Every British primary school pupil knows who the worst and most corrupt King of England of all time was. Ivan the Landless (1166-1216), brother of the much better known Richard II. The son of arguably the most influential medieval Western European ruler, Eleanor of Aquitaine, could hardly have made a worse reputation for himself. More than eight hundred years after his death, he is still regularly listed as both the most evil and the most cruel ruler, often alongside the worst dictators of the 20th century, such as Hitler and Stalin.
The last surviving son of the able Henry II of the Plantagenet dynasty, he unexpectedly took the throne after the death of all three older brothers. The territory of the English kings stretched across both sides of the English Channel since the Norman invasion of Ivan’s ancestor William the Conqueror in 1066. Until it was Ivan who finally lost Normandy and most of the other family territories in what is now France in 1214, playing a key role in defining the borders of France and Britain as we know them today. But it was not only his significant territorial losses that weighed on him, it was his character.
Ivan betrayed his dying father, even though he was his favourite son, and tried to dethrone his brave brother Richard while he was fighting successfully in the Crusades in the Middle East. In all likelihood, he bloodthirsty murdered his nephew, a rival for the throne, with his own hands, married a girl of barely twelve, already betrothed, and incurred the enmity of the English nobility through unpopular government measures and draconian taxes. One chronicler wrote that, to his credit, he “heaped an infinite number of curses on his traitorous head”.
The monster, the duplicitous, worthless ‘rotten character’, as most of his contemporaries and historians wrote, has not remained so present in the collective memory all these centuries because he was cruel even by medieval standards. Indeed, he has also been brought to people’s attention by the many fictional stories, books and films about Robin Hood, in which he regularly appears as a pathetic bad guy and villain. Children know him from Disney films, and many from the Oscar-winning film The Lion in Winter, starring Katherine Hepburn and Peter O’Toole. He is one of those personalities who have always stirred the public imagination.
His infamous fame and, ultimately, his important historical role are closely linked to one of the most famous constitutional documents in human history, the Magna Carta Libertatum, or Great Charter of Liberties. As one of the first key contributions to the rule of law and the cornerstone of parliamentarianism, this document was essentially a peace treaty between Ivan and his subjects, mainly nobles. The King abused his powers to such an extent that the nobility rose up against him in revolt on several occasions.
After the loss of Normandy and other continental territories, the Charter was a last resort before the outbreak of civil war. It was an attempt to conclude an agreement that would force Ivan to obey the law and protect the Church from the monarchy. It declared the latter independent of the King’s interference.
The date of adoption of the Magna Carta, 15 June 1215, is commemorated as one of the key turning points in the history of law. The Magna Carta is still synonymous with the legal limitation of a ruler’s power and symbolises the basic rights of the people against the tyrannical power of monarchs and the just and effective application of the law. Its most important innovation, compared to similar, earlier charters, was the principle that the king must also obey the law.
Although legally outdated, some of its central principles survive in the 1791 US Constitution and the 1948 UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Above all, it established the universal constitutional principle of habeas corpus, according to which everyone has the right to a fair trial.
But at the time it was created, its main purpose was not to enact noble and far-sighted moral principles that would give people more rights and a better life. It was essentially a bizarre mix of promises extorted from the King by the barons and the clergy and broken by the King a scant six weeks later. Ivan negotiated the Magna Carta with a fig in his pocket from the start. And in doing so, he opened the door wide to the civil war that ended only a year after his death in 1217.
Who were the Plantagenets?
Ivan’s great-grandfather was Henry I, the youngest son of William the Conqueror, King of England and Duke of Normandy. Henry’s succession was problematic, as he was left with only one daughter, Matilda, whom he married Geoffrey, Count of Anjou, with the unusual plant-name Plantagenet.
The Plantagenet dynasty, or Angevin dynasty, ruled England after a long civil war – known as the Anarchy – between the followers of Matilda and those of her cousin Stephen, lasting nineteen years. Both camps claimed the legitimate right to the throne, but eventually compromised with a political bargain that saw Matilda’s son, Henry II, succeed Stephen on the throne.
