The Magna Carta Project
potential impact: THE WIDER PUBLIC: The project website will make freely available newly discovered charters, letters and writs of King John and English translations of the various texts of Magna Carta (1215, 1216, 1217 and 1225) with their associated clause-by-clause commentaries and illustrative primary material (also all in English translation). These will be accompanied by an introduction, aimed at a general readership, to the political, legal and social history of the period, the reign of King John, the making of Magna Carta in 1215, the meaning of Magna Carta, its subsequent re-issues, its enforcement during the reign of King Henry III and its longer-term significance. The website will include a glossary of technical terms, a regular commentary modelled on the 'Fine of the Month' feature that was so successful an aspect of the AHRC-funded Henry III Fine Rolls Project, directed by Professor Carpenter. NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL CELEBRATIONS for the 800th Anniversary of Magna Carta (2015): The UK government has already initiated a series of celebrations for the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta. At a ceremony held on 12 November 2010 at the memorial site in Runnymede, the Secretary of State Kenneth Clarke and the Justice Minister Lord McNally both spoke of its enduring relevance in the twenty-first century (http://www.justice.gov.uk/news/newsrelease121110a.htm). As Lord McNally observed, 'The promises Magna Carta contains are as important today as they were in 1215'. The governments of the USA and numerous Commonwealth countries, including Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand and many African states acknowledge Magna Carta's influence on their constitutions. The project will make a valuable contribution to national and international celebrations in the following ways: -The project will contribute to a major exhibition (online and in situ) at the British Library in 2015 which will be part based upon the project's research. -The project will host a conference in London in 2015, one…
project status: Closed
type: Project
has project identifier: AH/J004170/1
abstract: Magna Carta is one of the most famous documents in history, celebrated throughout the English-speaking world. It is widely seen as the foundation stone of the British constitutional tradition in which kings and law makers are themselves subjected to the rigours of the law. And yet, there is a great deal about Magna Carta that remains unknown. There has been no proper commentary on the original 1215 issue of Magna Carta in the past hundred years, and there has never been a proper commentary on the 1225 reissue of the charter that became the standard version, parts of it still on the Statute Book today. Despite the fact that all four of the original versions of Magna Carta preserved from the issue of 1215 have been granted UNESCO World Heritage status, there has never been a proper edition noticing all of the differences between these documents. The subsequent reissues of the charter, including the definitive version of 1225, have been left unedited and to a large extent unstudied since 1805. No-one is entirely sure of the relation between these texts, or indeed of how many reissues, or how many surviving copies there are from the first century of Magna Carta. Since the 1830s, there has been no systematic search for documentary evidences for King John. As a result, historians today have only a warped and incomplete understanding of large parts of John's reign, crucial for the making of Magna Carta. Because no work has been undertaken on the handwriting of John's original letters and charters, several hundred of which survive in archives scattered across Britain, Ireland and France, we are unable to say who wrote Magna Carta or whether the four surviving originals were written by royal or by other scribes. The present project, which combines input from four universities and the principal modern authorities on the subject, is intended to appeal both to scholars and to a more general public. It will fill many gaps in our knowledge of Magna Carta in time for the forthcomi…
subject: http://data.open.ac.uk/ahproject/subject/94664
subject: http://data.open.ac.uk/ahproject/topic/104480
subject: http://data.open.ac.uk/ahproject/subject/103018
subject: http://data.open.ac.uk/ahproject/topic/125281
subject: http://data.open.ac.uk/ahproject/topic/29001
subject: http://data.open.ac.uk/ahproject/topic/67364
subject: http://data.open.ac.uk/ahproject/topic/95854