Magna Carta and Its American Legacy
Before penning the Declaration of Independence--the first of the American
Charters of Freedom--in 1776, the Founding Fathers searched for a historical
precedent for asserting their rightful liberties from King George III and the
English Parliament. They found it in a gathering that took place 561 years
earlier on the plains of Runnymede, not far from where Windsor Castle stands
today. There, on June 15, 1215, an assembly of barons confronted a despotic and
cash-strapped King John and demanded that traditional rights be recognized,
written down, confirmed with the royal seal, and sent to each of the counties
to be read to all freemen. The result was Magna Carta--a momentous achievement
for the English barons and, nearly six centuries later, an inspiration for
angry American colonists.
Magna Carta was the result of the Angevin king's disastrous foreign policy and
overzealous financial administration. John had suffered a staggering blow the
previous year, having lost an important battle to King Philip II at Bouvines
and with it all hope of regaining the French lands he had inherited. When the
defeated John returned from the Continent, he attempted to rebuild his coffers
by demanding scutage (a fee paid in lieu of military service) from the barons
who had not joined his war with Philip. The barons in question, predominantly
lords of northern estates, protested, condemning John's policies and insisting
on a reconfirmation of Henry I's Coronation Oath (1100), which would, in
theory, limit the king's ability to obtain funds. (As even Henry ignored the
provisions of this charter, however, a reconfirmation would not necessarily
guarantee fewer taxes.) But John refused to withdraw his demands, and by spring
most baronial families began to take sides. The rebelling barons soon faltered
before John's superior resources, but with the unexpected capture of London,
they earned a substantial bargaining chip. John agreed to grant a charter.
The document conceded by John and set with his seal in 1215, however, was not
what we know today as Magna Carta but rather a set of baronial stipulations,
now lost, known as the "Articles of the barons." After John and his
barons agreed on the final provisions and additional wording changes, they
issued a formal version on June 19, and it is this document that came to be
known as Magna Carta. Of great significance to future generations was a minor
wording change, the replacement of the term "any baron" with
"any freeman" in stipulating to whom the provisions applied. Over
time, it would help justify the application of the Charter's provisions to a
greater part of the population. While freemen were a minority in 13th-century
England, the term would eventually include all English, just as "We the
People" would come to apply to all Americans in this century.
While Magna Carta would one day become a basic document of the British
Constitution, democracy and universal protection of ancient liberties were not
among the barons' goals. The Charter was a feudal document and meant to protect
the rights and property of the few powerful families that topped the rigidly
structured feudal system. In fact, the majority of the population, the
thousands of unfree laborers, are only mentioned once, in a clause concerning
the use of court-set fines to punish minor offenses. Magna Carta's primary
purpose was restorative: to force King John to recognize the supremacy of
ancient liberties, to limit his ability to raise funds, and to reassert the
principle of "due process." Only a final clause, which created an
enforcement council of tenants-in-chief and clergymen, would have severely limited
the king's power and introduced something new to English law: the principle of
"majority rule." But majority rule was an idea whose time had not yet
come; in September, at John's urging, Pope Innocent II annulled the
"shameful and demeaning agreement, forced upon the king by violence and
fear." The civil war that followed ended only with John's death in October
1216.
On indefinite loan from the Perot Foundation, a 1297 version of Magna Carta
shares space with the Charters of Freedom in the National Archives Rotunda.
To gain support for the new monarch--John's 9-year-old son, Henry III--the
young king's regents reissued the charter in 1217. Neither this version nor
that issued by Henry when he assumed personal control of the throne in 1225
were exact duplicates of John's charter; both lacked some provisions, including
that providing for the enforcement council, found in the original. With the
1225 issuance, however, the evolution of the document ended. While English
monarchs, including Henry, confirmed Magna Carta several times after this, each
subsequent issue followed the form of this "final" version. With each
confirmation, copies of the document were made and sent to the counties so that
everyone would know their rights and obligations. Of these original issues of
Magna Carta, 17 survive: 4 from the reign of John; 8 from that of Henry III;
and 5 from Edward I, including the version now on display at the National
Archives.
