The History of Manchester

HISTORY OF MANCHESTER

ROMAN MANCHESTER

The name Manchester originates from the Ancient Roman name Mamucium, the name of the Roman fort and settlement, generally thought to be a Latinisation of an original Celtic name (possibly meaning "breast-like hill" from mamm- = "breast"), plus Old English ceaster = "town", which is derived from Latin castra = "camp".[14] An alternative theory suggests that the origin is British Celtic mamma = "mother", where the "mother" was a river-goddess of the River Medlock which flows below the fort. Mam means "female breast" in Irish Gaelic and "mother" in Welsh.[15] Manchester is also the 10th most common place name in the United States.
Manchester began when a wooden fort was built by the Roman army on a plateau about 1 mile south of the present cathedral about 80 AD. The Romans called it Mamuciam (breast shaped hill) probably because the plateau resembled a breast. The fort was rebuilt in stone about 200 AD.
Soon a civilian settlement grew up around the fort. The soldiers provided a market for the goods the civilians sold such as shoes and wine.
However in 407 AD the Roman army left Britain and the civilian settlement disappeared. The stone fort at Manchester fell into ruins.
In 7th century the Saxons created a new village at Manchester but it was tiny. The surrounding area was thinly populated and was mostly forest. The Saxons called any Roman town or fort a ceaster. They called the old fort at Manchester Mamm ceaster. The village nearby took its name from the fort. By the time of the Domesday Book in 1086 the settlement was called Mamecester. In time the name changed to Manchester.
There is a story that Reddish is called that because there was once a battle there and the blood left 'reddish' stains. It is far more likely that Reddish is a corruption of Reed Ditch.
In 919 the king repaired the old Roman fort as a defence against the Danes. It gave its name to Castlefield.

Early history
The Brigantes were the major Celtic tribe of what is now Northern England; they had a stronghold in the locality at a sandstone outcrop on which Manchester Cathedral now stands, opposite the banks of the River Irwell.[16] Their territory extended across the fertile lowland of what is now Salford and Stretford. Following the Roman conquest of Britain in the 1st century, General Agricola ordered the construction of a Roman fort in the year 79 named Mamucium to ensure Roman interests with Deva Victrix (Chester) and Eboracum (York) were protected from the Brigantes.[16] Central Manchester has been permanently settled since this time.[17] A stabilised fragment of foundations of the final version of the Roman fort is visible in Castlefield. The Roman habitation of Manchester probably ended around the 3rd century; the vicus, or civilian settlement appears to have been abandoned by the mid 3rd century although the fort may have supported a small garrison until the late 3rd or early 4th centuries.[18]
MANCHESTER IN THE MIDDLE AGES

By the time of the Norman Conquest in 1066 the focus of settlement had shifted to the confluence of the rivers Irwell and Irk.[19] Much of the wider area was laid waste in the subsequent Harrying of the North.[20][21]
A the time of the Normans in the 11th century Manchester was a small village but things changed in the 12th century. The population of England grew and trade and commerce grew rapidly. Many new towns were founded. The village of Manchester was made into a town in the early 13th century. The Lord of the Manor, a man named Robert Grelly built a manor house nearby. He also built the church of St Mary. He divided up some of his land into plots for building and rented them to craftsmen. He may also have started a weekly market. Soon a town grew up.
In the year 1222 Manchester was granted the right to hold an annual fair. In the Middle Ages a fair was like a market but was held only once a year. It would attract buyers and sellers from all over Lancashire. In the Middle Ages Manchester was, at best, a medium sized town. It was not nationally important. It is not known what its population was. An educated guess is 2,500. It would seem very small to us but settlements were tiny in those days.
In Manchester there was a wool industry. After wool was woven it was fulled. That means it was beaten in a mixture of water and clay to clean and thicken it. Wooden hammers powered by a watermill beat the wool. When it dried the wool was dyed. There was also a leather tanning industry in the town.
In 1301 Manchester was given a charter (a document granting the townspeople certain rights). Before that date the Lord of the Manor appointed a bailiff who ran the town day to day. Afterwards the merchants of Manchester were allowed to elect an official called a Reeve who did the job.
In the late Middle Ages water from a spring was brought along elm pipes to a conduit in the town where the townspeople could fetch water. The spring gave its name to Spring Gardens and Fountain Street.



A map of Manchester and Salford from 1801.
Thomas de la Warre, lord of the manor, founded and constructed a collegiate church for the parish in 1421. The church is now Manchester Cathedral; the domestic premises of the college now house Chetham's School of Music and Chetham's Library.[22][19] Manchester is mentioned as having a market in 1282.[23]
Around the 14th century, Manchester received an influx of Flemish weavers, sometimes credited as the foundation of the region's textile industry.[24] Manchester became an important centre for the manufacture and trade of woollens and linen, and by about 1540, had expanded to become, in John Leland's words, "The fairest, best builded, quickest, and most populous town of all Lancashire."[19] The cathedral and Chetham's buildings are the only significant survivors of Leland's Manchester.[20]
During the English Civil War, Manchester strongly favoured the Parliamentary interest. Although not long lasting, Cromwell granted it the right to elect its own MP. Charles Worsley, who sat for the city for only a year, was later appointed Major General for Lancashire, Cheshire and Staffordshire during the Rule of the Major Generals. He was a diligent puritan, turning out ale houses and banning the celebration of Christmas; he died in 1656.[25]
Significant quantities of cotton began to be used after about 1600, firstly in linen/cotton fustians, but by around 1750 pure cotton fabrics were being produced and cotton had overtaken wool in importance.[19] The Irwell and Mersey were made navigable by 1736, opening a route from Manchester to the sea docks on the Mersey. The Bridgewater Canal, Britain's first wholly artificial waterway, was opened in 1761, bringing coal from mines at Worsley to central Manchester. The canal was extended to the Mersey at Runcorn by 1776. The combination of competition and improved efficiency halved the cost of coal and halved the transport cost of raw cotton.[19][22] Manchester became the dominant marketplace for textiles produced in the surrounding towns.[19] A commodities exchange, opened in 1729,[20] and numerous large warehouses, aided commerce.
MANCHESTER IN THE 16th AND 17th CENTURIES
A grammar school was founded in Manchester in 1515 by Hugh Oldham, bishop of Exeter. During the 16th century and the 17th Manchester grew steadily larger and more important. By the late 16th century it may have had a population of 4,000. By the mid 17th century it probably had about 5,000 inhabitants.
However, it still wasn't a particularly large town. It may have been important locally but it wasn't very important nationally. About 1540 a writer described Manchester: (In this history I have changed the words of old writers slightly to make them easier to read) 'Manchester, on the south side of the Irwell is the fairest, best built, busiest and most populous town in Lancashire'.
In 1603 Manchester suffered an outbreak of plague, which may have killed one quarter of the population. However the town soon recovered. There were always plenty of poor people in the countryside willing to come and work in the town and replace the dead.
Manchester was famous for wool and also for cotton. From 1637 silk was woven in the town.
Then in 1642 came civil war between king and parliament. Manchester sided with parliament and the people erected wooden posts linked by chains around the town to stop royalist cavalry. They also erected earth ramparts to protect the town. The royalists attacked on 25 September but were repulsed. They made several attempts to take Manchester by storm but each time they were driven back. Eventually, on 1 October they gave up and left. Manchester remained in parliamentary hands for the rest of the war but it suffered from disruption to trade.
Manchester also suffered from an outbreak of plague in 1645.
Chethams Hospital (a school for poor children) was founded in 1656.
At the end of the 17th century Celia Fiennes, the travel writer described the town: 'Manchester looks exceedingly well as you enter. Very substantial buildings, the houses are not very lofty but mostly of brick and stone. The old houses are timber. There is a very large church, all stone and it stands high (above the town) so that by walking around the churchyard you see the whole town. This is a thriving place. The market is large it takes up 2 streets.'
MANCHESTER IN THE 18th CENTURY
In the early 18th century Manchester probably had a population of around 10,000. It was still a medium sized town. However in the late 18th century the industrial revolution began. The population of Manchester soared and by the end of the century it had reached 70,000.
During the Industrial Revolution Manchester became the focal point of the northern cotton trade. Inventions like Hargreaves’ Spinning Jenny and Arkwright’s water frame changed the face of the world and Manchester was at the forefront of that of the technologically advancement of the 18th century.

