All language subtitles for David.Starkeys.Magna.Carta.2015.1080p.WEBRip.x264.AAC-[YTS.MX].eng

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relations between a state

and its people can all
too easily break down,

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from bickering to riot, from
anarchy to bloody revolution.

The rulers, whether they call
themselves kings and emperors

or presidents and prime
ministers, are arrogant,

power-grabbing and often
corrupt, while we, the ruled,

can be disorderly,
irrational and bloody-minded.

But, 800 years ago in
england, one such crisis -

local, limited, particular -

threw up a document that has
become a kind of universal model,

a sort of blueprint.

They didn't get it right first
time, but constantly revisited

and readjusted, it has
become a working constitution.

Its words still retain their power
to quicken the blood, with ideas

to keep governments in check
and fill autocratic regimes with fear.

It's called magna carta, and it
matters as much now as then.

More indeed, perhaps, as we
have forgotten so many of its lessons.

This is the river thames,

and I'm travelling
upstream from east to west.

Steam whistle blows

I'm on this lovely pleasure
steamer, and nowadays, indeed,

the river is largely
a tourist attraction.

But back in the middle ages, it
was the superhighway of england.

It's the summer of 1215, and
england is bitterly divided about how

it should be governed and,
indeed, who should govern it.

It's what we might call
a constitutional crisis.

But it has gone beyond words
to the very brink of civil war.

Back there, some
20 miles downstream,

is the barons' main
camp in London.

And over there, some five miles
upstream, is the king's camp in the

magnificent, almost impregnable
fortress of windsor castle.

And here is runnymede.

"A new state of things
has begun in england,

"such a strange affair as
had never before been heard,

"for the body wished
to rule the head

"and the people desired to
be masters over the king."

So wrote a monk who witnessed
the tense confrontations on these

watery meadows between king
John and his rebellious barons.

This stand-off is the very
stuff of school history lessons.

In fact, it was just the midpoint
of a bitter power struggle that

would threaten to
tear england apart

and one that had started
several years earlier.

England in the 13th century.

Contrary to our popular perception,
this is not some dark age -

quite the reverse.

England is ruled by tiny
strips of parchment with

a government of
writing and sealing.

It has seen an enormous explosion
in sophisticated law, offering

justice, settling disputes, dealing
with an increasingly complex world.

But it is this almost insatiable
demand for a fairer society

that will bring people to conflict
with their monarch, king John.

To offer justice is
one of the fundamental

responsibilities of kingship.

And it was one that John,

whose tutor had been a leading
judge, found especially congenial.

It was also something
that people wanted.

However, law and justice
are a two-edged sword.

They're a vital necessity.

On the other hand, they can be
so easily perverted into a means

for the king to exercise
excessive and arbitrary power

and to delve excessively
into his subjects' pockets.

And king John certainly
knew how to abuse power.

A ruthless megalomaniac, he was
accused of murdering his nephew

and dishonouring
his noblemen's wives.

By all accounts,
he was a bad king.

For most monastic chroniclers,

John was the very
measure of human depravity.

"Foul as it is," one declared,

"hell itself was defiled
by the foulness of John."

John's many defects of character
- his violent rages, his lusts

and his shifty unreliability - also
damaged relations with his barons.

But their principal
grievance was to be financial.

John wanted to regain a
great continental empire

he had inherited but lost.

The expenditure needed
would be enormous.

From 1206, and following the
loss of most of his lands in France,

John concentrated on england
and on raising and hoarding cash.

He targeted everybody - nobles
and townsmen, Jews and the church,

and he used any and every means.

He was astonishingly successful.

He doubled royal
revenue and more,

and by 1212, he had
accumulated a gigantic cash hoard

of at least £132,000 in
coin, in castle treasuries.

And then he blew the lot.

In the summer of 1212, John
lodged an ambitious counterattack

against king Philip Augustus
to recapture his lands in France.

But it ended in disaster.

Horse whinnies

at bouvines, north of Paris,
in the summer of 1214,

John's allies were comprehensively
put to flight by the French king.

Very few medieval battles
resulted in complete rout,

but this was one of them.

A weakened and impoverished
king John returned home

to find his realm in disarray, his
angry barons now in open revolt.

