Magna Carta
The seeds of Liberty were planted nearly a thousand years ago.
At Runnymede, at Runnymede,
Your rights were won at Runnymede!
No freeman shall be fined or bound,
Or dispossessed of freehold ground,
Except by lawful judgment found
And passed upon him by his peers.
Forget not, after all these years,
The Charter Signed at Runnymede.
-Rudyard Kipling, “The Reeds of Runnymede”
It’s easy for conversations about the Magna Carta to result in breathless superlatives. Surely, it is the most expensive document in the world, pound for pound, and word for word. The single sheet of sheepskin sold at a Sotheby’s auction for $21,300,000 in 2013. In general, superlatives hide the ulterior meaning of the speaker as opposed to being objectively deserved. In the case of the Magna Carta, they are not only deserved, but words may never be adequate to capture the profound importance of this truly remarkable work of statecraft or the magnitude of its impact on history since its first edition 808 years ago in 1215.
800th Anniversary
We’re lucky that such a significant anniversary for this historic document occurred less than a decade ago. This sparked a flurry of activity and renewed interest in Magna Carta scholarship. We are currently blessed with relatively recent reframings of the life and times of 13th century England and the Magna Carta’s place within it. The specific works that inspired and informed this essay are referenced at the end with commentary.
Historical Context
Medieval England was largely a cross-channel affair. William the Conquerer (or William the Bastard, depending on whom you ask) was a French duke who became king of England and imposed French values and social structures on the island. In particular, he imported feudalism while exporting vast sums in the form of taxes. Contemporary commentators described England as a cow being milked. England’s remote sovereign also created a full survey of every taxable thing in England “down to a single pig” called the Domesday Book. This expansive effort enabled precise and increasing taxation to be levied on this oppressed vassal state.
In the interest of brevity, we’ll elide much of the history from William to King John who, despite William’s great abuses, is the real villain of this tale. We encourage you to go to some of the reference materials for the whole story. The tale is riveting — more entertaining and more unbelievable than Game of Thrones.
King John
King John took taxation and royal caprice to a whole new level. Every transaction, every piece of property, and every office was taxed. The taxes were arbitrary, they were high, and they were based entirely on the whims of the sovereign.
Sir James Holt, author of the authoritative treatise on the Magna Carta, reminds us that there is a “distinction between kingship and tyranny.” In many ways, the king is entrusted by the people to rule justly according to foundational principles of government. Indeed, Henry I issued a charter at the beginning of his reign with the “intent to rule justly.” Where there was a disagreement between the people and the king, the pope often broke the tie. There was a very real sense that even the king was subordinate to the laws of heaven.
This three way equilibrium between the sovereign, the church, and the people was an unstable one. The sovereign was tempted to abuse its privilege. The church could also be arbitrary and at times exacerbated the disequilibrium. And, of course, the people could, and periodically did, revolt.
After a 1212 plot to murder or depose King John, his abuses magnified. He threatened, taxed, cajoled, jailed, killed, and otherwise manipulated the barons and their subordinates in an attempt to thwart this threat to his throne. It wasn’t until after his abject failure to defeat Philip II at the Battle of Bouvines and concomitant bankruptcy that John was forced to the negotiating table.
Runnymede
The marshy interval between Windsor and Staines was chosen precisely because it would make a terrible battlefield. This maximized the chances that the negotiations would be effected by words rather than steel.
Steven Langton, Archbishop of Canterbury, acted as officiant of the proceedings and is occasionally credited for authorship of the Magna Carta. On June 15th of 1215 in that boggy marsh, the king and his barons agreed to a precarious peace and ratified the first version of the charter.
Immediately, John tried to renege on the agreement. He quickly convinced the pope, Innocent III to annul the document, casting the barons and King John into civil war. Were it not for the death of the king and for the gift of the great man who became the guardian of his son and heir, this might have been the end of the story relegating Magna Carta to a historical footnote.
William Marshal
Earl of Pembroke, knight, and king’s regent, William Marshal was charged with the guardianship of nine year old Henry III who, though king, was still a minor and lacked the context to understand the heavy responsibility he inherited. Prior to his service to the crown, Marshal had been a professional athlete who gained his fame in the tournament circuit. In a very real sense, he was a beloved medieval MMA champion and was widely admired by elites as well as the common people.
He must also have been a very decent man given the outcomes he manifested over the ensuing years. In particular, he was instrumental in bringing the barons back to the negotiating table in 1216 to revise and reratify the Magna Carta, thereby ending the civil war. Young king Henry lacked a royal seal which he wouldn’t receive until he came of age so Marshal as king’s regent sealed this revision on his behalf. Marshal snatched this victory for liberty from the jaws of defeat just as he must have done with other victories on the tournament fields where he earned his name.