A Spinning Jenny
In 1757 the official census put the population of Manchester at 17,101 and for any of those citizens wishing to make the 180-mile journey to London they would have the dangerous three-day coach journey, constantly at risk from attack from highwaymen.
In 1761 the Bridgewater Canal was opened. It was the first modern artificial waterway and linked Manchester to the town of Worsley but it was six years later with the Spinning Jenny that really put Manchester on the map for ever.
Now Manchester was growing a growing city and this was underlined by the opening of the first bank in 1771 while the population was fast approaching the 22,000 mark.
Ten years later saw the publication of Manchester’s first newspaper, the Manchester Chronicle which eventually ceased publication in 1838, by which time the census put the population of the city at over 180,000 despite a serious outbreak of cholera some six years previously.
Manchester continued to be famous for manufacturing wool, cotton, linen and silk. In 1729 a cotton exchange was built where cotton could be bought and sold. In the late 18th century, with the coming of the industrial revolution, the textiles industry boomed.
There were some improvements in Manchester during the 18th century. St Ann’s Church was built in 1712.
The first newspaper in Manchester appeared in 1719.
A quay was built on the Irwell in 1735. In 1761 the Bridgewater canal was built to bring coal from a coalfield to Manchester.
An infirmary was built in 1752.
The first theatre in Manchester opened in 1753.
By 1756 the population had risen to over 16,000 (including Salford).
In 1792 an act of parliament formed a body of men to clean and light the streets (with oil lamps). After 1792 night watchmen patrolled the streets of Manchester. (Although it is doubtful if they were very effective!).
Heaton Hall was built in 1772.
In 1780, Richard Arkwright began construction of Manchester's first cotton mill.[22][20]
MANCHESTER IN THE 19th CENTURY

One of the most notorious episodes in Manchester's history occurred on 16 August 1819. Tens of thousands of people gathered on St Peters field to hear radical speakers including Henry Hunt. The local magistrates sent the Manchester Yeomanry to arrest the speakers. However, when they were harassed by the crowd the yeomanry drew their swords and started slashing. The magistrates sent in the 15th hussars to disperse the crowd. They did so with their swords. Eleven people died and more than 600 were wounded. Bitterly the people called the massacre Peterloo after Waterloo.
In the 19th century the population of Manchester soared. From 70,000 in 1801 it rose to 108,000 in 1821. It then rose to 142,000 in 1831. (Part of the rise in population was due to very poor Irish immigrants).
In 1816 a water company began supplying piped water through iron pipes (for those who could afford to be connected). In the 1820s Manchester gained gas street lights.
However like all 19th century towns Manchester had dreadful slums. Some streets were unpaved. In some of them rubbish such as rotting vegetables was piled in heaps. It was only removed at intervals to be sold as fertiliser. People used cesspits, which were only cleaned infrequently. The worst slums were the cellar dwellings. Whole families lived in 1 room cellars. Sometimes they had no furniture and slept on piles of straw. They were damp and unventilated.
Because of these horrid conditions disease was rife. In 1832 a cholera epidemic in Manchester killed 674 people.
However there were some improvements in Manchester in the early 19th century. The Manchester Chamber of Commerce was created in 1820. The Manchester Guardian began publication in 1821.
From 1828 horse drawn buses ran in the streets of Manchester. In 1830 a railway to Liverpool opened.
The Royal Institution for the promotion of Literature, Science and the Arts was built in 1829. It was made an art gallery in 1882. A Natural History Museum opened in Manchester in 1835.
A corn exchange where grain could be bought and sold was built in 1837.
In 1838 Manchester was made a borough for the first time.
In 1846 the first public parks in Manchester were created, Peel Park, Queens Park and Phillips Park.
After 1845 the council took responsibility for removing refuse. They also removed sewage. In those days some people had cesspits. Others had a bucket with a grid on the bottom. The urine would soak into the soil while the excrement was caught. At night a horse and cart came round and men removed the 'night soil'. (Everyone kept their windows closed when the 'nightsoilmen' came! In 1851 the council took over the towns water supply.
The Church of St Mary was made a cathedral in 1847. A tower was added in 1868.
In the early 19th century Manchester became world famous as a manufacturing centre. Wool, silk and cotton were manufactured and vast numbers of working people worked 12 hour days in the mills. There was also a paper making industry and iron foundries.

Sir John Dalton
1844 saw the death of John Dalton who years earlier had had come up with the first table of atomic weights of elements and atomic theory. He was buried in Ardwick cemetery.
By the end of 1853 Manchester was a declared a city and eight years later the city was showing off its wealth courtesy of the cotton industry with the opening of Watt’s warehouse, by far the grandest of cotton warehouses yet erected. It is now the Britannia Hotel on Portland Street.

By 1851 the population of Manchester had reached 186,000. In the late 19th century the population was boosted by the arrival of Jews fleeing persecution in Eastern Europe.
The first public library in Manchester opened in 1852.
In 1853 Manchester was made a city. The town hall was built in 1877. A technical school was built in 1892.
In 1894 the Manchester Ship Canal opened. This turned Manchester into an inland port.

Industrial Revolution


Cotton mills in Ancoats about 1820.


Manchester from Kersal Moor, by William Wylde in 1857. Manchester acquired the nickname Cottonopolis during the early 19th century owing to its sprawl of textile factories.
Much of Manchester's history is concerned with textile manufacture during the Industrial Revolution. The great majority of cotton spinning took place in the towns of south Lancashire and north Cheshire, and Manchester was for a time the most productive centre of cotton processing,[26] and later the world's largest marketplace for cotton goods.[19][27] Manchester was dubbed "Cottonopolis" and "Warehouse City" during the Victorian era.[26]
Manchester began expanding "at an astonishing rate" around the turn of the 19th century as part of a process of unplanned urbanisation [28] brought on by the Industrial Revolution.[29] It developed a wide range of industries, so that by 1835 "Manchester was without challenge the first and greatest industrial city in the world."[27] Engineering firms initially made machines for the cotton trade, but diversified into general manufacture. Similarly, the chemical industry started by producing bleaches and dyes, but expanded into other areas. Commerce was supported by financial service industries such as banking and insurance. Trade, and feeding the growing population, required a large transport and distribution infrastructure: the canal system was extended, and Manchester became one end of the world's first intercity passenger railway—the Liverpool and Manchester Railway. Competition between the various forms of transport kept costs down.[19] In 1878 the GPO (the forerunner of British Telecom) provided its first telephones to a firm in Manchester.[30]
The Manchester Ship Canal was created by canalisation of the Rivers Irwell and Mersey for 36 miles (58 km) from Salford to the Mersey estuary. This enabled ocean going ships to sail right into the Port of Manchester. On the canal's banks, just outside the borough, the world's first industrial estate was created at Trafford Park.[19] Large quantities of machinery, including cotton processing plant, were exported around the world.


