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Henry III and the Magna Carta that mattered
King John’s sealing of a charter at Runnymede in 1215 is one of the most feted moments of the Middle Ages. Yet, writes David Carpenter, it was the charter issued by his son 10 years later that became fundamental to England’s history
February 2025 marks the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta. But wait – surely we already commemorated that milestone in 2015? Certainly, on 15 June that year, the Queen, the Duke of Edinburgh, the archbishop of Canterbury, prime minister David Cameron and assorted dignitaries gathered at Runnymede. At the meadow by the Thames between Windsor and Staines, they celebrated the charter King John had sealed there exactly 800 years earlier. That document, sealed under duress from rebel barons and famously subjecting the king to the law and promising justice to all, is widely lauded today as a milestone in the establishment of English law. Read more | What did Magna Carta mean to the English in 1215? Yet the fact is that, in the centuries after 1215, the term Magna Carta was hardly ever used for John’s document. Rather, that was the name given to the charter issued nearly a decade later by King John’s son, Henry III, at Westminster on 11 February 1225. Although Henry’s charter was based on his father’s, the earlier iteration was usually called simply the ‘Charter of Runnymede’. So when, in 1297 and 1300, Henry’s son Edward I confirmed Magna Carta, he meant the charter of 1225 – and the same was true of all later confirmations. Indeed, though most of its provisions have since been repealed, those chapters that remain on the statute book of the UK today are from the 1225 version. So how did the Charter of Runnymede in 1215 become Magna Carta in 1225? On the podcast | Are we celebrating the wrong Magna Carta? Abandoned promises At the end of 1215 any progression beyond the Charter of Runnymede would have seemed unlikely, for it appeared to be a failure without a future – quashed by the pope, at the king’s behest. It had also, in effect, been abandoned by the rebel barons. Having failed to hold the king to its terms, they had taken another route: they deposed John and offered the throne to Louis, eldest son of the king of France. Louis came to England in May 1216, on a wave of support – but said nothing about the charter. Under his benevolent rule, he doubtless assured his supporters, it would be quite unnecessary. It was John’s death during the night of 18/19 October 1216 that transformed the situation. The minority government of his nine-year old son, Henry III – led by regent William Marshal, Earl of Pembroke, and the papal legate Guala Bicchieri – was in a desperate situation. Louis controlled much of England. The only way forward seemed to be to accept what John had rejected and Louis was ignoring. Read more | The real King Arthur and his Lancelot? Henry the Young King's remarkable friendship with William Marshal So on 12 November 1216, a new version of the charter was issued in Henry’s name. The most controversial and radical provisions of the Charter of Runnymede were omitted, but the great bulk remained in place. This concession had its effect. Though there were no immediate desertions from Louis’ side, at the decisive battle of Lincoln in May 1217 (when forces loyal to Henry III defeated an army supporting Louis), the rebel barons hardly fought very hard. None were killed; most simply surrendered. With a revised version of the charter accepted, they could believe their cause was won. The baronial victory was confirmed by the peace settlement at the end of the war. Louis abandoned his claim to the throne and returned to France. In return, the minority government restored the rebels to their lands and, in November 1217, issued a new and improved version of the charter, accompanied by an entirely new charter regulating the running of the royal forest. It was at this point that the term Magna Carta (‘Great Charter’) was first introduced, referring not to its grandeur but to its size, to distinguish that physically larger charter from the smaller Charter of the Forest. Those two charters would now always be linked together. With both in place, why might further changes be needed in 1225? Because the 1217 charters remained problematic. How could they be trusted when issued by a king only 10 years old and lacking his own seal? Instead they bore the seals of the legate and the regent. There was another problem. Might it not be claimed that the charters were invalid, having been extracted from the king by rebellion? At a council meeting in 1223, that point was made by one of John’s most rebarbative old minsters, William Brewer. Two years later, the chance arose to put these problems right, thanks to a crisis overseas. In 1224, Louis – now king of France – overran the county of Poitou. Far to the south, Gascony seemed likely to fall as well. A gigantic effort would be needed to save the English king’s one remaining continental possession – and for that, he needed money. Read more | 6 Magna Carta myths explained With no reserves of treasure, the government knew that those vital funds could come only from a tax levied on the whole kingdom. They knew, too, that such a tax could never be collected unless sanctioned by a great council – the kind of assembly soon to be called parliament. How to secure such consent? The answer was for the king to concede, in return for the tax, new versions of Magna Carta and the Charter of the Forest – versions that put right the deficiencies of their predecessors. Once again, the exigencies of the continental empire played a central part in the history of Magna Carta. The loss of Normandy and Anjou in 1204, and the heavy taxation designed to fund their recovery, had been a turning point on the road to the charter of 1215. Similarly, the loss of Poitou in 1224 led directly to the Magna Carta of 1225. However, while John failed to recover his continental possessions, the great tax of 1225 did save Gascony, which remained in English hands until 1453. Doing the deal Two men above all were responsible for negotiating the deal that led to the 1225 charters, though acting from very different motives. They were the justiciar Hubert de Burgh, head of government since the death of William Marshal in 1219, and the archbishop of Canterbury, Stephen Langton. For cautious, pragmatic de Burgh, the charters were simply a practical necessity. For Langton, one of the great biblical scholars of the age, they responded to deeply held ideas about the need for rulers to be limited by the law. The texts of both charters, crafted by Langton and de Burgh, had new preambles and new conclusions designed to address the anxieties mentioned previously. In the preamble, the king (now aged 17) was said to act “of his spontaneous and good will” – a statement not found in the 1216 and 1217 charters, nor indeed in John’s Charter of Runnymede. At the end of the new charters now hung Henry’s own seal, introduced in 1218. It showed him on the front crowned and enthroned, and on the back mounted, armoured and brandishing his sword – images that encapsulated the majesty of kingship. Read more | Alternate history: what if Magna Carta hadn’t been written? The conclusion to these revised charters also rebutted the charge that they had been extracted from the king by force. Rather, they stated, in return for his concessions everyone in the kingdom had granted him a 15th part of their movable property – essentially, a 15th part, by value, of their agricultural produce and farm animals. Producing some £40,000, roughly three times the king’s current annual revenue, this was the tax that saved Gascony. The charge of coercion was thus laid to rest. Magna Carta and the Forest Charter were the result of a freely entered bargain between king and kingdom. The consensual nature of the new documents was further demonstrated by lists of those who had witnessed and, thus, affirmed the granting of the charters – unlike earlier iterations, which had no witness lists to speak of. All the good and great of the land witnessed the charters, whatever their stance in the civil war. The witness list was headed by Archbishop Langton, 11 bishops and 20 abbots. Then came Hubert de Burgh, followed by nine earls and 23 magnates. Sensing the significance and novelty of this certification, the copy of the charters made soon afterwards at Cerne Abbey in Dorset set out the witness list in beautifully elaborate fashion, and inscribed the place and date of issue in great capital letters. Inclusivity statement Langton, responding to ideas about how just rule should benefit the whole community, also did something to make Magna Carta more inclusive. The concessions in the charters of 1216 and 1217, like those in 1215, had been made only to people who were free – thus excluding the unfree peasantry who made up the largest part of the population. In 1225, this changed. The statement that the concessions had been made to the free remained, but it was qualified – indeed, contradicted – by the new preamble in which these concessions were granted to “everyone in the kingdom”. Likewise, in the conclusion, everyone was said to have agreed the tax in return for which the charters were granted. Langton moved decisively to bring in the church full-square behind the new charters. In 1215, he had felt unable to excommunicate those who contravened John’s charter, in part because it was clearly the product of rebellion. When the charters of 1216 and 1217 were issued, Langton was out of England; now, with the new versions clearly consensual, he and his fellow bishops sentenced to excommunication all who breached them. This set a precedent, and further sentences of excommunication were promulgated in 1237 and 1253, the latter with great publicity and with circulation of the texts. Churchmen could profit as much as laymen from many of Magna Carta’s provisions but, in particular, they treasured the very first chapter, which guaranteed the freedom of the church. How right Langton had been to add it into the charter at Runnymede. Strengthened in these ways, the 1225 texts became the final and definitive versions of Magna Carta and the Charter of the Forest – but they were not without flaw. Despite acting “of his spontaneous and good will”, Henry was not yet 21 when issuing the charters, and therefore underage; this defect had to be put right in a proclamation of 1237. More serious was the fact that the charters set out no constitutional means of enforcement. The 1215 document had given 25 barons the power to enforce its provisions, but the barons were omitted from the subsequent versions, with nothing put in their place. Though the sentences of excommunication elevated the status and publicised the texts of the 1225 charters, their practical effect is unclear. Not surprisingly, there were constant complaints that the charters were being broken. The complaints had an element of truth, but some key chapters