Charter of the Forest
One of the particularly egregious abuses of Kings William, Henry II, and John was the afforestation they employed to slowly deprive the shires of the public forests. During their reigns, they essentially turned England into a giant game reserve exclusive to the crown. Every acre accrued was an acre deprived from the common people who were accustomed by ancient tradition to hunting, fishing, and gathering from the land for sustainance.
The story of Robin Hood and his adversary Philip Mark, the Sheriff of Nottingham, are legends borne of this era. The crown had simply taxed and taken too much treasure and land and the people rebelled. The right of the people to sustain themselves through their efforts on the fruits of the land was just as much in play as the loftier ideals of liberty in the charters.
The Charter of the Forest of 1217 can be thought of as an addendum to the Magna Carta which disafforested large swathes of land, ie. returned them to the public trust. Indeed, Magna Carta earned its moniker as a contrast to the important but relatively minor Charter of the Forest.
Commerce
The establishment of property rights, weights and measures, and more specific remedies such as removing the fish traps from the Thames and other rivers, were just as much about enabling commerce as they were about fundamental principles of liberty. In this way, both the Magna Carta and the Charter of the Forest were very practical documents. The immediate concern was to unbridle the merchant class and nobility but as the ideas of liberty and free trade gained currency, the lower classes clamored for a piece of the action.
Regulation
Medieval commerce was a highly regulated affair. Guilds imposed monopoly power and tightly controled competition in the marketplace. Guilds chose who could make what, how much, and for what it should sell. This stricture on commerce had the unintended consequence of stifling innovation and reducing the general level of economic output.
Their jurisdictions were confined to geographical areas which gave rise to the delightfully named Liberties. These were essentially black markets outside of town where unregulated commerce could take place. The original cottage industries rose up to produce goods outside of guild control unleashing greatly increased economic output and prosperity.
This entrepreneurial spirit eventually gave rise to the Industrial Revolution as these unsanctioned merchants grew in economic power.
Unfortunately, progress from Magna Carta to the Industrial Revolution to its spiritual heir in contemporary America was neither linear, nor bloodless.
The Peasants’ Revolt
In 1381 civil strife due in part to a pandemic in 1348 but also excessive taxation resulted in a reprise of revolt and civil war. The death toll from the pandemic shifted power from capital to labor which squeezed the margins of the ruling class. The responses may have been innovative at the time but are boringly predictable from a contemporary point of view. The government imposed price controls on labor and fines and prohibitions on the freedom to work. The straw that eventually broke the camel’s back was the attempt to investigate the non-payment of a tax. History rhymes.
The revolt was bloody and largely unsuccessful. The rebels were executed and a tenuous order was restored. It did have the effect of putting the government on notice who became nervous about sparking new revolts if they overplayed their hand. Unable to raise taxes, they had to reduce their military adventurism abroad and find options for pursuing peace. Imagine that.
The American Revolution
The founding colonies of America based their colonial charters explicitly on the Magna Carta. There was a sense at this point in history that certain rights were inalienable. In other words, they traveled with the person and were granted by a higher power than the state.
It was the most freedom loving of the English and elsewhere who were attracted to the colonies in the first place. They were embarking on a grand experiment of rebuilding civilization from scratch. They started from a state of anarchy, or perhaps minarchy, save the attempts at remote rule from the British crown.
This time, the start of the hostilities was sparked by the passage of the Stamp Act of 1765 giving rise to the famous protest, “no taxation without representation.” That tax and the response of the colonists led directly to the Revolutionary War and the rebirth of the Magna Carta in the form of the US Constitution and its Bill of Rights.
Contemporary America
Fast forward to today and we have many of the ingredients of those far away times. A recent pandemic has sent an economic shock wave through the world. Inflation is high and persistent. Holt tells us that the inflation between Kings Henry II and John was a ‘trebling’ of prices in 40 years. That’s 200% inflation over that interval which annualizes to 2.7%. This was considered a disaster at the time. Compare this with Core CPI from last month of 4.7%, annualized. Inflation is proving to be persistent and the monetary response has not yet been adequate to curtail it. The money printed during the recent pandemic is still careening through the system and probably represents unrealized future inflation.
Like those times, we also have expeditionary wars which are draining the government coffers while the US runs a trillion dollar deficit. A trillion dollars.
$1,000,000,000,000
If you made a trillion dollars a year, you’d make $480,000,000 an hour. All of those trillion dollars a year of deficit represent future taxation which the government hasn’t figured out how to pay. For now we can print the money and monetize the debt and the rest of the world will be forced to play along. How long will that last?
The word dollar is currently internationally synonymous with money. Drachma, denari, solidus, dinar, franc, and sterling also held this status. It is far from a guarantee that the dollar will retain its bullying power indefinitely. The thing that kills currencies is usually war and the associated defaults. This is a game of trust. Eventually, the trust erodes.