The Peterloo Massacre of 1819 saw 15 deaths and several hundred injured.
A centre of capitalism, Manchester was frequented by bread and labour riots, as well as calls for greater political recognition by the city's working and non-titled classes. The most famous example ended in the Peterloo Massacre on 16 August 1819. Manchester was the subject of Friedrich Engels' The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844; Engels himself spent much of his life in and around Manchester.[31] The first Trades Union Congress was held in Manchester (at the Mechanics' Institute, David Street), from 2 to 6 June 1868. Manchester was also an important cradle of the Labour Party and the Suffragette Movement.[32]
At that time, it seemed a place in which anything could happen—new industrial processes, new ways of thinking (the Manchester School, promoting free trade and laissez-faire), new classes or groups in society, new religious sects, and new forms of labour organisation. It attracted educated visitors from all parts of Britain and Europe. A saying capturing this sense of innovation survives today: "What Manchester does today, the rest of the world does tomorrow."[33] Manchester's golden age was perhaps the last quarter of the 19th century. Many of the great public buildings (including the Town Hall) date from then. The city's cosmopolitan atmosphere contributed to a vibrant culture, which included the Hallé Orchestra. In 1889, when county councils were created in England, the municipal borough became a county borough with even greater autonomy.
Although the Industrial Revolution brought wealth to the city, it also brought poverty and squalor to a large part of the population. Historian Simon Schama noted that "Manchester was the very best and the very worst taken to terrifying extremes, a new kind of city in the world; the chimneys of industrial suburbs greeting you with columns of smoke". An American visitor taken to Manchester’s blackspots saw “wretched, defrauded, oppressed, crushed human nature, lying and bleeding fragments”.[34]
The number of cotton mills in Manchester itself reached a peak of 108 in 1853.[26] Thereafter the number began to decline and Manchester was surpassed as the largest centre of cotton spinning by Bolton in the 1850s and Oldham in the 1860s.[26] However, this period of decline coincided with the rise of city as the financial centre of the region.[26] Manchester continued to process cotton, and in 1913, 65% of the world's cotton was processed in the area.[19] The First World War interrupted access to the export markets. Cotton processing in other parts of the world increased, often on machines produced in Manchester. Manchester suffered greatly from the Great Depression and the underlying structural changes that began to supplant the old industries, including textile manufacture.
World War II
Like most of the UK, the Manchester area mobilised extensively during World War II. For example, casting and machining expertise at Beyer, Peacock and Company's locomotive works in Gorton was switched to bomb making; Dunlop's rubber works in Chorlton-on-Medlock made barrage balloons; and just outside the city in Trafford Park, engineers Metropolitan-Vickers made Avro Manchester and Avro Lancaster bombers and Ford built the Rolls-Royce Merlin engines to power them. Manchester was thus the target of bombing by the Luftwaffe, and by late 1940 air raids were taking place against non-military targets. The biggest took place during the "Christmas Blitz" on the nights of 22/23 and 23/24 December 1940, when an estimated 467 tons (475 tonnes) of high explosives plus over 37,000 incendiary bombs were dropped. A large part of the historic city centre was destroyed, including 165 warehouses, 200 business premises, and 150 offices. 376 were killed and 30,000 houses were damaged.[35] Manchester Cathedral was among the buildings seriously damaged; its restoration took 20 years.[36]
Cotton processing and trading continued to fall in peacetime, and the exchange closed in 1968.[19] By 1963 the port of Manchester was the UK's third largest,[37] and employed over 3,000 men, but the canal was unable to handle the increasingly large container ships. Traffic declined, and the port closed in 1982.[38] Heavy industry suffered a downturn from the 1960s and was greatly reduced during the economic reforms associated with Margaret Thatcher's government (i.e. 1979 onwards). Manchester lost 150,000 jobs in manufacturing between 1961 and 1983.[19]
Regeneration began in the late 1980s, with initiatives such as the Metrolink, the Bridgewater Concert Hall, the Manchester Evening News Arena, and (in Salford) the rebranding of the port as Salford Quays. Two bids to host the Olympic Games were part of a process to raise the international profile of the city.[39]
1996 bomb
Manchester has a history of attacks attributed to Irish Republicans, including the Manchester Martyrs of 1867, arson in 1920, a series of explosions in 1939, and two bombs in 1992. On Saturday 15 June 1996, the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) detonated a large bomb next to a department store in the city centre. The largest to be detonated on British soil, the bomb injured over 200 people, heavily damaged nearby buildings, and broke windows half a mile away. The cost of the immediate damage was initially estimated at £50 million, but this was quickly revised upwards.[40] The final insurance payout was over £400 million; many affected businesses never recovered from the loss of trade.[41]
Redevelopment


Exchange Square during a BBC Big Screen showing of a FIFA world cup football game.
Spurred by the investment after the 1996 bomb, and aided by the XVII Commonwealth Games, Manchester's city centre has undergone extensive regeneration.[39] New and renovated complexes such as The Printworks and the Triangle have become popular shopping and entertainment destinations. The Manchester Arndale is the UK's largest city centre shopping mall.[42]
Large sections of the city dating from the 1960s have been either demolished and re-developed or modernised with the use of glass and steel. Old mills have been converted into modern apartments, Hulme has undergone extensive regeneration programmes, and million-pound lofthouse apartments have since been developed. The 169-metre tall, 47-storey Beetham Tower, completed in 2006, is the tallest building in the UK outside London and the highest residential accommodation in western Europe. The lower 23 floors form the Hilton Hotel, featuring a "sky bar" on the 23rd floor. Its upper 24 floors are apartments.[43] In January 2007, the independent Casino Advisory Panel awarded Manchester a licence to build the only supercasino in the UK to regenerate the Eastlands area of the city,[44] but in March the House of Lords rejected the decision by three votes rendering previous House of Commons acceptance meaningless. This left the supercasino, and 14 other smaller concessions, in parliamentary limbo until a final decision was made.[45] On 11 July 2007, a source close to the government declared the entire supercasino project "dead in the water".[46] A member of the Manchester Chamber of Commerce professed himself "amazed and a bit shocked" and that "there has been an awful lot of time and money wasted".[47] After a meeting with the Prime Minister, Manchester City Council issued a press release on 24 July 2007 stating that "contrary to some reports the door is not closed to a regional casino".[48] The supercasino was officially declared dead in February 2008 with a compensation package described by the media as "rehashed plans, spin and empty promises."[49]
Second City
Manchester has recently been regarded by the international press,[50] British public,[51] and government ministers[52] as being the second city of the United Kingdom. A 2007 poll by the BBC placed it ahead of Birmingham and Liverpool in the category of second city of England, but also ahead in the category of third city. Neither categories are officially sanctioned, and criteria for determining what 'second city' means are ill-defined. Manchester is not the second largest city in size or population, but it is argued that cultural and historical criteria are more important.[53] The BBC reports that redevelopment of recent years has heightened claims that Manchester is the second city of the UK.[54] This title however, which is unofficial in the UK, has traditionally been held by Birmingham since the early 20th century.[55]
Governance


Manchester Town Hall, used for the local governance of Manchester, is an example of Victorian era Gothic revival architecture.
Manchester is represented by three tiers of government, Manchester City Council ("local"), UK Parliament ("national"), and European Parliament ("Europe"). Greater Manchester County Council administration was abolished in 1986, and so the city council is effectively a unitary authority. Since its inception in 1995, Manchester has been a member of the English Core Cities Group,[56] which, amongst other things, serves to promote the social, cultural and economic status of the city at an international level.
The town of Manchester was granted a charter by Thomas Grelley in 1301 but lost its borough status in a court case of 1359. Until the 19th century, local government was largely provided by manorial courts, the last of which ended in 1846.[57] From a very early time, the township of Manchester lay within the historic county boundaries of Lancashire.[57] Pevsner wrote "That [neighbouring] Stretford and Salford are not administratively one with Manchester is one of the most curious anomalies of England".[24] A stroke of a Norman baron's pen is said to have divorced Manchester and Salford, though it was not Salford that became separated from Manchester, it was Manchester, with its humbler line of lords, that was separated from Salford.[58] It was this separation that resulted in Salford becoming the judicial seat of Salfordshire, which included the ancient parish of Manchester. Manchester later formed its own Poor Law Union by the name of Manchester.[57] In 1792, commissioners—usually known as police commissioners—were established for the social improvement of Manchester. In 1838, Manchester regained its borough status, and comprised the townships of Beswick, Cheetham Hill, Chorlton upon Medlock and Hulme.[57] By 1846 the borough council had taken over the powers of the police commissioners. In 1853 Manchester was granted city status in the United Kingdom.[57]
In 1885, Bradford, Harpurhey, Rusholme and parts of Moss Side and Withington townships became part of the City of Manchester. In 1889, the city became the county borough of Manchester, separate from the administrative county of Lancashire, and thus not governed by Lancashire County Council.[57] Between 1890 and 1933, more areas were added to the city from Lancashire, including former villages such as Burnage, Chorlton-cum-Hardy, Didsbury, Fallowfield, Levenshulme, Longsight, and Withington. In 1931 the Cheshire civil parishes of Baguley, Northenden and Northern Etchells from the south of the River Mersey were added.[57] In 1974, by way of the Local Government Act 1972, the City of Manchester became a metropolitan district of the metropolitan county of Greater Manchester.[57] That year, Ringway, the town where Manchester Airport is located, was added to the city.
Geography
Climate chart for Manchester

J F M A M J J A S O N D


69

6
1

50

7
1

61

9
3

51

12
4

61

15
7

67

18
10

65

20
12

79

20
12

74

17
10

77

14
8

78

9
4

78

7
2
average temperatures in °C
precipitation totals in mm
source: Climate-Charts.com

