By the Great Charter of 1215, King John promised that his ministers would not meddle in the Church or stuff his Treasury with taxes on trade.
The Great Charter of England was signed under duress by King John (r. 1199-1216) at Runnymede in June 1215. It has inspired critics of Government overreach ever since, and the Provisions of Oxford (1258), the Petition of Right (1628) and the US Declaration of Independence (1776) owe much to it. Below is a selection of provisions that speak to every generation.
The Battle of Lewes in 1263 took place just a few miles from the Battle of Hastings two centuries before it, and was arguably as important.
Henry III (r. 1216-1272) allowed extravagance and extortionate taxation to drive his noblemen to the brink of rebellion. When in 1258 he did as his father John had done, and signed the Great Charter only to break it soon after, civil war beckoned. Yet the conflict proved a blessing, for as American historian David Montgomery explains, it led to ‘government by the people.’
When King Henry III’s barons turned up to his council wearing full armour, he realised he had to mend his ways.
When King John died in 1216, England was in civil war. A series of cool-headed regents for John’s nine-year-old son Henry III steadied the kingdom, but when Henry took over from them in 1236 he immediately undid all their good work. His spending was so lavish (he tried to buy Sicily) and he levied such cruel taxes to fund it, that his barons longed for the days when Henry had left government to them.
Lord Macaulay believed that the disastrous reign of King John brought the country together.
Lord Macaulay argued that ‘bad’ King John’s reign did England a lot of good. It pulled the country away from Continental Europe, forcing the supercilious Normans in government to feel less European and more English, and to connect with their everyday countrymen after generations of neglect.
Peter de Brus and his tenants agreed to work together after King John ordered a crackdown on unpaid rents.
About six years before King John reluctantly signed ‘Magna Carta’ in 1215, some of those who made him sign it had already begun enacting its principles of liberty and honest government up in Yorkshire.
King John promised his nobles respect, but he was not a man to regard his word as his bond.
The ‘Great Charter’ of England, signed on June 15th 1215, has been regarded for over three centuries as one of the foundational documents of the British and American constitutions. It was not always regarded with the same awe.