Magna Carta Week: The Magna Carta Memorial: Past and Present

The Magna Carta Memorial

Runnymede, Surrey

by Emma Powell
Photographs by and courtesy Jayne and Adrian Smith

The 15 June 1215 is rightly regarded as one of the most notable days in the history of the world. Those who were at Runnymede that day could not know the consequences that were to flow from their proceedings. The granting of Magna Carta marked the road to individual freedom, to Parliamentary democracy and to the supremacy of the law. The principles of Magna Carta, developed over the centuries by the Common Law, are the heritage now, not only of those who live in these Islands, but in countless millions of all races and creeds throughout the world.

--The Magna Carta Trust

Jayne Smith (right) at Magna Carta Memorial
© 2015 Adrian Smith 

Runnymede. It is quite disconcerting to learn that nothing marked this historic spot, where constitutional freedom was born, until this memorial was built by the American Bar Association (in recognition of statutes of liberty that were transferred to the American colonies and thus their later basis of law and democracy) and opened in 1957. The memorial and site is today managed by the National Trust and is open to everyone, all year round.

John F. Kennedy Memorial
© 2015 Adrian Smith 

Steps leading to JFK Memorial
© 2015 Adrian Smith 

The area of Runnymede has much history going back way before 1215. Of course, there’s no forgetting its proximity to Windsor Castle where King John was staying during that world-changing event in 1215, from the Roman river crossing at nearby Staines-upon-Thames (modern-day Staines Bridge, once part of an important route out of Roman London to Bath), to adjoining Egham Manor, to which Runnymede once belonged. Egham, my birthplace, is now a small, bustling town within a commuter belt but geographically lies next to Runnymede meadows, along the ancient track we know as the A30. Originally Echga’s Ham(let), this ancient settlement became part of the extensive lands belonging to Chertsey Abbey at its founding in 666 A.D. Many Roman finds have been discovered over the years along with Saxon and medieval discoveries. 

View of the river from JFK Memorial
© 2015 Adrian Smith 

Another claim to fame for Egham is the fact it was the inspiration for the famous best-selling 1960 book Green Eggs and Ham by Dr Seuss!  Also known as American author Theodor Seuss Geisel who was briefly stationed in Egham during WWII, he found Egham not to his liking, despite being reminded how green and lush the area was. He is known to have said he did not like a green Egham and cited this as his inspiration for the afore-mentioned book. 

That other, more illustrious tome known as the Domesday Book notes the place as Egeham in 1086 and this is how, in 1215, King John and his barons would have known it. I like to think they may have procured provisions from here! Today, a sculpture of King John and Baron Fitzwalter stand in the town to commemorate the Magna Carta.

Also here were regular meetings of the Witan, Anglo-Saxon council meetings. The name itself, Runnymede, is possibly derived from runieg, meaning meeting place and mede, meaning meadow.  The water meadows have a long history of good-quality hay production, as well as further extending as low marshy land that went as far as what is now Virginia Water and even today, remain a flood plain.

View of Magna Carta Island 
© 2015 Adrian Smith 

From the memorial looking across to the opposite side of the River Thames, is Magna Carta Island.  Some sources say this is also a plausible site where King John signed the Great Charter (so named due to its length, not so much the detail!) but others seem to think it was an area where the barons could retire to. The Thames has possibly changed course occasionally since 1215, so it maybe this site was originally part of Runnymede meadows. Henry III is known to have met Louis, the future Louis VIII  of France here in 1217, and nearby are the ancient ruins of a Benedictine priory and a 2,500-year-old yew tree, both of which would have been witness to the illustrious gathering for the Magna Carta. 

So from the 13 June 2015, this area will be thronged with regattas, memorials, parties and remembrance. And rightly so.

The poorest man may in his cottage bid defiance to all the forces of the Crown. It may be frail, its roof may shake; the wind may blow through it; the storms may enter, the rain may enter – but the King of England may not enter; all his forces dare not cross the threshold of the ruined tenement.  

--William Pitt the Elder defining Magna Carta (via Daniel Hannan 12.6.15)

American Bar Association Memorial to Magna Carta information board © 2015 Adrian Smith  

The History of Magna Carta information board
© 2015 Adrian Smith 



Emma Powell has been reviewing for us since The Review's debut. She has since joined the admins team and you can find more of Emma's scribblings on her blog here.

Jayne Smith is an admin with The Review since its inception, and a great lover of history and cats. She maintains and manages several related Facebook groups. Jayne and her husband Adrian made a special trip to Runnymede specifically to make the photographs for this entry, for which we are very grateful. Hats off to you, Smiths!

Magna Carta Week: The Magna Carta - A Childhood Memory

The Magna Carta: A Childhood Memory

by Louise Rule

Back in the day when I was a gangling nine-year-old, with a mass of freckles and the ubiquitous large bow in my hair, we had a Magna Carta Day at school. We were all so excited at the prospect of this. It was 15th June, 1956, a Friday it was, and we were allowed to wear our best clothes for the occasion.

