Magna Carta

Withnail

Well-Known Forumite
p02g7216.jpg


http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04wtchv

Melvyn Bragg begins a major new series marking the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta, one of the best known of all historical documents.

1/4 - 1,2&3 up now, 4 tomorrow

There'll be a lot of this sort of thing come June; so you might as well bone up on it now.

Not that it is a chore really - if you don't find it so. Which i don't.
 

shoes

Well-Known Forumite
Urgh... does this mean even more people bleating on about freemanship and how it means you cannot be prosecuted or fined or told off for doing anything at all blah blah blah yawn zzzzzZZZZZ
 

Withnail

Well-Known Forumite
Urgh... does this mean even more people bleating...
I suspect so...
... on about freemanship and how it means you cannot be prosecuted or fined or told off for doing anything at all blah blah blah yawn zzzzzZZZZZ
... not quite.

The last one is up now -
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04wwkh8
- and is probably the more interesting of the four (esp. for la Barg realising the error of trying to record audio beneath the Heathrow flight path). Definitely worth a listen if you are even remotely interested.

This one is still 'on the books' -
NO Freeman shall be taken or imprisoned, or be disseised of his Freehold, or Liberties, or free Customs, or be outlawed, or exiled, or any other wise destroyed; nor will We not pass upon him, nor [X5condemn him,] but by lawful judgment of his Peers, or by the Law of the Land. We will sell to no man, we will not deny or defer to any man either Justice or Right.
Kind of the whole point is that it meant that the King himself could be 'prosecuted or fined or told off' for doing the wrong thing - nobody is above the law, be they prince or pauper.

Ultimately it meant that 'we' didn't suffer the same kind of 'L'etat c'est moi' kind of bollox that the French had to endure - indeed when Charles I tried it on he was given short shrift, then a shorter body...

I must admit it i feel a bit ashamed that we Brits are less acquainted with this momentous piece of legal history than our US counterparts. One can't help feeling that the Restoration was a massive failure of imagination - the kind of imagination that the Barons showed that forced John to submit in 1215 was what was needed. What we got was Tumbledown Dick.

Listen to the goddam programme.
 

shoes

Well-Known Forumite
I might have to eat humble pie.. I caught some of this last week and was gripped by it. Very interesting indeed.
 

bpelectric

Well-Known Forumite
There are to this day many old law's still on the book's simply because they were passed by Royal Charter

Most of them you wouldn't get away with, one that sprigs to mind is in the Royal Charter Granted to Stafford by King John in 1206 were it states the town shall be a free Borough for ever, Yet were still clobbered for Council Tax
 
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