[MUSIC]So what actually happenedhere at Runnymede?>> What actually happened herein June 1215, was a series ofmeetings between the king andthe barons stretched over some twoweeks occupying pretty well the wholeof the first half of June 1215.The position was that the king wasbased over there, at Windsor, andthe barons had occupation of London.And their advance guard was at Stains, thetown a mile or two over in that direction.So, we have to imagine several weeksof American Secretary of State styleshuttle diplomacy, envoys going back andforth between the two sides.And that in the endsplitting the difference andmeeting halfway here at Runnymede.We have no eyewitness accountsof what actually happened,no eyewitness has written a description.But we can work out roughly,how the flow of negotiations went.By the 10th of June,a provisional agreement had been reached.That's the document known asthe Articles of the Barons, andit survives in the Britishlibrary in London.Then a few more days of fine tuning andfinally on the 15th of June,the final terms were agreed.And then there was some sort ofreconciliation ceremony between the kingand the barons, andthe king's clerks got busy,scribbling away, writing out copiesof the charter, and they werecarried by envoys to every corner ofthe realm to be read out in public.>> Were baronial rebellionscommon at this time then?>> Yes and no.Rebellions in England were no more common,no less common thananywhere else in Europe.A baronial rebellion in the Middle Ageswas in some sense a politicalsafety valve,by which people could let off steam, andthe king was told that he'd gone too far.They served that sortof political function.But what we can say, is that it wasa major difference between the baronialrebellions in England andbaronial rebellions elsewhere in Europe.In let us say, modern day France,barons rebelledin defense of provincial orlocal interests.The barons of Burgundy would rise up inrebellion to defend the privileges ofBurgundy, barons ofNormandy would rise up in defense of thebaron liberties of Normandy, or wherever.Wasn't like that in England.In England,when the barons rebelled against the king,they did soin the name of the whole country.When the barons rebelled againstKing John, it was a national rebellion,not a local one.It was a national rebellion,the barons acting on behalf ofthe whole political community,to secure a charter of liberties grantedto all the free people of England.>> So, that's one of the thingsthat makes it distinctive andmay well be one of the reasonsit's got such longevity.>> Absolutely.It shows the politicalmaturity of England.It shows England's precocious politicalunity, and it helps to explainwhy it was a document accepted by all,it helps to explain why it survived.>> Clearly there was a majorcrisis in England in 1215.What had gone wrong?Was King John really that bad?>> King John has had a bad write-upin history and he deserved it.There's no getting round the fact,he was pretty awful.He was slippery, untrustworthy,cruel, malevolent.Just to give an example, in 1208,he broke the power of one ofthe great baronial families of England andIreland, the de Braose family.The thought they were on good termswith the king, suddenly, in 1208,he seized their lands andlocked up William de Braose.But it wasn't just King John'spersonal unattractiveness.Perhaps even more important, he wasunsuccessful in war, and this mattered.Remember, he was the brother andsuccessor of Richard the Lionheart,the outstanding soldier of the age.He was compared with Richardthe Lionheart, and found wanting.The turning point of the reign I think,came in the year 1204,when he lost Normandy to the French.We have to remember of course,that in those days,England, the King of England ruledgreat areas of Western France.John when he became king in 1199,inherited a big empire,stretching from Hadrian's Wall in theNorth, down to the Pyrenees in the South.He owned as much of Franceas the king of France did.And of course,the king of France resented that.He wanted to kick King John out, andthat's what he did in the year 1204.King of France recovered Normandy andAnjou.And that was an appalling humiliation forKing John, even he felt the humiliation.And he was determined toget Normandy back, andspent the next ten years trying to do so.Building up a war chest andbuilding up a great army.And the culmination of thisstrategy came in the year 1214,when he launched a two-prongedattack on France.He himself went down to SouthWest Franceand attacked France from below.And his ally, the emperor of Germany,attacked France from the East.And the emperor got heavilydefeated at the Battle of800 years ago in July 1214, andthat was a calamitous defeat.It was actually one of the most importantbattles in Medieval history, andit represented total collapseof King John's strategy.He lost, he'd found pacing back toEngland with his tail between his legs.It was a, another appalling humiliation.And it meant that John completelylost credit in England,he was a totally discredited monarch.But the bills still had to be paid.The soldiers wages still had to be paid,they were demanding their wages.So, King John's tax collectors went outall over England collecting the money,but they quickly encountered resistance,people refused to pay.And the disaffection began in the North ofEngland and quickly spread to East Anglia.In October,there was a famous meeting at Bury St.Edmunds in East Anglia, where the baronsswore to seek settlement withKing John on the basis of the goodold laws of King Henry the First.Henry the First had ruleda hundred years before.This is very characteristic ofMedieval baronial thinking.You go to a lost golden age,an imagined golden age inthe past to validate the political demandsthat you're making in the present.Well, of course, King John didn't wantto have anything to do with this.But the barons pressed on,there was another meetingin the spring of the next year atStony Stratford in the midlands,where they renounced theiroaths of homage to King John.And that was the legal means which youcould employ in the Middle Ages, torenounce your obedience to the king anddeclare war on him.So, England was in a state of totalcivil war by the spring of 1215, andthe turning point came inMay when London openedits gates to the rebels, and that toldKing John that he would have to negotiate.In England in the early 13th century,monarchy was a dynamic force.It was a powerful monarchythat could make it in,make its impact felt inevery corner of the land.If the monarchy was weak, it didn'tmatter, people could just ignore the king.But precisely becausethe King of England was sopowerful, his reach was so extensive.If it's in the case of King John,you had a bad king.His bad kingship effected everyone.So, the monarchy had tobe brought under control.And the remarkable thing aboutMagna Carta, is that through rebellionthe king was brought underthe apparatus of law.Rebellion was used to createa constitutional meansof controlling kingship.>> And that brings an over mighty andunsuccessful monarch to heel.>> Absolutely, butdid it only for a few months.