Henry II added the counties of Anjou to England and Normandy, and when he married Europe’s most desirable heiress, Eleanor of Aquitaine, who owned a third of what is now France, he became the most influential European ruler since Charlemagne. During his reign, he annexed Brittany and established himself in Ireland, and through alliances with Castile, Saxony and Sicily, his tentacles reached across much of western Europe to the Mediterranean.
After Anarchy, he wanted to bring peace and effective government back to the country as soon as possible. He was almost over-zealous and successful in achieving this goal. He had nowhere to stay, and he was continually combing his kingdom through thick and thin, slowly but steadily establishing control over all sections of English society. His son Ivan inherited at least his father’s wanderlust and boundless energy, if not his gift for government and politics.
Henrik’s most controversial trait was his obsession with control. Although he established a judiciary that was admirably efficient for the time, and his laws touched every aspect of English society, he also created a profitable bureaucratic apparatus dedicated almost exclusively to milking money – from the poorest to the richest.
The discontent over Henry’s drastic measures to collect taxes for the Crown was the start of the process that led to the Magna Carta and the inglorious end of his son Ivan. The two men also fell out with the Church, and the murder of the prominent Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Becket, who Henry was behind, brought the Archbishop into disrepute.
Henry married his third cousin Eleanor, eleven years his senior, at the tender age of nineteen, a few weeks after her divorce from King Louis VII of France. Their marriage was stormy, to say the least, but fruitful, producing at least eight children. Ivan was their last child and, as such, rather insignificant from a political point of view. He was also the only one who was much more attached to his father than to his mother. His father jokingly called him Ivan the Landless, as he was far down the line for succession or for inheriting more important territories.
The first-born son, Henry “The Young King”, was to receive his father’s lands, England, Normandy and Anjou, while the second-born Geoffrey was given Brittany and Richard Aquitaine, which Eleanor brought into the marriage. But their authoritarian father did not give them any power over these territories during his lifetime, so they constantly resisted him and competed with each other. Only Ivan, then still a child, did not take part in these family quarrels. He spent most of his time in his father’s company and became his pet.
They even sought an alliance with Henry’s nemesis, King Louis VII of France, their mother’s ex-husband. Eleonora often incited her sons to rebel against their father, as the couple were like dog and cat. Henry’s peace was further shattered by Louis’s death. His much more enterprising and capable son, Philip II Augustus, arrived on the scene. Philip’s main aim was to oust the Plantagenets from their continental territories and annex them to the French crown.
The King had always had other plans for Ivan, namely to enthrone him as the leader of Ireland. The Anglo-Normans had only just conquered the Irish, and they soon proved to be perpetually unruly subjects. Ivan was not the least interested in Ireland. But when, under pressure from his father, he accepted the “gift” and set out to meet his new subjects, he resented them the moment he set foot on Irish soil. He mocked their habits and appearance in a condescending manner and, together with his cronies, began to pull their long beards in a childish manner. The Irish never forgot their first contact with Ivan.
Unlike the Irish, Henry always forgave the sins of his rebellious sons. But he punished his wife severely for scheming. He imprisoned her for many years in a manor house in the south of England, which his sons, who were very attached to their mother, strongly resented. But soon the family was marked by tragedies worse than their differences. First young Henry died unexpectedly, followed shortly afterwards by Geoffrey. Next in line to the throne was the famous Richard, who also often failed to find common ground with his father.
Fraternal rivalry
Henry’s last years were difficult because of the growing struggles with King Philip of France and conflicts with his impatient children over the succession. His life was marred above all by a dispute with Richard which escalated into a full-scale war, and Henry even threatened Richard with disinheritance.
In addition, his son decided to take part in the Third Crusade at great risk to his own skin, which made his father even angrier with him. While the Crusades brought Richard immense fame, prestige and respect, they also made his younger brother jealous. Ivan was forbidden by his father to take part in the Crusades for fear of being left without his heir to the throne and his favourite son.
The French king skilfully exploited the English disagreements and, in alliance with Richard, attacked the old king on the continent. Henry was exhausted and in a deteriorating physical condition. Slowly he realised that his last hour was ticking. On his deathbed, he gave in to Richard’s demands and recognised him as heir to the throne.