of Magna Carta were obeyed. The inheritance tax demanded from earls and barons, which sometimes ran into hundreds and thousands of pounds before 1215, was set at just £100. For the most part, widows of barons and knights were not forced into remarriage. Justice was no longer openly sold. The Forest Charter saw substantial areas removed from the royal forest. In general, the rule of Henry III was far less abrasive and extortionate than his father’s. Read more | “He was not a great king but he was respected as a most Christian one”: David Carpenter on Henry III The texts of the charters also became widely known and, thus, sank deep roots into English society. Copies were made by religious houses, magnates, ministers, knights, freemen and lawyers. Of the various versions, that of 1225 was easily the most copied. When the 1217 charter featured, it was often amended in the light of the 1225 changes, thus including from the preamble the king acting of his “spontaneous and good will” and, from the conclusion, him making concessions in return for the tax. Those examining the texts – and marginal annotations bear witness to intensive study – could see that Magna Carta was far more than just a baronial document. Chapters such as those regulating the levying of fines and the running of local government benefited wide sections of society. The Great Charter would never have survived had that not been the case. What’s in a name? By the end of the 13th century, Magna Carta was firmly established at the heart of the English polity and was well set for its long later history. Yet, on that point, one question remains: how and when did the Charter of Runnymede take centre stage and become universally known as Magna Carta? In the early 17th century, when the lawyers Selden and Coke saw Magna Carta as a bulwark against Stuart tyranny, it was still the charter of 1225 to which they appealed; they hardly mentioned John at all. William Shakespeare himself, in his King John, made no reference to the charter. The change came in the next century, thanks to lawyer William Blackstone. His seminal work, The Great Charter, published in 1759, printed for the first time an authentic text of the 1225 Charter under the heading ‘Magna Carta Regis Johannis’. His introduction, too, referred continuously to the ‘Great Charter’ of King John. Blackstone, it seems, was unaware that the word Magna had originally referred simply to the physical size of the 1217 and 1225 charters compared with the Charter of the Forest; he understood it to mean ‘great’ in terms of status, and thus thought it very much applicable to the charter of 1215 – the parent, as he showed, of Henry III’s later Magna Carta. (Blackstone also printed authentic texts of the 1216, 1217 and 1225 charters.) Read more | Is 15 June 1215 the true date of Magna Carta? Two historians debate Blackstone’s terminology stuck. In Bishop Stubbs’ hugely influential Constitutional History of England, published in the 1870s, John’s charter is called “The Great Charter” or Magna Carta. Likewise, JC Holt’s classic book Magna Carta, first published in 1965, was essentially about the charter of 1215. In many respects, this seems absolutely right. Without John’s charter, as Blackstone showed, the Henrician versions would never have existed. And yet the charter of 1225, consensual in a way its predecessors were not, placed Magna Carta on new and firmer foundations. The charters of 1215 and 1225 should always march together. This article was first published in the February 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine
“He was not a great king but he was respected as a most Christian one” | David Carpenter on Henry III
David Carpenter talks to David Musgrove about the second part of his biography of King Henry III, and the extraordinary revolution that removed him from power in 1258
This is the second volume of a two-part biography of Henry III, covering the period 1258 down to the king’s death in 1272. The year 1258 saw revolt against the king, so had Henry’s reign gone well up to this point? King Henry III would have said that he had given long years of peace to England, linked to an absence of foreign war. He was a pacific king as well as a most Christian one. He had none of the cruelty and irreligion of his father, King John. He gave huge alms to the poor, attended multiple masses, and, most importantly, was rebuilding Westminster Abbey in honour of his patron saint, Edward the Confessor. Henry had accepted Magna Carta, and his financial exactions (though still resented) were far lower than John’s as a result. His critics, though, saw him as a simple-minded, naive king who had plunged into ill-advised projects, including trying to place his second son on the throne of Sicily. In his open-handed way, Henry had also given gigantic rewards to his foreign relatives, thus creating tensions at court and divisions with his English subjects. And Henry, politically unaware, had failed to reform local government. This meant his sheriffs and judges had become increasingly oppressive. Magnates, too, had been allowed to expand their local power. If there was peace, it seemed to be peace with injustice. So when we get to 1258, there was revolution in the court of Henry, with one group of courtiers turning on another, led by Henry’s half-brothers from Poitou. You state that Henry is less central to volume two than to volume one. Who is the key figure in this story? The central character is Henry III’s brother in-law Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester, one of the most extraordinary people to have ever dignified and defiled – at the same time – English history. He is central to the seizure of power in 1258, in which a baronial council took over the government of the kingdom in a revolution far more radical than Magna Carta. The sealing of Magna Carta in 1215 left King John in charge of central government. He could still appoint ministers and pursue what policies he liked. In 1258, a baronial council reduced Henry to a cipher and essentially then ruled the country. Simon de Montfort was integral to that. Read more | Simon de Montfort and the barons’ crusade: why rebel lords waged holy war against Henry III Montfort became even more central after 1261, when Henry recovered power. At that point Montfort left England, only to return in 1263. Between his great victory at Lewes in May 1264 and his death at the battle of Evesham in August 1265, he was the real ruler of the country. He was the first magnate to seize power and govern the kingdom. He was also the first populist leader in English history because he had a wonderful political sense of the issues that would resonate with the public. From the word go, Montfort was highly controversial. His enemies thought he was driven by a lust for power. He also had a series of material grievances, because although he had married the king’s sister, he constantly said he had not received the lands and endowment that ought to have gone with her. Montfort saw the revolution of 1258 as remedying his own grievances as well as those of everyone else. What made Simon de Montfort tick? Montfort was driven by a strong sense of religiosity. One of the most remarkable things about this period, and a major theme of my book, was the intertwining of religion and politics. What drove Montfort – and in some ways, the whole reform of 1258 – was this deep feeling that the barons had to reform the realm in order to purify their own souls. They thought that to get salvation, they had to act justly themselves. Montfort’s father had led the Albigensian Crusade (1209–18) in southern France, and Montfort, like his father, was seeking a righteous cause for which he might fight and, if necessary, die. Montfort had a political feel for the issues that would galvanise local communities. What he seized on when he came back to England in 1263 was ‘England for the English’. On the podcast | Simon de Montfort's medieval revolution This is a very important period in the development of English national identity shaped, unfortunately, by hostility to foreigners. In 1263, he introduced the Statute against Aliens, which stated that no foreigner could ever hold office in England, and that all foreigners must depart, apart from those who were accepted by parliament. Vitally, Montfort was also a great general. Unlike Henry III, he knew how to fight war and understood its brutal violence. That’s partly because he’d been the king’s lieutenant in Gascony in the 1250s, where he ravaged the lands and the crops of his enemies. He did that when he came back in 1263. In 1264, he won a battle at Lewes and, against all the odds, captured the king. You needed huge self-confidence to fight a battle, so most people avoided them. Yet Montfort marched out of London early in May 1264 with no other aim than to bring the king’s army to battle. He did so by taking his army up onto the top of the Downs during the night, so that when the king woke in Lewes Priory he looked up and there was Montfort’s army above. They came crashing down to win the battle in which Henry, his brother and his son were all taken prisoner. What about other key characters in the story? One is Henry’s queen, Eleanor of Provence. She played a very important part in the politics of this period. She was far tougher than Henry. She supported the revolution of 1258 against her husband, because it got rid of the king’s Poitevin half-brothers, with whom her faction of foreigners from Savoy were at daggers drawn. After supporting the revolution of 1258, she changed her mind and played a big part in Henry’s initial recovery of power in 1261. Antagonisms she created helped lay the ground for Montfort’s return to England and seizure of power in 1263. A year later, Eleanor was abroad after Henry’s capture at Lewes, and she gathered a large army in Flanders to invade England. Read more | How to be a medieval queen: the realities of being a royal woman in the Middle Ages In the end, she ran out of money and no invasion took place. But it’s interesting what this tells us about the attitude to women in politics. Although they feared an invasion by foreigners, the medieval chroniclers commenting on these events are full of praise for the amazonian exploits of Eleanor in raising the army. That’s an indication of the scope that a woman might have to play a major part in politics. The other great character in the book is Henry’s son, the future Edward I. From 1263 onwards, it’s Edward rather than his father calling the shots. And they are shots. Edward saw that he needed to defeat Montfort by war, not compromise. In 1263, when Edward takes command, you suddenly feel this galvanic force driving on the king’s party and army. It’s totally different from the way Henry had acted in all his previous reign. The comparison between Henry’s lethargy and Edward’s aggressive energy is quite extraordinary. How was the 1258 revolution against Henry effected? It was done by violence. In the parliament of Westminster in April 1258, Henry was begging for a gigantic tax to pursue the Sicilian project. The barons said that they would give their reply on 30 April. On that day they marched in full armour into the Great Hall at Westminster. Henry came down from his chapel, and realised at once that this was unprecedented. Henry cried out: “What is this, my lords, am I wretched fellow, your prisoner?”