September 9, 2021 • 48 mins
In 1215 at Runnymede (doo dah, doo dah) the nobles and the king agreed to end a rebellion against the power of the English throne. While the treaty that emerged contained all sorts of arcane Medieval details, it also contained the seeds of Western liberty and civil rights.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you should know a production of I
Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the Perd Carst. I'm
Josh Clark, and there's Charles w Chuck Bryant and Jerry's
over there somewhere, and this is stuff you should know
the perd Carst. Did I say that? I think so.
(00:25):
You sounded like Kristen Wiggs target lady character. I'm not familiar.
Welcome to the Paired Coast. Oh no, way, that's a
different character. What character was that? I think that was
Mike Meyer's Scottish guy. No, not that jerk. I don't
know who then, Oh, I'm blanking. People are screaming at
(00:47):
their radio. Is that well known of a character? There
a m FM radio just to listen to. How is
this coming through? It's like when a fifty year old podcasts.
M h, it's true, a fifty year of this podcasting
before very ears. Right now. That's right, that's me. He
can't the age me. Martin Scorsese running circles around the
(01:07):
younger ones. Chuck, um, so, Chuck. Have you ever seen
the Simpsons? Oh boy, you got one for me. Did
you ever see the one about the murder House where
Marge becomes a real tour You mean a certified real tour. Yes,
of course, what are the kind of I don't know,
(01:32):
remind me. Oh so anyway, Marge becomes a real tour
and she uh, I think with Lionel Huts is realty
company and it's like a kind of like a Glen
Garry Glenn Ross spoof is like that that little uh subplot.
But um, she she uh tries to sell a house
(01:52):
that like a multiple murder was committed in uh to
Flanders and his family back when Maud was still alive.
And she does and tell them it's a murder house, um,
and feels like a tremendous amount of guilt and then
finally like confesses and I don't think they end up
buying the house anyway, I don't remember, but it's a
pretty good one that has almost nothing to do with anything.
(02:13):
I could have just stopped right there where Marge became
a real tour because she's taking the realty test and
um Lisa comes along and teaches her how to how
to remember things using mnemonic devices and in um. In
one example she gives, she says, and you can put
like something you're trying to remember to a song like
(02:34):
in twelve fifteen running me Doude dudea, the nobles and
the king agreed, Oh do do da day? That's great.
That is one of my go to references for the
Magna Carta. You know what mine is? Funny enough, man,
that was a tortured intro. No. I thought it was
great Simpsons reference is what it was. I thought it
(02:58):
was fantastical. Thank you. And I've never heard that. I
don't remember that episode and I've never heard that little jingle,
so vintage classic Simpsons. When I think of Magna Carta,
I think of Johnny Dangerously the movie with Michael Keaton,
the very funny spoof movie, because at one point I
think the someone is on death row and they're being
(03:20):
read fake last rites by a fake priest as they
walk down the Green Mile and they're just sort of
making up Latin terms and he goes Magna carta master chargea.
And I saw that in the theater when I was whatever,
like ten or eleven, and I've remembered that ever since.
It gets in your name and your your head, those
(03:41):
two words they go really well together. They have a
tendency to stick around. And then also like you get
the idea when you when you kind of like Percy
little ears up about this magnet carda thing that it
was kind of pretty important. People people tend to put
a lot of stock into it. Yeah, Uh, she's and know,
(04:01):
and I'm looking and I can't even see what Magna
carta what does it mean? Great Charter? The Great Charter
of course. Yeah. And technically the name of the Magna
Carta what we're talking about. We'll get into all like
the little details and everything in a second, but um,
it's called the Magna Carta Libertarium. So it's the Great
(04:22):
Charter of Liberties, is what it really is. And a
lot of people, like I was saying, they put a
lot of stock into they basically say, you say that
this is the well spring, at least in the UK
and America and I and by extension Australia and Canada
of human rights, of like civil rights, of the basic
rights that every citizen has, that like that all kind
(04:43):
of came from this document, and that before that there
really wasn't that kind of stuff. And you have to
really narrow your focus here because in this time period
we're talking about around them, like twelve and thirteenth centuries CE,
like England was still kind of figuring out which way
it was going. At the same time, if you went
(05:04):
to the Arab world, you would find half a million
people living in some cities. Well, there was like ten
thousand people living in London. If you went to the
west to modern day St. Louis, the Cahokia Mound civilization
had like fifteen thousand people living there. China had been
running a bureaucracy for a good thousand years by this time.
(05:24):
So this is new to England and the English, and
there their descendants and ancestors around this this time, this era.
But if you narrow it like that, then yeah, you
can make a pretty good case that for you and
me and those of us born in America, you can
trace your civil liberties pretty directly back to this document. Yeah,
(05:47):
And like even if the document itself as well learn
uh wasn't necessarily honored initially or even later. Um, it
was it was that seed that was planted that it
had to be at least uh, and we'll and we'll
see later on. You know it once it was in place,
you kind of couldn't go backwards from there, even though
(06:09):
some people did try later on, some royalty. It just
didn't happen. So it's sort of drew a line in
the sand and said, all right, from this point forward,
at least things for people, any people other than not
every person, but people other than royalty at least won't
won't go backwards from here. No, And like you said,
(06:31):
they tried it. Definitely wanted to. But when you lay
down something like people have rights that are basic to
them from the moment they're born, that's a tough one
to repeal, you know what I'm saying. Once that's out there,
that's that's tough to put it back in the box.
And good, it's good for us, bad for despotic absolutist monarchs. Though.
(06:54):
So should we get into a little background here, Yeah,
I think we should because we got we got some
ground to cover. Yeah, so, uh, the Grabster helped us
with this, and you could. I love it. You know,
you can tell when, uh, when our writers are really
into something by sort of how much background they give
us on stuff before they get to this stuff. I
(07:15):
think that I think that was into it. I think
he was wearing chainmail while he was writing them. He
may have been, but it did a great job with
a setup. And you know, we we have to point
out that this was a time, like you said, where
there was a king that ruled the land and everyone
had to do what the king said basically. And then
(07:35):
you had uh, you know, you had people that ruled
over smaller fiefdoms throughout the land, but they still answered
to the king. But they had their subjects as well.
But it was it was a bit of a mess.
Like even though the king could kind of do what
they wanted, the king usually knew like, hey, I can't
push things too far otherwise it gets really bad for me.
(07:58):
So let me see if I can walk right up
to that line as often as I can in many
cases as far as royalty is concerned, and sort of
push things as far as like you know, ringing money
out of people, uh for bribes or or quote unquote
taxes or uh, you know, try and just ruling with
a harsh hand, but not necessarily a hand that will
(08:20):
be so bad that the people revolt. Yeah, that was
a fine line. And so some kings in the history
of England, we're really good at being kings. I get
the impression that the more land you conquered in the
name of England, the more people you brought under your rule, Um,
the happier you could keep, the like the barons, the
(08:41):
people who um own the land that that, you know,
kind of all collectively made up your kingdom, the better
off you were. But yeah, you still were going to
need money to run things, so you're gonna have to
extract that stuff. So you had to just push it
just as far as you could. That was a good king.
There were also plenty of bad kings who would go
(09:02):
way past the line, and they were they they could
be allowed to do that because in England, kings were
divinely decreed by God. Their authority was derived directly from God.
So whatever they did, no matter how unhappy that made you,
God said it, So this king is allowed to do it.
(09:24):
In practice, that didn't actually like work out all the time,
Like it's not like the barons were like what are
you gonna do? God? God said? But they there was
still kind of that air that or around it. And
at the very least, even if you didn't buy into
that directly, that was the custom and had been for
a really long time, and that's hard to buck. So
you had good kings who still went up the line.
(09:46):
You have bad kings who crossed the line, and when
you put it all together, more often than not, that
line was being really kind of made to feel claustrophobic,
and so the barons would be unhappy. And they were
the ones the power. So if you push the barons
too far, they would push back, and then you would
end up with things like written laws and customs and
(10:08):
decrees that said the king won't do this anymore, right. Uh.
And there's also a third group in there of kings
that just weren't very good at their job. Like I
think history often like they often overlook sheer incompetence in
favor of you know, like this person did all these
great things, or this person was an evil tyrant, and
(10:30):
like some of them just weren't too good at it. Yeah,
the they like the day to day the Franklin pierces
of the English king Lin. Uh. So we'll skip up
to Henry the first uh alevend created the Charter of Liberties.
And this was sort of if the Magna Carta was
the seed of liberty for people like you and me, later,
(10:54):
the Charter of Liberties may have been the precede to
that seed in a way, because it is the first
kind of official thing that limited the king's power just
a bit. Uh, And in this case there were other things,
but it did limit the king's power to appoint church offices.