Imperial conversion[show]
J F M A M J J A S O N D


2.7

43
34

2

45
34

2.4

48
37

2

54
39

2.4

59
45

2.6

64
50

2.6

68
54

3.1

68
54

2.9

63
50

3

57
46

3.1

48
39

3.1

45
36
average temperatures in °F
precipitation totals in inches

At 53°28′0″N 2°14′0″W / 53.46667°N 2.23333°W, 160 miles (257 km) northwest of London, Manchester lies in a bowl-shaped land area bordered to the north and east by the Pennine hills, a mountain chain that runs the length of Northern England and to the south by the Cheshire Plain. The city centre is on the east bank of the River Irwell, near its confluences with the Rivers Medlock and Irk, and is relatively low-lying, being between 115 to 138 feet (35 and 42 m) above sea level.[59] The River Mersey flows through the south of Manchester. Much of the inner city, especially in the south, is flat, offering extensive views from many highrise buildings in the city of the foothills and moors of the Pennines, which can often be capped with snow in the winter months. Manchester's geographic features were highly influential in its early development as the world's first industrial city. These features are its climate, its proximity to a seaport at Liverpool, the availability of water power from its rivers, and its nearby coal reserves.[60]


The City of Manchester. The land use is overwhelmingly urban
The name Manchester, though officially applied only to the metropolitan district of Greater Manchester, has been applied to other, wider divisions of land, particularly across much of the Greater Manchester county and urban area. The "Manchester City Zone", "Manchester post town" and the "Manchester Congestion Charge" are all examples of this. The economic geography of the Manchester City Region is used to define housing markets, business linkages, travel to work patterns, administrative areas etc.[61] As defined by The Northern Way economic development agency the City Region territory encompasses most of the natural economy’s Travel to Work Area and includes the cities of Manchester and Salford, plus the adjoining metropolitan boroughs of Stockport, Tameside, Trafford, Bolton, Bury, Oldham, Rochdale and Wigan, together with High Peak (which lies outside the North West England region), Congleton, Macclesfield, Vale Royal and Warrington.[62]
For purposes of the Office for National Statistics, Manchester forms the most populous settlement within the Greater Manchester Urban Area, the United Kingdom's third largest conurbation. There is a mixture of high-density urban and suburban locations in Manchester. The largest open space in the city, at around 618 acres (3 km2), is Heaton Park. Manchester is contiguous on all sides with several large settlements, except for a small section along its southern boundary with Cheshire. The M60 and M56 motorways pass through the south of Manchester, through Northenden and Wythenshawe respectively. Heavy rail lines enter the city from all directions, the principal destination being Manchester Piccadilly station.
Manchester experiences a temperate maritime climate, like much of the British Isles, with relatively cool summers and mild winters. There is regular but generally light precipitation throughout the year. The city's average annual rainfall is 806.6 millimetres (31.76 in)[63] compared to the UK average of 1,125.0 millimetres (44.29 in),[64] and its mean rain days are 140.4 per annum,[63] compared to the UK average of 154.4.[64] Manchester however has a relatively high humidity level, which optimised the textile manufacturing (with low thread breakage) which took place there. Snowfall is not a common sight in the city, due to the urban warming effect. However, the Pennine and Rossendale Forest hills that surround the city to its east and north receive more snow and roads leading out of the city can be closed due to snow,[65] notably the A62 road via Oldham and Standedge, the A57 (Snake Pass) towards Sheffield,[66] and the M62 over Saddleworth Moor.


Month Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec
Avg high °C (°F) 6.4 (43.5) 6.6 (43.9) 8.9 (48.0) 11.6 (52.9) 15.3 (59.5) 18.2 (64.8) 19.6 (67.3) 19.5 (67.1) 17.0 (62.6) 13.7 (56.7) 9.1 (48.4) 7.1 (44.8)
Avg low temperature °C (°F) 1.3 (34.3) 1.2 (34.2) 2.5 (36.5) 4.3 (39.7) 7.3 (45.1) 10.2 (50.4) 12.0 (53.6) 11.9 (53.4) 10.0 (50.0) 7.5 (45.5) 3.6 (38.5) 2.0 (35.6)
Mean Total Rainfall mm 69 50 61 51 61 67 65 79 74 77 78 78
Mean Number of Rainy Days 18.2 13.1 15.6 14.4 15.1 14.4 13.6 15.0 15.0 16.5 17.0 17.4
Source: Worldweather.org taken between 1971 and 2000 at the Met Office weather station at Manchester Airport.



Demography
Manchester compared[67][68]

UK Census 2001
Manchester Greater Manchester
England
Total population 441,200 2,547,700 49,138,831
Foreign born 15.0% 7.2% 9.2%
White 81.0% 91.0% 91.0%
Asian 9.1% 5.7% 4.6%
Black 4.5% 1.2% 2.3%
Over 75 years old 6.4% 7.0% 7.5%
Christian
62.4% 74% 72%
Muslim
9.1% 5.0% 3.1%


The population of Manchester shown with other boroughs in Greater Manchester county 1801 to 2001.
The United Kingdom Census 2001 showed a total resident population for Manchester of 392,819, a 9.2% decline from the 1991 census.[69] Approximately 83,000 were aged under 16, 285,000 were aged 16–74, and 25,000 aged 75 and over.[69] 75.9% of Manchester's population claim they have been born in the UK, according to the 2001 UK Census. Inhabitants of Manchester are known as Mancunians or Mancs for short. Manchester reported the second-lowest proportion of the population in employment of any area in the UK. A primary reason cited for Manchester's high unemployment figure is the high proportion of the population who are students.[69] Mid-year estimates for 2006 indicate that the population of the metropolitan borough of Manchester stood at 452,000 making Manchester the most populous city in North West England.[70] Historically the population of Manchester only began to rapidly increase during the Victorian era and peaked at 766,311 in 1931. After the peak the population began to decrease rapidly, reasons cited for this are slum clearance and the increased building of social housing overspill estates by Manchester City Council after WWII such as Hattersley and Langley.[71]
The inhabitants of Manchester, like in many other large cities, are religiously diverse. The Jewish population is second only to London in the UK,[72] and it also has one of the largest Muslim populations in Greater Manchester. Manchester's Palace Hotel hosted the 2007 Lloyds TSB's Northern Jewel Awards, where leaders of the Asian community in the north of the UK were recognised.[73]
The percentage of the population in Manchester who reported themselves as living in the same household in a same-sex relationship was 0.44%, compared to the English national average of 0.20%.[74]
In terms of districts by ethnic diversity, the City of Manchester is ranked highest in Greater Manchester and 34th in England. 2005 estimates state 77.6% people as 'White' (71.0% of residents as White British, 3.0% White Irish, 3.6% as Other White - although those of mixed white European and British ancestry is unknown, there are over 25,000 Mancunians of Italian descent alone which represents 5.5% of the city's population[75]). 3.2% as Mixed race (1.3% Mixed White and Black Caribbean, 0.6% Mixed White and Black African, 0.7% Mixed White and Asian, 0.7% Other Mixed). 10.3% of the city's population are South Asian (2.3% Indian, 5.8% Pakistani, 1.0% Bangladeshi, 1.2% Other South Asian). 5.2% are Black (2.0% Black Caribbean, 2.7% Black African and 0.5% Other Black). 2.3% of the city's population are Chinese, and 1.4% are another ethnic group.[76] Kidd identifies Moss Side, Longsight, Cheetham Hill, Rusholme, as centres of population for ethnic minorities.[19] Manchester's Irish Festival, including a St Patrick's Day parade, is one of Europe's largest.[77] There is also a well-established Chinatown in the city with a substantial number of oriental restaurants and Chinese supermarkets. The area also attracts large numbers of Chinese students to the city, attending the two universities.[78]
Based on the population estimates for 2005, crime levels in the city are considerably higher than the national average. Some parts of Manchester have been adversely affected by its recent rapid urbanisation, resulting in high levels of crime in areas such as Moss Side and Wythenshawe.[79] The number of theft from a vehicle offences and theft of a vehicle per 1,000 of the population was 25.5 and 8.9 compared to the English national average of 7.6 and 2.9 respectively.[80] The number of sexual offences was 1.9 compared to the average of 0.9.[80] The national average of violence against another person was 16.7 compared to the Manchester average of 32.7.[80] The figures for crime statistics were all recorded during the 2006/7 financial year.[81]
The Manchester Larger Urban Zone, a Eurostat measure of the functional city-region approximated to local government districts, has a population of 2,539,100 in 2004.[82] In addition to Manchester itself, the LUZ includes the remainder of the county of Greater Manchester.[83] The Manchester LUZ is the second largest within the United Kingdom, behind that of London.
Economy


