The Magna Carta ought to be dead, defunct, and of interest only to serious scholars of the thirteenth century. They are part of a document drawn up not to defend in perpetuity the interests of national citizens but rather to pin down a king who had been greatly vexing a small number of his wealthy and violent subjects. Those parts that are still frequently quoted-clauses about the right to justice before one’s peers, the freedom from being unlawfully imprisoned, and the freedom of the Church-did not mean in 1215 what we often wish they would mean today. Jones describes this way:įor the most part the Magna Carta is dry, technical, difficult to decipher, and constitutionally obsolete. All of this led to the humiliating scene at Runnymede, where John was forced to yield to the Church and the Nobles and agree to the Magna Carta, a document which Mr. Though the their three reigns differed, the commonality uniting the three kings was that their programs were incredibly expensive and they were forced to bleed ever more money from their landed gentry. Disputes with the papacy resulted in England being placed under interdict war in France resulted in the losses that earned him his derogatory nickname and, finally his own barons went to war against him. The author presents the history of all three kings and lurking in the background is always the dissatisfaction of the Church and the Nobles with their performance. While Richard, who was largely an absentee monarch as he fought the Crusades, has tended to get a pass in popular culture, John's bad reputation is well deserved. We know these characters best from films like Lion in Winter and The Adventures of Robin Hood. Henry II was succeeded by Richard I (The Lionheart) and then by John I (Lackland). Henry I's was actually referred to as the Charter of Liberties and taken together, though they may have intended these texts and words to be merely pro forma, they instead created the idea of certain "traditional liberties" of Englishmen (at that time, landed men). Importantly, not only did Henry swear the traditional Coronation Oath, but like his grandfather, Henry I, and Stephen he issued a Coronation Charter. He united and centralized at home while expanding the throne's power in France. When he took the throne England had been shattered by the civil war between his mother, Matilda, and her cousin, Stephen. The story begins with Henry II, one of the greatest English kings. In the first instance, he makes the tangled history of the period and the precipitating events comprehensible. His Magna Carta provides an outstanding display of his talents. But he's hardly limited to Medieval England, writing about Game of Thrones with equal felicity. He's lived up to that hype, becoming a regular on British and even American television and developing a well-deserved reputation as one of our best narrative historians, with a particular emphasis on the 13th and 14th centuries. A decade ago, The Guardian hailed Dan Jones as part of an exciting new generation of historians who were not academy bound and promised to become the next batch of tv presenters, replacing their mentors, like David Starkey.
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