Um guaranteed that any like inheritances would be carried forth,
(11:18):
and there were no bribes necessary. So just sort of
like cleaned up the act of the royals in this
sort of smallest ways. Yeah, because before it was like
you could, if you were the king, could be like, yeah,
I don't care, give me some money if you want
to be legally married, or give me some money if
you um wanted to be promoted in your church ranking,
(11:41):
Like you could just extract money for anything. And so
this is the first time where it was kind of like, okay,
we'll go we we won't do that, we won't keep
pushing things like you were saying. Like it just kind
of cleaned up the monarchy and limited their ability and
it was kind of a big thing. And again that
came out of a bad king. That was Henry, who
(12:02):
had to clean up the mess left by his successor
or his predecessor, William the Second, his brother, who had
been a bad king, had overtaxed, had overstepped the boundaries
and now there had to be some sort of document
created to say we won't do that again. This is
where laws came from in England, like people overstepping bounds
and being pushed back on right or the king just
(12:24):
arbitrarily deciding things. So Henry one dies, uh, succeeded by
Stephen the First. And this one was a little dicey
because Stephen the first ascension to the throne was contested
and resulted in a civil war called the anarchy. Uh.
And the anarchy was was a mess. It was a
(12:46):
pretty brutal, lawless time. And um, Stephen I think he
wasn't around too long, but he was quickly followed by
Henry the Second, who ruled for about thirty five years
I think right at thirty five years. And this was
at the end of the anarchy. But Henry the Second
comes in and basically says, all right, the royals are back, baby,
(13:08):
and there are gonna be a bunch of reforms here.
We're gonna centralize our power. Things have gotten out of
hand with his anarchy and uh, it's all under my
control now. Um. And in a way this was it
was good and bad. It's it's never great when someone
assumes his absolute authority. But it's also better just to
(13:29):
have a more structured, codified system than all these weird
arbitrary laws that were kind of all over the place
and scattered about before exactly. Yeah. So, and one of
the reasons why Henry the second did that is because
he was very much into adventurism. He would he would
go out of England and try to conquer more lands
and that was his big thing. Parasailing, that was his thing. Yeah,
(13:52):
So he needed he needed some basically some some structure
that he could set in place that didn't require him
to be there all the time to oversee it. And
some of that like actually kind of benefited people, um
in part because like you said, it was it wasn't
arbitrary anymore. And there were like some real reforms, like
he set up a panel of judges that would go
(14:14):
around and and basically carry out criminal trials. Rather than
just people getting away with crimes or maybe being subject
to mob justice, they were trying to apply some sort
of actual justice to it. Um. Uh. You could now
if you were a surf or a peasant, you could
complain to the king and go over the lord of
(14:34):
the manner that you worked on his head if he
was mistreating you like that was brand new. And so
there was like some good things that were set in
place by Henry the Second. He wasn't like some benevolent
guy or anything like that, but he he did leave
that legacy and it was a it was a big deal.
A lot of people point to his code as the
beginning of English common law. Yeah, he was. He was
(14:57):
not a great guy. He was in fact a pretty
brutal uh person on the battlefield, and he would brutal leader,
he would, and he and he did a good job
leading on the battlefield, and he loved going to war.
But he would cut the feet off or the um
genitals from his enemies. Uh. He would you know, lock
people in the dungeons. He was known supposedly for gouging
(15:18):
out the eyes of a young messenger boy one time
who delivered bad news. Uh. So he wasn't some great guy.
And he was also like he had to finance all
of these travails in wars all over the place, and
that cost a lot of money. So a lot of
what he did when he when he brought all this
under his order, was made a lot of money and
(15:40):
raised a lot of revenue. Uh, and was kind of
just squeezing every last bit he could out of these
landowners again with those kind of fees like you were
talking about, like, hey, if you're a widow and you
want to remarry, h pay me. If you want to
inherit some land or a title, pay me. Maybe you
can even and bribe me. I'm you know, I'm open
(16:01):
to that right, which is arbitrarian and of itself, because
the person doesn't necessarily deserve whatever it is they're bribing
the king for an exchange for and that's you know,
that's not good. It's also in direct violation of the
Charter of Liberties that Henry the First had laid out.
And now that there was that, now that that had
(16:23):
been established by Henry the First, the nobility could point
to that and be like, you're not honoring this stuff,
like this is something we can hold your feet to
the flames over. It didn't necessarily work with Henry the
Second because he was such a strong king, but it
was it was something that they could point to and
they could say like this is wrong and here's why. Yeah,
and you know there's something I meant to point out
(16:45):
at the beginning that that I'll bring up here that's
really kind of integral to how all of this worked
back then, is it was sort of a a three
way dance between um, nobility, these really wealthy influential bearing
and then the church. And like those are the three
big pieces of the puzzle that like everyone kind of
(17:07):
had to be happy among that group to a certain
degree or there were big problems. Uh. And it was
always sort of that dance with the royalty two sort
of make sure that like they were extracting money from
the barons, but they didn't want to make them too
unhappy because I said, they would revolt. But you also
had to satisfy the church, which technically was a separate entity,
(17:27):
which we'll get to in a minute. But the push
and pull among these three groups was really a pretty
key thing to how everything operated back then. Yeah, um,
and yeah, that was an excellent point because the church
was like a state unto itself, right, it could make
its own money. And um, this is at a time
when the prevailing economic theory was that there was like
(17:49):
a finite amount of money in the in the world.
So when you were extracting money from like the barons,
whether you were the church or whether you were the king,
like that really hurt, hurt more than you know it
does paying taxes today, because there's this idea that that
like that was it there. There was like a zero
sum game. Everybody was taking in exchanging from the same
(18:11):
pot um. So yeah, if you could kind of balance
all those three together, you had a pretty stable monarchy.
But more often than not, it was like we were saying,
people kind of push things over the edge. Henry the
second definitely did that with the bribery, but again he
was a strong monarch um and then he was he
was succeeded by a couple of people that are kind
(18:33):
of studies in contrast as far as kings of England go.
Don't you think, Yeah, maybe let's take a break. That's
a great cliffhanger. Who could these two people be? Laurel
and Hardy C. C. De Ville could be the Hardy Boys,
which like with Parker Stevenson and what's his other name?
I bet you that's who it is, the other guy,
(18:53):
poor other guy learning stuff with Joshua John. All Right,
(19:29):
we're back Parker Stevenson and Fred Noonan with the two
party boys. No, uh, you're talking about Richard, and then John.
We'll start with Richard. Henry the Second died and his son,
Richard the Lion Hearted inherited the throne, and he was
beloved and he did a lot of crusades as well
(19:51):
and had a lot of great military successes and uh,
you know, I had to spend a lot of money
to do so, of course, but he died unexpected lee.
And then Henry the second, his his dad was Henry
the Second. His son John took over the throne. And
remember when I mentioned earlier that some some people just
were not good at their job. This was John. He
(20:14):
was just not good at being a politician, not good
at being a king, not good at getting along with
the barons and the church. He was just not cut
out for it. Yeah, and he's the main bad guy.
I think we I wondered if Richard the third was
the main bad guy or the king and the Robin
Hood legend is King John? Oh is it really? Yeah?
(20:35):
Because I remember Richard the Lion Heart is like all
fighting the crusades, and King John's running the show in
a mean and incompetent way. That's who Robin Hood's fighting.
And the Sheriff of Nottingham. But in real life John
was just he was not meant to be a king.
You know. He was Richard's brother, he was the younger brother,
(20:56):
and Henry the second. Their father didn't even for one
he didn't even name John after a king um. And
he didn't give him any land um. So there was
no no, no area for him to rule. He was
sent off to like study with scholars. That's what he
was supposed to be. So he was never bred to
be a king, and he wasn't a very good one,
(21:17):
regardless because of that or or just naturally. But his
first nickname among the nobility was John Lackland because he
didn't have any land, because they must have really burned him,
you know, that's pretty funny. But he was terrible. But
more to the point, like not only was he like
bad with money and like he was a despot in
(21:37):
a lot of ways too. He lost land. Remember I
said the kings that were most beloved were the ones
that like added to the kingdom. The ones that were
the most despised were the ones who lost land from
the kingdom. And that was what John did almost out
of the gate. Yeah, he was losing land to king
Phillip the second of France and and uh, you know
(22:01):
ed points out and it's important to know here that
you know, England and France back then were it's not
like it is today, Like they were very intertwined. Um.
England held a lot of land in the north of France,
and they were constantly kind of going back and forth
about like winning and taking land from one another. So
it's it's you gotta have to kind of deprogram yourself
from how you think of those two countries today to
(22:23):
think about how it was back then. Um. So he
was losing land to King Philip the second, and uh,
Philip like to John's cousin, Arthur of Brittany, and he
had a competing claim to the throne. So Philip was
in Arthur's court. And you know, John just wasn't doing
a good job. He was blowing through money he which
(22:44):
meant he had to get more money out of the
barons than even his predecessors did. And he was not
winning land with this money, so he was he was
just going down the tubes fast. Yeah. And one one
thing I saw a check. Just want to mention these
the English um were so intertwined with the French at
the time that these kings that we're talking about, Henry
(23:05):
the Second, Richard the Lion Hearted, h John Lackland, they
all spoke French. And that interesting. The English king spoke
French at the time. Oh sure, like when you go
to if you look at any of the old movies
that are historically accurate, it's really hard to make sense
of any of it. When like people from France or
(23:25):
sending their daughter to England to marry into It's like
it's it's really confusing, and I don't know if it's
about the family lines, but it's it is super confusing,
like the um oh, like Catherine the Great. And some
of this comes from watching TV, I'll admit, but that
(23:46):
TV show The Great is really good because I think
wasn't Catherine the Great Russian? Yes? Or she was married
off to the Russians. I'm not sure she was a
born Russian. I don't know. It's all just very confusing.