We were lucky in having a teacher who had the knack of making every lesson interesting. Thinking back, I am sure she could have made the telephone directory interesting. She would just sit on the corner of her desk, and, well, just teach. Time flew in her class. Teachers like that are a gift to a child. She was my gift, and she nurtured my love of history. I will never forget her.

HRH Queen Elizabeth II

Queuing for sweets at 
the end of rationing

So, to continue; there hadn't been much to celebrate since WWII had ended, save for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953, and another landmark of 1953 for us children was the end of sugar rationing. We formed endless queues outside the sweet shop to buy our humbugs, barley sugars, and gobstoppers. Just don't get me started on gobstoppers with a different colour for each layer.... Sorry, I digress... Magna Carta. We were all excited when our teacher told us of the poem that we would all learn. It was simply called 'King John', by Hugh Chestermann (b. 20.03.1884 - d. 03.11.1941). It can be found in Brian Moses' anthology Blood and Roses: British History in Poetry, which was published by Hodder Children's Books in 2004.

King John

We were given it as a print-out. The teacher put the copies on the front desk, and asked us to take a copy and pass the rest back. This we did, until we each had our own. We were a class in excess of 45 children, being 'baby-boomers'. We were informed that we would be reciting it as a 'round', where one child would recite the first two lines, then the next child, the next two lines, and so on. That is why it would be done as a 'round'. By the time it had been recited many times, it stuck in my head. Over the years, however, I have only remembered the first four lines, but on seeing it again, it all came back to me. 

So, the poem

'King John'

John was a tyrant, John was a tartar

John put his name to the Great Big Charter.

Every baron from Thames to Tweed

Followed the road to Runnymede.

Every baron had something to say

To poor perplexed King John that day.

"Pray sign your name," said Guy de Gaunt,

"It's easily done and it's all we want."

"A J and an O and an N" said Hugo, Baron of Harpenden.

Quietly spoke the Lord Ranbure, 

"Oblige Lord King with your signature."

"Your name my liege, be writ just here,

A mere formality," laughed de Bere.

"A stroke of the pen and the thing is done,"

Murmured Sir Roger of Trumpington.

"Done in a twinkling," sniffed de Guise.

Said Stephen Langton, "Sign if you please!"

So many people egging him on

I can't help feeling sorry for John.

(There is an alternative ending...)

Too many people he did wrong

We have no cause to pity John.

I think it is safe to say, that whichever ending of this poem you prefer, there has never again been a king named John.

I am sure that my continued love of history stemmed from my teacher's enthusiasm for our Magna Carta Day. It conjured up in my mind all the colourful costumes, and the striped tents with their pennants flying in the breeze. I had seen Quo Vadis and Knights of the Round Table at the cinema, starring Robert Taylor, and it was those Hollywood images that were in my mind.

The Great Charter of 1215 (From Wikipedia)

John met the rebel leaders at Runnymede near both the royal fortress of Windsor Castle and the rebel base at Staines, on 10th June 1215, where they presented him with their draft demands for reform, and the "Articles of the Barons". Stephen Langton's pragmatic efforts at mediation over the next ten days turned these incomplete demands into a charter capturing the proposed peace agreement; a few years later, this agreement was renamed Magna Carta, meaning "Great Charter". By 15th June, general agreement had been made on a text, and on 19th June, the rebels renewed their oaths of loyalty to John and copies of the charter were formally issued.

This from the Magna Carta Society:

[M]agna Carta matters. It is the foundation stone supporting the freedoms enjoyed today by hundreds of millions of people in more than 100 countries. Magna Carta enshrined the Rule of Law in English society. It limited the power of authoritarian rule. It paved the way for trial by jury, modified through the ages as the franchise was extended. It proclaimed certain religious liberties, "the English Church shall be free." It defined limits on taxation; every American remembers that "no taxation without representation" was the cry of the American colonists petitioning the king for their rights as free men. For centuries it has influenced constitutional thinking worldwide including in France, Germany, Japan, the United States and India as well as many Commonwealth countries, and throughout Latin America and Attica. Over the past 800 years, denials of Magna Carta's basic principles have led to a loss of liberties, loss of human rights and even genocide. It is an exceptional document on which democratic society has been constructed.

The original Great Charter was agreed by King John on 15th June 1215, when he acceded to barons' and bishops' demands to limit his powers and directed that it be sealed. This version of Magna Carta was revised several times in the 13th century. The 1297 version became part of English la[w.]

Magna Carta 1215

It is, indeed, a document that transcends all others, and the compiling of which has demonstrated how what we do now most definitely influences the future - not just our future, but everyone's future. It is like the ripples from the stone dropping into still water. If the Magna Carta had not been written, albeit amended, who is to say what our lives would be like now? It is only with the glories of hindsight, that we can imagine the destruction that would undoubtedly have occurred.

So, I say thank you to my teacher of 1956, for gifting me the love of history, and I say thank you, to every baron from Thames to Tweed, who followed that road to Runnymede, to make John put his name to the Great Big Charter, on 15th June 1215.

Louise E. Rule is author of Future Confronted. She can be found on her blog, Facebook, and Twitter.