Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should know a production of I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the Perd Carst. I'm
Speaker 1: Josh Clark, and there's Charles w Chuck Bryant and Jerry's
Speaker 1: over there somewhere, and this is stuff you should know
Speaker 1: the perd Carst. Did I say that? I think so.
Speaker 1: You sounded like Kristen Wiggs target lady character. I'm not familiar.
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Paired Coast. Oh no, way, that's a
Speaker 1: different character. What character was that? I think that was
Speaker 1: Mike Meyer's Scottish guy. No, not that jerk. I don't
Speaker 1: know who then, Oh, I'm blanking. People are screaming at
Speaker 1: their radio. Is that well known of a character? There
Speaker 1: a m FM radio just to listen to. How is
Speaker 1: this coming through? It's like when a fifty year old podcasts.
Speaker 1: M h, it's true, a fifty year of this podcasting
Speaker 1: before very ears. Right now. That's right, that's me. He
Speaker 1: can't the age me. Martin Scorsese running circles around the
Speaker 1: younger ones. Chuck, um, so, Chuck. Have you ever seen
Speaker 1: the Simpsons? Oh boy, you got one for me. Did
Speaker 1: you ever see the one about the murder House where
Speaker 1: Marge becomes a real tour You mean a certified real tour. Yes,
Speaker 1: of course, what are the kind of I don't know,
Speaker 1: remind me. Oh so anyway, Marge becomes a real tour
Speaker 1: and she uh, I think with Lionel Huts is realty
Speaker 1: company and it's like a kind of like a Glen
Speaker 1: Garry Glenn Ross spoof is like that that little uh subplot.
Speaker 1: But um, she she uh tries to sell a house
Speaker 1: that like a multiple murder was committed in uh to
Speaker 1: Flanders and his family back when Maud was still alive.
Speaker 1: And she does and tell them it's a murder house, um,
Speaker 1: and feels like a tremendous amount of guilt and then
Speaker 1: finally like confesses and I don't think they end up
Speaker 1: buying the house anyway, I don't remember, but it's a
Speaker 1: pretty good one that has almost nothing to do with anything.
Speaker 1: I could have just stopped right there where Marge became
Speaker 1: a real tour because she's taking the realty test and
Speaker 1: um Lisa comes along and teaches her how to how
Speaker 1: to remember things using mnemonic devices and in um. In
Speaker 1: one example she gives, she says, and you can put
Speaker 1: like something you're trying to remember to a song like
Speaker 1: in twelve fifteen running me Doude dudea, the nobles and
Speaker 1: the king agreed, Oh do do da day? That's great.
Speaker 1: That is one of my go to references for the
Speaker 1: Magna Carta. You know what mine is? Funny enough, man,
Speaker 1: that was a tortured intro. No. I thought it was
Speaker 1: great Simpsons reference is what it was. I thought it
Speaker 1: was fantastical. Thank you. And I've never heard that. I
Speaker 1: don't remember that episode and I've never heard that little jingle,
Speaker 1: so vintage classic Simpsons. When I think of Magna Carta,
Speaker 1: I think of Johnny Dangerously the movie with Michael Keaton,
Speaker 1: the very funny spoof movie, because at one point I
Speaker 1: think the someone is on death row and they're being
Speaker 1: read fake last rites by a fake priest as they
Speaker 1: walk down the Green Mile and they're just sort of
Speaker 1: making up Latin terms and he goes Magna carta master chargea.
Speaker 1: And I saw that in the theater when I was whatever,
Speaker 1: like ten or eleven, and I've remembered that ever since.
Speaker 1: It gets in your name and your your head, those
Speaker 1: two words they go really well together. They have a
Speaker 1: tendency to stick around. And then also like you get
Speaker 1: the idea when you when you kind of like Percy
Speaker 1: little ears up about this magnet carda thing that it
Speaker 1: was kind of pretty important. People people tend to put
Speaker 1: a lot of stock into it. Yeah, Uh, she's and know,
Speaker 1: and I'm looking and I can't even see what Magna
Speaker 1: carta what does it mean? Great Charter? The Great Charter
Speaker 1: of course. Yeah. And technically the name of the Magna
Speaker 1: Carta what we're talking about. We'll get into all like
Speaker 1: the little details and everything in a second, but um,
Speaker 1: it's called the Magna Carta Libertarium. So it's the Great
Speaker 1: Charter of Liberties, is what it really is. And a
Speaker 1: lot of people, like I was saying, they put a
Speaker 1: lot of stock into they basically say, you say that
Speaker 1: this is the well spring, at least in the UK
Speaker 1: and America and I and by extension Australia and Canada
Speaker 1: of human rights, of like civil rights, of the basic
Speaker 1: rights that every citizen has, that like that all kind
Speaker 1: of came from this document, and that before that there
Speaker 1: really wasn't that kind of stuff. And you have to
Speaker 1: really narrow your focus here because in this time period
Speaker 1: we're talking about around them, like twelve and thirteenth centuries CE,
Speaker 1: like England was still kind of figuring out which way
Speaker 1: it was going. At the same time, if you went
Speaker 1: to the Arab world, you would find half a million
Speaker 1: people living in some cities. Well, there was like ten
Speaker 1: thousand people living in London. If you went to the
Speaker 1: west to modern day St. Louis, the Cahokia Mound civilization
Speaker 1: had like fifteen thousand people living there. China had been
Speaker 1: running a bureaucracy for a good thousand years by this time.
Speaker 1: So this is new to England and the English, and
Speaker 1: there their descendants and ancestors around this this time, this era.