Oh yeah, but I mean that was a really good
way to consolidate power into games. Even more land um
would be to to marry like another royal family and
(24:08):
just put your stuff together, make you make yourselves even
harder to I might have gotten that all wrong, by
the way, but it was off the dome as the
kids say, hey, that's all right, man, off the domes
pretty great, alright. So John is uh, you know, I
talked about this sort of three prun thing. John is
not doing well. He is ticking off the barons because
he's having to squeeze more money out of them. So
(24:29):
it's like, well, surely he at least did okay with
the church right to keep that uh stool stable. Not
true at all. Pope Innocent the Third was in charge
at the time, and he appointed a new Bishop of
Canterbury named Stephen Langton, who would turn out to be
a big thorn and John's side. John did not want Langton,
(24:49):
and so he got mad and basically took his ball
and went home. Uh. He took control of Canterbury all
the church's possessions and said, Lankton, you can't even come
in the country. And so Innocent the Third said, oh, yeah,
you know what, I'm gonna issue a people degree that
basically all church services in England aren't valid anymore and
you can't hold them. And you know, if it was
(25:11):
you and me, we'd be like, sweet, we don't have
to go to church anymore. But it wasn't like that
back then. It was a really big deal. Uh. Ed said,
this was like dropping in ecclesiastical nuclear bomb into Britain
and that's kind of true. Yeah, because also the church
was a huge employer in England at the time too.
So now all the people who work in the church's
jobs are like, well are are are we valid? What's
(25:33):
going on here? You know? Do we have the same
protections that we used to It's it was a big,
big deal. And yeah, for all intents and purposes, England
under King John was at war with um, the Church
under Innocent the Third and it stayed that way for
a little while. Um, and they just put John that
(25:54):
was it. That was the last box to be checked.
Like he was at odds with absolutely everybody, uh, and
was a very unpopular king by anybody's anybody's measure. Um,
whether you were a commoner or whether you were nobility,
or whether you were a bishop, you did not like
King John very much. And then add to that that
(26:15):
the guy that Um Innocent the Third appointed to the
Archbishop of Canterbury. And this is also by the way,
after the last Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Beckett had been
murdered at the behest of John's father, Henry the second
um murdered brutally too. I read a first person account
of It's one or more ghastly murders I've ever heard um.
(26:38):
But the guy who came in, Stephen Langton, he was
like a progressive. He was basically writing about things that
questioned the divine authority of the monarchy, how some people
or not some people, but people had some natural rights,
like all people had some natural rights that even a
king couldn't violate. Like really progressive stuff. And this guy's
(27:00):
coming into England at a time when it has one
of its weakest kings in its history and basically set
the stage for the Magna Carta to to uh kind
of be written full stop? What else did you? I mean?
And could I have dressed it up more? Put a
little fruit on its head? Just your voice went up,
(27:23):
So I thought that was more. I was using up speak.
I was using so you might be asking yourself like
kind of what's the big deal? Because things were a
mess at various points in history, and there were revolts before,
and there was unrest before between the Church and the royals,
and was like why was this the big one that
(27:44):
kind of made everything change? And there are there are
a few reasons for this, um, one of which you
know I talked about France and England being so intertwined. Uh.
John lost land, but he lost Normandy, which was a
really big deal. Um. The Norman's in then had a
lot of land in northern France, like I said earlier,
since William the Conqueror uh got control of Normandy at
(28:06):
the Battle of Hastings. And the Normans were a tight
group and they were very influential in England. And then
when John lost Normandy, it was it was more than
just losing land. It was it was a big deal. Yeah,
they started calling him John soft Sword after that, did
they really? Yeah, that was his second nickname, John John
(28:28):
soft Sword. Uh. The church at the time, like we said,
was was separate, and so they had their own set
of laws, even they didn't have to. They had their
ecclesiastical laws. So if a church official ran a foul,
they were you know, they could say, no, no, no,
the King isn't gonna declare judgment on you. You You come
over here with us, we have our church law. It's
(28:51):
probably not as stiff to be honest uh. And and
basically John said, you know, forget that tradition. You guys
are under I rule and my decrees. And again this
just sent him further down the toilet um and then
like I was into the privy yes um. And then
(29:13):
add to that also that the the just the way
that people thought about the monarch, like thanks to people
like Stephen Langton, the new Archbishop of Canterbury um. And
the fact that the the Henry the first Document of Liberties,
a Charter of Liberties had had already been established. Like
just people were just thinking about things differently, and all
(29:36):
of this stuff kind of came together at this vortex
um and there was there was a point where finally
John was like okay, at the very least sending to
be in with the Pope and basically knelt before the
Pope and said England is a vassal state to um
the church again, which is a big deal um. But
(29:59):
it put put John in England back in Pope Innocent
the third good graces and they were fine again. But
that did nothing to help the barons uh. And as
a matter of fact, um, the barons were just as
put upon as before. But now John was even more
(30:19):
emboldened by having the full support of the Pope again,
and so the baron said, you know what, forget this,
enough of this, it's twelve fourteen and it's time for
some change. So they actually cobbled together uh a fighting
force and took London bye bye by force. They stormed
it and occupied London, uh, in open rebellion against King
(30:41):
John people. Yes, that's true, it really was. This is funny. Well,
it's funny to think of now. I mean, like ten
tho people living in London, but that's just the way
it was at the time. So yeah, you and I
could probably take London with ten thousand people, but it's
still significant to mention. Yeah, and are in our smartphones.
That's all we need. Yeah, look at the boomstick. Have
(31:04):
you ever seen a dog say I love you. Well,
I've got a video of it. Oh my god, they're bowing. Um.
So yeah, it wasn't a civil war, but it was.
It was a big deal. It was an open rebellion.
John knew this was not a good thing. So in
twelve fifteen he said, all right, I gotta make peace
with these people too, So let's get together. Uh, we'll
(31:26):
get that Langton, guy that I didn't like at all.
This shows you how much I'm coming. With my hat
in hand, he can act as the mediator. The baron said,
here's what we want. Uh, we'll call it the Article
of Barons and handed that to Langton, and Langton said,
all right, I gotta whip this into something that that
John is going to actually live with. And so he
(31:48):
drafted this initial document which included a lot of the
stuff from the Charter of Liberties that dealt with a
lot of this the you know, the laws that were
sort of on the books, but also had some had
some big ideas, like you were talking about about just
general rights at birth of humans. And they met, uh
(32:10):
ask Lisa Simpson where they met Running me Running Mead
June ninet, twelve fifteen, and they signed over fealty to John,
and they made copies of this thing, applied that Royal
seal on it, and that was it. It was the
Magna Carta, even though they didn't call it the Magna
Carta yet. No, And um, I was like, why Running Meat.
(32:33):
It turns out there's actually a few reasons why Running
Mead had a history of being an ancient kind of
council meeting spot. Um it was also nice place. Well
it was a boggy meadow, um, which is another reason
why I was chosen, because it would be a terrible
place to fight a war battle. And then also like
(32:54):
you could see basically in every direction from it, so
you couldn't do a surprise at tack either. Wanting to
fight in a boggy meadow. I thought it might have
been like a really nice picturesque thing, but it was
done out in the middle of nowhere where you could
see everything. Yeah. Well I get the impression that it
was picturesque still as well, but um that if you
had a lot of strategic strategic um assets to it too. Okay,
(33:19):
well that makes sense. Um. Alright, well I guess well,
before we take our break, let's just talk about the
fact that this first Magna Carta that was not even
called the magnet CARTI yet was ignored. John ignored it.
Uh innocent. The three said it's not even legal. Um.
John was under durest to agree to this thing, and
(33:39):
then a real full civil war called the First Barons
War broke out and John died of dysenteri in twelve sixteen.
It's kind of what ended the First Barons War. But
this is all sort of preamble to the real Magna Carta,
which we'll talk about in just a sec stuff with
(34:22):
Joshua John. All right, Chuck, So well, well, let's talk
a second about how the magnet Carta was applied shortly
after John died of dysenterry um. But first you have
to we should talk a little bit about like what
it actually looked like originally, because like you said, it
(34:44):
wasn't even what we think of the magnet Carta today.