. Roger Bigod, Earl of Norfolk, replied: “No, my Lord, but you must hand over the government of the country to us,” and the reforms went from there. The extraordinary thing about the reforms is that, in the end, it was not just a court revolution in which the king’s unpopular half-brothers from Poitou were expelled and the barons took over the government of the country. Instead, in wide-ranging changes to law and local government, the activities of baronial officials were made subject to reform, just as much as the officials of the king. And that’s where religiosity comes in. Influenced by the teachings of churchmen and the example of King Louis IX of France, Montfort was far from alone in thinking that barons had a responsibility for the actions of their men and would be damned if those men acted unjustly. What was the popular reaction to this revolution? It’s remarkable in that here was an unprecedented revolution, demeaning the king, reducing him to a cipher, and yet everyone thought it was a good thing. The qualification is that many didn’t quite know what was happening; in some ways, it was a secret revolution. In the great proclamation explaining the council’s authority, the barons were less than explicit about it taking over the government of the country for a full 12 years, which was what Henry had been made to accept. It could look as though the council had just a temporary brief to promulgate reforms with the king’s consent. Those who did appreciate what was going on, meanwhile, thought there was every reason for stripping the king of power, given his misrule. There’s no indication in 1258 that people believed this was an illegitimate revolution. Gradually a name for the reforms of 1258–59, ‘The Provisions of Oxford’, was introduced and they were hugely popular. How did King Henry respond? Henry recovered power in 1261, and that was due to a break-up of the baronial coalition. You could credit Montfort for the reforms of 1258, but you could also credit him with destroying them because he quarrelled with several of the other nobles. There was a very considerable feeling that Montfort was an extremist. There was also resistance to some of the local reforms. The idea that these reforms should embrace the malpractices of the barons themselves was not popular with some of the great magnates. So the baronial coalition broke up and the queen changed her mind, because Montfort himself had clashed with her own party, and Peter of Savoy in particular. Read more | Henry III in his own words: the medieval king as you’ve never seen him before The queen and Henry’s brother, Richard – Earl of Cornwall, and also king of Germany – masterminded the king’s recovery of power in 1261. The only baron who refused to accept this was Montfort. He left England at the end of 1261, saying: “I would rather die without land than depart from the truth and be perjured.” Henry thought it was all over then. In 1262 he pressed on with rebuilding Westminster Abbey. He went to see his brother-in law, Louis IX in France. Unfortunately trouble was brewing at home, and for that, Henry was not entirely to blame. During the course of 1262, Edward, Henry’s son, had quarrelled with some of his leading baronial supporters, in part thanks to the influence of his mother. A party of ex-Edwardians formed and they got together with Montfort, who came back to England in the spring of 1263. He placed himself at the head of a new movement designed to reimpose the Provisions of Oxford, linked now to the Statute against Aliens. There followed a struggle for power which culminated in Montfort’s victory next year at Lewes. But Montfort doesn’t emerge victorious. So what happens? After Lewes, Montfort appeared supreme. Henry was in captivity, as were his brother and his son. From May 1264 onwards, Montfort was the governor of the kingdom. His parliament of January 1265 was the first to which knights from the counties and burgesses from the towns were summoned. It was the first parliament with an embryo House of Commons. But within a few months, Montfort was dead. He inspired huge devotion among people below him and enjoyed huge popularity in the wider political community, while at the same time antagonising equals and people who thought they were his superiors. They found his self-righteousness, his domineering ways, absolutely intolerable. The beginning of the end of the regime was when Montfort fell out with someone who very much thought he was his equal – the Earl of Gloucester, Gilbert de Clare. The earl felt that Montfort didn’t take him seriously enough. Montfort went to Hereford to see if he could reach a settlement with Clare. But at that moment, Henry’s son Edward escaped from captivity and joined up with Clare. A large group of magnates really had had enough and once Edward was free, once he was with Clare, the regime began to collapse. That ended with the battle of Evesham and Montfort’s death. Did the battle of Evesham end the war? Evesham is really a turning point in late medieval politics because the clement centuries now give place to the centuries of blood, as the famous historian Maitland said. Previously in battles, great nobles were rarely killed. At Evesham, it’s all different. About 30 of Montfort’s leading supporters were deliberately done to death on the battlefield. Their surrenders were not accepted. Read more | How to be a medieval king: 6 pieces of advice for would-be rulers The high point, or the low point, of this was that Montfort himself was not merely killed, but his body was horrifically mutilated. Not merely were his head and limbs severed in the manner of a traitor. His testicles were cut off, hung either side of his nose and then stuffed in his mouth. Evesham didn’t end the war. It went on for another two years because Henry and Edward, in great unwisdom, decided to confiscate the estates of the Montfortians, while at the same time leaving them at large. That left a group of disinherited who continued the war until there was a settlement allowing them to recover their lands, although with financial penalties. By the end of Henry’s reign in 1272, the political community was coming together again. What is Henry III’s legacy? One aspect of Henry’s legacy should be mentioned at once. His persecution of the Jews prepared the way for their expulsion from England in 1290. But for Henry’s Christian subjects, his antisemitism only enhanced his reputation for piety. It was that reputation that helped him survive Montfort’s challenge. Henry was never threatened with deposition, unlike his father King John. He owed much to Edward, and also to the status and institutional strengths of English monarchy. But he also owed much to himself. His reign shows that in order to succeed, or at least to survive, one did not have to be a warlike and masterful ruler. How could one depose this ‘Rex Christianissimus’, this ‘most Christian king’? Read more | 10 reasons why Henry III may have been a great king Whatever its defects, the long peace of Henry’s reign was also appreciated, especially when contrasted with Montfortian war. Of course, the good relations Henry established with France, Scotland, and ultimately with Wales, did not survive the reign of his son. But the post-Magna Carta parliamentary state, anticipated under Henry, and achieved by Edward I, formed the basis for England’s late medieval polity. Henry has also one great achievement that stands to this day, and that’s Westminster Abbey. We owe to Henry the sumptuous church where centuries of royal coronations, including the 2023 crowning of King Charles III, have taken place. This article was first published in the June 2023 issue of BBC History Magazine
Why are British monarchs traditionally crowned in Westminster Abbey?
There is no way to tell the story of the English monarchy without Westminster Abbey, the site of royal coronations, weddings, funerals and burials for the last 1,000 years. Professor David Carpenter answers the key questions about the abbey’s long history
What is Westminster Abbey, and how old is it? A marvel of gothic architecture, it stands on one side of Parliament Square in London, adjoining Big Ben, Victoria Tower and the Houses of Parliament. It is the place of coronations (including that of Charles III) and has many famous (and infamous) people buried and commemorated within it, including monarchs, prime ministers, scientists and poets. Legend has it that it was founded in the reign of an Anglo-Saxon king called Saberht in the early seventh century, after a miraculous appearance by Saint Peter. There’s some reason to think that the site of the abbey was originally an island in the Thames, the island of Thorney, so we have to think of the river as much wider than it was before it was embanked. On the podcast | David Carpenter answers listener questions on the history of Westminster Abbey Until the reformation, the abbey was the home of a community of Benedictine monks ruled by an abbot. Since then, although keeping the name 'abbey', it has been an Anglican church governed by a dean and small group of clergymen called 'canons'. They form the dean and chapter. The abbey is a 'royal peculiar' meaning it is subject only to the monarch. The bishop of London has no jurisdiction over it. When was the Westminster Abbey that we see today constructed? There was an abbey at Westminster in the late-Anglo Saxon period, but the real start came with Edward the Confessor (reigned 1042-66), who had a palace essentially on the site of the Houses of Parliament and completely rebuilt the church. The Confessor also richly endowed the abbey. Read more | Edward the Confessor: England’s holy hardman The building of today, however, comes not from the 11th century, but mostly from the 13th during the reign of Henry III (r1216-72). He built all the church we have today save for the nave, Henry VII's chapel and the western towers. That said, the foundations of Edward the Confessor’s abbey and cloisters have been uncovered in excavations, as well as the remains of an even older door. His building was completed a week before his death on 5 January 1066, and since he died in Westminster he was buried on the site. There’s an extraordinarily vivid depiction of his body being borne to his tomb on the Bayeux Tapestry, as well as a depiction of the new church itself. Why is it called Westminster? Was there an Eastminster? The reason for that is to contrast the abbey with the great minster of St Paul’s, which is, if you like, Eastminster. While that name was never used to refer to St Paul’s Cathedral, the name Westminster caught on and came to describe the whole area, including