Speaker 1: But if you narrow it like that, then yeah, you
Speaker 1: can make a pretty good case that for you and
Speaker 1: me and those of us born in America, you can
Speaker 1: trace your civil liberties pretty directly back to this document. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And like even if the document itself as well learn
Speaker 1: uh wasn't necessarily honored initially or even later. Um, it
Speaker 1: was it was that seed that was planted that it
Speaker 1: had to be at least uh, and we'll and we'll
Speaker 1: see later on. You know it once it was in place,
Speaker 1: you kind of couldn't go backwards from there, even though
Speaker 1: some people did try later on, some royalty. It just
Speaker 1: didn't happen. So it's sort of drew a line in
Speaker 1: the sand and said, all right, from this point forward,
Speaker 1: at least things for people, any people other than not
Speaker 1: every person, but people other than royalty at least won't
Speaker 1: won't go backwards from here. No, And like you said,
Speaker 1: they tried it. Definitely wanted to. But when you lay
Speaker 1: down something like people have rights that are basic to
Speaker 1: them from the moment they're born, that's a tough one
Speaker 1: to repeal, you know what I'm saying. Once that's out there,
Speaker 1: that's that's tough to put it back in the box.
Speaker 1: And good, it's good for us, bad for despotic absolutist monarchs. Though.
Speaker 1: So should we get into a little background here, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think we should because we got we got some
Speaker 1: ground to cover. Yeah, so, uh, the Grabster helped us
Speaker 1: with this, and you could. I love it. You know,
Speaker 1: you can tell when, uh, when our writers are really
Speaker 1: into something by sort of how much background they give
Speaker 1: us on stuff before they get to this stuff. I
Speaker 1: think that I think that was into it. I think
Speaker 1: he was wearing chainmail while he was writing them. He
Speaker 1: may have been, but it did a great job with
Speaker 1: a setup. And you know, we we have to point
Speaker 1: out that this was a time, like you said, where
Speaker 1: there was a king that ruled the land and everyone
Speaker 1: had to do what the king said basically. And then
Speaker 1: you had uh, you know, you had people that ruled
Speaker 1: over smaller fiefdoms throughout the land, but they still answered
Speaker 1: to the king. But they had their subjects as well.
Speaker 1: But it was it was a bit of a mess.
Speaker 1: Like even though the king could kind of do what
Speaker 1: they wanted, the king usually knew like, hey, I can't
Speaker 1: push things too far otherwise it gets really bad for me.
Speaker 1: So let me see if I can walk right up
Speaker 1: to that line as often as I can in many
Speaker 1: cases as far as royalty is concerned, and sort of
Speaker 1: push things as far as like you know, ringing money
Speaker 1: out of people, uh for bribes or or quote unquote
Speaker 1: taxes or uh, you know, try and just ruling with
Speaker 1: a harsh hand, but not necessarily a hand that will
Speaker 1: be so bad that the people revolt. Yeah, that was
Speaker 1: a fine line. And so some kings in the history
Speaker 1: of England, we're really good at being kings. I get
Speaker 1: the impression that the more land you conquered in the
Speaker 1: name of England, the more people you brought under your rule, Um,
Speaker 1: the happier you could keep, the like the barons, the
Speaker 1: people who um own the land that that, you know,
Speaker 1: kind of all collectively made up your kingdom, the better
Speaker 1: off you were. But yeah, you still were going to
Speaker 1: need money to run things, so you're gonna have to
Speaker 1: extract that stuff. So you had to just push it
Speaker 1: just as far as you could. That was a good king.
Speaker 1: There were also plenty of bad kings who would go
Speaker 1: way past the line, and they were they they could
Speaker 1: be allowed to do that because in England, kings were
Speaker 1: divinely decreed by God. Their authority was derived directly from God.
Speaker 1: So whatever they did, no matter how unhappy that made you,
Speaker 1: God said it, So this king is allowed to do it.
Speaker 1: In practice, that didn't actually like work out all the time,
Speaker 1: Like it's not like the barons were like what are
Speaker 1: you gonna do? God? God said? But they there was
Speaker 1: still kind of that air that or around it. And
Speaker 1: at the very least, even if you didn't buy into
Speaker 1: that directly, that was the custom and had been for
Speaker 1: a really long time, and that's hard to buck. So
Speaker 1: you had good kings who still went up the line.
Speaker 1: You have bad kings who crossed the line, and when
Speaker 1: you put it all together, more often than not, that
Speaker 1: line was being really kind of made to feel claustrophobic,
Speaker 1: and so the barons would be unhappy. And they were
Speaker 1: the ones the power. So if you push the barons
Speaker 1: too far, they would push back, and then you would
Speaker 1: end up with things like written laws and customs and
Speaker 1: decrees that said the king won't do this anymore, right. Uh.
Speaker 1: And there's also a third group in there of kings
Speaker 1: that just weren't very good at their job. Like I
Speaker 1: think history often like they often overlook sheer incompetence in
Speaker 1: favor of you know, like this person did all these
Speaker 1: great things, or this person was an evil tyrant, and
Speaker 1: like some of them just weren't too good at it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the they like the day to day the Franklin pierces
Speaker 1: of the English king Lin. Uh. So we'll skip up
Speaker 1: to Henry the first uh alevend created the Charter of Liberties.
Speaker 1: And this was sort of if the Magna Carta was
Speaker 1: the seed of liberty for people like you and me, later,
Speaker 1: the Charter of Liberties may have been the precede to
Speaker 1: that seed in a way, because it is the first
Speaker 1: kind of official thing that limited the king's power just
Speaker 1: a bit. Uh, And in this case there were other things,
Speaker 1: but it did limit the king's power to appoint church offices.
Speaker 1: Um guaranteed that any like inheritances would be carried forth,
Speaker 1: and there were no bribes necessary. So just sort of
Speaker 1: like cleaned up the act of the royals in this
Speaker 1: sort of smallest ways. Yeah, because before it was like
Speaker 1: you could, if you were the king, could be like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't care, give me some money if you want
Speaker 1: to be legally married, or give me some money if
Speaker 1: you um wanted to be promoted in your church ranking,
Speaker 1: Like you could just extract money for anything. And so
Speaker 1: this is the first time where it was kind of like, okay,
Speaker 1: we'll go we we won't do that, we won't keep
Speaker 1: pushing things like you were saying. Like it just kind
Speaker 1: of cleaned up the monarchy and limited their ability and
Speaker 1: it was kind of a big thing. And again that
Speaker 1: came out of a bad king. That was Henry, who
Speaker 1: had to clean up the mess left by his successor
Speaker 1: or his predecessor, William the Second, his brother, who had
Speaker 1: been a bad king, had overtaxed, had overstepped the boundaries
Speaker 1: and now there had to be some sort of document
Speaker 1: created to say we won't do that again. This is
Speaker 1: where laws came from in England, like people overstepping bounds
Speaker 1: and being pushed back on right or the king just
Speaker 1: arbitrarily deciding things. So Henry one dies, uh, succeeded by
Speaker 1: Stephen the First. And this one was a little dicey
Speaker 1: because Stephen the first ascension to the throne was contested
Speaker 1: and resulted in a civil war called the anarchy. Uh.