It had a lot of stuff in it that has
nothing to do with nobody alive today. There is like
the basically the King's strong arm guy who went around
and like extracted money into orchard nobles. If they didn't
pay up, he and his cohorts are named specifically by
(35:05):
name as like they gotta go. There was stuff about,
you know, if you were a widow, you didn't have
to marry immediately, but if you did end up wanting
to get married later, you still had to go to
the king. There was about like land inheritance, all sorts
of stuff like that that really would have mattered to
(35:27):
a baron, uh, you know, a noble a noble person,
a nobleman or a woman in England at the time,
there were concessions. But then, like you said, there were
big ideas too. But if you were like the average
peasant working the land of surf, working in the land,
in the feudal system in England at the time, you
could not have made heads or tails of this because
number one it was written in abbreviated Latin, which would
(35:50):
have made it very hard to understand. But the number
two it was also written as one long I think
about three thousand word paragraph. Yeah that I don't even
think have punctuation in it either. It was it was
written like it was you know, by mad mad man. Yeah,
it's like written on a big long pieced roll of
(36:11):
toilet paper and that was rolled up. Uh it is
now like if you read the Magna Carta now it
is separated it into uh different clauses. But this was
not the case at first. This happened years later. Who
was the historian It was William Blackstone in the late
eighteenth century. Yeah, basically said like I gotta organize this thing,
(36:33):
like you know, this is gonna we we can't put
the thing in museums. It's embarrassing. Yeah, like people have
got to be able to make heads or tails of this,
so that that happened later on. At first it was
like you said, just this big long scrawl, and there
wasn't just one of them. It's not like you can
go to uh, you know, if you go to see
the Declaration of Independence and at the archives in d C,
(36:54):
like that's that's the one that's the master charge of
the master copy. There were thirteen known copies in twelve
fifteen of the Magna Carta, and there wasn't It's not
like they had one and then they ran it through
the xerox machine. They just they wrote it down thirteen times.
They're all originals. I guess it's maybe it's wrong to
(37:16):
say there isn't an original when there are thirteen originals.
There's not a soul original. Um. Four of these have
survived and they're little variations because they were written by
hand and transcribe, but nothing that like cancels anything out
is just sort of you know how somebody might transcribe something,
and they're all considered for like legit correct originals. I
(37:37):
think two of them are at the British Library of London,
one at Salisbury Cathedral and then one at Lincoln Castle. Yes.
And then if you go research how many Magna Carta
copies are there today, you'll find that there's a lot
more than four. And here you start to get into
just how muddy the history of the Magna Carta is, because,
(37:59):
like you said, when they first wrote this magnet Carta,
it wasn't exactly like what we think of magnet Carta today. Um.
It had a lot more provisions in it that had
to do with the forest, and there were so many
things rules and regulations about how to treat the forest,
how you can act in the forest, if you live
in the forest, who do you go, you know, claim
(38:20):
a grievance to that kind of stuff. That a separate
charter of the forest was created, Like those were basically
moved out, and then the document became the magnet Carta
that we understand it today. Um. And that was I
think in twelve seventeen when that finally happened. Yeah, twelve seventeen.
(38:41):
The charges of the forest was moved out, and then um,
little by little this document kept getting like adjusted, added
to as a new king came along. They would they
would basically be like I love the magnet carta, I'm
going to adhere to it. And slowly but surely, of
the next couple of decades it became accepted and respected
(39:05):
as the law of the land in England. Like it
was a lot more than just concessions to end the
Civil War, of the War of the Barons. It became
established law in England. Yeah, and and just those words
are very like it's easy now to sort of not
think too much about what law of the land means.
But back then that was a very big deal. And
(39:27):
that this was the first time that laws came about
that weren't directly from the king. Um. It wasn't royalty
just saying here's how everything is, everybody fall in line.
It was the people. And albeit it was you know,
if you were baron, you had a lot of money
(39:48):
and you know, a lot of political sway, it's not
like it was It's not like these were the surfs,
you know, like slinging hay in the hay fields that
had any kind of input. Um. So we do need
to point that out. But they were not royalty. So
it was a big deal for the very first time. Um,
actual um subjects of the king were weighing in and
(40:11):
and successfully weighing in on on what the law should be. Yeah.
And there were they were like the seeds to things
that would become really important later, like the idea that
um a council of barons I think twenty five barons
um could could basically hold the king to account. And
it was like the seed that eventually grew into the parliament. Um.
(40:33):
There was another one. There were there were some other
really big ones in there that that over time. One
of the things that happened over time, I guess, Chuck,
is it got extended to everybody in England, not just
what they called freemen which were landed nobility. Uh. It
got extended to everybody in England at least by twelve
(40:53):
ninety seven when it was encoded into law in England.
At the latest by like the Freds of fifteenth century. Um,
it became just commonly understood that like those those rights,
those laws in the Magna Carta applied to everybody in England. Yeah,
I mean, it was like this sacred document. And again
(41:15):
when you you kind of had no choice when you
came in there as a new king. Um, you may
try and alter and change some things, but you couldn't
refute the Magna Carta. At that point it was it
became too important, even if other laws superseded it later
on to the point where its actual laws in the
Magna Carta were rendered useless in a lot of circumstances.
(41:39):
It was a symbol, uh, And it had this, like
Ed said, it had this really powerful aura about it
because it was the first laws not decreed directly from
the King's voice. So you couldn't go back any anymore.
You could only move forward, even if it was even
if it was by tiny increments were talking about, um,
(42:00):
I mean the four hundreds. You know, this is a
long time ago, and it's gonna take a long time.
And Ed points out that, like we, humanity has always
been creeping towards more rights for more people, uh, even
if it's very slow and very clumsy at times. And
the Magna Carta was sort of the foundation on what
(42:21):
a lot of the modern rights that we have sort
of lay. Yeah. Like, there's there's a couple that are
actually still in English law. UM. Part of one the
first clause which gives freedom to the church, UM number thirteen,
which basically says that UM towns and municipalities have the
(42:42):
ability to decide their own matters like electing a mayor
that kind of stuff. And then the big ones. The
two big ones that were really huge when they were
codified in the Magna Carta back in twelve fifteen was
Um Claus thirty nine, which basically says that you uh
cannot be just thrown in prison, you can't be exiled,
(43:06):
you can't have your land taken away. None of those
things can happen to you unless it's through the lawful
judgment of your peers or the law of the land.
So it took away the king's arbitrary ability to throw
somebody in the dungeon until they starved to death because
they didn't pay him some bribe that he wanted. That
was enormous, and that today constitutes due process under the law.
(43:33):
And then also habeas corpus, where you can't just like
put someone in prison for no reason or never giving
a reason, and those are that's really huge, and that
is where directly where we we get that from an
America in the West. And the other one is um
Clause forty. There's you you cannot sell and you also
cannot deny or delay the rights that people have as citizens.
(43:57):
You you, you can't do that. So that was a
big deal. And then the idea that the magnet carta
um directly lead to the Bill of Rights um is
not an understatement at all. At the Constitutional Convention, when
they were thinking of whether they needed any kind of
magnet carta shout out because they had a mythical quality
(44:19):
in America by this time too um to kind of
keep the King of England at bay. Uh. They thought, well,
we're not gonna have a king here. We don't need
a magnet carta. And somebody very wisely pointed out, no,
we don't have a king, but the government still acts
at the behest of the majority of the people. What
if the majority of the people try to infringe on
(44:39):
the rights of others? We need something, And so they
came up with the Bill of Rights directly descended from
the magnet carta. So it is very much an important
document for surely still relevant, still relevant as ever. So
everybody go out and get a magnet carta copy, maybe
a poster or a T shirt and rocket ouably, do
(45:02):
you got anything else? I got nothing else? All right? Well,
Chuck said he's got nothing else. Than that means it's
time for a listener mail, I needna call this kind
correction on Jaclopes. I can't believe we walked right past this. Hey, guys,
a long time listener and super fan of the show.
I feel like we're friends since I listen to you
(45:23):
every day as I get ready for work and very
much look forward to your conversations. So as your friend,
I can say that absolutely love all your content, but
found myself cringing throughout the Jackalope episode. You see, I
am a the historic preservation officer for the City of
Las Vegas, Nevada, and while the jacaloplore is not prevalent
throughout Nevada, I still feel the need to weigh on
(45:45):
a bit of misunderstanding about our Southwestern fauna. The jack
and jackalopes is for the jack rabbit, of course, very
large species of hair, not a rabbits in the cute
little cottontail rabbit. The lope is for the pronghorn antelope,
not a deer. You guys, these are two different families, gentlemen.
The clue was right there in the name of antelope.
(46:07):
How do we miss that it's not a jack of deer?
I think we were so jazzed about even talking about
jack loops that we stopped seeing the forest for the trees.
Maybe so. However, a prong horn is not a true
antelope even, but that's another story. And further, prong horn
have horns, hence the name, which are affixed to the skull,
(46:29):
which of course means that put horns on the jack rabbit.
The prong horn must be deceased as well. However, dear
antlers shed annually with no harm done to the deer.
You can walk in any area where dear live and
find antlers on the ground. Therefore, deer does not necessarily
have to die to give up as antlers. While there
are certain yeah, that's good, while there are certainly our
(46:49):
taxidermy rabbits and hairs with deer antlers affixed to their heads.
A jacklobe by definition as a jack rabbit with prong
horn horns. I just wanted to give a little gentle
correction on all that, but in no way diminishes my
love for the show. Thank you for all you do,
all my best. Dr Diane ce C Brand, Historic Preservation Officer,
(47:12):
Las Vegas, Nevada. Excellent. Dr C. Brant. Dr Diane ce
c Brand, Okay C. C. Brand, m thank you Dr
C Brand, We appreciate that big time. Hats off to
you for that gentle correction. That was really something. If
you want to get in touch of this, like Dr
(47:32):
C Brand did, you can via email, wrap it up
spanking on the prong horn and send it off to
stuff Podcast iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know
is a production of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts my
heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
(47:52):
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff you should know a production of I
Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the Perd Carst. I'm
Josh Clark, and there's Charles w Chuck Bryant and Jerry's
over there somewhere, and this is stuff you should know
the perd Carst. Did I say that? I think so.