The final death blow came when he realised that his beloved son Ivan was a traitor, because he had been part of Richard’s rebellion against his father. The chroniclers wrote that “the old king died of grief and disappointment”. Ivan had been an opportunist all his life, skilfully turning with the wind. When it was clear that his father was beyond redemption, he quickly bowed to his elder brother, the future king.
Richard the Lionhearted is still one of the most revered English kings of all time. This is fascinating, because he spent the least time on English soil, had little interest in it, and hardly mastered the language. Yet he is still the only monarch whose statue stands in front of the British Houses of Parliament.
He was born on the Island, but brought up in a chivalrous and troubadour spirit by an over-loving mother in what is now the French South, a very different place politically, culturally and socially from England. He returned there regularly to raise money, because his favourite occupation – the Crusades – was very wasteful. To go the way of the brave crusader, he slowly drained his kingdom, and so he too built the foundations for the creation of the Magna Carta.
Ivan was not idle during Richard’s absence. He tried to displace his brother in every way, even though he had been well bribed by the distrustful Rihard before his departure. He knew his younger brother well, and as a seasoned leader and strategist, he knew he could not be trusted. After four years on Palestinian soil, where his courage and ability had even won him the respect of Saladin, he decided to call a truce with Saladin and return home. Rumours reached him that Ivan was again scheming with the King of France, even offering him the Plantagenet family lands.
But Richard had many opponents on European soil, so the Austrian prince had him imprisoned on his way home and then sold him to the Holy Roman Emperor. Ivan was delighted, as he was only one step away from the crown. While their mother, Queen Eleonora, was tirelessly collecting the ransom for Richard’s freedom, Ivan, in his old habit, schemed to keep his brother imprisoned. The amount of ransom that Richard’s followers eventually managed to raise – through new taxes – was unimaginable. Richard’s freedom cost at least as much as the entire Crusade.
When it became clear that Richard would soon be free again, Ivan greedily returned to his camp. “Don’t worry, Ivan, you are still a child, you have been left to bad guardians /…/”
Ivan was 27 and Rihard 36. But there was never any real trust between the brothers and when Philip and Richard quarrelled again in 1199, Ivan was back on the French side. So Richard, who was childless, proclaimed his young nephew Arthur, the son of his deceased brother Geoffrey, as his legitimate heir.
The Anglo-French war for control of the English mainland territories, especially Normandy, continued, making it impossible for Richard to return to England. When his army was on the verge of defeating the French, he was struck in the shoulder by an arrow during the siege of a castle. The wound caught fire and the great warrior was dead a few days later. Since the rules of succession were not clear in the Middle Ages in the case of monarchs without sons, the question of who would be the new king arose immediately. Arthur, twelve years old at the time of Richard’s death, or Ivan, who had long and successfully prepared himself for this mission?
Ivan becomes King
Although Ivan was crowned King of England in 1199 with his mother’s support, Arthur was too young, but his nephew did not renounce his right to the throne. Both had their supporters – Arthur’s were mainly French nobles and the French king, whose main goal remained the conquest of the Angevin territories on the continent. Most of Ivan’s reign was thus characterised by Anglo-French antagonism. These were soon joined by conflicts with the Church and, most decisive for the creation of the Magna Carta, with the English barons.
There are many sources about Ivan as king, especially chronicles. His reputation in the chronicles suffered even before he became king, and it was widely believed that Ivan was cruel, wicked, hypocritical and vindictive. He was childishly fond of making fun of both his neighbours and his subjects. Even his father, grandfather and brothers were not always the model of a perfect ruler, but he was said to have inherited and taken on only the worst qualities from his ancestors. At least, so wrote the chroniclers.
Although there is no doubt about Ivan’s perverse character, certain “testimonies” and pithy stories should nevertheless be taken with a pinch of salt, as they were often further spiced up by the chroniclers – members of the clergy. For the clergy were the only literate people at that time, apart from a few officials and the king’s scribes. Ivan, on the other hand, was in constant conflict with the Church.
A look into the government archives also gives a different and not exclusively unpleasant picture of Ivan. There are a vast number of documents, letters, memoranda, deeds, records of court proceedings, far more than any of his ancestors, and all of them have survived to this day, much to the delight of historians.
