The Magna Carta & The Great Anarchy

The Foundation of Western Democracy

William the Conqueror’s  sons William Rufus and Robert Curthose split the council and fought each other for control.  A few years later Henry I’s only (legitimate) male heir died  and he attempted to appoint his daughter to the kingship.  But upon his death several competitors enlisted support from different lords and war amongst them lasted 25 years, the era known as the Anarchy.  That is a kind of a misnomer since there was not no government, but several claimants fighting each other, joining each other, changing allegiances, all jockeying for power and all claiming authority.  But then it might have been a period of anarchy because as soon as one army seemed to defeat another, other dukes or earls would break away and develop their own coalition.  There seemed no end to the strife because no one wanted to submit to one leader being able to consolidate the nation.  There is a wealth of historical records of this era and it is interesting because every side of the conflict wrote their own history.  Ken Follett’s famous novel, and the movie based on it, Pillars of the Earth, is not a good place to begin for understanding, as it presents only one side as correct, and Follett seems to have limited his knowledge to only one source-the eventual winner.  For that reason I recommend ignoring it totally.  This was not a time of good king v. bad king but of a bunch of attempts to become king with no one willing to let anyone be a good or bad king.  Stephen, pilloried in the novel, was a usurper of sorts in that he overthrew Henry I’s appointed heir, but that was not why he didn’t successfully rule, his attempted coup became an opportunity for Tom, Duke & Earl to attempt to usurp power for themselves, from the Scots to the north  and the Welsh in the south-east,both of whom had been subdued by now,  to breakaway.  It was a time of anarchy in the sense that the Great Council became  great warriors and all its members  took swords in hand.  It was a time of horrendous devastation to the land and the people of England, a loss of many of the great forests.  Funnily enough, Stephen’s lands suffered very little damage.  But then everything started with Stephen leaving his lands to attack Mathilde’s and the wars never seemed to return there.  War also changed in nature from one of great battles between armies to one mostly fought by attacking another lord’s lands and surrounding their castles and became more of a contest to win more territory from each other rather than to actually establish any particular side as victor.  Which of course was the point and why it’s called the anarchy because no one really wanted another king.  Eventually Matilde’s son Henry FitzEmpress with a small  army crossed from Normandy, where his mother had fled back to England, offering peace by saying he would reinstate the Great Council.  Stephen was uncertain if his surviving son William coud rule and everyone just seemed tired of this war and trained their sights on distant lands  Many of the lords took their armies and joined the second crusade, Stephen signed an armistice with Henry FitzEmpress.  Upon his ascendancy Henry expelled all he deemed mercenaries, who had brought armies to the conflict and finished demolishing and burning 375 castles. Out of this mess came the first trappings of democracy.  