This is where the real
novelty of 1215 began.

There had been plenty of earlier
revolts against royal misgovernment,

but they had taken the
form of rebellions in favour

of rival claimants
to the throne.

In this winter of 1214-15, however,
there were no such rival claimants,

and John's opponents risked
being rebels without a cause.

Instead, they took the
revolutionary step of rebelling

not in the name of a
person, but of an idea.

Led by Robert fitzwalter,

the self-styled marshal of the
army of god, the barons decided

they would demand the king restore
their ancient rights and liberties.

There were precedents,
and talk turned to the

charter of liberties granted by
Henry I over 100 years previously.

It seemed the perfect solution.

Armed and ready for war, in early
January 1215, the barons went to

confront John about their grievances
at the temple church in London.

John was there under the
protection of the immensely rich,

immensely powerful crusading
order of the knights templar.

The barons entered and
demanded John agree to Henry i's

charter of liberties and reaffirm
by oath their ancient freedoms.

He refused.

According to one chronicler,
he angrily declared he would

never Grant them liberties
that would render him their slave.

John countered with an oath of
his own, by requiring his barons to

reswear their traditional
oath of allegiance,

but with an extra clause -

to follow him not only against all
men, but also against the charter.

The two sides were now
further apart than ever.

Both now manoeuvred
for advantage.

John appealed to Rome,
the barons hit back.

They renounced their allegiance
to the throne on the 5th of may.

And 12 days later, their forces
took London. This was decisive.

The loss of his capital forced
John into serious negotiation...

And to runnymede.

The watery meadows were
a convenient midway point

between the two rival forces.

But places between
two armed camps,

each bitterly hostile to the
other, risked becoming battlefields.

Runnymede was chosen
precisely because it couldn't,

as the surrounding land
was and, indeed, still... damn!

..Is too wet and too boggy.

Horse neighs

there wasn't just one
meeting at runnymede,

but several, as the two
sides negotiated terms.

By 10th June, a draft
document, not yet magna carta

but an outline
settlement, was drawn up.

The king then confirmed
the settlement, known as the

articles of the barons, by ordering
his great seal to be fixed to it.

And here it is -
the very document.

It is headed, "these are the
articles which the barons seek

"and the king agrees."

And to show, indeed, to guarantee
that the king had agreed to it,

here is his great seal, with
the king sitting in majesty.

Now, most of the articles are
arranged like a shopping list.

They are written very tersely,
like a telegram or a tweet,

so that the lines are only half
a dozen or a dozen words long.

Now, the barons' demands
are very prominent,

but equally, these articles show
just how much further the barons

had had to go in appealing
outside their own ranks,

promising justice not only to
the barons but to all free men.

Well, there's an article
that deals with that.

In other words, even in
this sort of sketch form,

this series of notes
of a committee,

the embryo of magna carta
shows us that it is so much more

than just an appeal to
narrow, aristocratic self-interest.

So what actually did happen on
that famous day of 15th June 1215?

It's the date that textbooks
celebrate as the signing

of magna carta.

Except that it wasn't.

John didn't sign the charter.

There is no evidence
that the king could write,

and, in any case, royal documents
weren't authenticated with

the king's signature,
but with his seal.

Probably, indeed, to complete
the demolition of the traditional

picture, on 15th June 1215,
there wasn't even a charter to sign.

No original sealed copy
of magna carta survives

and there is no evidence
that one ever existed.

Instead, what happened on 15th
June was a binding agreement,

solemn on both sides between
the king and the barons, that the king

would issue magna carta and that
the barons would swear fealty in return.

The articles of the barons
were then quickly transformed

from a rough shopping list
into a smooth, continuous,

unambiguous legal
form to become...

..Magna carta,
the great charter.

In a dense, almost
impenetrable Latin text,

some 4,000 words were squeezed
just onto one membrane of parchment

made from dried and
smoothed sheepskin.

13 copies were produced to
be circulated across the realm.

For the barons, the clauses that
really mattered in magna carta

dealt with the inheritance,
marriages and ownership of land.

These may seem remote
now, but they established what

half the world, from
Russia to China, still lacks -

that the state can't help
itself to private property at will.

And then there are the famous
clauses which best have come

to symbolise the universal
freedoms promised by magna carta -

clauses 39 and 40.