Speaker 1: And the anarchy was was a mess. It was a
Speaker 1: pretty brutal, lawless time. And um, Stephen I think he
Speaker 1: wasn't around too long, but he was quickly followed by
Speaker 1: Henry the Second, who ruled for about thirty five years
Speaker 1: I think right at thirty five years. And this was
Speaker 1: at the end of the anarchy. But Henry the Second
Speaker 1: comes in and basically says, all right, the royals are back, baby,
Speaker 1: and there are gonna be a bunch of reforms here.
Speaker 1: We're gonna centralize our power. Things have gotten out of
Speaker 1: hand with his anarchy and uh, it's all under my
Speaker 1: control now. Um. And in a way this was it
Speaker 1: was good and bad. It's it's never great when someone
Speaker 1: assumes his absolute authority. But it's also better just to
Speaker 1: have a more structured, codified system than all these weird
Speaker 1: arbitrary laws that were kind of all over the place
Speaker 1: and scattered about before exactly. Yeah. So, and one of
Speaker 1: the reasons why Henry the second did that is because
Speaker 1: he was very much into adventurism. He would he would
Speaker 1: go out of England and try to conquer more lands
Speaker 1: and that was his big thing. Parasailing, that was his thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So he needed he needed some basically some some structure
Speaker 1: that he could set in place that didn't require him
Speaker 1: to be there all the time to oversee it. And
Speaker 1: some of that like actually kind of benefited people, um
Speaker 1: in part because like you said, it was it wasn't
Speaker 1: arbitrary anymore. And there were like some real reforms, like
Speaker 1: he set up a panel of judges that would go
Speaker 1: around and and basically carry out criminal trials. Rather than
Speaker 1: just people getting away with crimes or maybe being subject
Speaker 1: to mob justice, they were trying to apply some sort
Speaker 1: of actual justice to it. Um. Uh. You could now
Speaker 1: if you were a surf or a peasant, you could
Speaker 1: complain to the king and go over the lord of
Speaker 1: the manner that you worked on his head if he
Speaker 1: was mistreating you like that was brand new. And so
Speaker 1: there was like some good things that were set in
Speaker 1: place by Henry the Second. He wasn't like some benevolent
Speaker 1: guy or anything like that, but he he did leave
Speaker 1: that legacy and it was a it was a big deal.
Speaker 1: A lot of people point to his code as the
Speaker 1: beginning of English common law. Yeah, he was. He was
Speaker 1: not a great guy. He was in fact a pretty
Speaker 1: brutal uh person on the battlefield, and he would brutal leader,
Speaker 1: he would, and he and he did a good job
Speaker 1: leading on the battlefield, and he loved going to war.
Speaker 1: But he would cut the feet off or the um
Speaker 1: genitals from his enemies. Uh. He would you know, lock
Speaker 1: people in the dungeons. He was known supposedly for gouging
Speaker 1: out the eyes of a young messenger boy one time
Speaker 1: who delivered bad news. Uh. So he wasn't some great guy.
Speaker 1: And he was also like he had to finance all
Speaker 1: of these travails in wars all over the place, and
Speaker 1: that cost a lot of money. So a lot of
Speaker 1: what he did when he when he brought all this
Speaker 1: under his order, was made a lot of money and
Speaker 1: raised a lot of revenue. Uh, and was kind of
Speaker 1: just squeezing every last bit he could out of these
Speaker 1: landowners again with those kind of fees like you were
Speaker 1: talking about, like, hey, if you're a widow and you
Speaker 1: want to remarry, h pay me. If you want to
Speaker 1: inherit some land or a title, pay me. Maybe you
Speaker 1: can even and bribe me. I'm you know, I'm open
Speaker 1: to that right, which is arbitrarian and of itself, because
Speaker 1: the person doesn't necessarily deserve whatever it is they're bribing
Speaker 1: the king for an exchange for and that's you know,
Speaker 1: that's not good. It's also in direct violation of the
Speaker 1: Charter of Liberties that Henry the First had laid out.
Speaker 1: And now that there was that, now that that had
Speaker 1: been established by Henry the First, the nobility could point
Speaker 1: to that and be like, you're not honoring this stuff,
Speaker 1: like this is something we can hold your feet to
Speaker 1: the flames over. It didn't necessarily work with Henry the
Speaker 1: Second because he was such a strong king, but it
Speaker 1: was it was something that they could point to and
Speaker 1: they could say like this is wrong and here's why. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you know there's something I meant to point out
Speaker 1: at the beginning that that I'll bring up here that's
Speaker 1: really kind of integral to how all of this worked
Speaker 1: back then, is it was sort of a a three
Speaker 1: way dance between um, nobility, these really wealthy influential bearing
Speaker 1: and then the church. And like those are the three
Speaker 1: big pieces of the puzzle that like everyone kind of
Speaker 1: had to be happy among that group to a certain
Speaker 1: degree or there were big problems. Uh. And it was
Speaker 1: always sort of that dance with the royalty two sort
Speaker 1: of make sure that like they were extracting money from
Speaker 1: the barons, but they didn't want to make them too
Speaker 1: unhappy because I said, they would revolt. But you also
Speaker 1: had to satisfy the church, which technically was a separate entity,
Speaker 1: which we'll get to in a minute. But the push
Speaker 1: and pull among these three groups was really a pretty
Speaker 1: key thing to how everything operated back then. Yeah, um,
Speaker 1: and yeah, that was an excellent point because the church
Speaker 1: was like a state unto itself, right, it could make
Speaker 1: its own money. And um, this is at a time
Speaker 1: when the prevailing economic theory was that there was like
Speaker 1: a finite amount of money in the in the world.