(00:25):
You sounded like Kristen Wiggs target lady character. I'm not familiar.
Welcome to the Paired Coast. Oh no, way, that's a
different character. What character was that? I think that was
Mike Meyer's Scottish guy. No, not that jerk. I don't
know who then, Oh, I'm blanking. People are screaming at
(00:47):
their radio. Is that well known of a character? There
a m FM radio just to listen to. How is
this coming through? It's like when a fifty year old podcasts.
M h, it's true, a fifty year of this podcasting
before very ears. Right now. That's right, that's me. He
can't the age me. Martin Scorsese running circles around the
(01:07):
younger ones. Chuck, um, so, Chuck. Have you ever seen
the Simpsons? Oh boy, you got one for me. Did
you ever see the one about the murder House where
Marge becomes a real tour You mean a certified real tour. Yes,
of course, what are the kind of I don't know,
(01:32):
remind me. Oh so anyway, Marge becomes a real tour
and she uh, I think with Lionel Huts is realty
company and it's like a kind of like a Glen
Garry Glenn Ross spoof is like that that little uh subplot.
But um, she she uh tries to sell a house
(01:52):
that like a multiple murder was committed in uh to
Flanders and his family back when Maud was still alive.
And she does and tell them it's a murder house, um,
and feels like a tremendous amount of guilt and then
finally like confesses and I don't think they end up
buying the house anyway, I don't remember, but it's a
pretty good one that has almost nothing to do with anything.
(02:13):
I could have just stopped right there where Marge became
a real tour because she's taking the realty test and
um Lisa comes along and teaches her how to how
to remember things using mnemonic devices and in um. In
one example she gives, she says, and you can put
like something you're trying to remember to a song like
(02:34):
in twelve fifteen running me Doude dudea, the nobles and
the king agreed, Oh do do da day? That's great.
That is one of my go to references for the
Magna Carta. You know what mine is? Funny enough, man,
that was a tortured intro. No. I thought it was
great Simpsons reference is what it was. I thought it
(02:58):
was fantastical. Thank you. And I've never heard that. I
don't remember that episode and I've never heard that little jingle,
so vintage classic Simpsons. When I think of Magna Carta,
I think of Johnny Dangerously the movie with Michael Keaton,
the very funny spoof movie, because at one point I
think the someone is on death row and they're being
(03:20):
read fake last rites by a fake priest as they
walk down the Green Mile and they're just sort of
making up Latin terms and he goes Magna carta master chargea.
And I saw that in the theater when I was whatever,
like ten or eleven, and I've remembered that ever since.
It gets in your name and your your head, those
(03:41):
two words they go really well together. They have a
tendency to stick around. And then also like you get
the idea when you when you kind of like Percy
little ears up about this magnet carda thing that it
was kind of pretty important. People people tend to put
a lot of stock into it. Yeah, Uh, she's and know,
(04:01):
and I'm looking and I can't even see what Magna
carta what does it mean? Great Charter? The Great Charter
of course. Yeah. And technically the name of the Magna
Carta what we're talking about. We'll get into all like
the little details and everything in a second, but um,
it's called the Magna Carta Libertarium. So it's the Great
(04:22):
Charter of Liberties, is what it really is. And a
lot of people, like I was saying, they put a
lot of stock into they basically say, you say that
this is the well spring, at least in the UK
and America and I and by extension Australia and Canada
of human rights, of like civil rights, of the basic
rights that every citizen has, that like that all kind
(04:43):
of came from this document, and that before that there
really wasn't that kind of stuff. And you have to
really narrow your focus here because in this time period
we're talking about around them, like twelve and thirteenth centuries CE,
like England was still kind of figuring out which way
it was going. At the same time, if you went
(05:04):
to the Arab world, you would find half a million
people living in some cities. Well, there was like ten
thousand people living in London. If you went to the
west to modern day St. Louis, the Cahokia Mound civilization
had like fifteen thousand people living there. China had been
running a bureaucracy for a good thousand years by this time.
(05:24):
So this is new to England and the English, and
there their descendants and ancestors around this this time, this era.
But if you narrow it like that, then yeah, you
can make a pretty good case that for you and
me and those of us born in America, you can
trace your civil liberties pretty directly back to this document. Yeah,
(05:47):
And like even if the document itself as well learn
uh wasn't necessarily honored initially or even later. Um, it
was it was that seed that was planted that it
had to be at least uh, and we'll and we'll
see later on. You know it once it was in place,
you kind of couldn't go backwards from there, even though
(06:09):
some people did try later on, some royalty. It just
didn't happen. So it's sort of drew a line in
the sand and said, all right, from this point forward,
at least things for people, any people other than not
every person, but people other than royalty at least won't
won't go backwards from here. No, And like you said,
(06:31):
they tried it. Definitely wanted to. But when you lay
down something like people have rights that are basic to
them from the moment they're born, that's a tough one
to repeal, you know what I'm saying. Once that's out there,
that's that's tough to put it back in the box.
And good, it's good for us, bad for despotic absolutist monarchs. Though.
(06:54):
So should we get into a little background here, Yeah,
I think we should because we got we got some
ground to cover. Yeah, so, uh, the Grabster helped us
with this, and you could. I love it. You know,
you can tell when, uh, when our writers are really
into something by sort of how much background they give
us on stuff before they get to this stuff. I
(07:15):
think that I think that was into it. I think
he was wearing chainmail while he was writing them. He
may have been, but it did a great job with
a setup. And you know, we we have to point
out that this was a time, like you said, where
there was a king that ruled the land and everyone
had to do what the king said basically. And then
(07:35):
you had uh, you know, you had people that ruled
over smaller fiefdoms throughout the land, but they still answered
to the king. But they had their subjects as well.
But it was it was a bit of a mess.
Like even though the king could kind of do what
they wanted, the king usually knew like, hey, I can't
push things too far otherwise it gets really bad for me.
(07:58):
So let me see if I can walk right up
to that line as often as I can in many
cases as far as royalty is concerned, and sort of
push things as far as like you know, ringing money
out of people, uh for bribes or or quote unquote
taxes or uh, you know, try and just ruling with
a harsh hand, but not necessarily a hand that will
(08:20):
be so bad that the people revolt. Yeah, that was
a fine line. And so some kings in the history
of England, we're really good at being kings. I get
the impression that the more land you conquered in the
name of England, the more people you brought under your rule, Um,
the happier you could keep, the like the barons, the
(08:41):
people who um own the land that that, you know,
kind of all collectively made up your kingdom, the better
off you were. But yeah, you still were going to
need money to run things, so you're gonna have to
extract that stuff. So you had to just push it
just as far as you could. That was a good king.
There were also plenty of bad kings who would go
(09:02):
way past the line, and they were they they could
be allowed to do that because in England, kings were
divinely decreed by God. Their authority was derived directly from God.
So whatever they did, no matter how unhappy that made you,
God said it, So this king is allowed to do it.
(09:24):
In practice, that didn't actually like work out all the time,
Like it's not like the barons were like what are
you gonna do? God? God said? But they there was
still kind of that air that or around it. And
at the very least, even if you didn't buy into
that directly, that was the custom and had been for
a really long time, and that's hard to buck. So
you had good kings who still went up the line.
(09:46):
You have bad kings who crossed the line, and when
you put it all together, more often than not, that
line was being really kind of made to feel claustrophobic,
and so the barons would be unhappy. And they were
the ones the power. So if you push the barons
too far, they would push back, and then you would
end up with things like written laws and customs and
(10:08):
decrees that said the king won't do this anymore, right. Uh.
And there's also a third group in there of kings
that just weren't very good at their job. Like I
think history often like they often overlook sheer incompetence in
favor of you know, like this person did all these
great things, or this person was an evil tyrant, and
(10:30):
like some of them just weren't too good at it. Yeah,
the they like the day to day the Franklin pierces
of the English king Lin. Uh. So we'll skip up
to Henry the first uh alevend created the Charter of Liberties.
And this was sort of if the Magna Carta was
the seed of liberty for people like you and me, later,
(10:54):
the Charter of Liberties may have been the precede to
that seed in a way, because it is the first
kind of official thing that limited the king's power just
a bit. Uh, And in this case there were other things,
but it did limit the king's power to appoint church offices.
Um guaranteed that any like inheritances would be carried forth,
(11:18):
and there were no bribes necessary. So just sort of
like cleaned up the act of the royals in this
sort of smallest ways. Yeah, because before it was like
you could, if you were the king, could be like, yeah,
I don't care, give me some money if you want
to be legally married, or give me some money if
you um wanted to be promoted in your church ranking,
(11:41):
Like you could just extract money for anything. And so
this is the first time where it was kind of like, okay,
we'll go we we won't do that, we won't keep
pushing things like you were saying. Like it just kind
of cleaned up the monarchy and limited their ability and
it was kind of a big thing. And again that
came out of a bad king. That was Henry, who
(12:02):
had to clean up the mess left by his successor
or his predecessor, William the Second, his brother, who had
been a bad king, had overtaxed, had overstepped the boundaries
and now there had to be some sort of document
created to say we won't do that again. This is
where laws came from in England, like people overstepping bounds
and being pushed back on right or the king just
(12:24):
arbitrarily deciding things. So Henry one dies, uh, succeeded by
Stephen the First. And this one was a little dicey
because Stephen the first ascension to the throne was contested
and resulted in a civil war called the anarchy. Uh.
