How the Magna Carta Worked

Mike Meyer's Scottish guy. No, not that jerk. I don't know who then, Oh, I'm blanking. People are screaming at 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 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, 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 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.

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 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 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 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 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, 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

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 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 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. 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, 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 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, 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. 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 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 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.

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 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 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 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. 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. 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 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

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, 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, 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, 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 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 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

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, 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 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, 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

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 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 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 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

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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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, poor other guy learning stuff with Joshua John. All Right, 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 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 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? 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, 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, 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

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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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, 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

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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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

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 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 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 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. 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 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, 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 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 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 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

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 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 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 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, 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, 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 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 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, 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 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. 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

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 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 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 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.

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 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 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. 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, 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 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 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, 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. 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. 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 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 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 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 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

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. 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, 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 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, 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 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

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