the royal palace. Why did Henry III rebuild Westminster Abbey? In 1161, Edward the Confessor had been canonised and two years later his body was translated to a shrine in the abbey, but if the monks and abbots who had campaigned for his veneration hoped this would boost the image of Westminster they were initially mistaken. There is little evidence of an increase in visits by pilgrims or donations. Kings of England didn’t seem to be hugely interested, and the same was true of Henry III in the early stages of his life. But when we come to the 1230s, everything changed and Henry adopted Edward the Confessor as his patron saint. He had gone through a difficult time politically: his ministers had let him down, plunged him into a civil war, and he had even been threatened with deposition. On the podcast | Henry III: inside the mind of a medieval king At this point, 1233-35, monks of Westminster came to Henry and convinced him to place his faith in a saint that would bring him success in this life and safe passage to the next. Henry came to believe it profoundly. His decision seemed to be immediately rewarded: a monk travelled to Provence and returned with Eleanor to be Henry’s much-desired wife. To secure the Confessor's ongoing support, however, it was vital for Henry to prove his continuing devotion, and this is where the abbey comes in. Henry thought there could be no more convincing proof than pulling down the Confessor's church and building a magnificent new one in its place, while at the same time translating the Confessor's body to a dazzling new shrine. That’s what Henry did, so the great heart of the abbey we see today was built between 1245 and 1269 at the king’s expense – or, in a way, at his subjects’ expenses because he used the revenues of the kingdom. He spent probably about two years’ annual revenue, which could have built three, four or even five of the great castles Edward I built in Wales. Watch now | David Carpenter on history of Westminster Abbey Who designed Henry III’s abbey and do we know anything about who built it? Although quite probably English in origin, the abbey's master mason was called Henry of Rheims, and the design certainly owed much to Rheims cathedral and other great French churches. It was thus French style flying buttresses that enabled the abbey to achieve its great internal height. It is 104 feet from the floor to the top of the vault, some 20 or so feet higher than England's great churches. Henry's subjects would have thought the abbey stunningly new. A French architect might have been more critical because – high as the Abbey was – the great French churches reached much higher. Probably the constricted site at Westminster prevented foundations for any greater height, but Henry would have had an answer to the critique. For if not as high, his abbey, he would have said, was far more magnificent than the French churches: magnificent in its use of Purbeck marble, its highly decorated vault, and in the diaper (little carved roses) covering much of what would otherwise have been bare surfaces. In this decorative splendour, the abbey was far more an English style church than a French. Read more | A brief history of Westminster Abbey The abbey's basic design came from Henry of Rheims, but he worked closely with King Henry, who urged on the work (ensuring wages were paid so as to prevent strikes) and was constantly thinking of how to make the abbey yet more sumptuous. Of course, the two Henrys were not alone. Accounts from the 1250s show between 400 and 500 people working on the abbey every day, including stone cutters, stone layers, polishers (of the Purbeck marble), glaziers, painters, plumbers, carpenters and labourers. The daily wage of a labourer, at one and a half pennies, was about enough to buy his daily food and drink. A skilled craftsman might receive four times as much. Henry spent tens of thousands of pounds on the construction, yet it was not fully completed by the time of his death in 1272. It would not be until the 14th century that work on the rest of the nave began. One of the great tributes was that the new nave imitated the design of Henry’s abbey, which was unusual. Normally speaking, a nave in the 14th century would have been built with 14th-century architecture, like seen at Canterbury and Winchester, but at Westminster it was deliberately not brought up to date. When and why was Westminster Abbey chosen as the place of coronations? The tradition goes back to 1066, following Edward the Confessor’s death and the Norman Conquest. The crowning of William the Conqueror on Christmas Day launched a still-unbroken line of kings and queens of England staging their coronation at Westminster Abbey. How many coronations have taken place at Westminster Abbey? In 2023, Charles III will be the 40th monarch to be crown at Westminster Abbey. The only exceptions were the two monarchs who were never crowned, Edward V (one of the Princes in the Tower) and Edward VIII. Read more | Coronations: a historical A-Z of the royal ceremony in Britain The importance of the tradition is well demonstrated by Henry III. When he came to the throne in 1216 in the middle of a civil war, his enemies were in control of Westminster so he could not be crowned there. He was actually crowned at Gloucester, but that was thought somehow wrong; there was a second coronation in 1220 at Westminster Abbey. The design of Henry's abbey was itself very much influenced by its being the coronation church. From Rheims came not merely the flying buttresses but also the forms of the windows (two lancets surmounted by a rose) and the rounded east end. Why? It was not just that the master mason had come from Rheims. Read more | 10 reasons why Henry III may have been a great king It was also that Rheims was the French coronation church and hence the design seemed right for its English counterpart. But the needs of the coronation also caused Henry to go beyond the Rheims design both in the great length of the transepts and in the building (hugely costly) of a gallery at triforium level. Both were there to allow crowds of people to attend the coronation as well as other principal services. Meanwhile, as the art historian Claudia Bolgia has argued, the famous Cosmati pavement, installed in 1268 from materials brought from Italy, resembled the pavement of Old St Peter’s Basilica in Rome, where emperors were anointed. Henry was offering the abbey, and the Confessor, to his people, and he knew this would be a church for the great services of the kingdom. As well as coronations, what other ceremonies are held at Westminster Abbey? Westminster Abbey is a thriving Anglican church, and so services are held there on a daily basis. Various royal ceremonies have been, and continue to be, held there, from jubilee celebrations (starting with Queen Victoria’s golden jubilee in 1887) to the Maundy Thursday service in which the monarch distributes alms, in the form of ‘Maundy money’. The abbey has hosted royal weddings throughout its history, although the majority have been in the 20th century. The most recent was the wedding of Prince William and Catherine Middleton in 2011. Royal funerals too are a feature, as recently as 2022 with the funeral service of Elizabeth II. Read more | The 8 most famous royal weddings in British history But while the abbey has thus always been a royal church, it has also very much been a church for the people. The coronation service itself is a pact between the monarch and his people – hence the need for the space for the people to attend. At the start, the archbishop of Canterbury asks those present whether they will accept the new monarch as their ruler. And after, with 'loud and repeated shouts' they have said 'yes', the monarch takes an oath to rule his people with justice and mercy. The theme for the 900th anniversary celebrations in 1966 of Edward the Confessor's abbey was 'One People'. How many kings and queens are buried at Westminster Abbey? A total of 30 kings and queens are buried at the abbey, the last being George II in 1760, while a vast number of notable figures – such as statesmen, scientists, artists and, of course, those interred in Poets’ Corner – have been interred, or at least their ashes, and memorialised there. How has the Westminster Abbey changed since Henry III? The main external change was the addition of two great white towers at the west end, which are in a sense the abbey’s most iconic visual representation. They were built in the 1720s-30s. The famous Henry VII Chapel replaced the former Lady Chapel in the early 16th century, but the building is being changed to this day. One of the most important things that’s happened in recent years has been the opening up of the triforium galleries, where the abbey’s museum is now, as that gives the public a wonderful view. Read more | How did Henry VII spend his money? How was Westminster Abbey affected by the Dissolution of the Monasteries? Although Westminster Abbey was dissolved and its relics and treasures removed, the building itself escaped unscathed. While the shrine of Edward the Confessor was dismantled, his bones were hidden away and the shrine base restored under the brief return to Catholicism under Mary I in the 1550s, which allowed it to survive in its current form. On the podcast | Dr Hugh Willmott responds to listener questions on Henry VIII’s suppression of the monasteries Greater damage has been done by the addition of the tombs in the abbey, since they destroyed large parts of the wall arcade. The exterior is also much different to what would have existed in Henry III’s day, with the sculptures having been lost or refaced due to the ravages of time and decay. It was untouched by the great fire of London in 1666, but during the Blitz in the Second World War, a bomb struck the lantern tower over the central crossing (where the coronation takes place). The whole ceiling collapsed and fell to the ground, but fortunately burnt out there without doing further damage, so the Abbey escaped the recent fate of Notre-Dame in Paris. How is the upkeep of Westminster Abbey funded? English churches, abbeys and cathedrals are owned by the Church of England, which receives no subsidy from the state in maintaining them. This is in contrast to France, where religious buildings are owned by the state. In England, they have to get money, so there is a necessary emphasis on payment to go in and look around. Nearly all preserve a place for private prayer and you don’t have to pay to go to services. The question is: do you want to pay more taxes so the state will own the churches and cathedrals, and then perhaps you can go in for free, or do you want to pay less taxes and the church has to charge for going in? Professor David Carpenter was speaking with David Musgrove on the HistoryExtra podcast, discussing the long history of Westminster Abbey as part of our Everything You Wanted To Know series. Hear more from this conversation in the full audio episode, or watch the whole video interview.
