We have all heard of Magna Carta, although, like Tony Hancock we might be a little hazy on when and why and what it was for.

We might remember that Magna Carta was not an economic migrant, but the Latin name for the Great Charter that was signed by King John and the barons of the realm in Runnymede in June 1215 (and we might even remember that it wasn’t signed by John, but sealed, and thus be able to win the history question in the pub quiz). But what is the significance of Magna Carta; for the Church then, and for the Church, us, today?

We can begin to understand this significance if we think of Magna Carta as the inevitable reaction to the fall of a strong man. Look at Iraq today. One of the causes of the instability in Iraq (and only one! There are plenty of others for which the west are more directly responsible) is that it was a country that was oppressively ruled by a single man for thirty years. A combination of systematic and personal violence suppressed all dissent, and all political and civil means of expressing disagreement. Remove the Big Man and you don’t get a flourishing liberal democracy; you got insurrection.

There was a similar situation in England at the end of the twelfth century. England was part of a cross-channel empire ruled by the family from Anjou, who took as their surname the white broom that grew in such abundance in their lands: the planta genista, the Plantagenets. Henry, twelfth Count of Anjou and second king of England by that name was the strong man. He had forged the empire, which controlled western Europe, from the Scottish borders, Ireland, the realm of England, and the lands we now call France, from estuary of the Somme to the Pyrenees.

He did this by being a particularly fearsome and wily ruler.
With his grey eyes, freckled face and uncertain temper, with his indifference to comfort or pomp despite his wealth and power, with the positive delight he took in an unkempt appearance, Henry fascinated his generation by his personality as much as by the extent of the lands he ruled.¹

Henry’s son, Richard, kept his father’s control over his English lands by employing the Archbishop of Canterbury as the enforcer Henry had hoped Thomas Becket would be: Hubert Walter (Archbishop, 1193–1205), was justiciar (the King’s chief minister) and chancellor (chief legal officer), and general hard man. Hubert was not a holy man, but he was one of the most able government minsters ever to have served in this country. It was Hubert who managed all the conflicting interests which had claim on the king’s interests, power and money. Following his death, the new king John, was left exposed.

He didn’t help himself. He was unlucky in battle (the King of France conquered Normandy in 1204); he was uncouth (he alienated churchmen by his boorish behaviour in church); he was not much of an outdoorsman (unloved by the hunting, fighting, fighting, hunting nobility). He had not much political nous. We can see all these factors combining in his attempts to find a replacement for Hubert.

John nominated his secretary, John de Grey, bishop of Norwich, to the see of Canterbury. This was not approved of by the monks of Canterbury, who had the formal right to elect the Bishop. They quickly elected Reginald, sub-prior of the Abbey. Impasse. A delegation was sent to the only man who could untangle the mess, Innocent III, bishop of Rome. The Pope quashed both elections and instructed the monks to elect again, anyone they liked, completely freely, just so long as it was Stephen Langton, cardinal priest of a church in Rome. The election took place at the Pope’s court. Surprisingly, in June 1207, the Canterbury monks elected Stephen Langton as Archbishop, and the Pope confirmed the election.

General rejoicing all round— except in the court of John. The king decided to play hard ball, and proclaimed as a public enemy anyone who recognized Stephen as Archbishop. A month later, he went further, and the monks of Canterbury were expelled from the monastery. If John thought that would solve the problem to his satisfaction he was wrong: he had tried to play hard ball— the pope could play harder.

In March, 1208, Pope Innocent III placed England under interdict. The Church in England was closed— every one. Mass was forbidden to be celebrated, except in monasteries and behind locked doors. Baptism was forbidden to be celebrated in church. The dead were refused burial in consecrated ground. Church bells were silenced (so it wasn’t all bad). The king was excommunicated, which meant that no Christian person was allowed to associate with him. The bishops, with the exception of the Bishop of Winchester, left England.

John reacted in the calm and measured way we would expect him to do: he plundered the churches. After four years of this, and having enough, the Pope deposed John and ordered that Philip II of France now had papal authority to execute the sentence: the French King had been given the thirteenth century equivalent of the UN Resolution. John realised that he had lost, and then did the only shrewd thing of his reign. He resigned his kingdom and made it over to the papacy. He then received it back in return, but now as a vassal of the pope, and on condition that he repaid the revenue that had been stolen and obeyed the instructions of the Pope’s agents in England, chief of whom was Stephen Langton, Archbishop of Canterbury.

