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David Eyles: Why the Magna Carta still matters today (Part II of II)

David Eyles is a Dorset livestock farmer.

The previous article was concerned principally with the finer detail of the Magna Carta; with the way in which it was a response to correct the individual abuses of feudal law by King John. But there are two clauses whose significance was nothing short of revolutionary. Clause 60 stated unequivocally that everything in this document applied equally to the king as well as to his subjects. Given the prevailing system of absolute power of the Angevin kings, this clause is astonishing enough as it grants an equality that was inconceivable before. But it is clause 61 which goes even further. It ensured that politics in England would never be the same again and furthermore that the character of law and politics in England were sundered from that of continental Europe. Clause 61 is long and in eight paragraphs. It gives the remedies to the barons if John should fail to keep his side of the bargain. Twenty five barons were elected to bring any offence of John or his agents to his attention and seek redress. In translation, this is what it says: “If we…..make no redress within forty days…..the twenty five barons ….may distrain upon and assail us in every way possible, with the support of the whole community of the land, by seizing our castles, lands, possessions or anything else saving only our own person and those of the queen and our children, until they have secured such redress as they have determined upon. Having secured the redress, they may then resume their normal obedience to us.” This remarkable clause gives licence for rebellion against the king if those twenty five are agreed of the need to do so. Schama, so eloquently, puts it thus: “So, if Magna Carta was not the birth certificate of freedom it was the death certificate of despotism. It spelled out for the first time, and unequivocally, something with which the Angevins themselves, as the highest justices in the realm, could not conceivably quarrel: that the law was not simply the will or the whim of the king but was an independent power in its own right, and that kings could be brought to book for violating it……..All this, in turn, presupposed something hitherto unimaginable: that there was some sort of English ‘state’ of which the king was part (albeit the supreme part) but not the whole.”

The delicate balance between the power of the king and his nobles, or the executive and Parliament, remained a subject for discussion, with varying degrees of violence, for the next 800 years. The principle of legal opposition to the executive has now been enshrined in parliamentary process by the gradual evolution of the party system. This has obviated the need for revolution and replaced it with elections if the electorate disagrees with the executive.

David Eyles: Why the Magna Carta still matters - the history (Part I of II)

David Eyles is a Dorset livestock farmer.

The Magna Carta has been cited several times in recent months, not least by David Davis in his resignation speech on the steps of the House of Commons. The media response to his speech and the resulting by-election was almost one of puzzlement and in many cases, dismissal. The relevance of the Magna Carta has been sidelined in a rush of sound bites and a lack of understanding. In reading both the document itself in translation, and the background, it seemed to me to be startlingly relevant to the present day. I am not a medieval scholar nor an expert in constitutional law, but a farmer; and for that I make no apologies. The following notes are taken from the British Library translation of the document itself and Domesday Book to Magna Carta by A.L. Poole (Oxford History of England, 2nd edition 1955). For an insight into the strategic significance of the battle of Bouvines, the oddly euro-centric The Isles by Norman Davies (Macmillan 1999) is useful. There is a good discussion on the delicate balance between a medieval king and his aristocracy in the early chapters of England in the later Middle Ages by M.H. Keen (Rouledge, 1973). And for sheer, roaring narrative, Simon Schama’s A History of Britain (BBC 2000) is enjoyable. In the summary below, I have plundered all of these sources, but the factual information is principally from Poole and the document itself. Where I have been judgemental of John’s character or the modern consequences of the document, those opinions are mine and subject to accusations of error from professional historians. But in those judgements, I am often at odds with Poole who seemed strangely given to finding excuses for John. I prefer to listen to the opinions of Roger of Wendover and Matthew Paris, both chroniclers at the monastery of St Albans. They were contemporaneous with the signing of the Magna Carta and also the depredation of many abbeys during the Interdict and subsequent excommunication of John. Accordingly, I lay before you the following for discussion:

By the time he came to sign the Magna Carta at Runnymede on the 15th June 1215, King John had had an eventful but largely negative reign. He had lost nearly all his territories in France to the wily and ambitious Philip Augustus of France, who had defeated John diplomatically and strategically and was now threatening invasion of England from his new Channel ports in Normandy. John’s alliance and expeditionary force with Otto and the Low Countries had failed at Bouvines in 1214. An earlier dispute with the church over the election of Stephen Langton as Archbishop of Canterbury had led to the Pope placing an interdict on the whole country which resulted in a religious lockout for everyone – services could not be performed in church, marriages likewise and the dead buried in unconsecrated ground. As the argument with Pope Innocent III progressed, John was himself excommunicated. His barons had been forced to choose between their estates in Normandy and England. Whichever they chose, their incomes were severely reduced. The development of a standing navy to counter the threat from Philip Augustus; the payment of a standing professional army and mercenaries to fight the apparently endless campaigns in France and the huge bribes paid out to sometimes unreliable allies in the Low Countries had all fallen upon England to pay. John was in a fix of his own making. Isolated by the pope, threatened by a newly united France and having provoked many of his own barons into revolt, John had to make concessions somewhere. He sought forgiveness from Innocent III by confirming Stephen Langton’s appointment as Archbishop of Canterbury and conceding the Kingdom of England and Ireland to the Pope. This was handed back, under fealty to Innocent III, for the fee of 1000 marks a year. England was now a feudal vassal state of a pan-European power.

David Eyles: Judges, knives and the law

David Eyles is a Dorset livestock farmer.

At last, it seems there has been some common sense on the issue of carrying knives. It seems a judge shocked a jury in a case involving a youth and a stabbing, by pulling out his own knife and demonstrated that he was within the law to carry it in a public place, because the blade was less than three inches in length and he needed two hands to open it. Although at the time of writing, the case continues, I suspect that the case will hinge on the act of stabbing, rather than the act of carrying the knife, as the judge has now demonstrated his own legal right to carry such an item. So, as things stand at the moment, it seems that as I empty my pockets at the check-out to pay for bread and milk with the pound coins that I know are in there somewhere, and bring out baler twine, bits of straw, washers, miscellaneous bolts, half a cattle ear tag, knife, more straw... I am not committing an offence provided the knife blade is less than three inches long. But David Cameron has now stated that it should be an offence for carrying such an item “without a reasonable excuse”. And therein lays a problem. 

In the course of a normal day, I usually carry at least one knife in trouser or jacket pocket. I think there are two in the tractor and probably one in the Land-Rover underneath piles of fencing pliers, hammers, staples, dagging and footing shears, billhooks and all manner of other offensive weapons. Or rather, tools which could be used as offensive weapons, if I was so minded. The knives are all folding. One can be opened with one hand, but the others need two hands and may well be longer than three inches. Depending upon how you define a “public place” I am probably committing an offence of some sort most days of the year, bearing in mind my fields are criss-crossed with public footpaths and my cattle are usually grazing in a nature reserve with considerable public access.

David Eyles: Is food security incompatible with a free a market?

This is the first part of a feature looking at food security by David Eyles, a Dorset livestock farmer.

Food security can be defined as:

“The ability of a nation to produce sufficient of its own food requirements such as to ensure the proper nutritional, economic, strategic, psychological and spiritual needs of its population. Where imports of food are necessary, they should not be so great that in the event of an alteration in political, economic or environmental conditions elsewhere in the world, that nation cannot feed or support itself properly.” 

This is my definition and is subject to discussion, but will do for a start.

For most of Britain’s history, we have been self sufficient and/or exporters of food and food based products. The considerable wealth of medieval England was accumulated by the export of wool. This continued until the late 18th century, when we started to import food to support a burgeoning population. Throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, we imported an increasing proportion of our food, until by 1940 we imported about 60% of our needs. This came mostly from the Empire, the USA and other countries like Argentina. A largely unhindered free market was in operation.