"No free man shall be
seised or imprisoned,

"or stripped of his
rights or possessions,

"or outlawed or exiled or deprived
of his standing in any other way,

"nor will we proceed with force
against him or send others to do so,

"except by the lawful
judgment of his equals

"or by the law of the land.

"To no-one will we sell, to no-one
deny or delay right or justice."

There was, indeed, there is,
something here that really matters.

The sense that
magna carta protects

and defines those three key
fundamental freedoms of the

anglo-Saxon world - life,
Liberty and property - is spot on.

With the 800th anniversary,
the British library is mounting

a special magna
carta exhibition.

The centrepiece - one of
the original 1215 copies,

of which only
four still survive.

This is a document which
is in Latin, a language which,

nowadays, very, very few
people can read readily.

Do you think this
has an irretrievable

effect of distancing, of separating
and making it feel remote?

Well, it is written in medieval
Latin and it is written in medieval

handwriting as well, of course.

Which is even worse, yes!

And here it is on this
parchment made from sheepskin

and it isn't the most... in fact,
it is an actual sheep, isn't it?

We should see the head
there, we should see the legs

on either side and the tail
sticking out there. Absolutely.

And nobody could say that it is
the most beautiful collection item

that we have, but I
never fail to be amazed

by the impression that it makes
on visitors to the library and how

much people value the opportunity
to be in proximity to this incredibly...

The sacred text, yes!

..Incredibly famous document.

And people do almost treat it
with the sort of reverence that you

might expect of a sacred text.

But, back in 1215,

magna carta came close to
becoming an obscure footnote in history.

Publicly, John had
accepted magna carta

and reconciled himself
with his subjects.

Privately, he burned with
resentment and threw a characteristic

fit of rage, gnashing his
teeth, as a chronicler reports,

scowling with his eyes and gnawing
on the very twigs and branches.

He would not keep his word a
second longer than he had to.

John immediately
appealed to Rome

and to pope innocent III to
have magna carta annulled.

One clause in particular was
difficult for John to stomach.

Clause 61 set out how magna
carta was to be enforced.

It set up a committee of 25
barons to hold John to every last jot

and tittle by any and every
means, including the levying of war.

Now, the idea was seductive
but it proved to be disastrous,

because it tried to protect
magna carta by effectively

destroying royal sovereignty.

And no king, least of all John,
could possibly agree to that.

Pope innocent responded
swiftly to John's request to have

magna carta quashed.

He immediately spotted the
threat it posed to all autocrats,

himself included.

He sent a firm
reply in a papal bull.

Magna carta, the bull says,
had been "extorted by force

"and violence, such as would've
affrighted the most courageous man.

"It was unjust, illegal,
harmful to royal rights

"and shameful to
the English people."

So, a mere ten weeks after those
heady June days at runnymede,

magna carta had been declared
null and void and of non-effect

by the highest earthly authority
known to medieval man.

And, do you know, it
made not a jot of difference

to the behaviour of
anybody involved.

Both sides now
prepared for civil war.

John recruited mercenaries,
whilst the barons resorted

to the traditional
tactic of backing

an alternative
claimant to the throne.

In a measure of
their desperation,

they offered the crown to
a frenchman, prince Louis.

Louis had a vague
hereditary claim

but his real strength was that he
was the anybody-but-John candidate.

In the invasion we
rarely talk about,

Louis arrived in London
with 7,000 French troops.

Whilst John travelled north to
places like here at headingley,

to recapture the castles
of his rebellious barons.

The fate of magna carta
now hung in the balance

and it was fate that would
deal the decisive blow.

Thunderclap

on 19 October 1216,
during a violent storm,

John died unexpectedly.

Thunderclap

at Newark castle
in nottinghamshire

his enemies alleged
from a surfeit of peaches.

Birdsong

his nine-year-old son
was crowned Henry III.

As he was underage,
the real power lay

with his regent, William
the marshal, himself a baron.

He immediately re-issued
magna carta, but with a difference.

This is the tomb of William
the marshal, Earl of pembroke.

He was the most
successful jouster of the age

and arguably the man who,
as regent for the boy king Henry,

saved england, the plantagenet
dynasty and magna carta itself.