Manchester City Centre from the Beetham Tower at night, the city is one of the largest financial centres in Europe.
Manchester was at the forefront of the 19th-century Industrial Revolution, and was a leading centre for manufacturing. The city's economy is now largely service-based and, as of 2007, is the fastest growing in the UK, with inward investment second only to the capital.[84] Manchester’s State of the City Report identifies financial and professional services, life science industries, creative, cultural and media, manufacturing and communications as major activities.[84] The city was ranked in 2007 and 2008 as the second-best place to do business in the UK,[85] and in 2008 as the fourteenth best city in Europe.[86]
Manchester has the largest UK office market outside London.[87] Greater Manchester represents over £42 billion of the UK GVA, the third largest of any English county and more than Wales or North East England.[88]
Manchester is a focus for businesses which serve local, regional and international markets.[87] It is one of the largest financial centres in Europe with more than 15,000 people employed in banking and finance and more than 60 banking institutions.[87] The Co-operative Group, the world's largest consumer-owned business, is based in Manchester and is one of the city's biggest employers. Legal, accounting, management consultancy and other professional and technical services exist in Manchester.[87]
Manchester's Central Business District is in the centre of the city, adjacent to Piccadilly, focused on Mosley Street, Deansgate, King Street and Piccadilly. Spinningfields is a £1.5 billion mixed-use development that is expanding the district west of Deansgate. The area is designed to hold office space, retail and catering facilities, and courts. Several high-profile tenants have moved in, and a Civil Justice Centre opened in October 2007.[89]
Manchester is the commercial, educational and cultural focus for North West England,[87] and is ranked as the fourth biggest retail area in the UK by sales.[90] The city centre retail area contains shops from chain stores up to high-end boutiques such as Vivienne Westwood, Emporio Armani, DKNY, Harvey Nichols, Chanel and Hermès. The city has several shopping malls including the Manchester Arndale, the UK's largest inner city shopping mall.[42]
Landmarks



Beetham Tower on Deansgate, currently Manchester's tallest building.
Manchester's buildings display a variety of architectural styles, ranging from Victorian to contemporary architecture. The widespread use of red brick characterises the city. Much of the architecture in the city harks back to its days as a global centre for the cotton trade.[22] Just outside the immediate city centre is a large number of former cotton mills, some of which have been left virtually untouched since their closure whilst many have been redeveloped into apartment buildings and office space. Manchester Town Hall, in Albert Square, was built in the gothic revival style and is considered to be one of the most important Victorian buildings in England.[91] It has been used in film as a replacement location for the Palace of Westminster, where filming is not permitted.[92] Manchester also has a number of skyscrapers built during the 1960s and 1970s, the tallest of which is the CIS Tower located near Manchester Victoria station. The Beetham Tower, completed in 2006, is an example of the new surge in high-rise building and includes a Hilton hotel, a restaurant, and apartments. On its completion, it was the tallest building in the UK outside London, although an even taller building, the Piccadilly Tower, began construction behind Manchester Piccadilly station in early 2008.[93] The Green Building, opposite Oxford Road station, is a pioneering eco-friendly housing project, almost unique in the UK.


B of the Bang in Sportcity, built to mark the 2002 Commonwealth Games.
In the north of the city borough is the award winning Heaton Park which is one of the largest municipal parks in Europe covering 610 acres (250 ha) of parkland.[94] There are a total of 135 parks, gardens and open spaces within the city.[95] Two large squares hold many of Manchester's public monuments. Albert Square has monuments to Prince Albert, Bishop James Fraser, Oliver Heywood, William Ewart Gladstone and John Bright. Piccadilly Gardens has monuments dedicated to Queen Victoria, Robert Peel, James Watt and the Duke of Wellington. The cenotaph in St Peter's Square, by Edwin Lutyens, is Manchester's main memorial to its war dead. The Alan Turing Memorial in Sackville Park commemorates his role as the father of modern computing. A statue of Abraham Lincoln by George Gray Barnard in the eponymous Lincoln Square was presented to the city by Mr. and Mrs. Charles Phelps Taft of Cincinnati, Ohio, to mark the part that Lancashire played in the cotton famine and American Civil War of 1861–1865.[96] The success of the 2002 Commonwealth Games is commemorated by the B of the Bang, located near the City of Manchester Stadium in the Eastlands area of the city. At 184 feet (56 m) tall, the sculpture is the tallest in the UK.[97] A Concorde is on display near Manchester Airport.

Transport


Manchester Piccadilly Station, the principal railway and Metrolink station in Manchester.
Manchester and North West England are served by Manchester Airport. The airport is the busiest in terms of passenger traffic in the UK outside London, serving 21.06 million passengers in 2008. Airline service exists to many destinations in Europe, North America, the Caribbean, Africa, the Middle East and Asia (with more destinations from Manchester than from London Heathrow).[98] A second runway was opened in 2001 and there have been continued terminal improvements. Passenger figures have been virtually static since 2005.
Manchester is well served by train. In terms of passengers, Manchester Piccadilly was the busiest English train station outside London in 2005 and 2006.[99] Local operator Northern Rail operates all over the north of England, and other national operators include Virgin Trains. The Liverpool and Manchester Railway was the first passenger railway in the world. Greater Manchester has an extensive countywide railway network, and two mainline stations. Manchester city centre is also serviced by over a dozen rail-based park and ride sites.[100] Manchester became the first city in the UK to acquire a modern light rail system when the Manchester Metrolink opened in 1992. An expansion programme is underway.[101] In October 2007, the government announced that a feasibility study had been ordered into increasing the capacity at Piccadilly station and turning Manchester into the rail hub of the north.[102]


One of the zero-fare buses
The city has one of the most extensive bus networks outside London with over 50 bus companies operating in the Greater Manchester region radiating from the city. Prior to the deregulation of 1986, SELNEC and later GMPTE operated all buses in Manchester.[103] The bus system were then taken over by GM Buses which after privatisation was split into GM Buses North and GM Buses South and taken over by First Manchester and Stagecoach Manchester respectively.[104] First Manchester also operates a three route zero-fare bus service called Metroshuttle which carries commuters around Manchester's business districts.[105]
An extensive canal network remains from the Industrial Revolution, nowadays mainly used for leisure. The Manchester Ship Canal is open, but traffic to the upper reaches is light.[106]
Arts


Manchester Opera House, one of Manchester's largest theatre venues
Manchester has two symphony orchestras, the Hallé Orchestra and the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra. There is also a chamber orchestra, the Manchester Camerata. In the 1950s, the city was home to the so-called 'Manchester School' of classical composers, which comprised Harrison Birtwistle, Peter Maxwell Davies, David Ellis and Alexander Goehr. Manchester is a centre for musical education, with the Royal Northern College of Music and Chetham’s School of Music.[107] The main classical venue was the Free Trade Hall on Peter Street, until the opening in 1996 of the 2,500 seat Bridgewater Hall.[108]
Manchester’s main pop music venue is the Manchester Evening News Arena, situated next to Victoria station. It seats over 21,000, is the largest arena of its type in Europe, and has been voted International Venue of the Year.[109] In terms of concert goers, it is the busiest indoor arena in the world ahead of Madison Square Garden in New York and the O2 Arena in London, the second and third busiest respectively.[110] Other major venues include the Manchester Apollo and the Manchester Academy. Smaller venues are the Bierkeller, the Roadhouse, the Night and Day Cafe and the Ruby Lounge.
Bands that have emerged from the Manchester music scene include The Smiths, the Buzzcocks, The Fall, Joy Division and its successor group New Order, Oasis and Doves. Manchester was credited as the main regional driving force behind indie bands of the 1980s including Happy Mondays, The Charlatans, Inspiral Carpets, James, and The Stone Roses. These groups came from what became known as the "Madchester" scene that also centred around the Fac 51 Haçienda (also known as simply The Haçienda) developed by founder of factory records Tony Wilson. Although from southern England, The Chemical Brothers subsequently formed in Manchester.[111] Ex-Stone Roses' frontman Ian Brown and ex-Smiths Morrissey continue successful solo careers. Other notable Manchester acts include Take That and Simply Red. Greater Manchester natives include A Guy Called Gerald, Richard Ashcroft and Jay Kay of Jamiroquai. Older Manchester artists include the 1960s band's The Hollies, Herman's Hermits and the Bee Gees who, whilst commonly associated with Australia, grew up in Chorlton.[112]
Larger venues include the Manchester Opera House, featuring large-scale touring shows and West End shows; the Palace Theatre; the Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester’s former cotton exchange; and the Lowry Centre, a touring venue in Salford. Smaller sites include the Library Theatre, a producing theatre in the basement of the central library; the Green Room; the Contact Theatre; and Studio Salford. The Dancehouse is dedicated to dance productions.[113]
In the 19th century, Manchester featured in works highlighting the changes that industrialisation had brought to Britain. These included Elizabeth Gaskell's novel Mary Barton: A Tale of Manchester Life (1848),[114] and The Condition of the English Working Class in 1844, written by Friedrich Engels while living and working in Manchester. Charles Dickens is reputed to have set his novel Hard Times in the city, and while it is partly modelled on Preston, it shows the influence of his friend Elizabeth Gaskell.[115]
Nightlife