Ivan was a king with boundless energy and, like his father, was always on the move. He regularly attended to even the smallest administrative details and learned every aspect of government. That is why some writers today are trying to restore him to some semblance of respectability, which is not well received in public. But at least he was not lazy, as many people accuse him of being.
In 1200, he had his first marriage annulled, forcibly abducted and married Isabella, probably only twelve years old, betrothed to a nobleman of the de Lusignan dynasty. This earned him the enmity of the whole clan. He treated Isabella as an accessory and a sex toy to be brought to him whenever he felt like it, and he also entertained mistresses.
When Arthur turned the dangerous age of 15 – at which point he could have formally begun his bid for the succession – and attacked his uncle with King Philip of France, he was captured and imprisoned. Soon, rumours of Ivan’s monstrous plan began to spread. He was to thwart his nephew by having him mutilated. He ordered his three cronies to first blind the teenager and then castrate him. The plan backfired, however, because in the end, one of the criminals had only the courage to attack Arthur, and the young man, with the help of the knights of his retinue, defeated him.
It didn’t take long for Arthur to disappear for good. His body was later found in the River Seine, but his death is still shrouded in darkness. The fact is that Ivan was the main culprit, but it is impossible to prove whether the most widely circulated version, according to which he had drunkenly smashed his nephew’s skull with a stone, is true. In any case, from then on Ivan was guaranteed the crown, as well as the status of a cruel heartless man.
Ivan loses Normandy
The French greatly resented the young man’s death, as he was an ally of their king, and so Arthur’s death was a direct consequence of the French invasion of Normandy. The military failures of Ivan’s army were one after another, for he was not as successful a military leader as his elder brother, whose courage earned him the nickname of the Lionhearted. Some argue that Ivan was also a successful general and that by the time of Richard’s reign it was only a matter of time before the French monarchy would dominate the continent.
It was also at this time that Ivan’s disputes with the Church began, with the appointment of the Archbishop of Canterbury being the most serious bone of contention. This had always been the right of the King of England, but this time the powerful Pope in Rome, Innocent III, did not support Ivan’s decision and appointed his own candidate.
The historical turning point that marked the final fate of Ivan’s reign was the loss of Normandy. The French king attacked Ivan’s territories with all his might, strategically cutting them in two. He cut off Normandy, his main target, from the south, and by swift manoeuvres took all the main castles and fortresses. The irrevocable end came in March 1204 with the fall of the mighty, hitherto impregnable castle of Gaillard, built by Richard as a defence against Philip. It was the most technologically sophisticated fortress in Europe at the time and symbolised Richard’s, and therefore England’s, power. It fell after one of the longest sieges in European history.
In 1203, Ivan was still a powerful ruler of England, South Wales, Duke of Normandy, Lord of Ireland, Duke of Anjou, had most of what is now western France under his control, had successfully got rid of Arthur, temporarily fought off rebellious Scots, divorced an unwanted wife and married a younger one. Then his house of cards began to collapse. After the loss of the Gaillard chateau, Rouen, the capital of Normandy, fell, and after Eleonora’s death, he lost virtually all his southern estates one by one. The King of Castile also turned against him from the south.
Within five years, Ivan had lost the entire continental territory that his father and brother had so carefully expanded and controlled. The loss of Normandy represents one of the greatest milestones in medieval English history and the end of an era – for since the Norman invasion of 1066, English kings have always been dukes of Normandy. A common Anglo-Norman culture emerged, with trade, economics and the military operating under a common ruler.
Then these ties began to loosen. Under Richard and Henry I, the English royal family was far more powerful and wealthy than the French, but then the roles were reversed. For the first time in a long time, the English King had to live again exclusively in England, among his own people.
For Ivan, the loss of his ancestral territory was a severe humiliation. Temporarily shamed, he was to withdraw from public view and spend most of his time in the bed of his young wife. Whether this is true or not, Ivan did not mourn for very long. He did not accept the loss of his territories and his main goal became to persuade the English barons to come to his aid, both financially and militarily. He reactivated the traditional family activity of collecting taxes.