Although tradition and interpretation would one day make Magna Carta a document
of great importance to both England and the American colonies, it originally
granted concessions to few but the powerful baronial families. It did include
concessions to the Church, merchants, townsmen, and the lower aristocracy for
their aid in the rebellion, but the majority of the English population would
remain without an active voice in government for another 700 years.
Sir Edward Coke's reinterpretation of Magna Carta provided an argument for
universal liberty in England and gave American colonists a basis for their
condemnation of British colonial policies. (Library of Congress)
Despite its historical significance, however, Magna Carta may have remained
legally inconsequential had it not been resurrected and reinterpreted by Sir
Edward Coke in the early 17th century. Coke, Attorney General for Elizabeth,
Chief Justice during the reign of James, and a leader in Parliament in
opposition to Charles I, used Magna Carta as a weapon against the oppressive
tactics of the Stuart kings. Coke argued that even kings must comply to common
law. As he proclaimed to Parliament in 1628, "Magna Carta . . . will have
no sovereign."
Lord Coke's view of the law was particularly relevant to the American
experience for it was during this period that the charters for the colonies
were written. Each included the guarantee that those sailing for the New World
and their heirs would have "all the rights and immunities of free and
natural subjects." As our forefathers developed legal codes for the
colonies, many incorporated liberties guaranteed by Magna Carta and the 1689
English Bill of Rights directly into their own statutes. Although few colonists
could afford legal training in England, they remained remarkably familiar with
English common law. During one parliamentary debate in the late 18th century,
Edmund Burke observed, "In no country, perhaps in the world, is law so
general a study." Through Coke, whose four-volume Institutes of the Laws
of England was widely read by American law students, young colonists such as
John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison learned of the spirit of the
charter and the common law--or at least Coke's interpretation of them. Later,
Jefferson would write to Madison of Coke: "a sounder whig never wrote, nor
of profounder learning in the orthodox doctrines of the British constitution,
or in what were called English liberties." It is no wonder then that as
the colonists prepared for war they would look to Coke and Magna Carta for
justification.
By the 1760s the colonists had come to believe that in America they were
creating a place that adopted the best of the English system but adapted it to
new circumstances; a place where a person could rise by merit, not birth; a
place where men could voice their opinions and actively share in self-government.
But these beliefs were soon tested. Following the costly Seven Years' War,
Great Britain was burdened with substantial debts and the continuing expense of
keeping troops on American soil. Parliament thought the colonies should finance
much of their own defense and levied the first direct tax, the Stamp Act, in
1765. As a result, virtually every document--newspapers, licenses, insurance
policies, legal writs, even playing cards--would have to carry a stamp showing
that required taxes had been paid. The colonists rebelled against such control
over their daily affairs. Their own elected legislative bodies had not been
asked to consent to the Stamp Act. The colonists argued that without either
this local consent or direct representation in Parliament, the act was
"taxation without representation." They also objected to the law's
provision that those who disobeyed could be tried in admiralty courts without a
jury of their peers. Coke's influence on Americans showed clearly when the
Massachusetts Assembly reacted by declaring the Stamp Act "against the
Magna Carta and the natural rights of Englishmen, and therefore, according to
Lord Coke, null and void."
Members of the British goverment and church mourn the demise of the Stamp Act.
(Library of Congress)
While Magna Carta did include some provisions reaffirming the principles of
trial by jury and taxation by consent for the baronage, these
"privileges" were never intended to apply to all levels of society.