Canal Street, one of Manchester's liveliest nightspots, part of the city's gay village
The night-time economy of Manchester has expanded significantly since about 1993, with investment from breweries in bars, public houses and clubs, along with active support from the local authorities.[116] The more than 500 licensed premises[117] in the city centre have a capacity to deal with over 250,000 visitors,[118] with 110–130,000 people visiting on a typical weekend night.[117] The night-time economy has a value of about £100 million pa[119] and supports 12,000 jobs.[117]
The Madchester scene of the 1980s, from which groups including The Stone Roses, the Happy Mondays, Inspiral Carpets, 808 State, James and The Charlatans emerged, was based around clubs such as The Hacienda.[120] The period was the subject of the movie 24 Hour Party People. Many of the big clubs suffered problems with organised crime at that time; Haslam describes one where staff were so completely intimidated that free admission and drinks were demanded (and given) and drugs were openly dealt.[120] Following a series of drug-related violent incidents, The Hacienda closed in 1997.[116] Public houses in the Canal Street area have had a gay clientele since at least 1940[116] and now form the centre of Manchester's gay community. Following the council's investment in infrastructure, the UK's first gay supermarket was opened; since the opening of new bars and clubs the area attracts 20,000 visitors each weekend[116] and has hosted a popular festival each August since 1991.[121] The TV series Queer as Folk is set in the area.

7Education


The entrance to Whitworth Hall, part of the University of Manchester campus
There are two universities in Manchester. The University of Manchester is the largest full-time non-collegiate university in the United Kingdom and was created in 2004 by the merger of Victoria University of Manchester and UMIST.[122] It includes the Manchester Business School, which offered the first MBA course in the UK in 1965. Manchester Metropolitan University was formed as Manchester Polytechnic on the merger of three colleges in 1970. It gained university status in 1992, and in the same year absorbed Crewe and Alsager College of Higher Education in South Cheshire.[123]
The University of Manchester, Manchester Metropolitan University and the Royal Northern College of Music are grouped around Oxford Road on the southern side of the city centre, which forms Europe's largest urban higher education precinct.[124] Together they have a combined population of 73,160 students in higher education,[125] though almost 6,000 of these were based at Manchester Metropolitan University's campuses at Crewe and Alsager in Cheshire.[126]
One of Manchester's most notable secondary schools is the Manchester Grammar School. Established in 1515,[127] as a free grammar school next to what is now the Cathedral, it moved in 1931 to Old Hall Lane in Fallowfield, south Manchester, to accommodate the growing student body. In the post-war period, it was a direct-grant grammar school (i.e. partially state funded), but it reverted to independent status in 1976 after abolition of the direct-grant system.[128] Its previous premises are now used by Chetham's School of Music. There are two schools nearby: Withington Girls' School and Manchester High School for Girls.
Sport


The City of Manchester Stadium, used for the 2002 Commonwealth Games
Manchester is well-known for being a city of sport. Two Premiership football clubs bear the city's name, Manchester City and Manchester United. Manchester City's ground is at the City of Manchester Stadium (48,000 capacity); Manchester United's Old Trafford ground, the largest club football ground in the United Kingdom, with a capacity of 76,000, and England's only UEFA-rated 5-star stadium, is just outside the city, in the borough of Trafford. Lancashire County Cricket Club's ground is also in Trafford.[129] Premier League champions Manchester United have the widest football club fanbase in the world, while Manchester City is the richest football club in the world, thanks to its wealthy owners.[130]
The City of Manchester Stadium was built for the 2002 Commonwealth Games. After the games, one of the stands was replaced in preparation for Manchester City's arrival in 2003. The stadium holds 48,000 fans all-seated, and is one of the largest football stadiums in England. It has hosted the 2008 UEFA Cup Final. Old Trafford is the only club football ground in England to have hosted the UEFA Champions League Final, in 2003. It is also the venue of the Super League Grand Final in Rugby League.
First class sporting facilities were built for the 2002 Commonwealth Games, including the City of Manchester Stadium, the National Squash Centre and the Manchester Aquatics Centre.[131] Manchester has competed twice to host the Olympic Games, beaten by Atlanta for 1996 and Sydney for 2000. The Manchester Velodrome was built as a part of the bid for the 2000 games.[116] It hosted the UCI Track Cycling World Championships for the third time in 2008. Various sporting arenas around the city will be used as training facilities by athletes preparing for the 2012 Olympics in London. The MEN Arena hosted the FINA World Swimming Championships in 2008.[132] Manchester also hosted the World Squash Championships in 2008.[133]
Media


The headquarters of Granada Television


The headquarters of the Manchester Evening News, located in the Spinningfields district.
ITV franchisee Granada Television has its headquarters in Quay Street, in the Castlefield area of the city.[134] Granada produces the world's oldest and most watched television soap opera, Coronation Street,[135] which is screened five times a week on ITV1. Local news and programmes for the north-west region are produced in Manchester.
Manchester is one of the three main BBC bases in England,[134] alongside London and Bristol. Programmes including A Question of Sport, Mastermind,[136] and Real Story,[137] are made at New Broadcasting House on Oxford Road, just south of the city centre. The hit series Cutting It was set in the city's Northern Quarter and ran on BBC1 for five series. Life on Mars was set in 1973 Manchester. Also, The Street, winner of a BAFTA and International Emmy Award in 2007 is set in Manchester.[138] The first edition of Top of the Pops was broadcast from a converted church in Longsight on New Year's Day 1964.[139] Manchester is also the regional base for the BBC One North West Region so programmes like North West Tonight are produced here.[140] The BBC intends to relocate large numbers of staff and facilities from London to Media City at Salford Quays. The Children's (CBBC), Comedy, Sport (BBC Sport) and New Media departments are all scheduled to move before 2010.[141] Manchester has its own television channel, Channel M, owned by the Guardian Media Group and operated since 2000.[134] The station produces almost all content including local news locally and is available nationally on the BSkyB television platform. Television characters from Manchester include Daphne Moon (played by Jane Leeves), of Frasier, Charlie Pace (played by Dominic Monaghan) of Lost, Naomi Dorrit (Lost) and Nessa Holt (Las Vegas), both played by local actress Marsha Thomason.
The city has the highest number of local radio stations outside London including BBC Radio Manchester, Key 103, Galaxy, Piccadilly Magic 1152, 105.4 Century FM, 100.4 Smooth FM, Capital Gold 1458, 96.2 The Revolution and Xfm.[142][143] Radio Manchester returned to its former title in 2006 after becoming BBC GMR in 1988.[144] Student radio stations include Fuse FM at the University of Manchester and MMU Radio at the Manchester Metropolitan University.[145] A community radio network is coordinated by Radio Regen, with stations covering the South Manchester communities of Ardwick, Longsight and Levenshulme (All FM 96.9) and Wythenshawe (Wythenshawe FM 97.2).[143] Defunct radio stations include Sunset (which became) Kiss 102 (now Galaxy Manchester), and KFM which became Signal Cheshire (now Imagine FM). These stations, as well as pirate radio, played a significant role in the city's House music culture, also known as the Madchester scene, which was based around clubs like The Haçienda which had its own show on Kiss 102. Radio producer and author Karl Pilkington, of The Ricky Gervais Show fame, is from Manchester.
Manchester is also featured in several Hollywood films such as My Son, My Son! (1940), directed by Charles Vidor and starring Brian Aherne and Louis Hayward. Also Grand Hotel (1932), in which Wallace Beery often shouts "Manchester!". Others include Velvet Goldmine starring Ewan McGregor, and Sir Alec Guinness's The Man in the White Suit. More recently, the entire city of Manchester is engulfed in runaway fires in the 2002 film 28 Days Later. The 2004 Japanese animated film, Steamboy was partly set in Manchester, during the times of the industrial revolution. The city is also home to the Manchester International Film Festival[146] and has held the Commonwealth film festival.
The Guardian newspaper was founded in Manchester in 1821 as The Manchester Guardian. Its head office is still in Manchester, though many of its management functions were moved to London in 1964.[19] Its sister publication, the Manchester Evening News, has the largest circulation of a UK regional evening newspaper. It is free in the city centre, but paid for in the suburbs. Despite its title, it is available all day.[147] The Metro North West is available free at Metrolink stops, rail stations and other busy locations. The MEN group distributes several local weekly free papers.[148] For many years most of the national newspapers had offices in Manchester: The Daily Telegraph, Daily Express, Daily Mail, The Daily Mirror, The Sun. Only The Daily Sport remains based in Manchester. At its height, 1,500 journalists were employed, though in the 1980s office closures began and today the "second Fleet Street" is no more.[149] An attempt to launch a Northern daily newspaper, the North West Times, employing journalists made redundant by other titles, closed in 1988.[150] Another attempt was made with the North West Enquirer, which hoped to provide a true "regional" newspaper for the North West, much in the same vein as the Yorkshire Post does for Yorkshire or The Northern Echo does for the North East; it folded in October 2006.[150] There are several local lifestyle magazines, including YQ Magazine and Moving Manchester.[151]