England in Ivan’s clutches
As many nobles had territories on both English and French soil, they had to decide in 1204 which Crown to serve. Ivan immediately seized all the estates of those barons who had sworn allegiance to the King of France and began to fill the state coffers. At this time, he was at least trying to tighten his grip on England, as well as on Scotland, Wales and Ireland, which did not sit well with the eminent barons, who had hitherto been quite independent. Notwithstanding the fatal loss of Normandy, England flourished economically during this period. In particular, trade was expanding successfully and new trade routes were opening up across Europe.
In 1205 and 1206, Ivan tried to invade France, but was first rebuffed by the English barons and stopped by the French King’s powerful army. He signed a two-year truce with Philip, during which time he had to raise enough money to finance a new war. He imposed ever heavier taxes and payments on services. Everything had to be paid for – marriages, divorces, inheritances. He hit the rich nobles hardest, pushing many to the brink of bankruptcy. One nobleman who was forced to marry his ex-wife was charged a hefty sum!
The King levied a special military tax almost every year, which his ancestors had imposed only in exceptional circumstances. Of course, such levies were nothing new, as the so-called “Danish money” had already been collected at the time of the Viking invasions. But Ivan’s predecessors, Henry and Richard, had perfected the mechanisms of tax collection to such an extent that it was impossible to avoid the obligations. Anyone who owned anything had to appear before a special local jury and swear to the amount of their income and assets. He then had to pay a certain percentage of this, which varied according to the needs of the court. Those who were unable to pay their debts within a certain time had to surrender their land to the King. Ivan was not only unpopular among his subjects, he was increasingly despised.
He also clashed with the Pope, who was undoubtedly the most influential man in Europe at the time. Most European kings tried to flex their muscles against papal influence and the superiority of ecclesiastical over secular power in one way or another, but the Pope of the day, the able, unyielding clerical authoritarian Innocent III, who was sacredly convinced of God’s mission of absolute domination of the Roman Catholic Church, was simply too tough a nut to crack.
When Stephen Langton, who belonged to the intellectual circle of critics of the Plantagenet dynasty, was appointed archbishop by Inocent, Ivan went mad. He took revenge on the clergy, earning himself an interdict from Inocent in 1208. This was a very severe punishment, as from then on all worship, masses, weddings, confessions and burials on consecrated ground were forbidden. The bells of English churches stopped ringing.
In 1209, Ivan was excommunicated by Innocent and all the priests, except two bishops, left the island. Archbishop Langton also went into exile in Paris. But Ivan did not take the Pope’s anger to heart. He even benefited from the departure of the clergy, taking their property and land. Moreover, he was soon not the only excommunicate in Europe; even the Holy Roman Emperor joined him.
If the split with the Church was not too damaging to Ivan’s reputation, the de Briouze affair was all the more tragic. The influential nobleman William de Briouze was already a close associate of Ivan’s brother Richard, and he was also very loyal to Ivan, serving him as sheriff and judge. But one day, William’s wife Matilda spoke unkindly and tactlessly about Arthur’s fate, and Ivan was seized with a fierce rage. It was his habit to do so, but this time the consequences were more cruel than ever. De Briouze promised Ivan large sums of money to calm him down, but nothing helped. He took all the family’s land and deported them. He persecuted Mathilde with an immense meanness, extreme even by his standards.
In 1210, she was thrown into prison with one of her sons, while her husband was already safe in France. On the King’s orders, they were starved to death and when the cell was finally opened, they were found embraced in a grotesque embrace of death. A chronicler wrote: “On the eleventh day the mother was found dead between her son’s legs, still upright and leaning on his chest. The son, who was also dead, was sitting upright, leaning against the wall. So desperate was the mother that she ate her son’s cheeks. When William de Briouze, who was in Paris, heard the news, he died shortly afterwards, and many were convinced that it was of grief.”
The route to the Magna Carta
No one escaped Ivan’s watchful eye, and when he lost Normandy, he turned his energies to the British Isles. He even turned his attention to Ireland, which until then had been more or less left to its own devices, and imposed English administrative procedures on it. He resented the Scots most of all, who, in the light of the previous agreements with Richard, had a relatively large degree of freedom and autonomy.
The Scots have therefore played an important role in the creation of the Magna Carta. By 1212, the King had subdued his entire kingdom and his purse was fuller than ever. He was almost unimaginably rich and his many castles were bursting with silver.
