Realm Divided: A Year in the Life of Plantagenet England by Dan Jones

Author:Dan Jones [Jones, Dan]
Language: zho
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781781858813
Publisher: Head of Zeus
Published: 2015-09-30T00:00:00+00:00

*1 John’s advisers at Runnymede, as named in the preamble to Magna Carta, were: ‘Stephen, archbishop of Canterbury, primate of all England and cardinal of the holy Roman church; Henry, archbishop of Dublin; Bishops William of London, Peter of Winchester, Joscelin of Bath and Glastonbury, Hugh of Lincoln, Walter of Worcester, William of Coventry and Benedict of Rochester; Master Pandulf, subdeacon and confidant of the lord Pope, Brother Eymeric, master of the Knights Templar in England; and the noble men William Marshal, earl of Pembroke, William, earl of Salisbury, William, earl of Warenne, William, earl of Arundel, Alan of Galloway, constable of Scotland, Warin fitzGerold, Peter fitzHerbert, Hubert de Burgh, seneschal of Poitou, Hugh de Neville, Matthew fitzHerbert, Thomas Basset, Alan Basset, Philip d’Aubigny, Robert of Ropsley, John Marshal, John fitzHugh, and others of our subjects.’

*2 Despite what is often thought, written, drawn and believed, Magna Carta was never ‘signed’. In 1215 kings and other lords only used impressions of their seals and would never stoop to so lowly a task as writing, even if they were able. Writing was the business of royal clerks. Sealing was the job of a royal official known as a spigurnel. It was a matter of huge importance, for it was the indisputable symbol of royal approval for a document. Harsh penalties fell upon those who meddled with the royal seal: the chronicler Walter Map relates a story of ‘a clever workman’ who created a fake copper seal die to imitate that of Henry II. The king ordered the workman to be hanged, and although he subsequently took pity on the man’s family and commuted the death sentence, the forger was instead confined to a monastery, ‘lest his pity should appear over-indulgent’. M. R. James (ed. and trans.), revised by C. N. L. Brooke and R. A. B. Mynors, Walter Map: De nugis curialium: Courtiers’ Trifles (Oxford, 1983) 494–5.

*3 After John’s death the charter was twice reissued by his son Henry’s minority government. On the second of these occasions, in 1217, a Charter of the Forest was also issued. Magna Carta then gained its famous name, to distinguish between the two. For clarity and convenience I have used the term ‘Magna Carta’ here to refer to the charter of 1215 as well. Although in theory anachronistic, this practice is usual among all modern historians of the reign.

*4 Today four copies of the 1215 Magna Carta survive. Two are held in the British Library in London – one in a good condition and the other badly damaged by fire and a botched nineteenth-century attempt at preservation. (The latter copy once belonged to Canterbury Cathedral.) Another copy is owned by Lincoln Cathedral and is displayed in a gallery at Lincoln Castle close by. A fourth is owned by Salisbury Cathedral. The Salisbury Magna Carta is in a notably different pen-hand from the chancery cursive script of the other three. This suggests that at Runnymede the volume of work engrossing the charter demanded that other, non-chancery scribes were co-opted to help.

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