Video podcast | David Carpenter on history of Westminster Abbey
David Carpenter answers listener questions on the history of Westminster Abbey, which has hosted royal coronations since the Middle Ages
Westminster Abbey has hosted royal coronations since the medieval period, and the next monarch to be crowned there will be King Charles III. Speaking with David Musgrove, Professor David Carpenter (who grew up in the abbey) answers listener questions on the lengthy history of this iconic building – from marvellous medieval acoustics to the destruction of its brightly coloured art. Related content: Read more | Why are British monarchs traditionally crowned in Westminster Abbey? On the podcast| David Carpenter on history of Westminster Abbey
Westminster Abbey: everything you wanted to know
Everything you wanted to know about history (podcast series)
Westminster Abbey has hosted royal coronations since the medieval period, and the next monarch to be crowned there will be King Charles III. In our latest Everything You Want to Know episode, David Musgrove speaks to Professor David Carpenter (who grew up in the abbey) to answer listener questions on the lengthy history of this iconic building – from marvellous medieval acoustics to the destruction of its brightly coloured art. Related content: Read more | Why are British monarchs traditionally crowned in Westminster Abbey? Watch now | David Carpenter on history of Westminster Abbey
Part five in our 20-part series looking at decisive moments of the last 1,000 years in British history explores 1200–1249. In 1215, when England's barons clipped the wings of a tyrannical king, they established principles that still influence British justice 800 years on
The year of Magna Carta, 1215, when an English ruler was first subjected to the law, has resonated down the ages as a landmark in Britain’s constitutional history. The Charter itself still lives. Its most fundamental chapters remain on the Statute Book of the UK as barriers to arbitrary rule. They condemn the denial, sale and delay of justice, and forbid imprisonment and dispossession save by lawful judgement of one’s peers (social equals), or the law of the land. The Charter was negotiated at Runnymede between 10 and 15 June 1215, with King John riding down each day from Windsor, and the barons encamped in their tents across the meadows beside the Thames. On 15 June, John, tricky to the end, refused more concessions and simply sealed the Charter – “take it or leave it” – thereby cleverly keeping the names of the 25 barons who were to enforce its terms out of the document, this because they had still to be chosen. John hoped the Charter would become no more than a toothless symbol of his generosity to the kingdom; the barons hoped that its terms would be rigorously enforced and indeed extended. The result was civil war. By September, John had got the pope to quash the Charter. That month, the opposition barons deposed John and offered the throne to Louis, eldest son of King Philip II of France. He came to England in May 1216 and by the time of John’s death in October controlled more than half the kingdom. In the north Alexander II of Scotland had gained Carlisle, and was making good his claims to Cumberland, Westmorland and Northumberland. In Wales, Llywelyn ab Iorwerth, ruler of Gwynedd, had swept through the south and taken the royal bases of Cardigan and Carmarthen. Yet John’s dynasty survived, and with it, paradoxically, the Charter. Its implantation into English political life was the work of the minority government of John’s son, Henry III, who was only nine on his accession. Magna Carta was also a British document. Both Alexander and Llywelyn had been with the rebels from the start, and both benefited from the Charter’s terms, terms which acknowledged “the law of Wales” and invoked for the Welsh, as for Alexander, the principle of judgement by peers. Ultimately, as Wales and Scotland became part of a United Kingdom, their peoples too were embraced by the Charter’s protections. The Charter, however, was no panacea. Since the clause setting up the 25 barons was left out from post-1215 versions of the document, it had no constitutional means of enforcement. It said nothing about how the king’s ministers were to be chosen, patronage distributed and policy decided, major holes which defined the political battleground of the later middle ages. Yet the Charter made a profound difference. It clamped down on various sources of revenue. Henceforth the “relief” or inheritance tax paid by an earl or baron was to be £100, not the thousands of pounds sometimes demanded by John. It facilitated the spread of the common law and made justice less open to bargaining or bribery. It gave the gentry concessions they could exploit to make the running of local government more acceptable. Above all it asserted a fundamental principle: the king was subject to the law, the law Magna Carta had made. As a result arbitrary rule became more difficult and resistance to it more legitimate. 1215 in context Scotland, England and Wales were very different societies, but each nation showed the influence of the Norman Conquest The island of 1215 was one of contrasts with profound differences in social structure between the uplands of Wales and Scotland and lowland England. Hence the way the English, living in nucleated villages, and eating bread, product of their great corn-growing fields, could stigmatise the Scots as bare-buttocked highlanders and ridicule the Welsh as dwellers in dispersed settlements, who consumed nothing but milk and meat. Yet, in many ways, the peoples of Britain were becoming more alike. The structure of dioceses and parishes, and the houses of Benedictine and Cistercian monks, had spread through the island. The Scottish nobility had been transformed in the 12th century by the kings’ establishment of Anglo-Norman aristrocrats, men of chivalric outlook. The castles, cavalry, armour, seals and documents of the Welsh rulers show how they had been influenced by their Anglo-Norman neighbours. Royal government in Scotland, however, was comparatively decentralised. Wales was divided between competing princes. Only in England was the power of the ruler so insistent and intrusive as to provoke demands for restraints. The grievances dealt with in Magna Carta had a long history. Many were the product of the way kings since the Norman Conquest had manipulated the judicial process and exploited the rights and revenues which came to them from the new tenurial structures introduced by the Norman Conquest. Already in 1100 Henry I’s Coronation Charter dealt (unavailingly) with the issues of relief, widows, and wardships of children later tackled in Magna Carta. This was why the 1100 Charter was brought out again by the opposition to King John. John’s Angevin predecessors were also to blame. His father, Henry II (r1154–89), had extended the royal forest, antagonising wide sections of society. John’s brother, Richard I, between 1194 and 1199, had placed novel financial burdens on the country.The need for money to preserve the continental empire against the power of the king of France was a constant problem facing these kings. Another was that the great landed base brought to monarchy by the Norman conquest had slowly been eroded as land was given away to reward followers. As a result, kings had to exploit other, more politically sensitive, sources of revenue. Of course, the Angevins gave as well as took; they had developed immensely popular legal procedures which lay at the heart of what was later called “the common law”. These were the assizes which the Charter sought to extend not restrict. But here too was a problem, for the new procedures turned on due process of law. No free man was to lose his possessions “unjustly and without judgement”. The year 1215 was the moment when society turned on the king and demanded that he obey his own rules. Early in his reign John suffered two blows, first a rapid inflation for which he was blameless, and then, in 1204, the loss of Normandy. Thereafter he spent “ten furious years” trying to raise the treasure to get Normandy back. The treasure went in an abortive military campaign in France of 1214. The grievances remained and produced Magna Carta. When the king became a sitting duck In 1214 John’s long planned campaign to recover his continental empire had ended in disaster with his allies decisively defeated at Bouvines. John returned to England a sitting duck, his treasure spent. Suspicious and untrustworthy, a womaniser and a murderer, he was loathed by many of his barons. His huge financial exactions over several years had antagonised the wider political community. By early 1215 a large group of barons, many from the North, where his rule had seemed particularly severe, were in league, and were demanding reform. They were abetted by Scotland’s King Alexander and Llywelyn of Wales. John played for time and summoned a council to meet at Oxford towards the end of April. Instead the barons met in arms at Stamford in Lincolnshire, from where on 5 May they renounced their allegiance to the king, the beginning of civil war. The war was transformed within a fortnight by the Londoners letting the baronial rebels into the city – its walls and wealth protected the baronial cause, and made any quick royalist victory impossible. Yet baronial victory too could not be quick. John retained his castles, many commanded by ruthless military experts. Shrewd use of patronage meant he also retained the loyalty of some of the greatest barons. So the result towards the end of May was a truce and the start of the negotiations which ended with the Charter at Runnymede. Read more: Is 15 June 1215 the true date of Magna Carta? Two historians debate The Charter was the product of the way John and his predecessors has ruled since the Norman Conquest. It also reflected the nature of early 13th-century English society, in part through its omissions. Take the place of women in the Charter. They certainly appeared, for important clauses secured for baronial widows their dowers and inheritances and protected them from forced re-marriage by the king. The clause reflected that baronial women did have property rights: they could inherit land; they received as dower a portion (usually a third) of their husbands’ lands on his death. The clause had a real effect and the 13th century