On 15 June 1215 the signatories to a momentous document gathered in a field by the banks of the Thames: a disgruntled King John, a gaggle of rebellious barons and a group of senior clergy led by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Stephen Langton. Magna Carta (the Great Charter) is widely regarded as the founding text of English liberties, a key part of constitutions across the globe and the inspiration behind the UN’s 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights. But all was not as it might seem from the vantage point of the present. The barons were far from being champions of the people. The Archbishop was not as impartial as he pretended. And even the Charter did not quite say what people later claimed it meant. How did it survive and take on a force and reach that the original parties never intended or imagined? Watch Magna Carta Unlocked to find out.
By any reckoning, Sir Isaac Newton is one of the towering geniuses of science. Active across an astounding range of disciplines, somehow he also found time to be an MP, Master of the Royal Mint and a magistrate. Yet to what extent was the fullest flowering of this driven man’s mind only possible in a particular set of circumstances? Was there something about the England of his day that made it particularly fertile ground for intellectual enquiry? Watch Magna Carta Unlocked to see the debt that modern science owes to the legacy of Magna Carta.
Behind an elegant frontage, England in the early eighteenth century was in a sorry state. There were echoes of our own age at every turn. Politics was corrupt, the democratic system broken. There had been a huge Stock Market crash. Many were trapped in addiction and despair. What had once been trusted institutions had no solution to offer. Then something remarkable happened. A thirty-five-year-old man called John Wesley started travelling the country. Wherever he went, he preached in the open air, telling people that there was a God who loved them and wanted better for their lives. Despite often violent opposition, crowds turned out, with many falling to their knees weeping and resolving to be born again into the Christian life. As individuals were transformed, so was a nation. Out of this religious revival grew the campaign to abolish the slave trade, a new impetus to the fight for worker rights and an emboldened commitment to a political voice for the common man.
John Wilkes is a comparatively little-known figure today, but in the mid- to late-eighteenth century he was at the epicentre of events which shook the British Establishment and helped prepare the ground for modern civil liberties. Wilkes was part of a successful campaign to compel governments to publish the full text of Parliamentary debates. He took the side of the American colonists in their disputes with the Crown. He fought for freedom of the press. And his actions led to general warrants (which named the crime rather than the alleged perpetrator and so allowed dozens to be caught in police dragnets) being declared illegal. Wilkes was the inheritor of a tradition which is grounded in Magna Carta but can be traced centuries earlier to the Anglo-Saxons. Watch Magna Carta Unlocked to see how that legacy helped shape the modern world.
The battle of Waterloo (the last engagement of Napoleon’s so-called Hundred Days) was fought on Sunday 18 June 1815, just south of Brussels in modern Belgium. It began late in the morning, as the French Emperor waited for the ground to dry after the soaking rain of previous days, but once battle was joined it raged until evening. What has all that got to do with Magna Carta? Watch Magna Carta Unlocked to find out.
Magna Carta Unlocked - Interview with Robert Kee
Magna Carta Unlocked - Interview with Keith Moore
Magna Carta Unlocked - Interview with Robin Eagles