Speaker 1: So when you were extracting money from like the barons,
Speaker 1: whether you were the church or whether you were the king,
Speaker 1: like that really hurt, hurt more than you know it
Speaker 1: does paying taxes today, because there's this idea that that
Speaker 1: like that was it there. There was like a zero
Speaker 1: sum game. Everybody was taking in exchanging from the same
Speaker 1: pot um. So yeah, if you could kind of balance
Speaker 1: all those three together, you had a pretty stable monarchy.
Speaker 1: But more often than not, it was like we were saying,
Speaker 1: people kind of push things over the edge. Henry the
Speaker 1: second definitely did that with the bribery, but again he
Speaker 1: was a strong monarch um and then he was he
Speaker 1: was succeeded by a couple of people that are kind
Speaker 1: of studies in contrast as far as kings of England go.
Speaker 1: Don't you think, Yeah, maybe let's take a break. That's
Speaker 1: a great cliffhanger. Who could these two people be? Laurel
Speaker 1: and Hardy C. C. De Ville could be the Hardy Boys,
Speaker 1: which like with Parker Stevenson and what's his other name?
Speaker 1: I bet you that's who it is, the other guy,
Speaker 1: poor other guy learning stuff with Joshua John. All Right,
Speaker 1: we're back Parker Stevenson and Fred Noonan with the two
Speaker 1: party boys. No, uh, you're talking about Richard, and then John.
Speaker 1: We'll start with Richard. Henry the Second died and his son,
Speaker 1: Richard the Lion Hearted inherited the throne, and he was
Speaker 1: beloved and he did a lot of crusades as well
Speaker 1: and had a lot of great military successes and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, I had to spend a lot of money
Speaker 1: to do so, of course, but he died unexpected lee.
Speaker 1: And then Henry the second, his his dad was Henry
Speaker 1: the Second. His son John took over the throne. And
Speaker 1: remember when I mentioned earlier that some some people just
Speaker 1: were not good at their job. This was John. He
Speaker 1: was just not good at being a politician, not good
Speaker 1: at being a king, not good at getting along with
Speaker 1: the barons and the church. He was just not cut
Speaker 1: out for it. Yeah, and he's the main bad guy.
Speaker 1: I think we I wondered if Richard the third was
Speaker 1: the main bad guy or the king and the Robin
Speaker 1: Hood legend is King John? Oh is it really? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Because I remember Richard the Lion Heart is like all
Speaker 1: fighting the crusades, and King John's running the show in
Speaker 1: a mean and incompetent way. That's who Robin Hood's fighting.
Speaker 1: And the Sheriff of Nottingham. But in real life John
Speaker 1: was just he was not meant to be a king.
Speaker 1: You know. He was Richard's brother, he was the younger brother,
Speaker 1: and Henry the second. Their father didn't even for one
Speaker 1: he didn't even name John after a king um. And
Speaker 1: he didn't give him any land um. So there was
Speaker 1: no no, no area for him to rule. He was
Speaker 1: sent off to like study with scholars. That's what he
Speaker 1: was supposed to be. So he was never bred to
Speaker 1: be a king, and he wasn't a very good one,
Speaker 1: regardless because of that or or just naturally. But his
Speaker 1: first nickname among the nobility was John Lackland because he
Speaker 1: didn't have any land, because they must have really burned him,
Speaker 1: you know, that's pretty funny. But he was terrible. But
Speaker 1: more to the point, like not only was he like
Speaker 1: bad with money and like he was a despot in
Speaker 1: a lot of ways too. He lost land. Remember I
Speaker 1: said the kings that were most beloved were the ones
Speaker 1: that like added to the kingdom. The ones that were
Speaker 1: the most despised were the ones who lost land from
Speaker 1: the kingdom. And that was what John did almost out
Speaker 1: of the gate. Yeah, he was losing land to king
Speaker 1: Phillip the second of France and and uh, you know
Speaker 1: ed points out and it's important to know here that
Speaker 1: you know, England and France back then were it's not
Speaker 1: like it is today, Like they were very intertwined. Um.
