Saturday Rave: Magna Carta.

The Great Charter - or Magna Carta as it is usually known (it was written in (very abbreviated) Latin) - was agreed on June 15th 1215.

It has been called (by the judge Lord Denning) "the greatest constitutional document of all time - the foundation of the freedom of the individual against the arbitrary authority of the despot".

Sounds good, eh?

Magna Carta was agreed between King John of England (also known as Bad King John) and his barons (basically, the posh landowners who ran the country while the king was abroad losing battles).

The need for Magna Carta was twofold. First, Bad King John's principle of government came down to vis et voluntas, force and will, or the idea that as king he was allowed to do anything he could get away with, however unfair it was to anyone else.

The second problem was that Bad King John wasn't just an untrustworthy, unlikable, selfish sort of a man, he was also a useless general (the other name he was given was John Lackland, because of all the lands he lost in France). After one particularly disastrous battle he was required to pay reparations to the French, and, being short of cash, he asked his barons to have a whip-round.

Magna Carta was the price, not so much of the baron's support, but of stopping them tearing him limb from limb.

Magna Carta promised to establish a council of barons to make sure King John kept his promises in the charter, and it also had things to say about taxation without consent, protection from illegal imprisonment, and access to swift justice. Most of it was about the barons, but the serfs (who were many, and not much more than slaves) did get a few look-ins.

I must say here that the whole agreement failed within weeks, and despite being brought back in various forms over the next few reigns it continued to fail with wearisome regularity. The charter did become important again in the 1600s, a time when kings again decided they should be able to do anything they liked. (That time the affair ended in a very bloody revolution and the beheading of King Charles I.)

But Magna Carta never quite went away. It was, and is, a perpetual remainder of what might be and what should be. It has formed an inspiration for people all over the world campaigning for the rights of their citizens.

And even though these campaigns still fail with wearisome regularity, Magna Carta is still there, an uncomfortable light shining on the thrones of bad kings (or prime ministers or presidents) everywhere.

Words To Use Today: Magna Carta. This means great charter in Latin. So it does what it says on the tin.