was graced by large numbers of baronesses who spent years as widows controlling extensive lands. Yet the Charter did nothing to alter the inequalities between men and women. Women only inherited in default of brothers. They virtually never held office, and, for all their influence behind the scenes, played virtually no public part in politics. No women featured in the list of those who had counselled John to concede the Charter. The clauses in the Charter itself were designed not to liberate women, but to protect their male children from having their mothers’ property carried off by second husbands. Peasants oppressed – no change there then Even less privileged were the peasants. They made up perhaps 75 per cent of the population, half of them “villeins” which meant they were legally unfree. Peasants featured in the Charter – the stipulation that sheriffs should not force men and villages to work on bridges dealt specifically with their predicament. So did the clause which laid down that fines imposed on villeins were to be reasonable and assessed by men of their neighbourhood. To no one, John promised in one of the most famous clauses, would he sell, deny or delay justice. But there lay the rub, for it was the law itself which made half of the peasantry unfree, leaving them excluded from the king’s courts and at their lords’ mercy in anything concerning the terms on which they held their lands. The Charter did nothing to alter this. Indeed, the protection it did afford peasants was exclusively against the oppressions of royal agents. They were protected from the king so that they could be exploited all the better by their lords. Against its meagre concern for women and peasants, the Charter catered abundantly for the great players. It gave freedom to the Church (holding over a quarter of England’s land), and re-iterated John’s promise that bishops and abbots could be elected free from royal interference, thus dealing with a major grievance. The church was to play a key part in publicising John’s charter and in supporting the later versions of Henry III. London as we have seen, was the great baronial base. Its population early in the 13th century was perhaps as high as 40,000, making it Britain’s largest city. The Charter protected the privileges of all the kingdom’s cities and boroughs but London’s alone were mentioned by name, and it received an additional promise that it should be free from arbitrary taxation. Most striking of all was the Charter’s treatment of the knights. In the 1200s there were about 5,000 of them in England’s counties, the backbone of local government. One contemporary chronicler, Ralph of Coggeshall, averred that all the barons who remained loyal to John were deserted by their knights, an exaggeration but it shows the flow of the tide. The charter laid down that the king’s judges hearing assizes in the counties were to sit with four knights of each county, elected in the county court, a testimony both to the self-confidence of the knights and their determination to control the workings of justice in the localities. Another clause empowered 12 knights in each county, again elected in the county court, to investigate and abolish the evil practices of the king’s local officials. The zeal with which the knights went about their work was a major factor in John’s decision to abandon the Charter. Read more: Was King John murdered? Above all, the Charter met the grievances of the earls and barons. There were around a dozen earls in the early 13th century, and 100 to 200 barons. Tiny numbers, but they controlled a large part of the country’s wealth, and had mostly been in rebellion. Not surprisingly, they stamped their mark on the Charter’s early clauses, making it very much a baronial document. Thus chapter two, as we have seen, fixed the relief of earls and barons at £100. Chapter four protected baronial lands from exploitation by the king when they were in his hands during the minority of an heir. Chapter 14 vested the power to consent to taxation in the hands of a largely baronial assembly. Indeed, only the greater barons, lay and ecclesiastical, were to receive individual letters of summons to it. The implication was that the earls and barons, commanding the allegiances of their tenants, could answer for the realm. The Charter thus reflected the structures of power in English society. It was also the product of ideas. The king should govern lawfully for the good of his people. He should only punish individuals having obtained a judgement of their peers. A king who defied these principles could be regarded as a tyrant, and might be restrained or even deposed. By 1215 such concepts had a long pedigree and were commonplace amongst John’s opponents. They were sharpened and refined by the archbishop of Canterbury, Stephen Langton, an internationally famous academic, who played a key role in brokering the 1215 settlement, and in supporting the Charter thereafter. It was these ideas, enshrined in the Charter, which formed its essential legacy, a legacy first for England, and ultimately for the United Kingdom as a whole. History facts: 1200–1249 £130,000: John’s treasure in 1213 £202 a year: the average baronial income 1160–1220 £15-£20 a year: the 3xpected income of a knight 1216–72 1 penny: minimum daily wage for a labourer in the 13th century Key years: other important events in the first half of the 13th century 1204 – John loses Normandy. Normandy was finally conquered by Philip II of France (his successful siege of Chateau Gaillard marked the end of John’s rule). This was a pivotal event in European history – now the cross-channel Anglo-Norman state was over. King and barons, like everyone else, would be born and live only in England. They had far more time for the affairs of Britain. The English conquest of Wales in the 1280s and near conquest of Scotland around 1300 was the result. 1216– Llywelyn dominates Wales. Llywelyn ab Iorwerth, the ruler of Gwynedd, established his dominance over native Wales. His vision was of a principality in which he alone did homage to the king of England while the other native rulers did homage to him, in effect as prince of Wales. Two years later, in the Treaty of Worcester, Llywelyn’s territorial conquests and practical (if not theoretical) supremacy were recognised by the king of England. 1217 – The throne is secured for John’s son. Two victories, the first at Lincoln, the second at sea off Sandwich, secured the throne for John’s son, Henry III (below). Prince Louis, eldest son of Philip II of France, resigned his claims and returned to France. Had a French king ruled England, the political structure of Europe would have developed on incalculably different lines. 1221 – The friars move in. The first Dominicans arrived in England, soon followed by the Franciscans. By c 1300 there were more than 100 Dominican and Franciscan houses in Britain. With an emphasis on poverty, preaching and university study, they transformed the religious life of the island. A sermon by an educated preacher now became an everyday part of town life. 1225 – Magna Carta is re-issued. In 1216 and 1217 the minority government of Henry III had reversed John’s policies and issued new versions of Magna Carta. In 1225, yet another version was issued in return for a great tax which saved the dynasty’s continental possessions in Gascony. The 1225 version of the Charter became definitive, the one confirmed by subsequent kings, clauses of which are on the Statute Book today. 1236 – A strong queen emerges. Henry III married Eleanor of Provence, laying the foundations for a remarkable resurgence of queenly power. No queen consort had played a role in English political life since Eleanor of Aquitaine in the 1160s. Eleanor of Provence, made of far sterner stuff than her indulgent husband, changed that. Supporting, and supported by, her relations from Savoy, whom Henry established in England, she was a central figure in the politics of the reign. 1237 – The Treaty of York. Alexander II of Scotland resigned claims to the northern counties of England which Scottish kings had pursued for 200 years. In return he gained substantial territory in Tynedale. He consolidated the Anglo-Scottish peace (it lasted from 1217 to 1296), and was free to concentrate on the conquest of Galloway, where he had taken armies in 1235 and 1236, thus extending the reach of the Scottish state. 1240 – The end of a great Welsh leader. This year marked the death of Llywelyn ab Iorwerth, justly called in his own lifetime Llywelyn the Great. His death ushered in a period in which the king of England recovered his power in Wales. But Llywelyn’s vision of a Welsh principality under a single native ruler, the prince of Wales, was to be realised, if only for the ten years between 1267 and 1277, by his grandson. 1249 – Scotland loses King Alexander. King Alexander II of Scotland (who had come to the throne aged 16 in 1214) died on an expedition to wrest lordship of the isle of Man and the Hebrides from the king of Norway. The expedition summed up the way Alexander had re-orientated Scottish kingship. It would expand not south into England but north and west. The acquisition of Man and Hebrides was ultimately achieved by his son, Alexander III, securing Scotland’s western borders. Together they had constructed a state strong enough to resist English attempts at conquest. More turning points in British history Read next: 1295: Edward I consolidates English rule Go back: 1171: The English invasion of Ireland <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2006/04/TP-Images-with-overlay5-2981063.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="Part six in our 20-part series looking at decisive moments of the last 1,000 years in British history explores 1200–1249" title="Part six in our 20-part series looking at decisive moments of the last 1,000 years in British history explores 1200–1249 (Photo by Getty Images)" /> This article was first published in the August 2006 issue of BBC History Magazine
Is 15 June 1215 the true date of Magna Carta? Two historians debate
In 1215, King John sealed Magna Carta, a document that safeguarded basic freedoms and placed limits on the power of the crown. The event was a turning point in British constitutional history, but are we marking its anniversary on the correct date? Professors David Carpenter and George Garnett debate...