Speaker 1: England held a lot of land in the north of France,
Speaker 1: and they were constantly kind of going back and forth
Speaker 1: about like winning and taking land from one another. So
Speaker 1: it's it's you gotta have to kind of deprogram yourself
Speaker 1: from how you think of those two countries today to
Speaker 1: think about how it was back then. Um. So he
Speaker 1: was losing land to King Philip the second, and uh,
Speaker 1: Philip like to John's cousin, Arthur of Brittany, and he
Speaker 1: had a competing claim to the throne. So Philip was
Speaker 1: in Arthur's court. And you know, John just wasn't doing
Speaker 1: a good job. He was blowing through money he which
Speaker 1: meant he had to get more money out of the
Speaker 1: barons than even his predecessors did. And he was not
Speaker 1: winning land with this money, so he was he was
Speaker 1: just going down the tubes fast. Yeah. And one one
Speaker 1: thing I saw a check. Just want to mention these
Speaker 1: the English um were so intertwined with the French at
Speaker 1: the time that these kings that we're talking about, Henry
Speaker 1: the Second, Richard the Lion Hearted, h John Lackland, they
Speaker 1: all spoke French. And that interesting. The English king spoke
Speaker 1: French at the time. Oh sure, like when you go
Speaker 1: to if you look at any of the old movies
Speaker 1: that are historically accurate, it's really hard to make sense
Speaker 1: of any of it. When like people from France or
Speaker 1: sending their daughter to England to marry into It's like
Speaker 1: it's it's really confusing, and I don't know if it's
Speaker 1: about the family lines, but it's it is super confusing,
Speaker 1: like the um oh, like Catherine the Great. And some
Speaker 1: of this comes from watching TV, I'll admit, but that
Speaker 1: TV show The Great is really good because I think
Speaker 1: wasn't Catherine the Great Russian? Yes? Or she was married
Speaker 1: off to the Russians. I'm not sure she was a
Speaker 1: born Russian. I don't know. It's all just very confusing.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, but I mean that was a really good
Speaker 1: way to consolidate power into games. Even more land um
Speaker 1: would be to to marry like another royal family and
Speaker 1: just put your stuff together, make you make yourselves even
Speaker 1: harder to I might have gotten that all wrong, by
Speaker 1: the way, but it was off the dome as the
Speaker 1: kids say, hey, that's all right, man, off the domes
Speaker 1: pretty great, alright. So John is uh, you know, I
Speaker 1: talked about this sort of three prun thing. John is
Speaker 1: not doing well. He is ticking off the barons because
Speaker 1: he's having to squeeze more money out of them. So
Speaker 1: it's like, well, surely he at least did okay with
Speaker 1: the church right to keep that uh stool stable. Not
Speaker 1: true at all. Pope Innocent the Third was in charge
Speaker 1: at the time, and he appointed a new Bishop of
Speaker 1: Canterbury named Stephen Langton, who would turn out to be
Speaker 1: a big thorn and John's side. John did not want Langton,
Speaker 1: and so he got mad and basically took his ball
Speaker 1: and went home. Uh. He took control of Canterbury all
Speaker 1: the church's possessions and said, Lankton, you can't even come
Speaker 1: in the country. And so Innocent the Third said, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know what, I'm gonna issue a people degree that
Speaker 1: basically all church services in England aren't valid anymore and
Speaker 1: you can't hold them. And you know, if it was
Speaker 1: you and me, we'd be like, sweet, we don't have
Speaker 1: to go to church anymore. But it wasn't like that
Speaker 1: back then. It was a really big deal. Uh. Ed said,
Speaker 1: this was like dropping in ecclesiastical nuclear bomb into Britain
Speaker 1: and that's kind of true. Yeah, because also the church
Speaker 1: was a huge employer in England at the time too.
Speaker 1: So now all the people who work in the church's
Speaker 1: jobs are like, well are are are we valid? What's
Speaker 1: going on here? You know? Do we have the same
Speaker 1: protections that we used to It's it was a big,
Speaker 1: big deal. And yeah, for all intents and purposes, England
Speaker 1: under King John was at war with um, the Church
Speaker 1: under Innocent the Third and it stayed that way for
Speaker 1: a little while. Um, and they just put John that
Speaker 1: was it. That was the last box to be checked.
Speaker 1: Like he was at odds with absolutely everybody, uh, and
Speaker 1: was a very unpopular king by anybody's anybody's measure. Um,
Speaker 1: whether you were a commoner or whether you were nobility,
Speaker 1: or whether you were a bishop, you did not like
Speaker 1: King John very much. And then add to that that
Speaker 1: the guy that Um Innocent the Third appointed to the
Speaker 1: Archbishop of Canterbury. And this is also by the way,
Speaker 1: after the last Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Beckett had been
Speaker 1: murdered at the behest of John's father, Henry the second
Speaker 1: um murdered brutally too. I read a first person account
Speaker 1: of It's one or more ghastly murders I've ever heard um.
Speaker 1: But the guy who came in, Stephen Langton, he was
Speaker 1: like a progressive. He was basically writing about things that
Speaker 1: questioned the divine authority of the monarchy, how some people
Speaker 1: or not some people, but people had some natural rights,
Speaker 1: like all people had some natural rights that even a
Speaker 1: king couldn't violate. Like really progressive stuff. And this guy's
Speaker 1: coming into England at a time when it has one
Speaker 1: of its weakest kings in its history and basically set
Speaker 1: the stage for the Magna Carta to to uh kind
Speaker 1: of be written full stop? What else did you? I mean?
Speaker 1: And could I have dressed it up more? Put a
Speaker 1: little fruit on its head? Just your voice went up,
Speaker 1: So I thought that was more. I was using up speak.
Speaker 1: I was using so you might be asking yourself like
Speaker 1: kind of what's the big deal? Because things were a
Speaker 1: mess at various points in history, and there were revolts before,
Speaker 1: and there was unrest before between the Church and the royals,
Speaker 1: and was like why was this the big one that
Speaker 1: kind of made everything change? And there are there are
Speaker 1: a few reasons for this, um, one of which you
Speaker 1: know I talked about France and England being so intertwined. Uh.
Speaker 1: John lost land, but he lost Normandy, which was a
Speaker 1: really big deal. Um. The Norman's in then had a
Speaker 1: lot of land in northern France, like I said earlier,
Speaker 1: since William the Conqueror uh got control of Normandy at
Speaker 1: the Battle of Hastings. And the Normans were a tight
Speaker 1: group and they were very influential in England. And then
Speaker 1: when John lost Normandy, it was it was more than
Speaker 1: just losing land. It was it was a big deal. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they started calling him John soft Sword after that, did
Speaker 1: they really? Yeah, that was his second nickname, John John
Speaker 1: soft Sword. Uh. The church at the time, like we said,
Speaker 1: was was separate, and so they had their own set
Speaker 1: of laws, even they didn't have to. They had their
Speaker 1: ecclesiastical laws. So if a church official ran a foul,
Speaker 1: they were you know, they could say, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: the King isn't gonna declare judgment on you. You You come
Speaker 1: over here with us, we have our church law. It's
Speaker 1: probably not as stiff to be honest uh. And and
Speaker 1: basically John said, you know, forget that tradition. You guys
Speaker 1: are under I rule and my decrees. And again this
Speaker 1: just sent him further down the toilet um and then
Speaker 1: like I was into the privy yes um. And then
Speaker 1: add to that also that the the just the way
Speaker 1: that people thought about the monarch, like thanks to people
Speaker 1: like Stephen Langton, the new Archbishop of Canterbury um. And
Speaker 1: the fact that the the Henry the first Document of Liberties,
Speaker 1: a Charter of Liberties had had already been established. Like
Speaker 1: just people were just thinking about things differently, and all
Speaker 1: of this stuff kind of came together at this vortex
Speaker 1: um and there was there was a point where finally
Speaker 1: John was like okay, at the very least sending to
Speaker 1: be in with the Pope and basically knelt before the
Speaker 1: Pope and said England is a vassal state to um
Speaker 1: the church again, which is a big deal um. But
Speaker 1: it put put John in England back in Pope Innocent
Speaker 1: the third good graces and they were fine again. But
Speaker 1: that did nothing to help the barons uh. And as
Speaker 1: a matter of fact, um, the barons were just as
Speaker 1: put upon as before. But now John was even more
Speaker 1: emboldened by having the full support of the Pope again,
Speaker 1: and so the baron said, you know what, forget this,
Speaker 1: enough of this, it's twelve fourteen and it's time for
Speaker 1: some change. So they actually cobbled together uh a fighting
Speaker 1: force and took London bye bye by force. They stormed
Speaker 1: it and occupied London, uh, in open rebellion against King
Speaker 1: John people. Yes, that's true, it really was. This is funny. Well,
Speaker 1: it's funny to think of now. I mean, like ten
Speaker 1: tho people living in London, but that's just the way
Speaker 1: it was at the time. So yeah, you and I
Speaker 1: could probably take London with ten thousand people, but it's
Speaker 1: still significant to mention. Yeah, and are in our smartphones.