William the marshal wisely saw the
clause for a committee of barons to

enforce magna carta was dangerously
unworkable and stripped it out.

The result was an
astonishing reversal of fortune.

Henry, burdened with none
of his father's political baggage,

proved to be a much more
attractive king than John.

Whilst magna carta,

hitherto discredited as the
occasion of civil war, factional strife

and foreign intervention,
was suddenly transformed

into the squeaky-clean manifesto
of an optimistic new regime.

Not all the barons were
convinced by the regime change

and some fought on.

Steel clashes

but marshal, famed not only
for his political acumen but also

for his prowess in combat, routed
them at the battle of Lincoln fair.

Louis and his troops fled
back to the safety of France.

Peace and stability were
restored to the realm.

Then, in 1225, when Henry
III was old enough to assume

full executive power, magna carta
was reissued it its definitive form.

This time, the charter
emphasised that it was granted

by the king's full
and free consent.

The taint of war and coercion

which had dogged the
first magna carta was gone.

The charter had achieved
something truly revolutionary

and almost by accident.

The great charter,
despite its name,

contained no great general
statement of principle.

However, its multitude of
detailed clauses did imply one -

that the king, however
great his power,

however much
the law was his law,

was, finally, under the law.

Not surprisingly, kings, the good
ones as well as the bad ones,

found the idea
difficult to accept

and it would be disputed for
centuries in peace and war.

However, magna carta quietly,

but with enormous cumulative
effect, laid the foundations

of the two key institutions

that in time would bridle
the English monarchy.

They were both based here
in the heart of royal england,

westminster.

Colloquially, we call this building
here the houses of parliament.

Actually, it's the
palace of westminster.

But it was the principal
and indeed the only palace

properly so-called of the
medieval kings of england.

How it becomes a seat of
parliament is a very long story.

But the story, like so much
of our political structure,

begins with magna carta.

The demands of the great charter
led to an assembly of bishops and

barons who met to approve
taxation and sanction its collection.

This assembly was the embryo
of the modern parliament,

with its two houses of
lords and commoners.

The precedent of this relatively
painless way of raising taxation

was irresistible for
revenue-hungry kings

like Edward I and Edward III,

with their perpetual
endless wars

against the Welsh, the
Scots and the French.

Parliament used
the Grant of taxation

to extort concessions
from the crown.

Kings didn't like it, but if
they wanted the money -

and they almost always
did - they had to lump it.

Monarchs also found themselves
grappling with the new idea

of a legal system whose first
home was westminster hall here.

Magna carta called
for professional judges

and a fixed place
for the law courts.

Before, kings administered
justice themselves

and the courts moved with the
king. Magna carta changed that.

The king's law was becoming
the common law of england.

For hundreds of years magna carta
determined the rules of engagement

between the king and his
subjects, but it was not to last.

Fierce cries

four centuries on from the meeting
at runnymede, england found herself

in another crisis more
bloody and more protracted

than even the
confrontation with king John.

On the throne was Charles I.

The second king of the house
of Stuart, his reign began in 1625,

but it's hard to imagine
two more different men.

John, lecherous, murderous
and systematically dishonest,

was a pantomime
villain, whilst Charles,

dignified and devoted to his family,
was the very model of a good man.

All of which raises some
awkward questions -

why was such a good
man such a bad king?

And why does magna carta
wake from slumber to play

a key role in these
tragic events?

Those great creations of
magna carta, parliament

and the common law
courts still flourished,

but the real locus of royal
government had moved to

different institutions, to the
court, the council and the church.

And to a different place,
the palace of whitehall.

This splendid interior now
known as the banqueting house,

was the principal reception room
of Charles's palace of whitehall.

In the very latest classical
style, it's designed by inigo Jones,

the most fashionable
architect of the day.

Whilst the ceiling is painted
by sir Peter Paul rubens,

the most famous
contemporary artist.

But rubens' ceiling is
more than lavish decoration,

it also has a powerful
political message.

The central oval represents
the ascent to heaven

of Charles i's father, James I.

James declared that

"the state of monarchy is the
most supremest thing on earth,

"even by god himself."

Kings are called gods.

