Magna Carta and Modern Controversies from Multiculturalism to Political Correctness (David Starkey)

to sing the praise of the political process in 2015 on either side of the Atlantic is a deeply rash enterprise the political isn't it the political process is held in profound contempt by a very large part of Democratic electors and I think this is a very serious problem I am going to sing its praises and I'm going to sing them loudly and without reservation I am after all a contrarian so when everybody else is despairing in it I'm going to say we need to discover it rediscover it and praise it loudly let's then look at what happens in 1215 try and get some sense of why it happens very quickly and then look at what I call the Magna Carta decade because if the Magna Carta of 1215 fails and is an absolute failure the reason for its success of the events of another decade we all forget because our fondness for single anniversaries that 1215 is only the first of a continuous series of reissues of Magna Carta which go on until 1297 the key ones take place in the decade 1215 - 1225 but they are documents of an absolutely radically different nature and are the product of radically different political circumstances and until we understand this is where the historian comes in until we understand that specificity that local quality we will understand nothing right why then does Magna Carta happen at all we were again talking when when we were all assembling before this this afternoon's session we were talking about the remarkable resemblance between so much modern politics and earlier man article and court politics and what are the points of which of course they all Center is the question of the actual personality of the ruler the president whoever the key to understanding why Magna Carta happens is John John is a younger brother of extreme ambition an ambition that hugely overtakes his ability in other words in Britain you can make the perfect remark he is a mill about he is in Miliband jr. he becomes king largely by accident and murder more or less the same process that produced Ed Miliband and with all MIT whereas we can now see disastrous consequences look at look at look at the suicide of the Labour Party anyway John becomes king in 1199 and again to get this sense he is by far the most powerful ruler in Europe we're very fond are we many of us in this room of talking about anglers fears all the rest of it the concept of something distinct distinct and separate about England the Anglosphere English based civilization is totally and completely incomprehensible before 1530 in the Middle Ages England is invariably part of some form of enormous cross-continental Empire and its political institutions are fundamentally similar and we really do need to understand this the channel only becomes the widest strip of water in the world in the reign of Henry the eighth in which values change mysteriously between Calais and Andover as unfortunately our immigrant class hasn't yet discovered it will happen B so the V and John then rules over this extraordinary Empire which stretches from Scotland through Wales Ireland and the whole of western France which he then proceeds to lose the key to understanding John is in the splendid phrase of Oscar Wilde in The Importance of Being Earnest that was on the subject of babies you will remember that to lose one is a misfortune - - - to lose two looks like carelessness John committed the carelessness of losing two empires in very quick succession in other words Magna Carta is a product of Imperial recession it's the loss of power the loss of empire first he loses the better half of his French lands against Philip Augustus then he uses was always the case the immense wealth of England to try to create a second empire in the British Isles with enormous pressure against Scotland and against Wales and he does it of course by screwing the riches of England and he had attacks frontally the two key riches groups one of which is the landed aristocracy now the landed aristocracy tend to have a very very bad name and which they largely deserve there's a great element of kind of privileged brat pack about them what's striking about the barons even at the height of the crisis of Magna Carta they can't do without to joust which is rugby on horseback you know they risk they risk they are American football on horseback with with a frank admission of the intent to do harm to the opposite party and they they are like that but they're also of course each one of them is a corporation they are the masters of thousands and tens of thousands of acres many of them are surprisingly well-educated rarely in Latin but tolerably so and but above all they're able to employ highly skilled and they have to employ highly skilled accountants lawyers and clergy who can act as theoreticians okay so this group is then put under immense pressure by the manipulation of the legal process and so on to to yield large quantities of money to the king so is the other and this is the great point of variation between the world end of the world now okay in the England of 1215 the other by far the richest group is the church when you go around England and many of you will know it at least as well as I do and one of this great marvels are the wonderful cathedrals and we tend to look at those buildings and to think of them erected out of the piety the pious pennies of self-denying peasants ladies and gentlemen nothing could be further from the truth but cathedrals are the expression of an overweening