The Great Charter agreed on June 15, 1215, between King John of England and his barons at Runnymede, near Windsor, remains to this day one of the world’s great symbols of freedom and the rule of law. On display now at the Legion of Honor and through June 15th, is a sheet of parchment roughly twenty-one inches high and seventeen inches wide contains fifty-six lines of hand-inscribed Latin text. While the handwriting is parallel to the more formal Gothic style found in early thirteenth-century books, it is specifically a “chancery script,” written relatively quickly and cursively but with a tendency toward extension and flourish. The ink is dark brown in color, so it is probably an iron-gall pigment rather than the blacker carbon-based variety. The text is written on the flesh side of a single parchment made from sheep or goatskin. It’s like – the greatest piece ever for “show & tell” in a 7th Grade civics class. Even the Bodelian Library keeps it out of view.
“It is one of the greatest documents of democracy and freedom in the history of the world,” said FAMSF Director John Buchanan. “In essence, it lays out that all men are equal and free and – as importantly – even the King is not beyond the law. The document was issued under the reign of King John. This particular copy says that his inheritor is Henry III who was a young boy when this document was constructed. I suspect that the execution of this particular copy – as well as others done in 1217 – was to underscore His Majesty as the inheritor of the throne and to mitigate any thought that someone was going to usurp the boy king. The Magna Carta we have here was sent to Gloucestershire and in all likelihood was preserved and shown, loved and secured by the Abbey of Gloucester Cathedral. Subsequently, it found its way to the Bodelian Library.”
Dr. James Ganz, Curator of the Achenbach Foundation for Graphic Arts, has co-ordinated the installation of the exhibit. “There were many different issues of Magna Carta,” he said. “It was first agreed upon in 1215 by King John – under duress. John, who plays a role in the Robin Hood stories, was a disaster as a king. He took advantage of the feudal system to really overtax the population. He waged a number of wars which were not successful, particularly against the French. To pay for all this, he just taxed and taxed to the point that the wealthiest and most prominent members of English society got to the point where they said “enough is enough”.
“He also got into a dispute with the pope – which was never a good idea. The pope wanted to put in Stephen Langton as the Archbishop of Canterbury. John, for some reason, didn’t think this was a good idea and banished Stephen Langton. In retribution, the pope excommunicated the king which meant, in fact, the English Church was essentially shut down for a period of several years while it was all sorted out. That meant nobody could be properly married and, basically, everybody was going to end up in hell – all because of the King. He was brought to agree to this document that was probably drafted by Stephen Langton, working with the barons, in 1215.”
“They agreed on the terms of the Magna Carta at Runnymede. The document was then produced which was sealed by the king, which is to say authenticated, by the king. Almost immediately, John tried to have it revoked and to distance himself from it. He ended up once again battling with the barons. He died the following year. His young son, Henry III, took over. He was only nine years old. It was the first time a young child had come to be King. So, they had to think about when he would actually reach the age of majority. That is one of the clauses the Magna Carta talks about: when does a person reach majority? Twenty-one was the age except, for some reason, Henry reached majority at nineteen – at which point, he re-issued Magna Carta.”
“There are four copies that exist from 1215. There is no “original”. People are always very concerned about which one is the original. There were simply a number of documents that would have been written out by scribes in the Royal Chancery, each one of them was sealed, and sent throughout the realm to different population centers where it would be read and made available to all the officials. So, we don’t know how many would have been created in 1215. Probably at least a dozen, but only four of those survive.”
The Bodleian charter on view at the Legion of Honor is one of the library’s three originals of the solemn reissue of November 1217. The opening line of the charter names the boy king Henry III, then just ten years old, who had succeeded John in October 1216. Power was held by his guardians, the papal legate Cardinal Guala Bicchieri and the Earl of Pembroke, William Marshal the elder. Although King Henry addresses his subjects at the start, the document carries his guardians’ seals at its foot. Henry was still too young to have a device of his own. The cardinal’s mark survives only as a defaced oval lump of white wax at left, but Marshal’s small round seal in green wax, showing the earl on horseback, survives at right to authenticate the document. The decision to issue a new version of the Magna Carta with his guardians’ seals was vital to securing the young king’s own position as well as the rights of his subjects.