And the anarchy was was a mess. It was a
(12:46):
pretty brutal, lawless time. And um, Stephen I think he
wasn't around too long, but he was quickly followed by
Henry the Second, who ruled for about thirty five years
I think right at thirty five years. And this was
at the end of the anarchy. But Henry the Second
comes in and basically says, all right, the royals are back, baby,
(13:08):
and there are gonna be a bunch of reforms here.
We're gonna centralize our power. Things have gotten out of
hand with his anarchy and uh, it's all under my
control now. Um. And in a way this was it
was good and bad. It's it's never great when someone
assumes his absolute authority. But it's also better just to
(13:29):
have a more structured, codified system than all these weird
arbitrary laws that were kind of all over the place
and scattered about before exactly. Yeah. So, and one of
the reasons why Henry the second did that is because
he was very much into adventurism. He would he would
go out of England and try to conquer more lands
and that was his big thing. Parasailing, that was his thing. Yeah,
(13:52):
So he needed he needed some basically some some structure
that he could set in place that didn't require him
to be there all the time to oversee it. And
some of that like actually kind of benefited people, um
in part because like you said, it was it wasn't
arbitrary anymore. And there were like some real reforms, like
he set up a panel of judges that would go
(14:14):
around and and basically carry out criminal trials. Rather than
just people getting away with crimes or maybe being subject
to mob justice, they were trying to apply some sort
of actual justice to it. Um. Uh. You could now
if you were a surf or a peasant, you could
complain to the king and go over the lord of
(14:34):
the manner that you worked on his head if he
was mistreating you like that was brand new. And so
there was like some good things that were set in
place by Henry the Second. He wasn't like some benevolent
guy or anything like that, but he he did leave
that legacy and it was a it was a big deal.
A lot of people point to his code as the
beginning of English common law. Yeah, he was. He was
(14:57):
not a great guy. He was in fact a pretty
brutal uh person on the battlefield, and he would brutal leader,
he would, and he and he did a good job
leading on the battlefield, and he loved going to war.
But he would cut the feet off or the um
genitals from his enemies. Uh. He would you know, lock
people in the dungeons. He was known supposedly for gouging
(15:18):
out the eyes of a young messenger boy one time
who delivered bad news. Uh. So he wasn't some great guy.
And he was also like he had to finance all
of these travails in wars all over the place, and
that cost a lot of money. So a lot of
what he did when he when he brought all this
under his order, was made a lot of money and
(15:40):
raised a lot of revenue. Uh, and was kind of
just squeezing every last bit he could out of these
landowners again with those kind of fees like you were
talking about, like, hey, if you're a widow and you
want to remarry, h pay me. If you want to
inherit some land or a title, pay me. Maybe you
can even and bribe me. I'm you know, I'm open
(16:01):
to that right, which is arbitrarian and of itself, because
the person doesn't necessarily deserve whatever it is they're bribing
the king for an exchange for and that's you know,
that's not good. It's also in direct violation of the
Charter of Liberties that Henry the First had laid out.
And now that there was that, now that that had
(16:23):
been established by Henry the First, the nobility could point
to that and be like, you're not honoring this stuff,
like this is something we can hold your feet to
the flames over. It didn't necessarily work with Henry the
Second because he was such a strong king, but it
was it was something that they could point to and
they could say like this is wrong and here's why. Yeah,
and you know there's something I meant to point out
(16:45):
at the beginning that that I'll bring up here that's
really kind of integral to how all of this worked
back then, is it was sort of a a three
way dance between um, nobility, these really wealthy influential bearing
and then the church. And like those are the three
big pieces of the puzzle that like everyone kind of
(17:07):
had to be happy among that group to a certain
degree or there were big problems. Uh. And it was
always sort of that dance with the royalty two sort
of make sure that like they were extracting money from
the barons, but they didn't want to make them too
unhappy because I said, they would revolt. But you also
had to satisfy the church, which technically was a separate entity,
(17:27):
which we'll get to in a minute. But the push
and pull among these three groups was really a pretty
key thing to how everything operated back then. Yeah, um,
and yeah, that was an excellent point because the church
was like a state unto itself, right, it could make
its own money. And um, this is at a time
when the prevailing economic theory was that there was like
(17:49):
a finite amount of money in the in the world.
So when you were extracting money from like the barons,
whether you were the church or whether you were the king,
like that really hurt, hurt more than you know it
does paying taxes today, because there's this idea that that
like that was it there. There was like a zero
sum game. Everybody was taking in exchanging from the same
(18:11):
pot um. So yeah, if you could kind of balance
all those three together, you had a pretty stable monarchy.
But more often than not, it was like we were saying,
people kind of push things over the edge. Henry the
second definitely did that with the bribery, but again he
was a strong monarch um and then he was he
was succeeded by a couple of people that are kind
(18:33):
of studies in contrast as far as kings of England go.
Don't you think, Yeah, maybe let's take a break. That's
a great cliffhanger. Who could these two people be? Laurel
and Hardy C. C. De Ville could be the Hardy Boys,
which like with Parker Stevenson and what's his other name?
I bet you that's who it is, the other guy,
(18:53):
poor other guy learning stuff with Joshua John. All Right,
(19:29):
we're back Parker Stevenson and Fred Noonan with the two
party boys. No, uh, you're talking about Richard, and then John.
We'll start with Richard. Henry the Second died and his son,
Richard the Lion Hearted inherited the throne, and he was
beloved and he did a lot of crusades as well
(19:51):
and had a lot of great military successes and uh,
you know, I had to spend a lot of money
to do so, of course, but he died unexpected lee.
And then Henry the second, his his dad was Henry
the Second. His son John took over the throne. And
remember when I mentioned earlier that some some people just
were not good at their job. This was John. He
(20:14):
was just not good at being a politician, not good
at being a king, not good at getting along with
the barons and the church. He was just not cut
out for it. Yeah, and he's the main bad guy.
I think we I wondered if Richard the third was
the main bad guy or the king and the Robin
Hood legend is King John? Oh is it really? Yeah?
(20:35):
Because I remember Richard the Lion Heart is like all
fighting the crusades, and King John's running the show in
a mean and incompetent way. That's who Robin Hood's fighting.
And the Sheriff of Nottingham. But in real life John
was just he was not meant to be a king.
You know. He was Richard's brother, he was the younger brother,
(20:56):
and Henry the second. Their father didn't even for one
he didn't even name John after a king um. And
he didn't give him any land um. So there was
no no, no area for him to rule. He was
sent off to like study with scholars. That's what he
was supposed to be. So he was never bred to
be a king, and he wasn't a very good one,
(21:17):
regardless because of that or or just naturally. But his
first nickname among the nobility was John Lackland because he
didn't have any land, because they must have really burned him,
you know, that's pretty funny. But he was terrible. But
more to the point, like not only was he like
bad with money and like he was a despot in
(21:37):
a lot of ways too. He lost land. Remember I
said the kings that were most beloved were the ones
that like added to the kingdom. The ones that were
the most despised were the ones who lost land from
the kingdom. And that was what John did almost out
of the gate. Yeah, he was losing land to king
Phillip the second of France and and uh, you know
(22:01):
ed points out and it's important to know here that
you know, England and France back then were it's not
like it is today, Like they were very intertwined. Um.
England held a lot of land in the north of France,
and they were constantly kind of going back and forth
about like winning and taking land from one another. So
it's it's you gotta have to kind of deprogram yourself
from how you think of those two countries today to
(22:23):
think about how it was back then. Um. So he
was losing land to King Philip the second, and uh,
Philip like to John's cousin, Arthur of Brittany, and he
had a competing claim to the throne. So Philip was
in Arthur's court. And you know, John just wasn't doing
a good job. He was blowing through money he which
(22:44):
meant he had to get more money out of the
barons than even his predecessors did. And he was not
winning land with this money, so he was he was
just going down the tubes fast. Yeah. And one one
thing I saw a check. Just want to mention these
the English um were so intertwined with the French at
the time that these kings that we're talking about, Henry
(23:05):
the Second, Richard the Lion Hearted, h John Lackland, they
all spoke French. And that interesting. The English king spoke
French at the time. Oh sure, like when you go
to if you look at any of the old movies
that are historically accurate, it's really hard to make sense
of any of it. When like people from France or
(23:25):
sending their daughter to England to marry into It's like
it's it's really confusing, and I don't know if it's
about the family lines, but it's it is super confusing,
like the um oh, like Catherine the Great. And some
of this comes from watching TV, I'll admit, but that
(23:46):
TV show The Great is really good because I think
wasn't Catherine the Great Russian? Yes? Or she was married
off to the Russians. I'm not sure she was a
born Russian. I don't know. It's all just very confusing.