Speaker 1: That's all we need. Yeah, look at the boomstick. Have
Speaker 1: you ever seen a dog say I love you. Well,
Speaker 1: I've got a video of it. Oh my god, they're bowing. Um.
Speaker 1: So yeah, it wasn't a civil war, but it was.
Speaker 1: It was a big deal. It was an open rebellion.
Speaker 1: John knew this was not a good thing. So in
Speaker 1: twelve fifteen he said, all right, I gotta make peace
Speaker 1: with these people too, So let's get together. Uh, we'll
Speaker 1: get that Langton, guy that I didn't like at all.
Speaker 1: This shows you how much I'm coming. With my hat
Speaker 1: in hand, he can act as the mediator. The baron said,
Speaker 1: here's what we want. Uh, we'll call it the Article
Speaker 1: of Barons and handed that to Langton, and Langton said,
Speaker 1: all right, I gotta whip this into something that that
Speaker 1: John is going to actually live with. And so he
Speaker 1: drafted this initial document which included a lot of the
Speaker 1: stuff from the Charter of Liberties that dealt with a
Speaker 1: lot of this the you know, the laws that were
Speaker 1: sort of on the books, but also had some had
Speaker 1: some big ideas, like you were talking about about just
Speaker 1: general rights at birth of humans. And they met, uh
Speaker 1: ask Lisa Simpson where they met Running me Running Mead
Speaker 1: June ninet, twelve fifteen, and they signed over fealty to John,
Speaker 1: and they made copies of this thing, applied that Royal
Speaker 1: seal on it, and that was it. It was the
Speaker 1: Magna Carta, even though they didn't call it the Magna
Speaker 1: Carta yet. No, And um, I was like, why Running Meat.
Speaker 1: It turns out there's actually a few reasons why Running
Speaker 1: Mead had a history of being an ancient kind of
Speaker 1: council meeting spot. Um it was also nice place. Well
Speaker 1: it was a boggy meadow, um, which is another reason
Speaker 1: why I was chosen, because it would be a terrible
Speaker 1: place to fight a war battle. And then also like
Speaker 1: you could see basically in every direction from it, so
Speaker 1: you couldn't do a surprise at tack either. Wanting to
Speaker 1: fight in a boggy meadow. I thought it might have
Speaker 1: been like a really nice picturesque thing, but it was
Speaker 1: done out in the middle of nowhere where you could
Speaker 1: see everything. Yeah. Well I get the impression that it
Speaker 1: was picturesque still as well, but um that if you
Speaker 1: had a lot of strategic strategic um assets to it too. Okay,
Speaker 1: well that makes sense. Um. Alright, well I guess well,
Speaker 1: before we take our break, let's just talk about the
Speaker 1: fact that this first Magna Carta that was not even
Speaker 1: called the magnet CARTI yet was ignored. John ignored it.
Speaker 1: Uh innocent. The three said it's not even legal. Um.
Speaker 1: John was under durest to agree to this thing, and
Speaker 1: then a real full civil war called the First Barons
Speaker 1: War broke out and John died of dysenteri in twelve sixteen.
Speaker 1: It's kind of what ended the First Barons War. But
Speaker 1: this is all sort of preamble to the real Magna Carta,
Speaker 1: which we'll talk about in just a sec stuff with
Speaker 1: Joshua John. All right, Chuck, So well, well, let's talk
Speaker 1: a second about how the magnet Carta was applied shortly
Speaker 1: after John died of dysenterry um. But first you have
Speaker 1: to we should talk a little bit about like what
Speaker 1: it actually looked like originally, because like you said, it
Speaker 1: wasn't even what we think of the magnet Carta today.