Taxation
The central theme since Magna Carta is the interplay between the liberty of the people and the prerogatives of the government. The interval between these parties is money and commerce. The cost levied on the people is tax. When governments panic, taxes and inflation increase. The outcome is generally not peaceful. Lawmakers currently have the luxury to spend and pretend but the mathematics of compounding interest is undefeated. Those who understand compounding interest, earn it. Those who don’t, pay it.
There is something fundamentally unfair for a rich person to demand payment from a poor person especially when that poor person is not interested in what the rich person is offering in return. This is true even when the rich person claims that what is paid will be used to help even poorer people. Ultimately, this is what tax is. The barons at Runnymede negotiated the creation of a Parliament, literally a place for getting together and talking, in order to hear the arguments for any new tax and either consent or decline to be taxed.
The English Parliament and its intellectual heir, the US Congress have fallen a long way from that ideal. Matt Ridley said it best during his interview in Secrets of the Magna Carta, “The whole point about parliament is it was supposed to give consent to taxation and to limit it. Nowadays, parliament is about how to spend it. Parliament is behaving much more like the king of 1215 than the parliament of 1215.”
Peaceful path forward?
Nicholas Vincent calls the Magna Carta, “The most important document in history” and channels his inner poet when he says it is “Liberty, distilled.”
Cheers to that.
Magna Carta was intended to put the brakes on one particularly onerous sovereign but its principles are so universal that its message of Liberty has echoed through the halls of history. The legacy we have inherited as we continue to attempt to strike a balance between the liberty of the individual and the prerogatives of the state were paid for in blood. Lots of blood.
The Barons’ Revolt.
The Peasants’ Revolt.
The English Civil War.
The American Revolution.
The American Civil War.
Countless others.
Does the world have the ability to honor the liberty bought at so high a price without resulting in another bloody conflict?
In a world of diffuse bureaucratic democracies with no one ruler, is there even a way for the people to assert their ancient and inalienable claim of freedom and liberty against this kind of amorphous sovereign?
History is a slow moving clock. Will government reform its taxing and spending policies before there is unrest? Is there simply too much momentum behind the ticking of that clock and the human nature driving it? Do we simply have to periodically relive these historic atrocities or is it possible to emerge into an enlightened society where individual liberties are truly sacred and their property only taken when they consent to give it?
Conclusion
Regardless of how the world engages with the concept of liberty going forward, when we look back through time, the light we continue to be guided by emits from the Magna Carta. It codified universal concepts like individual liberties and property rights but also specific legal concepts like habeas corpus and the right to a trial by a jury of one’s peers. It was extraordinarily ahead of its time.
Ultimately, a society which maximizes liberty maximizes economic prosperity as was on display in the Liberties of Medieval England. There is a reason why the Industrial Revolution started in England and it’s because the people were largely unleashed to build and — very importantly — to keep what they built.
The Constitution and Bill of Rights which are the spiritual heirs of the Magna Carta were designed not to rule a people but to constrain their government. The people consent to be governed, not vice versa. This framing is a direct consequence of the principles laid down in the Magna Carta.
Addendum
Thank you for following us on this fascinating journey. As usual, our only goal is to raise questions and to inspire thought. We hope you are inspired to take a look at some of the sources used during the writing of the essay, listed in order of increasing depth. This story is as fascinating as it is educational. We are grateful for the chance to spend time with these materials in order to bring a distilled version to our readers.
Secrets of the Magna Carta. Part 1. Part 2.
This is a riveting documentary covering the history, the personalities, and the design of the Magna Carta, equal parts scholarship and entertainment.
Vincent, Nicholas. Magna Carta: A Very Short Introduction.
This is an excellent primer on Magna Carta and the history leading up to it and surrounding it.
Starkey, Sir David. Magna Carta: The True Story Behind the Charter.
This work parallels Vincent’s work and was released during the same anniversary year.
Holt, Sir J. C. Magna Carta.
Holt’s magnum opus and the definitive work on the subject. Extremely well researched and cited. This volume has much more detail than the others and is truly a work of scholarship as opposed to merely being an excellent story.
Constitutional scholars, like President Obama, have called the United States Constitution a "charter of negative liberties" (https://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2008/11/03/barack-obamas-poor-understanding-of-the-constitution). I, vehemently, disagree with that characterization but he is absolutely right that a lot of the United States Constitution and its amendments state what government *can't* do to you. The United States Constitution starts with the principle that there are God-given individual rights to life, liberty, and property and that the United States Government will be restricted in how it can infringe upon those rights. I wonder how this will play in a (larger and larger) secular world since there is no submission to a higher power and, as a result, the concept of "unalienable rights" is fundamentally incompatible?
Regardless, thanks for the brief history lesson of the Magna Carta!
I'm not a long form blog reader. This post had my interest from start to finish. Thanks for sharing a setting the stage for your belief in the importance of liberty! Keep it coming.