In 1749, Benjamin Franklin wrote in Poor Richard’s Almanac: “On the 15th of June, anno 1215, was Magna Carta signed by King John, for declaring and establishing English liberty.”
The Almanac does not mention that Immediately after affixing his beeswax seal to the parchment, King John asked the Pope to annul the agreement, and the Pope obliged. King John has come down through history as being spiteful and weak, but then also were the historians who described his reign. (When he died a short time later of dysentery, his subjects said “Hell itself is made fouler by the presence of John.”)
The Magna Carta was written in Latin although King John and his barons spoke French. Its provisions were chiefly concerned with feudal financial arrangements, descriptions of land and husbandry, and obscure instruments for the seizing and inheritance of estates.
According to a recent article in The New Yorker, the Magna Carta was revived in 17th century England and celebrated in 18th century America. Not as significant today in England as it is in the United States, only four of the original 60-plus provisions remain on English books, making its effect very different from its original intent. As much of the Magna Carta has crumbled in the United Kingdom, in the United States Justice Antonin Scalia said, “It is with us every day” when he addressed a Federalist Society last year.
Not so, wrote Chief Justice Joseph Kennedy in 2008. “Magna Carta decreed that no man would be imprisoned contrary to the law of the land, finding that Lakhdar Boumediene and other Guantonamo prisoners had been deprived of an ancient right.” It’s noteworthy that on the 800th anniversary of the Magna Carta’s signing at Runnymede, one in every 110 people in the United States is imprisoned.
The Magna Carta is 800 years old and King John is 799 years dead. As The New Yorker article concluded, “Few men have been less mourned, few legal documents more adored.”