Ruben's genius transmutes
James's words into soaring,

swirling imagery in which kings
not only reign by divine right

but are divinities themselves.

And in whitehall,
Charles could be forgiven

for thinking that rubens'
extravagant painting

told no more than
the simple truth.

But only a few hundred yards
away, there was another palace,

a very different palace,
the palace of westminster.

Here, the king summoned
and dissolved parliament but

without the agreement of the lords
and commons, he could do nothing.

So, who was the
real king of england?

The magna carta limited
king of westminster or Charles,

absolute monarch of whitehall?

Normally, the choice never needed
to be made, but there was one

area of conflict which threatened
to destabilise everything.

Religion.

The tension had been present
ever since the reformation

when Henry viii made the English
king head of the English church,

giving the monarchy
huge new powers.

Under Charles I, it
became acute, since the king

and his leading subjects disagreed
fundamentally about religion.

The king wanted a
ceremonious religion,

that his opponents both feared
and denounced as Roman catholic.

His subjects, on the other hand,
wanted a stripped down, radical

protestantism that the king
sneeringly dismissed as puritan.

With the fire fanned by this
underlying tension about religion,

relations between Charles and the
house of commons quickly broke down.

Parliament refused
to agree to taxes

to pay for Charles'
military adventures.

Charles, desperate for money,
demanded customs duties

and forced loans and when a
few brave people refused to pay,

he imprisoned them
and imposed martial law.

But one man thought he had
the solution to the impasse,

sir Edward coke.

Coke was lord chief justice
and one of the most successful

lawyers ever.

He was also a brutal
prosecutor, leading the case

against sir Walter Raleigh
and the gunpowder conspirators.

Coincidentally, coke's legal
practice was in the temple

which had become
one of the inns of court.

Coke was the law.

Naturally, as a proud
as well as principled man,

he thought that the
law should be supreme.

So, just like the barons who
confronted king John on this

very spot long ago when
it was the headquarters of

the knights templar,
coke turned to magna carta

to bridle another
overweening king.

On 17th may 1628, sir Edward
coke Rose in the house of commons

and declared that magna
carta is such a fellow,

that he will have no sovereign.

The words were deliberately,
dangerously, disturbingly bold.

The sovereign was the king.
Now coke was declaring there was

another greater sovereign, magna
carta, which, as fundamental law,

neither parliament nor the
king himself could touch.

Coke took the key
principles of magna carta

and tried to turn them
into constitutional law,

into what would become
known as the petition of right.

Charles resisted as vehemently
as John had fought off magna carta.

But, likewise in vain.

Desperate for a
parliamentary Grant of money,

Charles gave his assent to
the petition on 7th June 1628,

though probably in
as bad faith as John.

In 1629, Charles did away
with parliament and the law

and lawyers, contrary to what
coke hoped, did nothing to stop him.

Matters came to a head in the
summer of 1642, when Charles

raised his standard over Nottingham
and declared war on parliament.

The bloody clash followed
that would tear england apart.

Though it would take seven years,
eventually the king was beaten

and for the first time
in history, in 1649,

an English king would
be put on public trial under

the watchful eyes of
cromwell's new model army.

Charles was brought under
armed guard into the great hall

at westminster here.

The king was dressed entirely
in black, with the silver star of the

order of the garter on his shoulder
and its blue ribbon round his neck.

He kept his hat
firmly on throughout,

as did his judges in a sartorial
stand-off of mutual contempt.

They, for his office of king, he,
for their claim to be his judges.

Worse was to come.

As a prosecuting counsel
Rose, Charles tapped him on the

shoulder with his silver topped
cane and commanded him to hold.

The counsel ignored him.

Then, as the charges
were read out,

the top fell off Charles' cane.

The king looked round, expecting
that somebody would pick it up.

Nobody did. Instead, he, the
king, had to stoop to retrieve it.

The charge continued that he
had employed a tyrannical power

to rule according to his will
and to overthrow the rights

and liberties of the people.

Charles' response was that
a monarch was not subject to

earthly authority and he
refused to enter a plea.

But here in the great hall,
legalities were soon set aside.

The show trial found
Charles Stuart guilty.

He was sentenced to death
for crimes against the people.

The place of his execution
was quite deliberate,

outside the banqueting house.