Henry FitzEmpress now became Henry II of England.  He inherited England and Normandy through his mother, Anjou & Maine through his father and Aquitaine through his wife.  History usually portrays him as a great king because of his many holdings and his domination and as the founder of the Plantagenet dynasty.  He was actually a man who never liked to keep a promise.  He broke his promise to Louis of France, to his wife, to the nobles of England and to his friend Beckett. He promised to get an advantage and broke his word to take advantage.  You might say he was the extreme caricature of the king who believes he is entitled to any and everything, that he had the absolute right to do whatever he wanted to do.  Generally in taking everything, he has won a lot of historical praise.  Like the long ago Sargon Of Sumer who may have been the first “lawgiver”, Henry is noted for laying down the foundations of jurisprudence that became the building blocks of anglo-american jurisprudence.  In reality, Henry after getting the war-weary barons to anoint him and after the treaty with Stephen, Henry retreated from England back to France. The treaty that had ended the great wars gave Stephen the kingship til the death of his son,  at which time Henry would become king.  Miraculously Stephen died quite suddenly a few months later.  Within the next year or two all of the still potential rivals  to the throne, including Stephen’s last son all died.  Henry went about rebuilding the English treasury, reclaiming Scottish and Welsh territories that had broken away during the chaos and building himself a couple of huge palaces before venturing back to England.  Henry ended up with not only most of England under his control but he controlled more of France than anyone since the Carolingtons.  To control this empire Henry was constantly traveling from one area to another.  And as he traversed his empire he initiated “law”.  The great law was basically created in codified form, the firm establishment of the stratified system. With each class having more rights as they ascended in class and ultimately in he, the King, being the final arbiter and possessor of all rights.  He called the great council again to take advice from all of his barons.  This was essentially allowing them the “freedom to participate” in the government.  The lords were enabled to discuss amongst themselves and express to Henry their own ideas on how the government should be run.  There were no votes.  After the council Henry sent them home and did what he wanted.  If conflict arose with Henry’s decision, well Beckett is only one example, albeit the most famous, of the result.  So from the beginning, “law” was structured to benefit the hierarchy and the freedom granted to the barons, or lords, was based on the illusion that Henry allowed their participation.  By the time of Henry’s son John, this illusion was shattered.  He didn’t have his father’s ability to pretend to give freedom ,or he saw no reason to do so.. Led by a dissatisfied church hierarchy that helped convince the barons to threaten war,  Stephen Langton, Archbishop of Canterbury drafted a document  that the duressed king signed guaranteeing the protection of church rights, protection for the barons from illegal imprisonment, access to swift justice, and limitations on feudal payments to the Crown, to be implemented through a council of 25 barons. John didn’t stand by his commitment and Pope Innocent III who was also feeling some threats of his own within the church hierarchy, nullified  the document as against the will of God.  War once again broke out in England and in 1217 the document was again issued as part of the peace of Lambeth and this actually when it became titled “the magna carta”.  Although it was nearly the same document it was actually two years later and after another civil war that John’s son Henry III actually agreed to what was then called the Magna Carta.  What you learned in history class is not exactly wrong but certainly not correct.  It was still not immediately a complete liberation for the barons but they were able to withhold funds until Henry III became short of funds and reissued the charter in 1225 to seek additional taxation from the barons.  But it was not until his son—Edward I—in 1297, again short of funds reissued the document and this time it finally became codified into English law.  So it wasn’t actually until the tail end of the 13th century.  Between 1215 and 1297 there were ongoing battles both verbally and physically over the king’s refusal to grant to the nobles, the rights they believed were theirs.  In actuality the acclaim and status that is now given to the Magna Carta was not established into English jurisprudence until the 17th  century and after the end of the Glorious Revolution when English juriste began looking to the document as the cornerstone of English law that we now learn it to have been.  And for most of the 13th century it was a piece of paper that the English kings simply ignored.  In 1258 there was another revolt And Henry III agreed to give up absolutism and allow the government to be run by a 15 member (all nobles) parliament.  Only again, it did not happen.  Well there were six parliaments in the next four years and Henry ignored them.  In 1263 Henry obtained a papal bull to relieve him from being bound.  A french-born nobleman, Simon de Montfort defeated Henry at the Battle of Lewes in 1264 and took Henry captive.  Montfort then called for a parliament and for the first time it was independent of any king.  Montfort, of course, wanted to rule, but Montfort did something a little strange.  He called for a parliament of nobles, but for the first time he called for a parliament of “commoners” consisting of the emerging gentry of knights and burgesses.  Of course no one at this time has any real rights, but for the first time, in at least western history, someone other than a king or the leading lords in a kingdom were being asked to participate in government.  But this wasn’t actually altruism.  After Montfort’s successful capture of Henry he had lost most of his support from the nobles so he was hoping to get enough support from the next class and hoping enticements of participation in the government  would help him gain control.  Well Henry’s son Edward escapes, he defeats Montfort in battle, Montfort dies, Henry is restored to the throne.  But this was kind of a turning point.  The convention that Henry had signed agreeing to a parliament had been nullified and Henry III was no longer bound to call a parliament.  He nevertheless called 3 parliaments in the next two years and he followed Montfort’s example of calling the gentry as a second house of the parliament.  Although no one knows exactly why,  it may be for a similar reason to Montfort’s.  There is no record of what gentry attended or how they were selected but Henry III may have seen the gentry’s participation as a balance between the constant tussle between the king and the barons.  The barons would need the gentry’s participation to revolt, and the gentry, feeling a greater part of the king’s government, might be less inclined to follow their liege’s against a government they were now participating within.

Upon Henry’s death, Edward I ascended to the throne.  Edward I, like his father, grandfather and great-grandfather, believed he was entitled to absolute authority.  But unlike them, Edward saw a way to use the Parliament to establish his authority.  Edward made parliament into a more or less permanent institution.  But Edward did something further towards democracy, with the goal being to solidify his absolute authority.  Edward granted to “all’ citizens (I am unclear who is included in “all”, probably not women and probably not unpropertied, but that is my speculation) to send petitions to the parliament of “grievances”  and codified into law that the concerns of “all citizens” should be addressed by parliament to create a more just nation and be a nation more responsive to it citizens.  So parliament now became a citizen’s government, or a government taxed with authority to address injustices that occurred and to pass corrective measures to right such injustices.  So this is the first trappings of democracy in the west, not Athens or Rome which were private clubs for the already rich and powerful.  

