Magna Carta and its historical significance

Magna Carter

Little did the English barons who forced King John to sign the Magna Carter and limit his powers realize that in 1215 they were setting the foundation for one of England's colonies to write its own constitution and declare freedom five centuries later. This irony offers a prime example of how an historic event can have major ramifications that are impossible to recognize at the time. Now, with hindsight, it is clearly understood how the signing of the Magna Carter greatly impacted the development of common law and many constitutional documents, including the U.S. Constitution, in years to come.

In fact, the similarities between what was taking place in England in 1215 and in the New World in the 1700s started much earlier than the writing of the Magna Carter. English feudalism during the Middle Ages was based on agreements between the lords and their subjects, or vassals. Likened to a pyramid, the king was on top, then the barons or noblemen, followed by the knights or lesser noblemen, and finally the serfs who worked the fields and paid dues (Slavicek, 2000, 8).

The times were going quite smoothly for the barons, and King John, in fact, was enacting some farsighted acts, until he and Pope Innocent III had a disagreement about who should receive the honored position of Archbishhop of Canterbury. The pope retaliated by putting England under interdict, closing all English churches and excommunicating the king. At first King John did not budge, but then finally gave in because he was losing his support from the barons. In the meantime, King John also needed to raise funds to fight the French, so he levied heavy taxes (Roskinsky, 2000, 4).

The barons, dissatisfied with these levies, wrote list of demands and presented them at Runnymede that were first called the "Unknown Charter of Liberties" to curb the king's misuse of power. John agreed to sign what was to become the "Magna Carta," but then reneged and civil war broke out. When King John died, not in the heat of battle but from food poisoning, the war ended and King Henry III (then nine years old) reissued the document when he became an adult. The document had three major points: The king cannot be considered an absolute monarch, as noted by the 13 thcentury judge Henry of Bracton: "The king himself ought to be subject to no man, but he ought to be subject to God and the law, since law makes the king" (Rosinsky the second premise stated that the king can levy taxes only when the payees agree to them. The third principle noted that the king's subjects hold the right to refuse the dictates of an unjust king.

The Magna Carta is recognized as a significant change from the monarch's absolute rule and toward a more democratic state with its creation of parliament or lawmaking body of noblemen. It stated that the king required the barons' advice and approval with anything related to the kingdom and stipulated that no special taxes were allowed to be levied on the barons without their agreement. Its most well-known condition, clause 39, states that "no freeman shall be taken or imprisoned... except by the lawful judgment of his peers and the law of the land." (Jones, 1987, 222).

Now look at what took place between the New World and England several centuries later to see the similarities between the two. England faced huge debts and the expense of maintaining a militia in America, after the costly Seven Years' War. The English parliament believed that the colonies should finance a significant portion of their own defense and thus in 1765 levied the first direct tax, the Stamp Act. Nearly every document, such as newspapers, legal writs, licenses, insurance policies, and even playing cards had to include a stamp proving payment of the required taxes. The colonists, like the barons, revolted against this economic control and the fact that they were never asked to vote on these taxes. It simply came down to "taxation without representation." They also disagreed with the condition that anyone who disobeyed could be tried in admiralty courts without a jury of peers.

The colonists condemned the Stamp Act, and when Benjamin Franklin and others in England powerfully argued the American side Parliament quickly repealed the bill. It did not matter, just as with the barons and King James. The seed had been planted and the mindset was transforming. As John Adams wrote to Thomas Jefferson, "The Revolution was in the minds of people, and this was effected, from 1760 to 1775, in the course of 15 years before a drop of blood was shed at Lexington" (Jones, 1987, 24). Such Revolutionary War doctrines as habeas corpus had their foundation in the establishment of English Law during the 17th century that was originally based upon the Magna Carta. King George, as King John, had dishonored these laws, placing his welfare over the law of the land, which allowed the colonists the ultimate right and even the duty to seek freedom from these constraints.

When Thomas Jefferson and James Monroe and the other writers of the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution were drafting their documents, they thus turned to the Magna Carta as well as other similar historic papers and individuals, such as John Locke. The Bill of Rights, and most particularly the 5th Amendment dealing with the concept of due process of law where King John promised that "[n]o free man shall be taken or imprisoned or disseized or exiled or in any way destroyed, nor will we go upon him nor send upon him, except by the lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land," and the 6th Amendment of the right to an impartial jury of peers, were most notably from this document.