February 28, 2025|Uncategorized

“1216 and all that: The real story of the Magna Carta” – Nick Barratt

Dr. Nick Barratt joined us on Zoom for Wickham History Society’s second talk of 2025 where sixty five members and guests heard from the leading medievalist on the background to Magna Carta – the genesis of the parliamentary system and a fundamental influence on many other constitutions around the world.

People were asking why 1216? We were all taught Magna Carta was signed in 1215 – well apparently there were several versions. The first Magna Carta signed in 1215 included a requirement for a council of barons to ensure the King was complying never got off the grounds so the second version which didn’t include that is seen as the version that “stuck”.

Of course King John never intended to keep to Magna Carta. He even went to the extreme of making the Pope his feudal lord leading to the Pope invalidating Magna Carta before his death in 1216 led to the eventual end of the Civil War.

Nick explained it was the cost of the french wars and their increasing irrelevance and unpopularity in England that precipitated the crisis. To John they remained far more important than England, while increasingly the Norman barons had transferred their holdings and interests to England and John’s extortions to raise the money he needed made him deeply unpopular. After that the rest is history…