The Magna Carta Is For Sale!

[Writers Plot]

Posted by Sheila Connolly

So I was informed by my AOL Welcome screen a few days ago. Ross Perot (or more precisely his Foundation) owns a copy (a fact I find a little bizarre) and wants to sell it (slightly less bizarre), and Sotheby's guesses it will go for a cool $30 million or so. But what intrigues me is AOL's assumption that (a) we all know what the Magna Carta is, and (b) we know why it matters.

I have to admit to a special fondness for the document, for a variety of reasons. For one thing, I have seen, up close and personal, three of the fewer than twenty copies that have survived since the thirteenth century. For another, I have a poster of one of those versions hanging on my wall as I write. For a third: Robin Hood.

And I absorbed what in hindsight was its rather mixed message. To boil it down: Robin became an outlaw because he was a follower of King Richard of England, who had been kidnapped and was off in the Holy Land somewhere (kindergarten kids aren't too strong on English history of the twelfth century). His nasty little brother John wanted the throne, and made life difficult for Richard's supporters. So the muddled concepts were these: it was all right to break the law and rob people if your heart was pure and you robbed only bad people–and gave what you stole back to the poor. Plus you got to ride horses and shoot arrows and live in the woods. What could be better? John was the official ruler of England, but he got no respect and nobody liked him. Everybody cheered in the end when Richard returned to reclaim his throne, and Bad John was put in his place. Too bad Richard died and John became king anyway. But that was later.

Fast forward a few years, and, lo and behold, I became a medieval art historian, following the paths of John and Richard–and their amazing mother, Eleanor of Aquitaine. Now there was a woman! When she inherited vast territories in the south of France, she knew she'd never make it on her own, so she married the king of France, Louis VII, and even had a few children (female) by him. A few years later she saw which way the wind was blowing, managed to dissolve her marriage to Louis, and married Henry Plantagenet, i.e., King Henry II of England (another version of the story holds that they fell madly in love–or lust). She was eleven years older than he was, and legally they were related six ways from Sunday, which might have been an impediment to a less determined couple, but the marriage took place and survived (not without its ups and downs, like a few years during which he had her imprisoned) and produced eight children in thirteen years while she followed her husband around his extended domain. This was one tough woman. Eleanore outlived Henry, and seems to have spent her later years meddling with the power struggles between her sons.

The Magna Carta came about because King John was such a lousy ruler that the nobles of the realm and the churchmen banded together in opposition to him and in 1215 forced John to sign a document that set down some basic laws that we still value today. One example: the right of Habeas Corpus–protection against unlawful imprisonment. In addition there was a "security clause," which established a committee of barons who could at any time meet and overrule the will of the King, through force by seizing his castles and possessions if needed. This was the first time this medieval legal practice was applied to a monarch.

And maybe that's why Perot's sale strikes home with the American people. Maybe we need to be reminded of just how deep-seated some of these fundamental liberties are, and how dangerous is it to tamper with them.