Speaker 1: It had a lot of stuff in it that has
Speaker 1: nothing to do with nobody alive today. There is like
Speaker 1: the basically the King's strong arm guy who went around
Speaker 1: and like extracted money into orchard nobles. If they didn't
Speaker 1: pay up, he and his cohorts are named specifically by
Speaker 1: name as like they gotta go. There was stuff about,
Speaker 1: you know, if you were a widow, you didn't have
Speaker 1: to marry immediately, but if you did end up wanting
Speaker 1: to get married later, you still had to go to
Speaker 1: the king. There was about like land inheritance, all sorts
Speaker 1: of stuff like that that really would have mattered to
Speaker 1: a baron, uh, you know, a noble a noble person,
Speaker 1: a nobleman or a woman in England at the time,
Speaker 1: there were concessions. But then, like you said, there were
Speaker 1: big ideas too. But if you were like the average
Speaker 1: peasant working the land of surf, working in the land,
Speaker 1: in the feudal system in England at the time, you
Speaker 1: could not have made heads or tails of this because
Speaker 1: number one it was written in abbreviated Latin, which would
Speaker 1: have made it very hard to understand. But the number
Speaker 1: two it was also written as one long I think
Speaker 1: about three thousand word paragraph. Yeah that I don't even
Speaker 1: think have punctuation in it either. It was it was
Speaker 1: written like it was you know, by mad mad man. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like written on a big long pieced roll of
Speaker 1: toilet paper and that was rolled up. Uh it is
Speaker 1: now like if you read the Magna Carta now it
Speaker 1: is separated it into uh different clauses. But this was
Speaker 1: not the case at first. This happened years later. Who
Speaker 1: was the historian It was William Blackstone in the late
Speaker 1: eighteenth century. Yeah, basically said like I gotta organize this thing,
Speaker 1: like you know, this is gonna we we can't put
Speaker 1: the thing in museums. It's embarrassing. Yeah, like people have
Speaker 1: got to be able to make heads or tails of this,
Speaker 1: so that that happened later on. At first it was
Speaker 1: like you said, just this big long scrawl, and there
Speaker 1: wasn't just one of them. It's not like you can
Speaker 1: go to uh, you know, if you go to see
Speaker 1: the Declaration of Independence and at the archives in d C,
Speaker 1: like that's that's the one that's the master charge of
Speaker 1: the master copy. There were thirteen known copies in twelve
Speaker 1: fifteen of the Magna Carta, and there wasn't It's not
Speaker 1: like they had one and then they ran it through
Speaker 1: the xerox machine. They just they wrote it down thirteen times.
Speaker 1: They're all originals. I guess it's maybe it's wrong to
Speaker 1: say there isn't an original when there are thirteen originals.
Speaker 1: There's not a soul original. Um. Four of these have
Speaker 1: survived and they're little variations because they were written by
Speaker 1: hand and transcribe, but nothing that like cancels anything out
Speaker 1: is just sort of you know how somebody might transcribe something,
Speaker 1: and they're all considered for like legit correct originals. I
Speaker 1: think two of them are at the British Library of London,
Speaker 1: one at Salisbury Cathedral and then one at Lincoln Castle. Yes.
Speaker 1: And then if you go research how many Magna Carta
Speaker 1: copies are there today, you'll find that there's a lot
Speaker 1: more than four. And here you start to get into
Speaker 1: just how muddy the history of the Magna Carta is, because,
Speaker 1: like you said, when they first wrote this magnet Carta,
Speaker 1: it wasn't exactly like what we think of magnet Carta today. Um.
Speaker 1: It had a lot more provisions in it that had
Speaker 1: to do with the forest, and there were so many
Speaker 1: things rules and regulations about how to treat the forest,
Speaker 1: how you can act in the forest, if you live
Speaker 1: in the forest, who do you go, you know, claim
Speaker 1: a grievance to that kind of stuff. That a separate
Speaker 1: charter of the forest was created, Like those were basically
Speaker 1: moved out, and then the document became the magnet Carta
Speaker 1: that we understand it today. Um. And that was I
Speaker 1: think in twelve seventeen when that finally happened. Yeah, twelve seventeen.
Speaker 1: The charges of the forest was moved out, and then um,
Speaker 1: little by little this document kept getting like adjusted, added
Speaker 1: to as a new king came along. They would they
Speaker 1: would basically be like I love the magnet carta, I'm
Speaker 1: going to adhere to it. And slowly but surely, of
Speaker 1: the next couple of decades it became accepted and respected
Speaker 1: as the law of the land in England. Like it
Speaker 1: was a lot more than just concessions to end the
Speaker 1: Civil War, of the War of the Barons. It became
Speaker 1: established law in England. Yeah, and and just those words
Speaker 1: are very like it's easy now to sort of not
Speaker 1: think too much about what law of the land means.
Speaker 1: But back then that was a very big deal. And
Speaker 1: that this was the first time that laws came about
Speaker 1: that weren't directly from the king. Um. It wasn't royalty
Speaker 1: just saying here's how everything is, everybody fall in line.
Speaker 1: It was the people. And albeit it was you know,
Speaker 1: if you were baron, you had a lot of money
Speaker 1: and you know, a lot of political sway, it's not
Speaker 1: like it was It's not like these were the surfs,
Speaker 1: you know, like slinging hay in the hay fields that
Speaker 1: had any kind of input. Um. So we do need
Speaker 1: to point that out. But they were not royalty. So
Speaker 1: it was a big deal for the very first time. Um,
Speaker 1: actual um subjects of the king were weighing in and
Speaker 1: and successfully weighing in on on what the law should be. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And there were they were like the seeds to things
Speaker 1: that would become really important later, like the idea that
Speaker 1: um a council of barons I think twenty five barons
Speaker 1: um could could basically hold the king to account. And
Speaker 1: it was like the seed that eventually grew into the parliament. Um.
Speaker 1: There was another one. There were there were some other
Speaker 1: really big ones in there that that over time. One
Speaker 1: of the things that happened over time, I guess, Chuck,
Speaker 1: is it got extended to everybody in England, not just
Speaker 1: what they called freemen which were landed nobility. Uh. It
Speaker 1: got extended to everybody in England at least by twelve
Speaker 1: ninety seven when it was encoded into law in England.
Speaker 1: At the latest by like the Freds of fifteenth century. Um,
Speaker 1: it became just commonly understood that like those those rights,
Speaker 1: those laws in the Magna Carta applied to everybody in England. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, it was like this sacred document. And again
Speaker 1: when you you kind of had no choice when you
Speaker 1: came in there as a new king. Um, you may
Speaker 1: try and alter and change some things, but you couldn't
Speaker 1: refute the Magna Carta. At that point it was it
Speaker 1: became too important, even if other laws superseded it later
Speaker 1: on to the point where its actual laws in the
Speaker 1: Magna Carta were rendered useless in a lot of circumstances.
Speaker 1: It was a symbol, uh, And it had this, like
Speaker 1: Ed said, it had this really powerful aura about it
Speaker 1: because it was the first laws not decreed directly from
Speaker 1: the King's voice. So you couldn't go back any anymore.