It was Langton who kept the pressure on John, not allowing him to think that he could slip back into his bad old ways. The Archbishop presented a copy of Henry I’s Coronation Charter to the nobility in a meeting at St Paul’s. They were so taken with this document, and the promises it contained, that they draft their own version, which was presented to the king in a summit meeting on a water meadow by the Thames at Runnymede in the summer of 1215. The king was unable to refuse the invitation; the barons had soldiers, and the Archbishop had the threat of another interdict.

So the King set his seal to a charter which had a preamble and sixty-three clauses. The clauses can be divided into nine separate groups: laws concerning the holding of land; laws for the regulation of trade and guilds; laws for the behaviour of royal officials; laws for the royal forests and for the ejection fof the king’s foreign mercenaries. A final group of clauses bound the king to obey the directions of a group of the barons; if the king refused their judgements the charter gave the barons right to wage war on the king.
Some of the clauses are still in force today. The most famous is the principle of habeus corpus: no one may be imprisoned without being subject to due process of law (a principle contested today with the use of so-called “extraordinary rendition” and extra-judicial detention at Guantanamo Bay). Another clause still in force (it has never been repealed) is the first clause:

In the first place have granted to God, and by this our present charter confirmed for us and our heirs for ever that the English church shall be free, and shall have its rights undiminished and its liberties unimpaired; and it is our will that it be thus observed; which is evident from the fact that, before the quarrel between us and our barons began, we willingly and spontaneously granted and by our charter confirmed the freedom of elections which is reckoned most important and very essential to the English church, and obtained confirmation of it from the lord pope Innocent III; the which we will observe and we wish our heirs to observe it in good faith for ever. We have also granted to all free men of our kingdom, for ourselves and our heirs for ever, all the liberties written below, to be had and held by them and their heirs of us and our heirs.

Or, in the original Latin

… quod Anglicana ecclesie libera sit…

What did this mean? A church free? What would such church look like? We can get a clue from another important meeting which happened that year, a council called by the Pope in his cathedral church of St. John Lateran in Rome, the Fourth Lateran Council of that name. Here Innocent proclaimed the outline and substance of the imperial medieval church: in attendance were seventy-one patriarchs and metropolitans, four hundred and twelve bishops, and nine hundred abbots and priors. At the Council the Church’s teaching on the Eucharist was defined (with the first use of the word “transubstantiation”); annual confession for all Christian people was ordered; archbishops were obliged to hold yearly synods; the teaching and ethical role of bishops was encouraged; parish clergy were ordered to reside in their parishes and not to marry. Most controversially, perhaps for now, was the promulgation that “extra ecclesiam nulla salus” (outside the church there is no salvation to be found). It was the church which controlled the whole of Europe’s access to God, and salvation:

It was a programme not of one nation’s democracy but of a whole Christian civilization’s discipline.²

Incidentally, Stephen Langton had a difficult time of it. He was forced to leave England when the Pope felt he had gone too far in prosecuting the case against John. He wasn’t able to take up his post again until the death of both king and pope.

Stephen Langton was a mediator because he had to serve his pope and his king, as well as his fellow-barons and his conscience. And he experienced a mediator’s usual lack of thanks.³

When he died they buried him outside the south transept of the Cathedral. Much later the St Michael’s Chapel was built on the site of his tomb (the Regimental Chapel of the Buffs). Langton’s head is inside the chapel, and his feet protrude into the open air.

The consequence of Magna Carta for the Church of England was two-fold. First, the status of the Church was now guaranteed by the legal system of the country, and in such a way as to complicate its status with a supra-national body, the Papacy. In other words, the Church of England could no longer be legally autonomous: other people (Crown and Pope) expected to have a say in the way it was governed). Second, the political role of the bishops of the country was reinforced. As Archbishop of Canterbury Stephen Langton acted as Henry II had wanted Thomas Becket to act: as a political player and an enforcer. The unfortunate thing for Henry’s son is that Langton was playing for the other side.

1. David Edwards, Christian England (London : Fount, 1989) p. 127 [↩]
2. David Edwards, Christian England, pp. 132-3. [↩]
3. David Edwards, Christian England, p. 131. [↩]