Magna Carta

"Great Charter" redirects here. For the Irish law, see Great Charter of Ireland.

Magna Carta
Magna Carta
Created	1215
Location	Various copies

Part of the Politics series on

Monarchism

Varieties [show] Absolute · Constitutional Elective · Regency

History [show] Magna Carta Foundation of the Ottoman Empire Glorious Revolution French Revolution First Spanish Civil War First French Empire Second French Empire Fall of Qing Dynasty Russian Revolution of 1917 Second Spanish Civil War Birth of the Italian Republic Iranian Revolution Modern Cambodia Nepalese Civil War

Related topics [show] Autocracy Divine Right of Kings Thomas Hobbes Mandate of Heaven Monarchy Montesquieu Oligarchy

Politics portal

v • d • e

Magna Carta, also called Magna Carta Libertatum (Great Charter of Freedoms), is an English legal charter, originally issued in the year 1215. It was written in Latin; its name is usually translated into English as Great Charter.

Magna Carta required King John of England to proclaim certain rights (pertaining to nobles and barons), respect certain legal procedures, and accept that his will could be bound by the law. It explicitly protected certain rights of the King's subjects, whether free or fettered—most notably the writ of habeas corpus, allowing appeal against unlawful imprisonment.

Magna Carta was arguably the most significant early influence on the extensive historical process that led to the rule of constitutional law today in the English speaking world. Magna Carta influenced the development of the common law and many constitutional documents, including the United States Constitution. ^[1] Many clauses were renewed throughout the Middle Ages, and continued to be renewed as late as the 18th century. By the second half of the 19th century, however, most clauses in their original form had been repealed from English law.

Magna Carta was the first document forced onto an English King by a group of his subjects (the barons) in an attempt to limit his powers by law and protect their privileges. It was preceded by the 1100 Charter of Liberties in which King Henry I voluntarily stated what his own powers were under the law.

In practice, Magna Carta in the Medieval period mostly did not limit the power of Kings; but by the time of the English Civil War it had become an important symbol for those who wished to show that the King was bound by the law.

Magna Carta is normally understood to refer to a single document, that of 1215. Various amended versions of Magna Carta appeared in subsequent years however, and it is the 1297 version which remains on the statute books of England and Wales.

Contents 1 Background 1.1 France 1.2 The Church 1.3 Taxes 1.4 Rebellion and signing of the document 1.5 Magna Carta re-issued 2 Content 2.1 Rights still in force today 2.2 Feudal rights still in place in 1225 2.3 Feudal rights not in the 1225 charter 2.4 Judicial rights 2.5 Anti-corruption and fair trade 2.6 Temporary provisions 3 Great Council 4 Tudor dynasty 4.1 First uses of the charter as a bill of rights 4.2 Reinterpretation of the charter 4.3 Edward Coke’s opinions 5 Magna Carta’s role in the lead-up to the Civil War 5.1 Trial of Archbishop Laud 6 Civil War and interregnum 6.1 Levellers 6.2 Diggers 7 Charles II 7.1 Within Parliament 7.2 Outside Parliament 7.3 Supremacy of the Commons 7.4 Glorious Revolution 8 Eighteenth century 8.1 Extent of the Commons' powers 8.2 America 8.3 Parliamentary sovereignty 8.3.1 John Wilkes 8.3.2 Granville Sharp 8.3.3 Proposed reform of Magna Carta 8.3.4 Chartists 9 Influences on later constitutions 10 Jews in England 11 Popular perceptions 11.1 Symbol and practice 11.2 Many documents form Magna Carta 11.3 The document was unsigned 11.4 America 11.5 21st Century Britain 12 Usage of the definite article 13 Copies 14 Participant list 14.1 Barons 14.2 Bishops 14.3 Abbots 14.4 Others 15 See also 16 Notes 17 References 18 External links

Background

One of the certified copies of Magna Carta made in 1215.

After the Norman conquest of England in 1066 and advances in the 12th century, the English King had by 1199 become a powerful and influential monarch in Europe. Factors contributing to this include the sophisticated centralised government created by the procedures of the new Norman systems of governance and extensive Anglo-Norman land holdings in Normandy.

But after King John of England was crowned in the early 13th century, a series of failures at home and abroad, combined with perceived abuses of the king's power, led the English barons to revolt and attempt to restrain what the king could legally do.

France

King John's actions in France were a major cause of discontent in the realm. At the time of his accession to the throne after Richard's death, there were no set rules to define the line of succession. King John, as Richard's younger brother, was crowned over Richard's nephew, Arthur of Brittany. Since Arthur still had a claim over the Anjou empire, however, John needed the approval of the French king, Philip Augustus. To get it, John gave to Philip large tracts of the French-speaking Anjou territories.

When John later married Isabella of Angoulême, her previous fiancé (Hugh IX of Lusignan, one of John's vassals) appealed to Philip, who then declared forfeit all of John's French lands, including the rich Normandy. Philip declared Arthur as the true ruler of the Anjou throne and invaded John's French holdings in mid-1202 to give it to him. John had to act to save face, but his eventual actions did not achieve this—Arthur disappeared in suspicious circumstances, and John was widely believed to have murdered him, thus losing the little support he had from his French barons.

After the defeat of John's allies at the Battle of Bouvines, Philip retained all of John's northern French territories, including Normandy (although Aquitaine remained in English hands for a time). These serious military defeats, which lost to the English a major source of income, made John unpopular at home. Worse, to recoup his expenses, he had to further tax the already unhappy barons.

The Church

Wikisource has original text related to this article:

an essay on the pope's response to the Magna Carta

At the time of John’s reign there was still a great deal of controversy as to how the Archbishop of Canterbury was to be elected, although it had become traditional that the monarch would appoint a candidate with the approval of the monks of Canterbury.

But in the early 13th century, the bishops began to want a say. To retain control, the monks elected one of their numbers to the role. But John, incensed at his lack of involvement in the proceedings, sent John de Gray, the Bishop of Norwich, to Rome as his choice. Pope Innocent III declared both choices invalid and persuaded the monks to elect Stephen Langton. Nevertheless, John refused to accept this choice and exiled the monks from the realm. Infuriated, Innocent ordered an interdict (prevention of public worship — mass, marriages, the ringing of church bells, etc.) in England in 1208, excommunicated John in 1209, and encouraged Philip to invade England in 1212.