Speaker 1: You could only move forward, even if it was even
Speaker 1: if it was by tiny increments were talking about, um,
Speaker 1: I mean the four hundreds. You know, this is a
Speaker 1: long time ago, and it's gonna take a long time.
Speaker 1: And Ed points out that, like we, humanity has always
Speaker 1: been creeping towards more rights for more people, uh, even
Speaker 1: if it's very slow and very clumsy at times. And
Speaker 1: the Magna Carta was sort of the foundation on what
Speaker 1: a lot of the modern rights that we have sort
Speaker 1: of lay. Yeah. Like, there's there's a couple that are
Speaker 1: actually still in English law. UM. Part of one the
Speaker 1: first clause which gives freedom to the church, UM number thirteen,
Speaker 1: which basically says that UM towns and municipalities have the
Speaker 1: ability to decide their own matters like electing a mayor
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff. And then the big ones. The
Speaker 1: two big ones that were really huge when they were
Speaker 1: codified in the Magna Carta back in twelve fifteen was
Speaker 1: Um Claus thirty nine, which basically says that you uh
Speaker 1: cannot be just thrown in prison, you can't be exiled,
Speaker 1: you can't have your land taken away. None of those
Speaker 1: things can happen to you unless it's through the lawful
Speaker 1: judgment of your peers or the law of the land.
Speaker 1: So it took away the king's arbitrary ability to throw
Speaker 1: somebody in the dungeon until they starved to death because
Speaker 1: they didn't pay him some bribe that he wanted. That
Speaker 1: was enormous, and that today constitutes due process under the law.
Speaker 1: And then also habeas corpus, where you can't just like
Speaker 1: put someone in prison for no reason or never giving
Speaker 1: a reason, and those are that's really huge, and that
Speaker 1: is where directly where we we get that from an
Speaker 1: America in the West. And the other one is um
Speaker 1: Clause forty. There's you you cannot sell and you also
Speaker 1: cannot deny or delay the rights that people have as citizens.
Speaker 1: You you, you can't do that. So that was a
Speaker 1: big deal. And then the idea that the magnet carta
Speaker 1: um directly lead to the Bill of Rights um is
Speaker 1: not an understatement at all. At the Constitutional Convention, when
Speaker 1: they were thinking of whether they needed any kind of
Speaker 1: magnet carta shout out because they had a mythical quality
Speaker 1: in America by this time too um to kind of
Speaker 1: keep the King of England at bay. Uh. They thought, well,
Speaker 1: we're not gonna have a king here. We don't need
Speaker 1: a magnet carta. And somebody very wisely pointed out, no,
Speaker 1: we don't have a king, but the government still acts
Speaker 1: at the behest of the majority of the people. What
Speaker 1: if the majority of the people try to infringe on
Speaker 1: the rights of others? We need something, And so they
Speaker 1: came up with the Bill of Rights directly descended from
Speaker 1: the magnet carta. So it is very much an important
Speaker 1: document for surely still relevant, still relevant as ever. So
Speaker 1: everybody go out and get a magnet carta copy, maybe
Speaker 1: a poster or a T shirt and rocket ouably, do
Speaker 1: you got anything else? I got nothing else? All right? Well,
Speaker 1: Chuck said he's got nothing else. Than that means it's
Speaker 1: time for a listener mail, I needna call this kind
Speaker 1: correction on Jaclopes. I can't believe we walked right past this. Hey, guys,
Speaker 1: a long time listener and super fan of the show.
Speaker 1: I feel like we're friends since I listen to you
Speaker 1: every day as I get ready for work and very
Speaker 1: much look forward to your conversations. So as your friend,
Speaker 1: I can say that absolutely love all your content, but
Speaker 1: found myself cringing throughout the Jackalope episode. You see, I
Speaker 1: am a the historic preservation officer for the City of
Speaker 1: Las Vegas, Nevada, and while the jacaloplore is not prevalent
Speaker 1: throughout Nevada, I still feel the need to weigh on
Speaker 1: a bit of misunderstanding about our Southwestern fauna. The jack
Speaker 1: and jackalopes is for the jack rabbit, of course, very
Speaker 1: large species of hair, not a rabbits in the cute
Speaker 1: little cottontail rabbit. The lope is for the pronghorn antelope,
Speaker 1: not a deer. You guys, these are two different families, gentlemen.
Speaker 1: The clue was right there in the name of antelope.
Speaker 1: How do we miss that it's not a jack of deer?
Speaker 1: I think we were so jazzed about even talking about
Speaker 1: jack loops that we stopped seeing the forest for the trees.
Speaker 1: Maybe so. However, a prong horn is not a true
Speaker 1: antelope even, but that's another story. And further, prong horn
Speaker 1: have horns, hence the name, which are affixed to the skull,
Speaker 1: which of course means that put horns on the jack rabbit.
Speaker 1: The prong horn must be deceased as well. However, dear
Speaker 1: antlers shed annually with no harm done to the deer.
Speaker 1: You can walk in any area where dear live and
Speaker 1: find antlers on the ground. Therefore, deer does not necessarily
Speaker 1: have to die to give up as antlers. While there
Speaker 1: are certain yeah, that's good, while there are certainly our
Speaker 1: taxidermy rabbits and hairs with deer antlers affixed to their heads.
Speaker 1: A jacklobe by definition as a jack rabbit with prong
Speaker 1: horn horns. I just wanted to give a little gentle
Speaker 1: correction on all that, but in no way diminishes my
Speaker 1: love for the show. Thank you for all you do,
Speaker 1: all my best. Dr Diane ce C Brand, Historic Preservation Officer,
Speaker 1: Las Vegas, Nevada. Excellent. Dr C. Brant. Dr Diane ce
Speaker 1: c Brand, Okay C. C. Brand, m thank you Dr
Speaker 1: C Brand, We appreciate that big time. Hats off to
Speaker 1: you for that gentle correction. That was really something. If
Speaker 1: you want to get in touch of this, like Dr
Speaker 1: C Brand did, you can via email, wrap it up
Speaker 1: spanking on the prong horn and send it off to
Speaker 1: stuff Podcast iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know
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