[MUSIC] Well, we've left Runnymede now and we're in the rooms of the Society of Antiquaries in Burlington House in Piccadilly in central London. And when meeting here, because in the society's collection of manuscripts, are two early transcripts. Two early copies of Magna Carta, quite remarkable documents. And they afford us the opportunity to talk about what was actually in Magna Carta. What did it say? And I'm with our two early copies, here they are. One is a transcript in a book of statutes associated with Peterborough Abbey, now Peterborough Cathedral on the borders of Northhamptonshire and Cambridgeshire. And the other document, the long parchment roll, this very beautiful parchment roll, is a copy of the 1225 Magna Carta. The copy which was regarded as the definitive reissue and which became as it were the first statute on the statute book. And as we look at these documents we can see first of all, that Magna Carta is quite a long document. In the original version of great Runnymede it stretched to 63 clauses. Rather fewer in the later reissues because some of the controversial clauses were knocked out and others abstracted and put in to the separate charter of the forest. But it's still, quite a long document. In its original version some 4,000 words. So what does it say? Well, many of its clauses are pretty obscure. They are technical. Magna Carta was drawn up to give specific remedies to specific grievances. So many of its clauses are quite technical and today many readers I think would regard them as rather obscure. But they were important to people at the time. The first clause, as so often in medieval documents, guaranteed the liberties of the Church. Then the clauses that follow, the first six or seven clauses, relate to feudalism. Feudalism provided the structuring of relationships between the king and the landowning classes, the barons and the knights. Clause 2, for example, set reliefs, set a level for reliefs. Relief was the sum of money which an heir paid to the King on succeeding to his lands after his father had died. King John charged extortionate reliefs. Thousands of pounds, he treated as a sort of substitute taxation of the upper classes. So Magna Carta clause 2, set reliefs at 100 pounds for a barony and 100 shillings, 5 pounds for a knight's fee, so cutting off a major source of revenue to the Crown. Clause 6 said, heirs shall not be given away in marriage in disparagement. Translated into ordinary, modern English, what that meant, was the well born young ladies, rich old widows would not be married off to King John's mercenary captains, people of inferior status to themselves. That had been one way in which John had found rewards for his highly unpopular mercenary captains. Later clauses running through the 30s and the 40s regulated justice, local government. There were clauses about the sheriffs. We know from the Robin Hood ballads, of course, the sheriff was a notorious baddy. So Magna Carta said, that Sheriffs should know the law of the land. Other causes regulated the forests. Much of England was covered by the Forest. Forest law was brutal. So the Forest boundaries were subjected to review. Foresters were regulated. And towards the end, in Clause 61, there was the security clause, which set up the committee of 25 barons who were to enforce Magna Carta. And in the middle of it, of course, were those famous clauses which transcended day to day issues. And affirmed universal principles. Clause 39, no free man shall be imprisoned or disseized, dispossessed of his lands, against the law of the land or without judgement of his peers. Clause 40, to no one should we sell, delay, or deny right or justice. And let us not forget as well clause 12, no scutage or aid may be levied without common consent, scutage or aid, they were fancy feudal words for taxes. What Clause 12 affirmed was what in the 1770s the American rebels would have recognized as no taxation without representation. We're looking for a document in which the principle of consent to taxation is laid down on parchment for the first time. It's here in Magna Carta clause 12. And where was consent to be obtained? In the next reign the answer to that question was to be in parliament. So there's a direct connection between Magna Carta and the origins of parliament in the next reign, that of Henry III. Clause 12 of Magna Carta led the way to the emergence 30 or 40 years later of parliament.