The Magna Carta is on loan from the Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford, and made possible thanks to the generosity of Qualcomm, Irwin and Joan Jacobs, and John Wiley and Sons. Viewing the Magna Carta is included in the general admission ticket for the Legion of Honor. There is a $5 surcharge for Pulp Fashion: The Art of Isabelle de Borchgrave, on view in the lower level galleries of the Legion of Honor through June 5th.
“It is one of the greatest documents of democracy and freedom in the history of the world,” said FAMSF Director John Buchanan. “In essence, it lays out that all men are equal and free and – as importantly – even the King is not beyond the law. The document was issued under the reign of King John. This particular copy says that his inheritor is Henry III who was a young boy when this document was constructed. I suspect that the execution of this particular copy – as well as others done in 1217 – was to underscore His Majesty as the inheritor of the throne and to mitigate any thought that someone was going to usurp the boy king. The Magna Carta we have here was sent to Gloucestershire and in all likelihood was preserved and shown, loved and secured by the Abbey of Gloucester Cathedral. Subsequently, it found its way to the Bodelian Library.”
Dr. James Ganz, Curator of the Achenbach Foundation for Graphic Arts, has co-ordinated the installation of the exhibit. “There were many different issues of Magna Carta,” he said. “It was first agreed upon in 1215 by King John – under duress. John, who plays a role in the Robin Hood stories, was a disaster as a king. He took advantage of the feudal system to really overtax the population. He waged a number of wars which were not successful, particularly against the French. To pay for all this, he just taxed and taxed to the point that the wealthiest and most prominent members of English society got to the point where they said “enough is enough”.
“He also got into a dispute with the pope – which was never a good idea. The pope wanted to put in Stephen Langton as the Archbishop of Canterbury. John, for some reason, didn’t think this was a good idea and banished Stephen Langton. In retribution, the pope excommunicated the king which meant, in fact, the English Church was essentially shut down for a period of several years while it was all sorted out. That meant nobody could be properly married and, basically, everybody was going to end up in hell – all because of the King. He was brought to agree to this document that was probably drafted by Stephen Langton, working with the barons, in 1215.”
“They agreed on the terms of the Magna Carta at Runnymede. The document was then produced which was sealed by the king, which is to say authenticated, by the king. Almost immediately, John tried to have it revoked and to distance himself from it. He ended up once again battling with the barons. He died the following year. His young son, Henry III, took over. He was only nine years old. It was the first time a young child had come to be King. So, they had to think about when he would actually reach the age of majority. That is one of the clauses the Magna Carta talks about: when does a person reach majority? Twenty-one was the age except, for some reason, Henry reached majority at nineteen – at which point, he re-issued Magna Carta.”
The Bodleian charter on view at the Legion of Honor is one of the library’s three originals of the solemn reissue of November 1217. The opening line of the charter names the boy king Henry III, then just ten years old, who had succeeded John in October 1216. Power was held by his guardians, the papal legate Cardinal Guala Bicchieri and the Earl of Pembroke, William Marshal the elder. Although King Henry addresses his subjects at the start, the document carries his guardians’ seals at its foot. Henry was still too young to have a device of his own. The cardinal’s mark survives only as a defaced oval lump of white wax at left, but Marshal’s small round seal in green wax, showing the earl on horseback, survives at right to authenticate the document. The decision to issue a new version of the Magna Carta with his guardians’ seals was vital to securing the young king’s own position as well as the rights of his subjects.
The Magna Carta is on loan from the Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford, and made possible thanks to the generosity of Qualcomm, Irwin and Joan Jacobs, and John Wiley and Sons. Viewing the Magna Carta is included in the general admission ticket for the Legion of Honor. There is a $5 surcharge for Pulp Fashion: The Art of Isabelle de Borchgrave, on view in the lower level galleries of the Legion of Honor through June 5th.