The sealing of Magna Carta was a turning point in British constitutional history, but are we marking its anniversary on the correct date? Was it really sealed on 15 June 1215? Two historians debate... Yes, it is – Professor David Carpenter The date 15 June seems fixed by Magna Carta itself. King John ends the Charter by stating that it has been “given by our hand in the meadow which is called Runnymede between Windsor and Staines on the 15th day of June in the 17th year of our reign”. This conclusion appears in all four surviving originals of the 1215 Magna Carta, and in the letter issued by Archbishop Langton and his fellow bishops setting out and guaranteeing the final text. The “given by the hand” formula is standard in royal charters: it indicates the day and place on which the ‘giver’ – either the king or a chancery official – authorised the drawing up and sealing of the charter in question, perhaps indeed by handing the final draft to the clerk who was going to write it out. King John, therefore, authorised the writing out and sealing of Magna Carta at Runnymede on 15 June 1215. 6 Magna Carta myths explained That all seems clear enough, yet distinguished historians have argued that the 15 June date is nothing more than “fictitious”. In their view, it took several more days for the details of the charter to be hammered out, and it was not till 19 June that John authorised its issue. If they are to be believed, we should not be celebrating the anniversary of Magna Carta on 15 June. The argument for a later date for Magna Carta was propounded by Sir James Holt in both the first and second editions (1965/1992) of his magisterial book Magna Carta. His opinions have not gone unchallenged. In a paper in 1996 and in my own book Magna Carta, recently published in the Penguin Classics series, I have sought to vindicate the 15 June date. The debate, however, continues. Why Magna Carta matters In their introduction to the third edition of Holt’s Magna Carta, which appears this year, George Garnett and John Hudson – two of Holt’s former pupils – have revived and reinforced his arguments. Garnett and Hudson are formidable historians. Their arguments are powerful, and need to be taken very seriously. Everyone, moreover, would agree that the evidence permits differences of view, and prevents absolute conclusions. If it is any comfort to those gathering this year at Runnymede, I still think the most likely scenario is that John did indeed authorise the writing out and sealing of Magna Carta at Runnymede on 15 June 1215. But others may come to a different conclusion. What, then, are the arguments against the 15 June date? The most central is that it was not till 19 June that peace was actually made between John and his opponents. On this day, it’s said that John’s opponents reentered his allegiance. This, so the argument goes, is incompatible with the charter being agreed on the 15th, for, if it was, there is an inexplicable hiatus before the peace on the 19th. The two events must surely have been more or less simultaneous, since John would never have granted the charter to those still in rebellion against him. Magna Carta, therefore, cannot have been issued earlier than 19 June. How, then, to explain its 15 June date? Here it is worth saying that chancery practice was not set in stone. Indeed, it is possible that the date in the charter recorded not its authorization, but some other event. This is what Garnett and Hudson believe. Listen | Professor Nicholas Vincent discusses the life and reign of the infamous 13th-century monarch, whose reign saw military disasters abroad and the sealing of Magna Carta in 1215 Their reconstruction is as follows: On 10 June, King John renewed the truce covering the negotiations, until the morning of 15 June. This created a ‘deadline’ for the reaching of some sort of preliminary deal. The deal was indeed achieved, and can be seen in a “penultimate draft of the charter” (preserved in a later copy) dated to 15 June, and “given” by John not at Runnymede, but at Windsor. The charter was now in place, however much there was still disagreement over some details. It was this “penultimate draft” that gave its date to the charter, although negotiations continued until a final settlement was reached on the 19th. As evidence for their continuation, Garnett and Hudson cite a later copy of the charter, which bears the date 16 June and still has detailed differences from the final authorised version. Set out like this, the arguments against 15 June seem formidable, yet I believe they can all be countered. Take the truce being prolonged on 10 June until the morning of the 15th. This seems to fit as well, if not better, with the deadline being for the charter itself to be agreed, rather than simply some sort of preliminary deal. One also wonders why four days later, on the 19th, it was thought worth recalling, in the date of Magna Carta, what had happened on the 15th. After all, the 15th, in Garnett and Hudson’s own account, had been a day of failure; a day when it had not been possible to reach a final agreement. Debate continued over the size of the baronial inheritance tax, the scope of the chapter on fines, and the ban against John appealing to the pope. These were important and contentious issues. In Garnett and Hudson’s scenario it took another four days before agreement could be reached. It is hard to see why, when that at last happened on the 19th, the charter was given the date of “some sort of preliminary deal” four days earlier rather than the date of the final deal itself. It is also difficult to see how the “penultimate draft” (if indeed it was that) could have been taken as the authorisation of the final charter, thus providing another reason for preserving its date. There are significant differences between the two: on the final charter the baronial inheritance tax is raised from 100 marks to £100; the chapter on fines is widened in scope, and most importantly of all, the king is no longer banned from appealing to the pope. There is no problem about these details having been changed on the morning of the 15th, but once they were and the charter was agreed, John must then have authorised its issue in its final form. If that authorization took place later than 15 June, why does the charter not say so? It is not as though the dating clauses in royal charters were frozen and formulaic. The place and date changed constantly. Yet at Runnymede, if Garnett and Hudson are right, the document whose text was solemnly guaranteed by Langton and the bishops, was given the correct place for its authorisation (Runnymede) but was left with the wrong date – one four days too soon. As I have said, chancery practice varied, and such a contradiction is not impossible, but no strong grounds have been advanced for thinking it took place in this case. If, then, there remain reasons for accepting the 15 June date for Magna Carta, how does one explain the four-day delay before the peace? My explanation here is that, having accepted the charter on the 15th, the baronial leaders found it very difficult to bring the general body of barons and knights encamped at Runnymede in behind the settlement. Hence the hiatus. Garnett and Hudson discount this hypothesis. The leaders, they point out, were not isolated, and were well able to carry their followers with them. Yet this idea is at odds with the Crowland chronicler, who says that some of the Northerners, on the pretense they had not been at Runnymede, went home and resumed the war. Evidently they were dissatisfied with the deal struck. Indeed, so little was there coherence and consensus, that at the time John authorised Magna Carta, the barons had been unable to choose the 25 of their number who were to enforce it. As the charter makes clear, that choice was still in the future. In these circumstances, it is easy to believe that it was not till the 19thh, after indeed John had made further concessions, that peace could at last be proclaimed. Why then was John prepared to authorise and issue the charter before the peace? Surely he would never have granted liberties to those still in rebellion against him. But in authorising the charter on 15 June, he was doing no such thing. The nearest parallel is 1216 when his son, Henry III, issued his first version of Magna Carta, although half the kingdom was in rebellion against him. Neither king was making concessions to rebels. It was only when rebels returned to the king’s allegiance that they would enjoy the liberties granted in the charter. After the baronial negotiators at Runnymede had agreed the charter’s terms, John perhaps assumed that the peace would go through at once and without difficulty. But, deeply suspicious as he was, perhaps he also had doubts – hence the stipulation that it would only be “after the peace” that he would dismiss his mercenaries. John hoped and believed the charter would bring peace, but if it was rejected he would at least have split the baronial party, embellished his reputation as a benevolent king, and established the best possible position for continuing the war. A possible sequence of events on 15 June is thus as follows: early in the morning (sunrise was before 5am), John moved from his base at Windsor castle to Runnymede, three-and-a-half miles away. The negotiations were concluded and John authorised, or “gave by his hand”, the final charter. If this was before noon, there was just time for the clerks to write out the charter (it reportedly took about eight hours) before the end of the day, even if they were based at Windsor rather than at Runnymede. On the other hand, it is equally possible that finished charters did not appear until the 16th. That would certainly have been the case if the negotiations did not conclude until late on the day before. This brings us finally to the question of why there are copies (as opposed to originals) of the charter that bear the date 16 June. Many later copies were made of the 1215 charter – they are found in monastic registers, chronicles and legal collections. Some of these copies are of the final, authorised version, while others are variants containing what seem to be material from drafts. Both types can have as a date either 15 or 16 June. The explanation for 16 June is most probably that it was the date given to unofficial copies of the charter written up on that day. Occasionally even in official chancery practice, royal documents bore the date on which they were written, rather than the date on which they were authorised. That one copy with a 16 June date still has the baronial inheritance tax at 100 marks rather than £100 could indicate discontent with the settlement that had just been reached. On the other hand, it is just as likely that unofficial copies were made from draft material without any precise awareness of how it differed from the final, authorised version. Whatever the truth here, variant copies with the 16 June date provide a slender basis for thinking that formal negotiations were still ongoing. A great debt is owed to Garnett and Hudson for reviving and re-invigorating the debate over the date of Magna Carta. I hope many will be encouraged to test out the rival hypotheses. I cannot give any absolute assurance that the great and good are marking the anniversary of Magna Carta on the right day. On the balance of the evidence and argument, however, I believe that yes, they are! David Carpenter is a professor of medieval history at King's College London, and author of Magna Carta (Penguin Classics), which came out in paperback in January. To find out more, click here. View oEmbed on the source website No, it is not – Professor George Garnett As Jim Holt knew well from his experiences in the army during the Second World War, when you are under sustained attack it is very important to be in the right company. Redoubtable an historian though David Carpenter is, most especially of Magna Carta, it is difficult to conceive of a more formidable comrade-in-arms than Holt. In that, John Hudson [co-author of Magna Carta, 2015] and I take some comfort. When we were invited to produce a third edition of Holt’s classic work, we decided that we would make no changes to his text, other than to correct obvious mistakes. We would confine alterations, amplifications, disagreements, and new directions to an extensive editors’ introduction. There, we would be at liberty to differ from the text that he had last revised in 1992. Like Holt himself, we were much impressed with David Carpenter’s recent work on Magna Carta, which has, since we wrote the introduction, culminated in his massive yet immensely readable book. Unlike Holt, we were initially minded to agree with Carpenter about a central aspect of this work – his re-dating of the document itself. This might appear to be a matter of pedantic, scholarly detail; but it is not. On the question of the date depends an assessment of how negotiations