Passing under the
great Ruben's ceiling,

and his father ascending to heaven,
Charles stepped from a window

directly onto a high scaffold
at the front of the building.

This time, it had taken a civil
war and the beheading of a king

to enforce the
principles of magna carta.

But, the resort to violence
destroyed the freedom it

sought to protect, leading to
a military dictatorship under

lord protector cromwell, who proved
just as despotic as any monarch

and who famously denounced
magna carta as magna farta.

The restoration of the Stuart
monarchy after cromwell's

death, seemed a blessed relief.

However, religious
tensions resurfaced

when James ii secretly
converted to catholicism and then

married a catholic, sparking
panic among the protestant elite.

It seemed as though the bad old
days of the civil war had returned.

But James ii, in contrast
with his father, Charles i's

iron resolve, lost his
nerve and fled abroad.

The royal family indivisibly
united in the civil war split with

James' daughter, Mary, and
her husband, William of orange,

leading the resistance.

The result was a bloodless coup
which opened the way to a radically

new political settlement, an
updated version of magna carta called

the bill of rights in deference
to coke's petition of right.

The crown was offered to William

and Mary on condition
that they accepted its terms.

On the 13th February 1689,

it was back to the banqueting house
for the denouement of what became

known as the
glorious revolution.

William and Mary took their
place under the canopy on the dais,

the lords, to the right, and
the commons, to the left,

led by their respective speakers,
approached the steps of the throne.

The clerk read
out the bill of rights

and a nobleman offered
William and Mary the crown.

William accepted it and
the pair were proclaimed king

and queen to the
sound of trumpets.

Nothing would ever
quite be the same again.

England or Great Britain as it
would soon become with union with

Scotland, had exchanged
the sovereignty of kings,

not as coke would have wished
for the sovereignty of the law,

but for another sovereignty,
that of parliament.

However, coke's dream for magna
carta as fundamental law didn't die.

It was to change its identity and
move far away from its birthplace.

Runnymede is the
most English of places

and magna carta, the
most English of events.

But what perhaps is most
English of all, is that there is nothing

much to Mark the spot of one of the
most famous events in human history.

Nothing English,
but there is this.

It's erected in 1957 by the
American bar association to

commemorate magna carta,
symbol of freedom under the law.

It's here because magna
carta matters in america too.

It's our very first English export
there, because magna carta was

carried in the minds of the
English colonists themselves.

The settlers came
here to this wild

and untamed land for
many different reasons.

Some were economic migrants,

some were escaping religious
persecution back home.

But they all thought of themselves
as English, bringing with them

the rights of englishmen as
they set up their little englands

across the sea.

From the beginning, the idea
was formally written into their laws.

Starting with the
charter of Virginia,

drafted by Edward
coke himself in 1606,

the settlers were given the same
rights as if they had been abiding

and born within this,
our realm of england.

And the ark of the covenant
of those English rights was

magna carta, which retained
all its old subversive power as it

crossed the Atlantic ocean.

But these rights were to
be turned on their colonial

masters in one of the great
upheavals in world history.

In 1765, the government
of king George III imposed

a tax on the sale of paper.

The notorious stamp act produced
an immediate outcry that it was

against magna carta and the
natural rights of englishmen.

Tensions between the
governed and the governors

escalated into a demand for
independence, soon all-out war.

As the conflict raged, one American
patriot, George Mason wrote,

"we claim nothing but the Liberty
and privileges of englishmen,

"in the same degree as if we
continued among our brethren

"in Great Britain."

Soon it became
clear to those who

would become known as
the founding fathers, that they

would have to draft
their own magna carta.

This elegantly understated
Georgian building, built as the seat

of government of the
state of Pennsylvania,

is america's runnymede.

And it is here america's founding
fathers, principal among them,

Thomas Jefferson, whose cane
still rests across a desk, ratified that

most precious of American documents
- the declaration of independence.

But alongside the declaration's
thrillingly new or at least newish

claim, that all men are created
equal and endowed with certain

inalienable rights, the declaration
also uses a much older language,

as old, indeed, as magna carta
which Jefferson consciously invokes.

Like another king John,
Jefferson accused George III

and his government of
taxing without consent,

interfering with freedom of
trade and punishing in life,

limb and property
without due process of law.