English historian Goldwyn Smith wrote that these two ideas, considered
fundamental to liberty, were actually "misrepresentation" of Magna
Carta by 17th-century lawyers like Coke. Smith continued, however, that such
"interpretations were not wholly absurd, for they accurately reflected the
spirit, if not the purpose, of the thirteenth century original." (Goldwyn
Smith, A History of England, p. 295)
But regardless of whether the charter forbade taxation without representation
or if this was merely implied by the "spirit," the colonists used
this "misinterpretation" to condemn the Stamp Act. To defend their
objections, they turned to a 1609 or 1610 defense argument used by Coke:
superiority of the common law over acts of Parliament. Coke claimed "When
an act of parliament is against common right or reason, or repugnant, or
impossible to be performed, the common law will control it and adjudge such an
act void. Because the Stamp Act seemed to tread on the concept of consensual
taxation, the colonists believed it, "according to Lord Coke,"
invalid.
The colonists were enraged. Benjamin Franklin and others in England eloquently
argued the American case, and Parliament quickly rescinded the bill. But the
damage was done; the political climate was changing. As John Adams later wrote
to Thomas Jefferson, "The Revolution was in the minds of the people, and
this was effected, from 1760 to 1775, in the course of 15 years before a drop
of blood was shed at Lexington."
Relations between Great Britain and the colonies continued to deteriorate. The
more Parliament tried to raise revenue and suppress the growing unrest, the
more the colonists demanded the charter rights they had brought with them a
century and a half earlier. At the height of the Stamp Act crisis, William Pitt
proclaimed in Parliament, "The Americans are the sons not the bastards of
England." Parliament and the Crown, however, appeared to believe
otherwise. But the Americans would have their rights, and they would fight for
them. The seal adopted by Massachusetts on the eve of the Revolution summed up
the mood--a militiaman with sword in one hand and Magna Carta in the other.
Armed resistance broke out in April 1775. Fifteen months later, the final break
was made with the immortal words of the Declaration of Independence: "We
hold these truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they
are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these
are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness." Although the colonies had
finally and irrevocably articulated their goal, Independence did not come
swiftly. Not until the surrender of British forces at Yorktown in 1781 was the
military struggle won. The constitutional battle, however, was just beginning.
In the war's aftermath, many Americans recognized that the rather loose
confederation of states would have to be strengthened if the new nation were to
survive. James Madison expressed these concerns in a call for a convention at
Philadelphia in 1787 to revise the Articles of Confederation: "The good
people of America are to decide the solemn question, whether they will by wise
and magnanimous efforts reap the just fruits of that Independence which they so
gloriously acquired . . . or whether by giving way to unmanly jealousies and
prejudices, or to partial and transitory interests, they will renounce the
auspicious blessings prepared for them by the Revolution." The
representatives of the states listened to Madison and drew heavily from his
ideas. Instead of revising the Articles, they created a new form of government,
embodied in the Constitution of the United States. Authority emanated directly
from the people, not from any governmental body. And the Constitution would be
"the supreme Law of the Land"--just as Magna Carta had been deemed
superior to other statutes.
In 1215, when King John confirmed Magna Carta with his seal, he was
acknowledging the now firmly embedded concept that no man--not even the
king--is above the law. That was a milestone in constitutional thought for the
13th century and for centuries to come. In 1779 John Adams expressed it this
way: "A government of laws, and not of men." Further, the charter
established important individual rights that have a direct legacy in the
American Bill of Rights. And during the United States' history, these rights
have been expanded. The U.S. Constitution is not a static document. Like Magna
Carta, it has been interpreted and reinterpreted throughout the years. This has
allowed the Constitution to become the longest-lasting constitution in the
world and a model for those penned by other nations. Through judicial review
and amendment, it has evolved so that today Americans--regardless of gender,
race, or creed--can enjoy the liberties and protection it guarantees. Just as
Magna Carta stood as a bulwark against tyranny in England, the U.S.
Constitution and Bill of Rights today serve similar roles, protecting the
individual freedoms of all Americans against arbitrary and capricious rule.
[ Magna Carta | Magna Carta Translation | Exhibit Hall ]
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Last update: May 1996
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