The Birth of Parliament
The Rule of Law
After Magna Carta was extracted from King John by barons in that peace treaty in Runnymede in 1215, it would require greater efforts to hold kings to the permanent covenants agreed to by England's king and the nobility. It was essential to establish a political body to act as a Rock of Gibraltar capable of preventing kings from violating the historic agreement that benefitted all of the English people. That immovable rock was Parliament. Creating Parliament was a heavy lift. It began as the Great Council of the Norman Kings comprised of the barons, his tenants in chief, but that...
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Saving Magna Carta
The Rule of Law
Magna Carta was sealed by King John at Runnymede on June 15, 1215. However, its survival was in doubt. It served two purposes, a peace treaty and the grant of liberties to the rebel barons and the English People. If the peace did not hold, Magna Carta would disappear from the pages of history. Even while the King was negotiating the final language riding to Runnymede from Windsor Castle, he was behind the barons' backs petitioning the Pope to declare Magna Carta null and void. His envoys made the two month journey between England and Rome and back numerous times in 1215,...
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Magna Carta
The Rule of Law
The cornerstone of the Rule of Law and Modern Democracy is Magna Carta. It was a peace treaty between King John and the barons who rebelled against his dictatorship. The treaty was agreed to in June 1215 in Runnymede, a 150 acre grassy field on the south bank of the River Thames between Windsor and Staines. Nearly all of the nobility of England were present to witness the event. However, if it were simply a peace treaty, today it would be a shadowy figure obscured by the mists of time. It was much more. It is the Great Charter of English Liberties. English kings confirmed it sixty...
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Lost Liberties Found
The Rule of Law
England was on the razor's edge between war and peace. The barons planned to assassinate King John. He had raped one of their wives and sexually assaulted one of their daughters. He had murdered another baron's wife and his son, by starving them to death in Windsor Castle. However, news of the assassination plot leaked out. The king was warned by two different sources, located hundreds of miles apart--in Scotland and Wales. Instead of being killed during his Welsh campaign and uncertain as to which of his barons to trust, the king dismissed all English barons and knights from...
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The War of the Worlds
The Rule of Law
Magna Carta, the Great Charter of English Liberties, is the foundation upon which the Rule of Law is built. The story of its creation is more surprising and far more complex than is commonly known. It extends beyond King John, the most despised king in English history and the Barons who were compelled to wage war against him. The epic also includes the King of France, Philip Augustus, King William of Scotland, Duke Arthur of Brittany, Count Ferrand of Flanders, Prince Llywelyn ap Iorwerth of Wales, the Archbishop of Canterbury Stephen Langton, the greatest knight in the Middle Ages,...
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Empire Falls
The Rule of Law
Magna Carta, the English Charter of Liberties, didn't happen overnight. It was the culmination of a series of events, piled one on top of the other, over the preceding16 years. This episode is the beginning of that story. It is about the fall of the Angevin Empire. Henry II of England had amassed a vast empire in western Europe. It extended from the Scottish border to the Spanish border. That Empire was continued and maintained by his warrior son, Richard the Lionheart, who spent most of his life outside of England in continental battles and in a crusade. But Richard died on April...
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Law and Murder
The Rule of Law
In the 12th Century, the Rule of Law advanced when the Digest of the Roman Emperor Justinian was discovered in Italy 500 years after its creation. Young men from across Europe travelled to Bologna to study Roman law, including an Englishman named Thomas Becket. Roman law would become the foundation of the laws of many European nations. However, English law remained idiosyncratic. In England, Roman law was figuratively rebuffed. Yet, Justinian's Digest still indirectly led to the creation of the first book of English law, Tractatus de legibus et consuetudinibus regni Anglie or...
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The Apocalypse
The Rule of Law
Episode 2 is the story of the impact of the Norman Invasion on the Rule of Law in England. Saxon control of England was obliterated in 1066 by the Norman Conquest. The Normans' ancestors were Vikings. Technically, the liegemen of the King of France, in reality their military power in Northern France was enormous. They helped created the Capetian Dynasty in France when they changed their allegiance from their patrons, the Carolingians, to Hugh Capet in 987. They possessed the most feared cavalry on the continent, a brutal killing machine. They were led by the illiterate Duke...
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From Time Immemorial
The Rule of Law
This is a history of The Rule of Law. How was it created? Who were the people who created it? When were the principles of the Rule of Law created. As you may suspect, it required the efforts of many exceptional people in events that spanned 2,000 years to create the Anglo-American Rule of Law, the bedrock of Western Civilization. You'll hear about those events and the individuals who fought the great battles in England and America to create a system with as its central principle, as Thomas Paine said, "in America the Law is King." In this episode: "From Time...
info_outlineThe cornerstone of the Rule of Law and Modern Democracy is Magna Carta. It was a peace treaty between King John and the barons who rebelled against his dictatorship. The treaty was agreed to in June 1215 in Runnymede, a 150 acre grassy field on the south bank of the River Thames between Windsor and Staines. Nearly all of the nobility of England were present to witness the event. However, if it were simply a peace treaty, today it would be a shadowy figure obscured by the mists of time. It was much more. It is the Great Charter of English Liberties. English kings confirmed it sixty times. Its works underscore its significance in the history of the world; King John: "We have also granted to all free men of our kingdom, for ourselves and our heirs in perpetuity, all of the following liberties, for them and their heirs to have and to hold of us and our heirs."
England, the United States and every nation that has a government derived from England's is built upon the bedrock of Magna Carta. Provisions of the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution can be directly traced to Magna Carta's chapters.
This episode describes the events of June 1215 and highlights the links between Magna Carta's chapters and the foundational documents of American Democracy.