But he was loathed and increasingly aware of it. Often paranoid and fearing for his life, he surrounded himself only with his closest supporters and the Royal Guard, armed to the teeth. He was right in his suspicions, for a plot to overthrow him had been afoot since 1212. Any noblemen whom he suspected of disloyalty, and there were many, had to hand over their wives and children as hostages. Others resented him for conquering their wives and daughters. These were times of tyranny, mistrust, extortion and blackmail.
But Ivan’s greatest desire was still to regain his lost territories in France. But few were willing to stand by him. For the northerners, Normandy was as far away as Norway and of no interest to them, and the nobility had long since stopped supporting him anyway. He was still at loggerheads with the Pope, who supported the King of France. But he was also hated by more and more European monarchs, and Ivan wanted to exploit these potential alliances as soon as possible. So he had no choice but to take revenge on the Pope.
So, in May 1213, Ivan greedily knelt before the triumphant Innocent, recognised Langton as archbishop and declared England and Ireland papal fiefs. He had to return vast estates to the Church and was again short of money to attack the French. And he introduced new taxes to cover the cost of mercenaries – he was not successful in recruiting domestic fighters.
On Sunday 27 July 1214, a coalition of Ivan’s allies attacked King Philip II of France at the village of Bouvines on the present-day French-Belgian border. Within hours, Ivan’s dreams were shattered – the French army had completely defeated its opponents, securing a bright future for the monarchy. Today, Bouvines is as important to the French as Hastings is to the British.
Ivan put his entire fortune and what honour he had left at stake in this battle. Ancestral territories were lost forever, the national treasury was empty. He left French territory and never returned. But the saga of the French court was not over.
On his return, he received anything but a warm welcome. Dissatisfaction with him and the disappointment of defeat brought England to the brink of civil war. He borrowed money from wealthy Templars to pay for the protection of foreign soldiers. The only one who still supported him was the Pope, with whom he was now particularly well known, having cunningly promised to take part in the next crusade against Jerusalem.
The nobility against Ivan
Of course, Ivan’s ancestors had already repeatedly faced disgruntled subjects and had promised them various rights and freedoms by adopting a number of documents. His great-grandfather Henry I, for example, signed one such charter at his coronation in 1110, limiting his powers of taxation, guaranteeing the freedom of the church and granting certain rights in inheritance and marriage to widows and orphans.
Over a hundred years later, in preparation for the negotiations with Ivan, the English barons revived it and added a number of new demands. This was the so-called “Unknown Charter”, so called because it was not found in the French national archives until 1863 and not published in England until the end of the 19th century. The principle of habeas corpus, which became the most famous article of the Magna Carta, Article 39, had already appeared in the “Unknown Charter”.
The Barons had been preparing their ultimatum to Ivan ever since his return after the defeat in France. In May 1215, they renounced their feudal allegiance to the Crown because he had not responded to a summons to an assembly to discuss their demands. The rebels then attacked and took the capital, London. The King was forced to negotiate. By then, the “Unknown Charter” had already been upgraded to the “Articles of the Barons”, which contained 49 clauses and was a comprehensive indictment of Ivan’s regime. This document was already very similar to the definitive one, i.e. the Magna Carta.
The venue for the negotiations was the large meadow of Runnymede on the River Thames near Windsor, some thirty kilometres from London. On one side were the grand royal pavilions, on the other the smaller but more numerous tents of the barons, where many distinguished knights were also gathered. For ten days, couriers travelled patiently between the two camps, and slowly a draft peace treaty was drawn up, which later took the famous name of Magna Carta.
Archbishop Langton was one of the most instrumental mediators in the successful negotiations, where the only weapon was the word. He also made a major intellectual contribution to the document and ensured that the freedom of the Church was guaranteed in its first article.
The negotiations were very difficult, difficult for Ivan and unnecessary. He was in a bad mood all the time, seemingly calm, but behind closed doors he raged, rolled his eyes, gnashed his teeth and chewed straw and twigs like a madman.
The final version of the document was inscribed on a large parchment and authenticated with the royal seal. It was dated 15 June 1215. Four parchments of this type, all of which are considered originals, have survived and are on display, and there are many copies.
