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Magna Carta in the British Museum
Magna Carta is the most famous document in the British Museum.
The charter, granted in 1215, is viewed as one of the most important legal documents in the history of democracy.
This iconic document was not intended to be a lasting declaration of legal principle. It was a practical solution to a political crisis which primarily served the interests of the highest ranks of feudal society by reasserting the power of custom to limit despotic behaviour by the king.
The majority of the clauses in Magna Carta dealt with the regulation of feudal customs and the operation of the justice system, not with legal theory and rights. It was King John's extortionate exploitation of his feudal rights and his ruthless administration of justice that were at the core of the barons' grievances.
All but three of Magna Carta's clauses have now become obsolete and been repealed, but the flexible way in which the charter has been reinterpreted through the centuries has guaranteed its status and longevity.
Legacy
Only three of the original clauses in Magna Carta are still law. One defends the freedom and rights of the English church, another confirms the liberties and customs of London and other towns, but the third is the most famous:
No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled . nor will we proceed with force against him . except by the lawful judgement of his equals or by the law of the land. To no one will we sell, to no one deny or delay right or justice.
This statement of principle, buried deep in Magna Carta, was given no particular prominence in 1215, but its intrinsic adaptability has allowed succeeding generations to reinterpret it for their own purposes and this has ensured its longevity. In the fourteenth century Parliament saw it as guaranteeing trial by jury. Sir Edward Coke interpreted it as a declaration of individual liberty in his conflict with the early Stuart kings and it has resonant echoes in the American Bill of Rights and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
But the real legacy of Magna Carta as a whole is that it limited the king's authority by establishing the crucial principle that the law was a power in its own right to which the king was subject.
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Magna Carta in the British Museum |
