to be royal forest, set aside for the king’s hunt. Prior to 1215 the extent of the forest was controlled by the king, and John increased its limits even further.
The royal forest was governed by a separate set of especially severe laws, enforced by special justices, sheriffs and wardens. All hunting was prohibited, as were bows and arrows, greyhounds, hawks and falcons, the cultivation of land and the felling of trees. Those living in the forest were unable to exploit the land’s resources and were subject to fines for any breach of forest law.
The barons used Magna Carta to regulate the boundaries of the forest, investigate its officials and reform forest law. These clauses subsequently formed the basis of the separate Charter of the Forest in 1217.
Towns and trade
The cities and towns of England were evolving rapidly in the 12th and 13th centuries. In London, the only major city in England, networks of artisans, merchants and shopkeepers supported a thriving urban culture, and the River Thames was occupied by merchant traffic. Only three of the clauses of the Magna Carta that were inscribed on the statute list in 1297 are still valid today, one of which declares that London and all other cities, boroughs, towns and ports will enjoy their ancient freedoms and customs.
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