The founding fathers
sat at these tables

and being
18th-century gentlemen,

they wore powder,
wigs and knee breeches,

but they were also
substantial landowners,

masters of dozens
of slaves, and so,

like the great land-owning
barons at runnymede,

they saw themselves as
cutting a tyrant down to size.

Today, Americans still take
their history, and therefore ours,

very seriously.

Magna carta was not only to
provide much of the rhetoric

of the American revolution,

the great charter also
remains fundamental

to the American constitution

and the everyday conduct of
American government itself.

I'm here in the crypt of the
American capitol in Washington.

Above me is one of the
biggest, most impressive

and most famous
buildings in the world.

It's the seat of the American
congress or parliament.

To one side is the senate
chamber, to the other

is the house of representatives,

and directly above me is
the central lobby or rotunda,

with its huge, massive dome.

Down here in the crypt is this -
it's a golden copy of magna carta -

complete with John's
seal, also in gold,

and it stands as a kind
of intellectual foundation,

timeless and incorruptible

for the soaring structure
of American government

and political ambition above.

For while the
American revolution

rejected English
political authority,

it did not reject the
authority of English law.

And to this day, magna carta,

with all its clauses, including the
removal of fish-weirs on the medway,

stands in full on the statute
books of 17 of the 52 states.

The institutions of
magna carta also took root.

Congress, where I've
just been, is the parliament.

The senate is the lords

and the house of
representatives is the commons.

Whilst the white house is
the seat of the president,

who is king George
III without his wig.

But this is novel and has
no real English equivalent.

It's the supreme court, and its
cast bronze doors have a story to tell.

The four panels on
the left-hand door

deal with the origins of
law in the ancient world,

but here, on the right-hand
door, three out of the four panels

represent the actual origins of
the supreme court in English law.

Down at the bottom, of course, we've
got magna carta - John and a baron.

Here, we've got the great
lawgiver English king, Edward I.

And up there,
on the third panel,

we have sir Edward
coke confronting James I,

and it's coke who
really matters.

Coke's attempt in 1628
to use the petition of right

to make magna carta fundamental
law inviolable by parliament

or by the king
failed in england,

but it succeeded in america
where the founding fathers

made the constitution
effectively untouchable,

fundamental law to be
interpreted not by congress,

still less by the president, but by
the judges of the supreme court.

And it is to magna carta

that the supreme court
judges turn again and again...

From 1790 to the present,

it has been cited an
astonishing 400 times.

But magna carta is not only a
mantra in the supreme court.

It is a ready-made banner,
quickly raised in the political arena.

As was the case
when another monarch -

only this time it was a
president, Richard Nixon -

thought he was above the law.

I have been guided by
the principle that the law

must deal fairly with every man.

Seven centuries have now passed

since the English barons
proclaimed the same principle

by compelling king John
at the point of a sword

to accept the great
doctrine of magna carta.

In 1974, facing impeachment

over his involvement in
the Watergate scandal,

Nixon resigned rather than
face the wrath of magna carta.

But in more recent times, a
much more threatening shadow

has been thrown over all
our constitutional liberties.

Siren blares

with the attack
on the twin towers,

the bush administration
announced america was at war -

war on terror.

For the foreseeable future,

the security of the western
world was Paramount.

Rights and freedoms - for which
the war was ostensibly being waged -

would have to take a back seat.

Accusations of torture,

waterboarding and
extraordinary rendition

hit the very heart of the
United States government.

But there were those who were
prepared to challenge the executive

in the name of magna
carta and the constitution.

As suspected terrorists were
interned in Guantanamo bay,

lawyers, working for free,

brought cases against
the bush administration

for unlawful
detention without trial.

One of the key lawyers,
David remes, visited the camp.

You were shocked by Guantanamo?

I was shocked, I was
overwhelmed... It was...

The men were so abject.

They were in despair and
the power exercised over them

by the prison
authorities was absolute.

Were you ashamed?

No, I was outraged.

You know, we come here,
we see those proud phrases

in which Liberty and freedom
and right and god and nature

are plastered over these
huge marble monuments.

Didn't the hypocrisy
stink in your nostrils?

Yes.

And what did you do?

