The Magna Carta in the 20th Century and beyond
The following is an extract from Magna Carta: A Very Short Introduction by Nicholas Vincent and discusses how the Magna Carta was still relevant in the 20th century and continues to be today.
The greatest Magna Carta collections are those housed today in the British Library (which has one 1225 and two 1215 charters besides the original Articles of the Barons), and the Bodleian Library in Oxford (which has three originals of the 1217 issue, one of 1225, and one — perhaps an original, perhaps not — from the issue of 1300). Only two original Magna Cartas are known to exist outside England: that in Canberra, acquired in the 1950s, and the 1297 Magna Carta now displayed in the National Archives at Washington, purchased in the early 1980s by the American billionaire Ross Perot from the Brudenell family of Deene Park in Northamptonshire. This was auctioned in 2007 for the staggering sum of $21.3 million: the highest price ever paid for a single sheet of parchment. During cataloguing for the 2007 sale, at least two Magna Cartas, previously listed as copies, were reidentified as ‘originals’, and no fewer than four new originals of the Forest Charter came to light. No doubt there are other originals, perhaps of Magna Carta, almost certainly of the Forest Charter, still awaiting discovery, listed as copies or concealed behind catalogue entries describing them merely as ‘royal charters’. This was the fate of the Hereford Magna Carta of 1217, catalogued merely as a ‘charter of Henry III’ and identified as an original Magna Carta as recently as 1989.
Not all has been unruffled calm for Magna Carta in the past century. The 700th anniversary celebrations in 1915 produced what is still the only clause‐by‐clause commentary, and a flurry of academic articles. Nonetheless, the First World War led to ‘Defence of the Realm’ regulations that ran entirely contrary to the spirit of Magna Carta clauses 38–40. At the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939, the Lincoln original of the 1215 charter happened to be on display at the New York World’s Fair. There, it became the focus of semi‐farcical attempts to tip American opinion in favour of the British war effort, with proposals discussed in 1940, backed by Winston Churchill, that it be gifted to the American people. This idea, which would have involved an outright denial of the property rights of the Dean and Chapter of Lincoln, entirely contrary to the spirit of Magna Carta, was eventually shelved, but only after attempts to persuade the British Museum to give up one of its Magna Cartas to be sent to Lincoln as a substitute. Instead, the Lincoln charter spent the War under close guard at Fort Knox.
Ever since the 1770s, there have been demands that 15 June, ‘Magna Carta Day’, be set aside as a public holiday.
A senior British official, asked to comment on one such proposal in 1947, opposed it precisely because it seemed to place liberty above obedience to British rule: ‘Colonial peoples might be led into an uncritical enthusiasm for a document which they had not read but which they presumed to contain guarantees of every so‐called “right” they might be interested at the moment in claiming.’
From Runnymede to Fort Knox, and from the Roman Empire to the modern industrial state, the story of Magna Carta has taken us far from English medieval law. As its 800th anniversary approaches, Magna Carta continues to command a unique combination of interest and veneration. It still has many mysteries. Remarkable though this may seem, we still do not know who wrote it: its scribes will only be identified when all of the many hundreds of routine documents that King John’s chancery issued have been properly collected and assessed. There is still no definitive critical edition that collates all of the various readings of Magna Carta in all of the originals. Equally remarkable, although a clause‐by‐clause commentary to the 1215 charter was published in the early 20th century (and hence is badly in need of revision), there has never been a clause‐by‐clause commentary to Magna Carta 1225, even though it is Magna Carta 1225 that entered English law and whose clauses still remain on the statute book. The language of Magna Carta, its references for example to ‘liberty’, has yet to be properly probed. What precisely was meant by such terms, and do these meanings accord with modern perceptions of ‘liberty’ or ‘law’?
Nicholas Vincent, Professor of Medieval History at the University of East Anglia. He received his first training in medeival history at Oxford, and has since held posts at Cambridge, Canterbury and Norwich. He divides his time between work in England and family in France. Nicholas is the author of Magna Carta: A Very Short Introduction.