proceeded in those 10 crucial days approaching midsummer 1215 – days for which the chronicle record is strikingly sketchy. Carpenter’s meticulously argued revision all seemed so beautifully simple: the date in the dating clause of the extant engrossments of 1215 was the date of the document, Monday 15 June 1215. When something seems simple and obvious once it has been explained, it is generally right. On this particular issue, we envisaged that we would be disagreeing with Holt in our introduction, rather than elaborating or supplementing him. But as all historians know well, there is all the difference in the world between finding something plausible on reading it, and formulating an argument on paper. There is no better (because no more painful) way of thinking something through. At this point I should come clean, and admit that the section of our introduction about dating was written by me (though – like this response – read, criticised, and approved by John Hudson), so I must take primary responsibility for it. And the more I agonised and reformulated, the more I thought that Holt was right after all. This is why. A charter was envisaged as the diplomatic form of the settlement in that much amended, apparently incomplete, but sealed (though undated) negotiating document now known as the ‘Articles of the Barons’. The articles takes the form of a petition, not a charter. Stephen Langton appears to have stuffed it into his pocket – or whatever passed for the archbishop of Canterbury’s pocket in the 13th century– as a souvenir after it had been superseded in the rush of events. For complicated reasons it is likely (though not certain) that this document was sealed on the king’s behalf on Wednesday 10 June, although it was quite unprecedented for petitions to the king to be sealed on the king’s behalf. The point was to prove that the king had accepted this statement of capitula (‘heads’, though now by scholarly convention ‘articles’) of agreement, as the basis for further negotiation. The document was the work of a single scribe – very probably a royal Chancery scribe – and it was evidently the product of a great deal of previous haggling. There are no scratchings out, but the scribe left space for insertions, and he evidently laid it out in such a way as to make it easy for readers to find particular chapters quickly. It was therefore a late draft, but designed to facilitate further work. For whatever reason, there was no time or inclination to draw up a fairer copy for sealing. Everyone was in far too much of a hurry. Now although it is not absolutely certain that 10 June was the date of the articles, it is certain that on that day the king prolonged a truce for his opponents until the morning of 15 June. Truces were usually measured in units of whole days. That this one was not suggests that on 10 June, as the articles was probably being sealed at Runnymede, it was anticipated that something dramatic would have happened (or not) by midday at the latest on 15 June. By inference, the purpose of the truce was to enable negotiations to proceed only up to that deadline, on the basis of the petition that the king had unprecedentedly allowed to be sealed. The reason why that particular deadline had been set so punctiliously is now irrecoverable. It may well have seemed sacrilegious to stipulate that a truce should expire on Trinity Sunday, but that would not explain why the truce should not be allowed to run for the whole of the following day. After all, the previous truce, issued on 8 June, had been set to expire at the end of 11 June. Its replacement’s expiry point on 15 June must have been agreed at Runnymede on 10 June. So must the fact that the articles twice mentioned that the envisaged agreement between the king and his opponents would be recorded in a charter. The text of that charter, we contend, was the draft copied into a late 13th-century statute book that VH Galbraith unearthed in California in 1967. It is demonstrably a draft from June 1215, because it contains several provisions that are intermediate between those in the articles and those in the surviving engrossments of Magna Carta of 1215. Moreover, the scribe’s minor errors reveal that he was copying unthinkingly, not confecting something new. Like those engrossments, its dating clause records that it was “given by [King John’s] own hand” on 15 June, but unlike them, at Windsor – presumably in the royal castle – rather than “on the meadow which is called Runnymede between Windsor and Staines”. We have suggested that this was the fruit of the negotiations covered by the truce issued on 10 June. These had, in various respects, moved on from the details hammered out in the articles, and the whole draft settlement had by now been recast in charter form, as the articles had ordained. If I am right, this draft was ready by the expiry of the truce on the morning of 15 June. Stephen Langton could slip the now superseded articles into his pocket. But if the date in a later copy is to be taken seriously, why discount the date given in all four surviving engrossments of 1215? One reason is a matter of practicality. Many of the details shared by all those extant engrossments represent further amendments to the draft text dated to Windsor on 15 June, and if I am right, probably in the morning. These details are likely to have been the subject of very intense negotiation in the following hours and days. We know that John was at Windsor Castle to celebrate Trinity Sunday on 14 June; that he commuted to Runnymede, three-and-a-half miles away, on 15 June, presumably after lunch, and that he returned to Windsor that evening. Would it have been possible during that very busy day to have negotiated on the basis of the draft text, and agreed substantial and detailed revisions to it, to be authorised in an amended text cleared for issue by the king on the meadow at Runnymede that very same afternoon? The most authoritative estimate of the time needed to copy out an engrossment of Magna Carta is eight hours, so it is inconceivable that any were ready for sealing that day on the meadow, even if we imagine that the Chancery clerks carted all their paraphernalia back and forth with them in the king’s train. Why ‘Bad King John’ was actually good The physical impossibility of producing engrossments in the time available does not in itself preclude the agreement that afternoon to amendments to the morning’s draft. Yet despite the propensity of negotiations to accelerate towards their conclusion, and the possibility of a sudden breakthrough, it seems highly unlikely that so much could have been settled in a few hours, given the eyeball-to-eyeball nature of the wrangling which had been going on for many days. Furthermore, another 13th-century copy of a putative draft, added to a contemporary legal collection, is dated 16 June; it shares one, and only one, of the intermediate variants of the Windsor draft. All the other variants of the previous day’s draft have been amended to the form found in the final engrossments. If the date may be trusted, and if the copy is reliable – palaeographers date the hand in which it is added to the collection early in the century, so it is a very early copy – this suggests that negotiation continued into 16 June, by which point some of the contentious provisional settlements of the previous day had been further amended. It is difficult to conceive of circumstances in which a version antecedent to the final one should have been produced on the day after the final one had been definitively settled. But before too much weight is placed on this evidence, it needs to be repeated that the date in this copy is written in larger letters than the rest of the clause, and appears to have been inserted by a different scribe. View Riddle on the source website The other reason for rejecting 15 June as the date on which the final text of Magna Carta was authorised is not a matter of textual detail: however far negotiations had got by that date, there was still no formal peace between the king and his opponents. They had renounced their bond of faith with John, and so were not his men. They were assembled in arms on the meadow. They would not become his men again until Friday 19 June, when the “firm peace” first predicted in a writ of 18 June (and therefore already pre-arranged by that date) was established by the renewal of homage. There is plenty of evidence that 19 June was the day on which homage was re-done, and therefore peace renewed. It remains, as Holt argued, inconceivable that John would have authorised the issue of the charter while his enemies were, formally speaking, still at war with him (though they would also have needed reassurance that once they had renewed their homage, John would not be able to renege on the agreed charter). The oath prescribed in cap 63 Magna Carta, to be taken by the barons as well as the king, secured the terms of the settlement. Cap 62, which provides a pardon for all beaches of peace committed between Easter 1215 and the “re-establishment of peace”, strongly implies that these oaths were sworn only after the renewal of homage. If all this is true, and the final text was authorised on 19 June, the question remains why it preserved the Windsor draft Charter’s date of 15 June, if not its place. The answer must be that the draft charter was accepted on 15 June as the basis for the settlement. This had not happened in Windsor Castle, where the draft was written up, but at Runnymede in the afternoon, where John had accepted the articles five days before. The articles had now been reformulated as a charter, as John’s opponents had long been demanding, but the fine-tuning that remained to be done took several further days, while other contentious matters not covered by the charter – castles, hostages, etc – were also being thrashed out. It is striking that most of the last-minute alterations incorporated in the charter shifted the terms in the king’s favour, so he evidently had skillful negotiators acting on his behalf. When these parallel negotiations had been completed, the final version of the charter was retrospectively dated from the point at which the draft had been accepted as the basis of the settlement in the requisite charter form. The Windsor draft thus played the part of a heavily revised articles, accepted by both sides as something approaching the final terms of the settlement. Unlike the articles, it was dated. By 15 June, negotiations had reached a stage that rendered unnecessary the renewal of the truce that had expired that morning. The retrospective dating of the final charter served to bridge the gap between the acceptance of the Windsor draft at Runnymede on the afternoon of 15 June and the final settlement – a gap during which the refinement of the terms continued. King John: the making of a medieval monster David Carpenter himself seems to accept something of the sort, when he writes that on 15 June “[t]he Charter was now in place, however much there was still disagreement over some details”. Adamant as he is that there was no “original”, it is difficult to conceive precisely what form of charter was, in his view, “now in place” on 15 June. Nevertheless, thanks to his unearthing of numerous later copies of the 1215 charter, it may well be possible to re-construct some of the details of these intense negotiations, if some of the variations can be interpreted as evidence of intermediate drafting. As Holt wrote in 1992, “[d]raft versions of the Charter constitute the most intriguing problem of all.” But there is no space to begin that exploration here. 10 medieval dates you need to know One of the lessons of this anniversary year is that key pieces of evidence can still come to light – a whole engrossment of the reissue of 1300 was found by Nicholas Vincent in Kent Record Office. It may well be that something else will, and that it will demonstrate either that David Carpenter is right, or that I am right, or that neither of us is right! What we should celebrate is the interest the anniversary has provoked in a type of medieval history that has been dismissed by some current historians as outdated, indeed obsolete – the sort of thing in which Victorians were interested, and which we sophisticated moderns should have moved beyond. What we have been reminded about is how central these matters were to the way in which people thought in 13th-century England. And the current disagreement between David Carpenter and myself demonstrates that many important questions remain to be settled; that there is still much work to be done. Attempting to settle them will reveal still more about medieval political thinking and practice. George Garnett is a professor of medieval history at the University of Oxford. He is the co-author (with John Hudson) of a revised edition of John Holt's classic study of Magna Carta This article was first published on HistoryExtra in June 2015