clerical elite which has roughly the same moral and practices as modern Wall Street bankers my cathedral front is wider than your West Cathedral being my west front is bigger than your West front my spires bigger than yours bah said the abbot to the bishop sort of thing that that that's that will and so what happens is John also screws this body but again what we also need to put into mind of two very different facts about the church one is that it is an pan-european institutional body it is the direct ancestor of the EU EU has got two direct ancestors one is the Roman Church and the other is the Roman Empire and its structures are very concerning Empire and its structures are very closely related to both so obviously attack one member of it and the head in Rome responds and the second thing that we forget and it's something that we mustn't forget the church is a completely separate system of law it's a separate system of law and which is at least as powerful in many ways in its effect as as a secular law I mean if you look at church law in England right through even after the royal supremacy right through to the 19th century it controls all testamentary jurisdictions the entire process of in subject that's dear to the heart of everybody in this room the whole subject of property is dealt with by church morn until the 19th century so this gives you some idea of its path and of course it is it is the intellectual powerhouse and the manor was Archbishop of Canterbury was the leading scholar of the day in the leading university of the day Stephen Langton in Paris because this is the great these are the glory days of the Sorbonne which it has to be said it's never fully recovered but I speakers speak as a member of the University of Cambridge there we and so that and that's the background and John then all of these endeavors the loss of the French Empire the enormous pressure against the English elite the pressure against the Celtic fringe of England all of these things come to a tremendous climax in 1212 in 1212 John launches huge campaign against the Welsh and taking a leaf out of Donald Rumsfeld's book there's a little bit of shock and awe so what he does to bring home to the Welsh that he really means business he hangs 22 handsome young Welsh aristocratic hostages simultaneously from the walls of a castle that's of shock and awe at which point it's revealed to him that is two most important no two most two of his most important secular Nobles a man called ser DeQuincy the Earl of Winchester and the what is the real of the real key figure in all of this a man called Robert it's Walter was a great Lord in the north in East Anglia but he's also a great figure in the city of London both militarily as the captain of the second largest castle in London of the city militia and also huge economic interests as a vintner and if you look in magna carta you will see astonishing attention is given to wine measures and the whittling trade further very obvious good connections of fitzwater these two of them plot to surrender John to the Welsh you can imagine what would have been done to John after he'd hang 22 handsome young Welsh hostages the plot is revealed the to flee of course they flee to Paris John then embarks on this extraordinary attempt at re-establishing himself he reconciles himself with the church with the Pope and he wriggles out of the the the interdict the the excommunication not simply of him but of the whole of England reconciles himself to Pope Innocent the third and he throw it tries a last desperate throw of the dice against Philip Augustus his arrival at France and there's one of those very rare things in the Middle Ages an absolutely decisive battle is the battle of Bhuvan in 1214 and ladies and gentlemen John it's brilliantly conceived it's on a church Chilean scale there's an invasion of France from the West a European Commission European Commission a European coalition Oh oh that's a masterly slip of the tongue invading invade invading from the east and but it all means a terrible failure at the Battle of bovine it's an absolute and total defeat for John and it is this combination of the loss of empire this immense pressure that he's brought to bear on by perversion of legal process and so on on his political class and finally irreversible irrefutable military defeat okay that's the background Veni events now begin to move rather quickly John is confronted the battle Bhuvan in 1214 at Christmas 1214 he is confronted by a body of the barons demanding something very strange third of course been lots of rebellions against earlier Kings John's effectiveness in eliminating opposition in other words he solved the problem of opposition previous rebellions always took place in the name of a rival junior member of the Royal House John had solved this problem by killing the war there weren't any so what you have to do you have to innovate you rebel not in the name of the person but of an idea and the idea is the Charter which is a form of document that will limit the excesses of the king incidentally the idea had first been invented by John's great grandfather Henry the first who was another youngest son who seizes the throne by usurpation and he puts forward a manifesto you know just like a modern political party coming to power that promises you know motherhood and an apple pie and whatever and the moment is in power has forgotten that the Barons don't forget this and they constantly Hart back to it John says come back at Easter they come back he says I still