The day the English barons and King John signed the Magna Carta is often regarded as the first tentative step from absolute monarchy to government by the people. Nothing is ever this straightforward but in a recent poll by The Times newspaper a quarter of the five thousand people polled voted the Magna Carta as the most important milestone in English Constitutional history. The event took place at Runnymede an island in the River Thames on 15th June 1215.

But in the 18th century the Vatican started harmonising everyone’s calendar. There were sound reasons for this because the sun and moon were getting out of alignment. In England the loss of eleven days this entailed happened in September 1752 shifting Christmas to just 355 days after Christmas 1751. The complications rippled on for centuries.

In the Gregorian calendar the years 1800 and 1900 were no longer leap years but in the Julian calendar they were. This resulted in the difference between the two calendars increasing to 12 days after February 1800 and then to 13 days a century later. 2000 was a leap year in both calendars. So Old Christmas Eve that was on the 4th January in 1753 is now on 6th January every year and coincides with Twelfth Night.

Be that as it may one way or another in England eleven days have been lost since Magna Carta was signed in 1215. So to avoid confusion about the 800th anniversary in 2015 it makes sense to associate Magna Carta II with the Summer Solstice rather than with a specific date like the 15th or the 26th.

The text of Magna Carta bears many traces of haste and is clearly the product of much bargaining and many hands. Most of its clauses deal with specific…and often long-standing…grievances rather than with general principles of law. Some of the grievances are self-explanatory but others can be understood only in the context of the feudal society in which they arose. Of a few clauses, the precise meaning is still a matter of argument.

Magna Carta attempted to do several things: to define the power of the monarch vis-à-vis the barons; to safeguard the powers of the Church and to codify some of the rights ordinary people enjoyed under Common Law. So it ended up setting down some basic ideas of liberty, democracy and constitutionalism. Many of these have tended to be taken for granted ever since. But for any renewal of theories of governance it represents quite a good departure point.

The document begins with a greeting from John, by the grace of God King of England, Lord of Ireland, Duke of Normandy and Aquitaine, and Count of Anjou, to his archbishops, bishops, abbots, earls, barons, justices, foresters, sheriffs, stewards, servants, and to all his officials and loyal subjects.

About two-thirds of the clauses of Magna Carta are concerned with matters of feudal governance and the misuse of their powers by royal officials. Many of these clauses can be adapted or updated to suit modern conditions. The scope for extortion and abuse in the feudal system…as in almost any system…was great so governance needed a light touch with rights, duties, rules and regulations applied benevolently.

Complaints about administration of The Good Old Law were rife long before King John came to the throne with abuses aggravated by the difficulty of obtaining redress. One of the things Magna Carta does is to set out the means for obtaining a fair hearing of complaints against the king and his agents…and against lesser feudal lords.

The first clause in Magna Carta concedes the freedom of the Church and its right to elect its own dignitaries without royal interference. This was a reflection of a dispute between King John and the Pope over Stephen Langton's election as Archbishop of Canterbury. It does not appear in the Articles of the Barons and it was a moot point whether to include it in the Magna Carta at all. Here is the translated text of this clause from the British Library website.

‘First that we have granted to God and by this present charter have confirmed for us and our heirs in perpetuity, that the English Church shall be free, and shall have its rights undiminished, and its liberties unimpaired. That we wish this so to be observed, appears from the fact that of our own free will, before the outbreak of the present dispute between us and our barons, we granted and confirmed by charter the freedom of the Church's elections - a right reckoned to be of the greatest necessity and importance to it - and caused this to be confirmed by Pope Innocent III. This freedom we shall observe ourselves, and desire to be observed in good faith by our heirs in perpetuity.

Magna Carta’s final clause also concerns Church matters. It goes like this: ‘It is accordingly our wish and command that the English Church shall be free and that men in our kingdom shall have and keep all these liberties, rights, and concessions, well and peaceably in their fulness and entirety for them and their heirs, of us and our heirs, in all things and all places for ever’. Future weblogs will discuss clauses about debts, merchants and the City of London ( 9,10,1,13 and 41) and those that seek to codify conflicting rights regarding the use of rivers and woodlands ( 33, 44, 47 and 48) and all other clauses deserving of a place in Magna Carta II - the sequel.