Oh yeah, but I mean that was a really good
way to consolidate power into games. Even more land um
would be to to marry like another royal family and
(24:08):
just put your stuff together, make you make yourselves even
harder to I might have gotten that all wrong, by
the way, but it was off the dome as the
kids say, hey, that's all right, man, off the domes
pretty great, alright. So John is uh, you know, I
talked about this sort of three prun thing. John is
not doing well. He is ticking off the barons because
he's having to squeeze more money out of them. So
(24:29):
it's like, well, surely he at least did okay with
the church right to keep that uh stool stable. Not
true at all. Pope Innocent the Third was in charge
at the time, and he appointed a new Bishop of
Canterbury named Stephen Langton, who would turn out to be
a big thorn and John's side. John did not want Langton,
(24:49):
and so he got mad and basically took his ball
and went home. Uh. He took control of Canterbury all
the church's possessions and said, Lankton, you can't even come
in the country. And so Innocent the Third said, oh, yeah,
you know what, I'm gonna issue a people degree that
basically all church services in England aren't valid anymore and
you can't hold them. And you know, if it was
(25:11):
you and me, we'd be like, sweet, we don't have
to go to church anymore. But it wasn't like that
back then. It was a really big deal. Uh. Ed said,
this was like dropping in ecclesiastical nuclear bomb into Britain
and that's kind of true. Yeah, because also the church
was a huge employer in England at the time too.
So now all the people who work in the church's
jobs are like, well are are are we valid? What's
(25:33):
going on here? You know? Do we have the same
protections that we used to It's it was a big,
big deal. And yeah, for all intents and purposes, England
under King John was at war with um, the Church
under Innocent the Third and it stayed that way for
a little while. Um, and they just put John that
(25:54):
was it. That was the last box to be checked.
Like he was at odds with absolutely everybody, uh, and
was a very unpopular king by anybody's anybody's measure. Um,
whether you were a commoner or whether you were nobility,
or whether you were a bishop, you did not like
King John very much. And then add to that that
(26:15):
the guy that Um Innocent the Third appointed to the
Archbishop of Canterbury. And this is also by the way,
after the last Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Beckett had been
murdered at the behest of John's father, Henry the second
um murdered brutally too. I read a first person account
of It's one or more ghastly murders I've ever heard um.
(26:38):
But the guy who came in, Stephen Langton, he was
like a progressive. He was basically writing about things that
questioned the divine authority of the monarchy, how some people
or not some people, but people had some natural rights,
like all people had some natural rights that even a
king couldn't violate. Like really progressive stuff. And this guy's
(27:00):
coming into England at a time when it has one
of its weakest kings in its history and basically set
the stage for the Magna Carta to to uh kind
of be written full stop? What else did you? I mean?
And could I have dressed it up more? Put a
little fruit on its head? Just your voice went up,
(27:23):
So I thought that was more. I was using up speak.
I was using so you might be asking yourself like
kind of what's the big deal? Because things were a
mess at various points in history, and there were revolts before,
and there was unrest before between the Church and the royals,
and was like why was this the big one that
(27:44):
kind of made everything change? And there are there are
a few reasons for this, um, one of which you
know I talked about France and England being so intertwined. Uh.
John lost land, but he lost Normandy, which was a
really big deal. Um. The Norman's in then had a
lot of land in northern France, like I said earlier,
since William the Conqueror uh got control of Normandy at
(28:06):
the Battle of Hastings. And the Normans were a tight
group and they were very influential in England. And then
when John lost Normandy, it was it was more than
just losing land. It was it was a big deal. Yeah,
they started calling him John soft Sword after that, did
they really? Yeah, that was his second nickname, John John
(28:28):
soft Sword. Uh. The church at the time, like we said,
was was separate, and so they had their own set
of laws, even they didn't have to. They had their
ecclesiastical laws. So if a church official ran a foul,
they were you know, they could say, no, no, no,
the King isn't gonna declare judgment on you. You You come
over here with us, we have our church law. It's
(28:51):
probably not as stiff to be honest uh. And and
basically John said, you know, forget that tradition. You guys
are under I rule and my decrees. And again this
just sent him further down the toilet um and then
like I was into the privy yes um. And then
(29:13):
add to that also that the the just the way
that people thought about the monarch, like thanks to people
like Stephen Langton, the new Archbishop of Canterbury um. And
the fact that the the Henry the first Document of Liberties,
a Charter of Liberties had had already been established. Like
just people were just thinking about things differently, and all
(29:36):
of this stuff kind of came together at this vortex
um and there was there was a point where finally
John was like okay, at the very least sending to
be in with the Pope and basically knelt before the
Pope and said England is a vassal state to um
the church again, which is a big deal um. But
(29:59):
it put put John in England back in Pope Innocent
the third good graces and they were fine again. But
that did nothing to help the barons uh. And as
a matter of fact, um, the barons were just as
put upon as before. But now John was even more
(30:19):
emboldened by having the full support of the Pope again,
and so the baron said, you know what, forget this,
enough of this, it's twelve fourteen and it's time for
some change. So they actually cobbled together uh a fighting
force and took London bye bye by force. They stormed
it and occupied London, uh, in open rebellion against King
(30:41):
John people. Yes, that's true, it really was. This is funny. Well,
it's funny to think of now. I mean, like ten
tho people living in London, but that's just the way
it was at the time. So yeah, you and I
could probably take London with ten thousand people, but it's
still significant to mention. Yeah, and are in our smartphones.
That's all we need. Yeah, look at the boomstick. Have
(31:04):
you ever seen a dog say I love you. Well,
I've got a video of it. Oh my god, they're bowing. Um.
So yeah, it wasn't a civil war, but it was.
It was a big deal. It was an open rebellion.
John knew this was not a good thing. So in
twelve fifteen he said, all right, I gotta make peace
with these people too, So let's get together. Uh, we'll
(31:26):
get that Langton, guy that I didn't like at all.
This shows you how much I'm coming. With my hat
in hand, he can act as the mediator. The baron said,
here's what we want. Uh, we'll call it the Article
of Barons and handed that to Langton, and Langton said,
all right, I gotta whip this into something that that
John is going to actually live with. And so he
(31:48):
drafted this initial document which included a lot of the
stuff from the Charter of Liberties that dealt with a
lot of this the you know, the laws that were
sort of on the books, but also had some had
some big ideas, like you were talking about about just
general rights at birth of humans. And they met, uh
(32:10):
ask Lisa Simpson where they met Running me Running Mead
June ninet, twelve fifteen, and they signed over fealty to John,
and they made copies of this thing, applied that Royal
seal on it, and that was it. It was the
Magna Carta, even though they didn't call it the Magna
Carta yet. No, And um, I was like, why Running Meat.
(32:33):
It turns out there's actually a few reasons why Running
Mead had a history of being an ancient kind of
council meeting spot. Um it was also nice place. Well
it was a boggy meadow, um, which is another reason
why I was chosen, because it would be a terrible
place to fight a war battle. And then also like
(32:54):
you could see basically in every direction from it, so
you couldn't do a surprise at tack either. Wanting to
fight in a boggy meadow. I thought it might have
been like a really nice picturesque thing, but it was
done out in the middle of nowhere where you could
see everything. Yeah. Well I get the impression that it
was picturesque still as well, but um that if you
had a lot of strategic strategic um assets to it too. Okay,
(33:19):
well that makes sense. Um. Alright, well I guess well,
before we take our break, let's just talk about the
fact that this first Magna Carta that was not even
called the magnet CARTI yet was ignored. John ignored it.
Uh innocent. The three said it's not even legal. Um.
John was under durest to agree to this thing, and
(33:39):
then a real full civil war called the First Barons
War broke out and John died of dysenteri in twelve sixteen.
It's kind of what ended the First Barons War. But
this is all sort of preamble to the real Magna Carta,
which we'll talk about in just a sec stuff with
(34:22):
Joshua John. All right, Chuck, So well, well, let's talk
a second about how the magnet Carta was applied shortly
after John died of dysenterry um. But first you have
to we should talk a little bit about like what
it actually looked like originally, because like you said, it
(34:44):
wasn't even what we think of the magnet Carta today.