But another thing that became monumental was that without any written document that established procedures for running the government, a more or less independent judiciary was established that could decide based on precedents of past decisions, rather than on kingly, or parliamentary decisions and what we know as common law began to take effect as a new type of interpreting law that was intended to balance kingly needs with lordly needs and the needs of “commoners”.

So England now had two parliaments and when the king wanted to raise money he would call the commoners parliament but for advice on statecraft or war , then the barons would be consulted.  He didn't necessarily have to do it that way but from 1265 on that was the general take on calling sessions of parliament. And every king did not  heed to parliament.  Edward’s son, Edward II  didn’t and he was deposed more or less nonviolently and the Parliament legitimized his son, Edward III to the throne.  So Parliament now began to exert their own authority into the kingdom.  Under Edward III parliament finally came into  more or less permanent existence.  All laws and all taxes had to be agreed to by both parliaments, and the sovereign.  So the king could no longer arbitrarily make laws  or issue taxes, but he still had the right to nullify any laws of parliament.  And under his realm the two houses of the English parliament were codified  and became permanent separate chambers and by 1430 franchisement, or voting for the commons began for anyone who owned property worth at least 40 shillings (which would have been a considerable amount) began.  

(If we briefly fast forward to the U.S. there was a distinct similarity—franchisement in the constitution was pretty well left up to the states, but being male, white and owning a certain amount of wealth was initially required in all.) Even though some, notably Governour Morris, argued at the convention for universal male suffrage for all free people.

So the most glaring thing all of this points out is the two principles of democracy that derail its success.  First, it is given to people reluctantly by those who have power, and second it is never meant to give everyone an equitable share in the power of the government but to confuse people into believing it gives them an equitable share so they don’t try to take the power away from those that have the power.  The delusion is built upon making you believe if you share in the government, then its powers of control are ok because they give you a voice against theirs. But since the citizen in a democracy continues to feel he doesn’t have the same power, because obviously he doesn’t, but to believe he does because he is led to believe he does then something is wrong.  As long as he believes the power structure is not the issue, the power structure can remain intact, so the disillusioned are misdirected to attack each other.  It’s the welfare mother forcing me into debt, it’s the immigrant causing me to have less pay, and now that person is ready for almost any other misdirected delusion.  It’s not just QAnon and stolen elections, those are even later, first it’s Kennedy conspiracies and government hiding aliens that makes people ripe for the flat earth and democrats that run child pornography rings.  And before that it’s depression from unequal feelings and taking our sense of importance that turn us to alcohol and drugs and seeking solace in the mindlessness of TV and now video games.  And all the time blasting subliminal messages into your minds with non-stop blitzing advertisements suggesting don't think, buy this, don’t need, want this.  And so we reach a point where the good guy in the white hat no longer wins.  We don’t believe he can.  

The continuous movies of power struggles between the minions of hell that keep winning, the zombie movies where  the hero becomes a zombie, the endless new rock groups with singers who are barfing at you with the conviction that Satan is the only power. And then the moralists appear to point out the only way to win the world back from Satan is to curtail freedoms.  Freedoms of lifestyle, freedoms of literature, freedoms to vote because all that freedom is what is giving Satan the victory, everything is wrong.

 We're miserable and consuming more time than on any form of escape, albeit, games. movies, stimulants.  Youth commit suicide because the world has no place for them.. We fight, and more more take the lives of our neighbors that we hate for whatever reason we think we hate them because we have lost our importance, so kill those that make me an irrelevant human.  Hating those who are different must be the problem.  I’m free, I have the vote, I’m free, I get to choose where I want to be a slave, I’m free because this is America, the land of the free.  I’m free and totally irrelevant.  And so the election was stolen and we need a stronger leader to abolish all these people that must be the reason I feel so bad, so unfree.  

Sources:  Gesta Regis Stephani anonymous

                Historia Novella William of Malmesbury

                Historia Ecclesiastica Orderic Vitalis

                The Perfect King Ian Mortimer