Contents of the magnetic card
The Magna Carta consists of 4 000 words and is written in Latin. It deals with many areas – political, legal, judicial, ecclesiastical, economic, feudal – and is a mixture of general and very detailed provisions, arranged in three main parts. Initially, it was written without any particular structure in a single block of text, with articles added later to make it easier to read. The document is highly technical and difficult to read. It has remained famous for a handful of articles referring to high and more general ideals, while the vast majority of it is now completely outdated.
As said, it starts with the freedom of the Church and continues with one of the biggest apples of the conflict between the King and the Barons, the succession. From then on, all the duties that the nobles owed to the king, in inheritance, marriage, land obligations and so on, were limited. The King could no longer declare taxes arbitrarily, and this was the basis of one of the essential principles of parliamentary democracy, namely that taxes could only be levied with the consent of the people.
Women are hardly mentioned, but widows were forbidden to be forced to remarry, and women were given some rights of succession and, under certain conditions, could own property. Many articles were devoted to trade, which was booming at the time, prohibiting trade barriers, obstacles to fishing, certain rules for building bridges and so on. The harmonisation of units of measurement for goods, corn, wine, was also very important, making it easier for traders to do business and preventing cheating.
The most famous provision of the last thousand years of legal history to emerge from the Magna Carta is certainly Article 39. It guarantees habeas corpus: “No free man shall be arrested, imprisoned, dispossessed of his lands, excommunicated, banished or destroyed in any manner whatsoever…/…/ without a valid judgment of the nobles or a law of the land providing for it.” The King thus undertook to judge according to the law and not according to his own will.
Also interesting was Clause 61, a kind of precautionary measure, which established a council of twenty-five barons who would become a kind of guardians of the Charter and be empowered to keep the peace.
The latter particularly bothered Ivan. And indeed, in the short term, the charter was a complete fiasco, as the King never had any intention of honouring it. According to the agreement, he would have had to immediately restore all stolen territories and property and release all hostages. Just six weeks later, it had already been annulled and the country was once again on the brink of civil war. This lasted two years and was known as the First Barons’ War (1215-1217).
Ivan’s first act was to take revenge on the most rebellious of his army, so he headed north. The soldiers carried out a real terror, burning villages, robbing, slaughtering innocents and raping women and girls. After initial successes in the north, he turned to the south-east of England. Soon rumours began to spread that the French were intensively preparing to invade England. They had been planning to do so since 1212, and King Philip was intent on placing his son Louis (later King Louis VIII) on the English throne. The barons were keen to do so, and supported the French cause.
And indeed, in June 1216, Louis landed in the south of England and was proclaimed King of England by the rebel barons. After his victorious takeover of London, he began to pursue the then exhausted Ivan, conquering manor after manor. In October 1216, however, Ivan fell seriously ill and died unexpectedly quickly of dysentery.
He was succeeded by his son Henry III, aged just nine. His regent was William Marshall, a septuagenarian who had served five kings and was trusted by the barons. Such a pair could hardly be blamed for Ivan’s mistakes, and civil war soon broke out. Marshall was also an excellent general, and the French, too, gave up and returned to the continent after defeats on land at Lincoln and at sea at Sandwich.
Immortality Magnetic Cards
Although the Magna Carta initially fared very badly, it was soon reissued, albeit partially amended, and the English kings showed more respect for it. Even the young Henry III declared it valid again in 1217, in order to ingratiate himself with the barons. With each new edition, it was sent to all corners of the kingdom, nailed to the doors of all the churches, and began to be mentioned in court proceedings.
In the 17th century, it again became an important symbol of liberty, when England was once again ruled by one of the worst autocrats and absolutists, Charles I. It was in the Magna Carta that his opponents found the historical precedent for the limitation of royal power. In 1689, the English adopted another key constitutional document, the Charter of Fundamental Rights, whose predecessor was also a magna carta. But it was even more influential in the USA, where its principles were eagerly taken up by the first colonists and where it was the model for the newly emerging American constitution, which limits the power of the state over its citizens. The Magna Carta has thus become an inalienable part of Western political thought.
Ivan’s reign was undoubtedly a failure. It is also difficult to write anything good about him as a man. But often the worst moments in history have good consequences. And so it is to Ivan’s credit that today, at least on paper, we all have equal rights before the law.