I represented
these men in court,

I fought to have
them released, and...

I hope that the lawyers'
efforts and communications

had an influence.
I believe they did.

The supreme court did rule

that detention without
trial was unconstitutional,

repeatedly citing magna carta.

But victory was short-lived.

A lesser appeals court
bypassed the ruling

by declaring that - in time of
war, ordinary rules do not apply.

The supreme court apparently
ruled in favour of these men and yet,

nothing has been done.

Guantanamo is still there.

The shame is still there.

If I'd been able to sit down
with one of those judges

of the court of appeal, how
would they have justified it?

Well, the principle would be
that the courts have no function,

no valid role to play in executive
decisions in the context of war.

At the same time that remes was
fighting his Guantanamo cases,

britain, too, was facing
a parallel challenge

to its legal and
constitutional integrity.

In 2008, at the
height of the crisis,

senior politician

and then shadow home
secretary, David Davis, resigned.

This Sunday is the
anniversary of magna carta.

The document that guarantees

that most fundamental
of British freedoms -

the right not to be imprisoned by
the state without charge or reason.

But yesterday this house
decided to allow the state

to lock up potentially
innocent citizens

for up to six weeks
without charge.

The view that the then government
was eroding piece by piece

all sorts of our
civil liberties,

mostly through altering
the structure of the law...

How long you could
be held without charge

was the issue at point there

and it struck me as a
grotesque assault on liberties...

Directly on magna carta...

Directly on magna carta,
directly on delay of justice,

directly on the things
that we... We believe in...

And they're things that our
country has become famous for.

But the impact of David Davis'

own little act of jihadism, of
political suicide, was short-lived.

We have already taken a
wide range of measures,

including stopping suspects
from travelling to the region

by seising passports...

Every passing month brings yet
more infringement of personal liberties

in the name of
the "war on terror".

..If we are going to deal
with extremists of all sorts

in our society and uphold our British
values, that we are able to take...

What does constitute suspicious
activity that would warrant

that phone call to you?

Is it possible that we've
become complacent

about our long tradition of freedom
from arbitrary state authority?

Are we sacrificing more
and more of our liberties

at the altar of "security",

and perhaps even sleepwalking
towards authoritarianism?

Why as a nation that
was once so assertive,

so sensitive about freedom,
why have we become so casual?

Why are we prepared apparently
to sacrifice it without question?

Well, it comes down to this
problem that people think that security

is more important than freedom

and future historians
will look back on our time

and say the great success of
al-qaeda was not the people they killed,

it's the way they transformed
the western states,

turned them from being incredibly
freedom-orientated societies

to being rather more
introverted, nervous societies.

So, is it time to reawaken magna
carta from its great slumber?

Well, on past
record, perhaps not.

Magna carta has often
proved quite impotent.

Henry viii paid scant
attention to its first clause

to protect the
freedom of the church.

Nor did its ringing
declaration -

"to no-one will we sell,
delay or deny justice" -

stop internment in northern
Ireland or Guantanamo bay.

So, in this day and age,

is magna carta really
little more than a myth?

I spoke to one of sir Edward
coke's professional descendants,

retired chief justice for
england and wales, lord judge.

Occasionally people will
say that magna carta's a myth,

it didn't make all the provisions
that people attribute to it.

And in that sense they're
right, magna carta did not.

But when we think that what
we regard as precious to us -

precious liberties, precious
freedoms are threatened -

we think magna carta.

It's a banner, it
summarises our belief

that government
should be controlled.

It summarises our belief
in equality before the law.

Whether that's
historically accurate or not,

it means that
magna carta is living,

and if something is
living, it isn't a myth.

Magna carta makes no
grand, general statements

about Liberty and freedom.

It's not got right first time.

It has to be reworked
again and again.

And yet, the outcome of
this process of trial and error

is a profound change
of political behaviour.

Consultation and accommodation
between ruler and ruled

ceased to be exceptional crisis
management and have become instead

a matter of habit of how
we English do things.

But in this 800th
anniversary year, parliament,

our habits of political freedom

and the idea of england herself,

are all facing
acute challenge...

..Perhaps the most
fundamental of modern times.

Will the memory of magna carta
help to carry us through again?

It would be nice to think so.

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