can't decide come back in a few weeks and it's at this point that the events I've looted to them very quickly at the beginning John's defeat is now turned into catastrophe because in May London opens its gates to the rebel barons and the Barons never lose control of London now this is decisive John loses what's left of his treasure his administration his prestige his capital he's finished that happens on the 17th of May within less than two weeks we call it a fortnight John is negotiating at Runnymede with the Barons and the thing that is the measure of his absolute failure is that his negotiator is the man who'd been his leading ecclesiastical opponent Stephen Langton the Archbishop of Canterbury very quickly John he's got no capital is forced to come to an agreement and the agreement and this is where I think we do need now to to grasp extraordinary remarkable nature of the Magna Carta of 1215 the Magna Carta of 1215 is an utterly devastatingly radical document what makes it even more wonderful you refer to the fact they're all written on animal skin we not only have the Magna Carta we have the drafts we have the actual draft of the document the articles of the Barons which was physically presented to Langton at Runnymede and ladies and gentlemen it looks just like a modern negotiating document each clause is given in essence each Clause of Magna Carta is reduced to about four or five key phrases and to what you begin each line with what do you and I begin each line with when we put forward a memorandum or heads of an agreement well we begin don't we with a bullet point ladies and gentlemen 800 years before Microsoft every line of the articles of the Barons begins with the bullet point there is a pair of mark just like in fact and a bass clef in music but with the tail turned round the other way and you go through and all of the key clauses of Magna carte are there in brief but ladies and gentlemen there's one remarkable thing towards the end of the document it changes towards the end of the document you get continuous Latin prose and the Latin prose of the bits of Magna Carta that the Barons didn't trust the clerks of the Kings Chancery to develop info because what they wanted was their exact words and the clauses that they regard as mattering but they draft out fully are clauses of genuine revolution and they are genuinely Republican what the Barons do is set up a committee of public safety of twenty-five barons they say that this committee of 25 battles will adjudicate all cases between the king and the Barons and when they found in favor of the Barons which surprisingly they invariably do the King has no time at all two or three days to put into full execution of the judgment of the barons and if he doesn't they license themselves to levy civil war only accepting the life of the king the Queen and the prince they actually the phrase it the flattened phrase is doing him as much damage as possible and to make sure this happens and this again this gives you a sense of the revolutionary nature of the document everybody in England is required to replace the oath of allegiance to the sovereign with an oath to the Charter and not only with an oath to the Charter but an oath to the twenty-five barons to the judgment of the twenty-five barons and to participate in the process of the levying of civil war do you will see what I mean now act add to that at the same time as agreeing this document John is also forced to agree to a treaty for the custody of London which is the most humiliating document that an English King I think is ever sealed it simply takes a form of an indenture the most basic armor if ik form of legal agreement at the balance say to the King we hold London if you do exactly what we want within two months they give him a deadline they give him an ultimatum of the 15th of August this is happening on the 15th of June if you do exactly what we want by the 15th of August we'll give you London but if we did you don't we won't and you can whistle for it's just extraordinary so this is the document that John has to agree to that has been revered and whatever the two key things first of all it leads to direct Civil War the document is so contentious that John who had had absolutely no support before Magna Carta is able to muster a significant party to fight for him and secondly the fact that it has been so manifestly extorted by duress means that it is of no validity in law and particularly no validity in canon law which enables the Pope to exonerating from his oath was then to cut a long story short a savage civil war which John begins to win and at which point our two favorite barons De Quincey and Fitz Walter realizing they fail faced failure treason and everything else run over to Paris and they offer the throne of England to the heir to the throne of France Prince Louie who invades England with a very powerful force of course he's got London the capital surrenders to him John collapses the royalist forces fail and within a few months the Royalists only have four castles Lincoln they've got they've got dover they've got and was a thing called Windsor and Rochester in the South East of England everything is lost John dies and at Newark allegedly of a surfeit of peaches appetite and his body is carted off to Worcester to be buried now at that point ladies and gentlemen England should be over the whole notion of an Anglo sphere should be finished and what is completely striking about it is Louie and the Barons in this civil war have made no attempt to whatever