Part 1: A Very Brief Story of Magna Carta

Magna Carta essentially went through two distinct phases of importance. The first was in the 13th century from its initial sealing in 1215 to the establishment of the 'model parliament' in 1297. The second extends from Edward Coke to the modern day.

When the barons of England finally reached the end of their patience with the misrule of king John, they decided to compel John by force of arms to accept a charter of liberties for England, which would have the affect of curtailing the king's powers and his ability to misuse them. Some barons had felt these problems went back as far as the rule of Henry II, John's father, so they used as their template the 'Charter of Liberties' granted by Henry I in 1100. Initially, they simply wanted John to adopt this charter, but as the war developed they added new ideas. By 1215 the king was willing to negotiate, and the result was Magna Carta, sealed in the meadows of Runnymede. However, John had no intention of keeping his word and sent it off to the pope to have it declared null and void. Pope Innocent III gladly did this and threatened excommunication on anyone who attempted to fight for it. Magna Carta only lasted a few weeks. When Innocent III's judgement was heard, the barons decided they would accept excommunication and the risks of a kingdom-wide civil war all for this charter. It mattered a lot to them.

But in 1216, John died, and his son Henry was only 9 years old. He was under the guardianship of a papal legate and William Marshal, a famous and highly respected baron. They reissued Magna Carta minus a few important clauses, which didn't help and the war continued. The rebels were particularly keen on the requirement that the king's decisions go through a council of barons and that he could not raise tax without their consent. John's death and the appointment of Marshal as the de facto ruler of the kingdom severely reduced support for the rebels, and in 1217 Marshal defeated a French invasion in support of the rebels, effectively winning the civil war. Rather than punish the rebels, he gathered them together in a great council to iron out a long term solution. They reissued Magna Carta, though it had changed substantially from the 1215 document. Although the requirement for the king's decisions to go through a council had been taken out, he still needed the consent of 'the commons' (or 'common consent' depending on how one interprets the text - see comments below) to gather taxes, which in reality meant regularly assembling a parliament. Magna Carta was reissued in 1225, and again during the baronial revolution in 1258-65, which temporarily made England a constitutional monarchy ruled by a parliament appointed government. The leaders of this revolution did not enjoy support from the barons, so they created a new legislative body of knights and freemen which would become known over the following decades as the House of Commons in contrast the council of barons that became known as the House of Lords. They did this because although Magna Carta required tax to be raised by the consent of the commons, it never defined what that actually was. Back in the 1210s, Marshall and other John supporting barons were not willing to allow a baronial government and the rebels were not willing to accept absolute monarchy, so the exact wording is a bit vague and open to exploitation. The barons, led by Simon de Montfort, argued that any broad assembly of free people would do. In 1297, when Edward I needed new taxes, he reissued the charter once more and established the 'model parliament', the format of a House of Commons and a House of Lords that has endured in some form or another to the present day. Magna Carta was again reissued in 1300 and 1306. At this point Magna Carta became part of wider legal reforms and statue law. It was regularly reissued up until the War of the Roses, and was a regular feature in legal cases from the 13th century onward. It was no longer at the forefront of politics, but instead took up a comfy position as an established constitutional document.

The key part of Magna Carta was that it required consent to raise tax. The easiest way to get that was to gather a parliament, and Magna Carta is one of the reasons parliaments went from occasional meetings in times of crisis to Parliament, the institution. However, the Wars of the Roses led to more creative fundraising by its participants and the leverage parliament had was severely reduced. The new Tudor dynasty also sought to suppress any threats to its legitimacy, which included Magna Carta. The Wars of the Roses effectively killed it off as an important feature of English politics, though technically some of it still had force of law.

This didn't stop it being read or studied. On the contrary, the invention of the printing press meant it was easily accessible to wealthier persons, and it is here that we get to the mythologising of the document. Many of those opposed to the Tudors and the Stuarts believed England once had an ancient constitution that the Tudor and Stuart kings and queens were breaking by their absolute rule. In particular, they believed there was once a mighty Anglo-Saxon parliament that ruled over a free English people that was destroyed by the Norman invasion of 1066, and then partially restored in 1225 (they didn't know about the 1215 version until the early 17th century). Magna Carta claimed to be restoring ancient liberties, but that was a reference to the Charter of Liberties given by Henry I. Most scholars of the day missed that connection to Henry I, saw references to ancient liberties, and thought Magna Carta was therefore a record of the ancient constitution of England they were searching for. Suddenly Magna Carta went from a forgotten constitutional relic to the foundation of opposition to royal power. Edward Coke was one of the more vocal men who used Magna Carta in opposition to the king, but he was far from alone. Intense pro Anglo-Saxon and anti-Norman thinking among historians and politicians at the time only fed into the narrative that Magna Carta was evidence of an Anglo-Saxon parliament. Many, most notably the renowned antiquarian William Stubbs, believed the barons were not only acting on behalf of themselves, but all the English people. This interpretation became particularly identified with the Whigs, one of the two major political parties of the early modern period, who liked to think of themselves as the heirs of the idealised Anglo-Saxon past that some thought Magna Carta was a record of. Historians who pointed out that the 'ancient liberties' of the charter were just a reference to Henry I's Charter of Liberties were drowned out.