It had a lot of stuff in it that has
nothing to do with nobody alive today. There is like
the basically the King's strong arm guy who went around
and like extracted money into orchard nobles. If they didn't
pay up, he and his cohorts are named specifically by
(35:05):
name as like they gotta go. There was stuff about,
you know, if you were a widow, you didn't have
to marry immediately, but if you did end up wanting
to get married later, you still had to go to
the king. There was about like land inheritance, all sorts
of stuff like that that really would have mattered to
(35:27):
a baron, uh, you know, a noble a noble person,
a nobleman or a woman in England at the time,
there were concessions. But then, like you said, there were
big ideas too. But if you were like the average
peasant working the land of surf, working in the land,
in the feudal system in England at the time, you
could not have made heads or tails of this because
number one it was written in abbreviated Latin, which would
(35:50):
have made it very hard to understand. But the number
two it was also written as one long I think
about three thousand word paragraph. Yeah that I don't even
think have punctuation in it either. It was it was
written like it was you know, by mad mad man. Yeah,
it's like written on a big long pieced roll of
(36:11):
toilet paper and that was rolled up. Uh it is
now like if you read the Magna Carta now it
is separated it into uh different clauses. But this was
not the case at first. This happened years later. Who
was the historian It was William Blackstone in the late
eighteenth century. Yeah, basically said like I gotta organize this thing,
(36:33):
like you know, this is gonna we we can't put
the thing in museums. It's embarrassing. Yeah, like people have
got to be able to make heads or tails of this,
so that that happened later on. At first it was
like you said, just this big long scrawl, and there
wasn't just one of them. It's not like you can
go to uh, you know, if you go to see
the Declaration of Independence and at the archives in d C,
(36:54):
like that's that's the one that's the master charge of
the master copy. There were thirteen known copies in twelve
fifteen of the Magna Carta, and there wasn't It's not
like they had one and then they ran it through
the xerox machine. They just they wrote it down thirteen times.
They're all originals. I guess it's maybe it's wrong to
(37:16):
say there isn't an original when there are thirteen originals.
There's not a soul original. Um. Four of these have
survived and they're little variations because they were written by
hand and transcribe, but nothing that like cancels anything out
is just sort of you know how somebody might transcribe something,
and they're all considered for like legit correct originals. I
(37:37):
think two of them are at the British Library of London,
one at Salisbury Cathedral and then one at Lincoln Castle. Yes.
And then if you go research how many Magna Carta
copies are there today, you'll find that there's a lot
more than four. And here you start to get into
just how muddy the history of the Magna Carta is, because,
(37:59):
like you said, when they first wrote this magnet Carta,
it wasn't exactly like what we think of magnet Carta today. Um.
It had a lot more provisions in it that had
to do with the forest, and there were so many
things rules and regulations about how to treat the forest,
how you can act in the forest, if you live
in the forest, who do you go, you know, claim
(38:20):
a grievance to that kind of stuff. That a separate
charter of the forest was created, Like those were basically
moved out, and then the document became the magnet Carta
that we understand it today. Um. And that was I
think in twelve seventeen when that finally happened. Yeah, twelve seventeen.
(38:41):
The charges of the forest was moved out, and then um,
little by little this document kept getting like adjusted, added
to as a new king came along. They would they
would basically be like I love the magnet carta, I'm
going to adhere to it. And slowly but surely, of
the next couple of decades it became accepted and respected
(39:05):
as the law of the land in England. Like it
was a lot more than just concessions to end the
Civil War, of the War of the Barons. It became
established law in England. Yeah, and and just those words
are very like it's easy now to sort of not
think too much about what law of the land means.
But back then that was a very big deal. And
(39:27):
that this was the first time that laws came about
that weren't directly from the king. Um. It wasn't royalty
just saying here's how everything is, everybody fall in line.
It was the people. And albeit it was you know,
if you were baron, you had a lot of money
(39:48):
and you know, a lot of political sway, it's not
like it was It's not like these were the surfs,
you know, like slinging hay in the hay fields that
had any kind of input. Um. So we do need
to point that out. But they were not royalty. So
it was a big deal for the very first time. Um,
actual um subjects of the king were weighing in and
(40:11):
and successfully weighing in on on what the law should be. Yeah.
And there were they were like the seeds to things
that would become really important later, like the idea that
um a council of barons I think twenty five barons
um could could basically hold the king to account. And
it was like the seed that eventually grew into the parliament. Um.
(40:33):
There was another one. There were there were some other
really big ones in there that that over time. One
of the things that happened over time, I guess, Chuck,
is it got extended to everybody in England, not just
what they called freemen which were landed nobility. Uh. It
got extended to everybody in England at least by twelve
(40:53):
ninety seven when it was encoded into law in England.
At the latest by like the Freds of fifteenth century. Um,
it became just commonly understood that like those those rights,
those laws in the Magna Carta applied to everybody in England. Yeah,
I mean, it was like this sacred document. And again
(41:15):
when you you kind of had no choice when you
came in there as a new king. Um, you may
try and alter and change some things, but you couldn't
refute the Magna Carta. At that point it was it
became too important, even if other laws superseded it later
on to the point where its actual laws in the
Magna Carta were rendered useless in a lot of circumstances.
(41:39):
It was a symbol, uh, And it had this, like
Ed said, it had this really powerful aura about it
because it was the first laws not decreed directly from
the King's voice. So you couldn't go back any anymore.
You could only move forward, even if it was even
if it was by tiny increments were talking about, um,
(42:00):
I mean the four hundreds. You know, this is a
long time ago, and it's gonna take a long time.
And Ed points out that, like we, humanity has always
been creeping towards more rights for more people, uh, even
if it's very slow and very clumsy at times. And
the Magna Carta was sort of the foundation on what
(42:21):
a lot of the modern rights that we have sort
of lay. Yeah. Like, there's there's a couple that are
actually still in English law. UM. Part of one the
first clause which gives freedom to the church, UM number thirteen,
which basically says that UM towns and municipalities have the
(42:42):
ability to decide their own matters like electing a mayor
that kind of stuff. And then the big ones. The
two big ones that were really huge when they were
codified in the Magna Carta back in twelve fifteen was
Um Claus thirty nine, which basically says that you uh
cannot be just thrown in prison, you can't be exiled,
(43:06):
you can't have your land taken away. None of those
things can happen to you unless it's through the lawful
judgment of your peers or the law of the land.
So it took away the king's arbitrary ability to throw
somebody in the dungeon until they starved to death because
they didn't pay him some bribe that he wanted. That
was enormous, and that today constitutes due process under the law.
(43:33):
And then also habeas corpus, where you can't just like
put someone in prison for no reason or never giving
a reason, and those are that's really huge, and that
is where directly where we we get that from an
America in the West. And the other one is um
Clause forty. There's you you cannot sell and you also
cannot deny or delay the rights that people have as citizens.
(43:57):
You you, you can't do that. So that was a
big deal. And then the idea that the magnet carta
um directly lead to the Bill of Rights um is
not an understatement at all. At the Constitutional Convention, when
they were thinking of whether they needed any kind of
magnet carta shout out because they had a mythical quality
(44:19):
in America by this time too um to kind of
keep the King of England at bay. Uh. They thought, well,
we're not gonna have a king here. We don't need
a magnet carta. And somebody very wisely pointed out, no,
we don't have a king, but the government still acts
at the behest of the majority of the people. What
if the majority of the people try to infringe on
(44:39):
the rights of others? We need something, And so they
came up with the Bill of Rights directly descended from
the magnet carta. So it is very much an important
document for surely still relevant, still relevant as ever. So
everybody go out and get a magnet carta copy, maybe
a poster or a T shirt and rocket ouably, do
(45:02):
you got anything else? I got nothing else? All right? Well,
Chuck said he's got nothing else. Than that means it's
time for a listener mail, I needna call this kind
correction on Jaclopes. I can't believe we walked right past this. Hey, guys,
a long time listener and super fan of the show.
I feel like we're friends since I listen to you
(45:23):
every day as I get ready for work and very
much look forward to your conversations. So as your friend,
I can say that absolutely love all your content, but
found myself cringing throughout the Jackalope episode. You see, I
am a the historic preservation officer for the City of
Las Vegas, Nevada, and while the jacaloplore is not prevalent
throughout Nevada, I still feel the need to weigh on
(45:45):
a bit of misunderstanding about our Southwestern fauna. The jack
and jackalopes is for the jack rabbit, of course, very
large species of hair, not a rabbits in the cute
little cottontail rabbit. The lope is for the pronghorn antelope,
not a deer. You guys, these are two different families, gentlemen.
The clue was right there in the name of antelope.
(46:07):
How do we miss that it's not a jack of deer?
I think we were so jazzed about even talking about
jack loops that we stopped seeing the forest for the trees.
Maybe so. However, a prong horn is not a true
antelope even, but that's another story. And further, prong horn
have horns, hence the name, which are affixed to the skull,
(46:29):
which of course means that put horns on the jack rabbit.
The prong horn must be deceased as well. However, dear
antlers shed annually with no harm done to the deer.
You can walk in any area where dear live and
find antlers on the ground. Therefore, deer does not necessarily
have to die to give up as antlers. While there
are certain yeah, that's good, while there are certainly our
(46:49):
taxidermy rabbits and hairs with deer antlers affixed to their heads.
A jacklobe by definition as a jack rabbit with prong
horn horns. I just wanted to give a little gentle
correction on all that, but in no way diminishes my
love for the show. Thank you for all you do,
all my best. Dr Diane ce C Brand, Historic Preservation Officer,
(47:12):
Las Vegas, Nevada. Excellent. Dr C. Brant. Dr Diane ce
c Brand, Okay C. C. Brand, m thank you Dr
C Brand, We appreciate that big time. Hats off to
you for that gentle correction. That was really something. If
you want to get in touch of this, like Dr
(47:32):
C Brand did, you can via email, wrap it up
spanking on the prong horn and send it off to
stuff Podcast iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know
is a production of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts my
heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
(47:52):
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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Chuck Bryant
Josh Clark
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