at reissuing Magna Carta instead there's a total reversal John's air is a little boy of nine and we've already seen from the photographs of Prince George and Princess Caroline that the entire world is a sucker for a royal kid so there is a coronation of a nine-year-old in Diddy little robes and with a little bracelet borrowed from his mother and the entire nation goes earth you know me Olga we all sigh and but much more importantly there's this extraordinary fact of a Tori with a brain maybe one can make it even more radical statement a Republican with a brain and we have William the Marshall Earl of Pembroke who becomes Regent and Marshall does this is where everything now gets really exciting Marshall had thought Magna Carta tooth and nail he'd risked everything in resisting it and yet he decides as regent of the boy King within 13 days of his father's death to reissue it but he reassures and this is the key to understanding it it is a completely different Magna Carta the Magna Carta of 1215 is four and a half thousand words it takes an entire sheep write it on the Magna Carta of 1216 more than a third of the text is gone the Magna Carta of 1215 is 60 clauses the Magna Carta of 1216 is 40 what's gone ladies and gentlemen I don't know whether you're familiar with the rather splendid we're all interested in politics here that wonderful television series Yes Minister Magna Carta has been Sir Humphry eyes everything difficult has been cut out all of those clauses setting up committees of public safety and licensing rebellion all the facts gone the question of the treatment of Jewish bankers has gone the business of forest law has gone everything is difficult and it's even better Sir Humphry tells you what he's doing there's this marvelous phrase at the end of the race you charter which says of course it was entirely sir Humphrey entirely right and proper that all of these wait difficult subjects were considered however they were really rather awkward so we've set up a committee everything is shunted into a committee where it usually it it sort of squirms you know like a laundry basket and only the stuff relating to Forrest law ever comes out so what Magna Carta is the Magna Carta that goes into law is a balance of extreme left of 1215 and the compromise ground of the right in 1260 but the final coup in all of this is there's still one thing that's very much missing from the Magna Carta of 1216 the king in whose name it's issued is a minor what is the king going to do when he becomes an adult will he follow the line of his Regent or will he follow the line of his father one man takes charge and that Stephen Langton who comes has a sort of second career in his late 70s not everybody dies at 20 in the Middle Ages and Langton sets himself the task of making sure that the boy king as he becomes an adult will reissue the Charter in an unchallenged fashion in his own name in other words eliminate the issue of consent ladies and gentleman that for the first time I've come up with an idea of principle please forget it how does the Archbishop of Canterbury get the King of England to agree to issue the definitive text of Magna Carta he takes a leaf out of the book of said Blatter he bribes him there is a meeting of a proto Parliament which votes up to that point the largest single grant of Taxation which had been so agreed but it's offered to the king on terms if you reissue the Charter we'll give you the tax if you don't we won't and the king takes one look at the pile of gold and silver and says yippee you've got your freedom that's that's the origin but what again you see this seems to me I've presented this in exactly the fashion that those who attack politics do but the product of it the product of this process it's two things it's not and dudu again let's be very careful here you don't suddenly get a notion of a king under law the idea of the king under law is fought over viciously at the time of the civil war and for for 450 years later what you do get you get two things you get a sense of the matter of government as being a dialogue between ruler and ruled that's 0.1 0.2 you get it encapsulated crystallized into a specific institutional form because that assembly giving the grant of Taxation in 1225 that assembly is the proto Parliament the real fully developed prototype Parliament whose anniversary are also celebrating the the Parliament of Simon de Montfort the 1265 Parliament harks back directly to that and the whole notion of the grant of taxation in return for the redress of grievance becomes again the fundamental institutional base on which all the things that everybody in this room values and that we talk about endlessly depends in other words the key to understanding Magna Carta and not the isolated grandia's clauses promising access to justice and whatever what tells you they're meaningless is that they're still on the statute book in England along with the clause promising the freedom of the church much good it did them under Henry the eighth or the clause promising the Freedom of the City of London much good it did them against a fleet these grandiose clauses don't mean anything it's the practical detailed institutional operations and consequences of that political process that does thank you

Channel: The Cato Institute

Views: 28,682

Keywords: Political Correctness (Quotation Subject), Multiculturalism (Quotation Subject), Magna Carta (Literature Subject)

Id: qK7iDHAlf_Q

Length: 25min 49sec (1549 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 21 2015