John finally backed down and agreed to endorse Langton and allow the exiles to return. To completely placate the pope, he gave England and Ireland as papal territories and rented them back as a fiefdom for 1,000 marks per annum. This surrender of autonomy to a foreign power further enraged the barons.

Taxes

King John needed money for armies, but the loss of the French territories, especially Normandy, greatly reduced the state income, and a huge tax would have to be raised in order to attempt to reclaim these territories. Yet, it was difficult to raise taxes because of the tradition of keeping them at the same level.

John relied on clever manipulation of pre-existing rights, including those of forest law, a set of regulations about the king’s hunting preserves, which were easily broken and severely punished. John also increased the pre-existing scutage (feudal payment to an overlord replacing direct military service) eleven times in his seventeen years as king, as compared to eleven times in twice that period covering three monarchs before him. The last two of these increases were double the increase of their predecessors. He also imposed the first income tax, which raised what was, at the time, the extortionate sum of £70,000.

Rebellion and signing of the document

John of England signs Magna Carta. Illustration from Cassell's History of England (1902)

By 1215, some of the most important barons in England had had enough, and they entered London in force on 10 June 1215,^[2] with the city showing its sympathy with their cause by opening its gates to them. They, and many of the moderates not in overt rebellion, forced King John to agree to the "Articles of the Barons", to which his Great Seal was attached in the meadow at Runnymede on 15 June 1215. In return, the barons renewed their oaths of fealty to King John on 19 June 1215. A formal document to record the agreement was created by the royal chancery on 15 July: this was the original Magna Carta. An unknown number of copies of it were sent out to officials, such as royal sheriffs and bishops.

The most significant clause for King John at the time was clause 61, known as the "security clause", the longest portion of the document. This established a committee of 25 barons who could at any time meet and overrule the will of the King, through force by seizing his castles and possessions if needed. This was based on a medieval legal practice known as distraint, but it was the first time it had been applied to a monarch. In addition, the King was to take an oath of loyalty to the committee.

Clause 61 essentially neutered John's power as a monarch, making him King in name only. He renounced it as soon as the barons left London, plunging England into a civil war, called the First Barons' War. Pope Innocent III also annulled the "shameful and demeaning agreement, forced upon the King by violence and fear." He rejected any call for restraints on the King, saying it impaired John's dignity. He saw it as an affront to the Church's authority over the King and the 'papal territories' of England and Ireland, and he released John from his oath to obey it.

Magna Carta re-issued

John died during the war, from dysentery, on 18 October 1216, and this quickly changed the nature of the war. His nine-year-old son, Henry III, was next in line for the throne. The royalists believed the rebel barons would find the idea of loyalty to the child Henry more palatable, so the boy was swiftly crowned in late October 1216, and the war ended.

Henry's regentis reissued Magna Carta in his name on 12 November 1216, omitting some clauses, such as clause 61, and again in 1217. When he turned 18 in 1225, Henry III reissued Magna Carta, this time in a shorter version with only 37 articles.

Henry III ruled for 56 years (the longest reign of an English Monarch in the Medieval period) so that by the time of his death in 1272, Magna Carta had become a settled part of English legal precedent.

Henry III's son and heir Edward I's Parliament reissued Magna Carta for the final time on 12 October 1297, as part of a statute called Confirmatio cartarum, reconfirming Henry III's shorter version of Magna Carta from 1225.

Content

Magna Carta was originally written in Latin. A large part of Magna Carta was copied, nearly word for word, from the Charter of Liberties of Henry I, issued when Henry I ascended to the throne in 1100, which bound the king to certain laws regarding the treatment of church officials and nobles, effectively granting certain civil liberties to the church and the English nobility.

Magna carta cum statutis angliae, (Great Charter with English Statutes) page 1 of manuscript, fourteenth century.

The document commonly known as Magna Carta today is not the 1215 charter but a later charter of 1225, and is usually shown in the form of The Charter of 1297 when it was confirmed by Edward I. At the time of the 1215 charter, many of the provisions were not meant to make long term changes but simply to right the immediate wrongs, and therefore The Charter was reissued three times in the reign of Henry III (1216, 1217 and 1225) in order to provide for an updated version. After this, each individual king for the next two hundred years (until Henry V in 1416) personally confirmed the 1225 charter in his own charter.

Rights still in force today

For modern times, the most enduring legacy of Magna Carta is considered the right of habeas corpus. This right arises from what are now known as clauses 36, 38, 39, and 40 of the 1215 Magna Carta.

As the most recent version, it is the 1297 Charter which remains in legal force in England and Wales. Using the clauses in the 1297 charter (the content and numbering are somewhat different from the 1215 Charter): Clause 1 guarantees the freedom of the English Church. Although this originally meant freedom from the King, later in history it was used for different purposes (see below). Clause 9 guarantees the “ancient liberties” of the City of London. Clause 29 guarantees a right to due process.

· I. FIRST, We have granted to God, and by this our present Charter have confirmed, for Us and our Heirs for ever, that the Church of England shall be free, and shall have all her whole Rights and Liberties inviolable. We have granted also, and given to all the Freemen of our Realm, for Us and our Heirs for ever, these Liberties under-written, to have and to hold to them and their Heirs, of Us and our Heirs for ever.

· IX. THE City of London shall have all the old Liberties and Customs which it hath been used to have. Moreover We will and grant, that all other Cities, Boroughs, Towns, and the Barons of the Five Ports, and all other Ports, shall have all their Liberties and free Customs.

· XXIX. NO Freeman shall be taken or imprisoned, or be disseised of his Freehold, or Liberties, or free Customs, or be outlawed, or exiled, or any other wise destroyed; nor will We not pass upon him, nor condemn him, but by lawful judgment of his Peers, or by the Law of the Land. We will sell to no man, we will not deny or defer to any man either Justice or Right.^[3]

The repeal of clause 26 in 1829 ^[4] was the first time a clause of Magna Carta was repealed. With the document's perceived protected status broken, in 150 years nearly the whole charter was repealed, leaving just Clauses 1, 9, and 29 still in force after 1969. Most of it was repealed in England and Wales by the Statute Law Revision Act 1863, and in Ireland by the Statute Law (Ireland) Revision Act 1872.^[3]

Feudal rights still in place in 1225

Several clauses were present in the 1225 charter but are no longer in force and would have no real place in the post-feudal world. Clauses 2 to 7 refer to the feudal death duties, defining the amounts and what to do if an heir to a fiefdom is underage or is a widow. Clause 23 provides no town or person should be forced to build a bridge across a river. Clause 33 demands the removal of all fish weirs. Clause 43 gives special provision for tax on reverted estates and Clause 44 states that forest law should only apply to those in the king’s forest.

Feudal rights not in the 1225 charter

Some provisions have no bearing in the world today, since they are feudal rights and were not even included in the 1225 charter. Clauses 9 to 12, 14 to 16, and 25 to 26 deal with debt and taxes and Clause 27 with intestacy.

The other clauses state that no one may seize land in debt except as a last resort; that underage heirs and widows should not pay interest on inherited loans; that county rents will stay at their ancient amounts; and that the crown may only seize the value owed in payment of a debt, that aid (taxes for warfare or other emergency) must be reasonable, and that scutage (literally, shield-payment, payment in lieu of actual military service used to finance warfare) may only be sought with the consent of the kingdom.

Clause 14 states that the common consent of the kingdom was to be sought from a council of the archbishops, bishops, earls and greater Barons. This later became the great council, which led to the first parliament.

Judicial rights

Clauses 17 to 22 allowed for a fixed law court, which became the chancellery, and defines the scope and frequency of county assizes. They also state that fines should be proportionate to the offence, that they should not be influenced by ecclesiastical property in clergy trials, and that their peers should try people. Many think that this gave rise to jury and magistrate trial, but its only manifestation in the modern world was the right of a lord to a criminal trial in the House of Lords at first instance (abolished in 1948).

Clause 24 states that crown officials (such as sheriffs) may not try a crime in place of a judge. Clause 34 forbids repossession without a writ precipe. Clauses 36 to 38 state that writs for loss of life or limb are to be free, that someone may use reasonable force to secure their own land, and that no one can be tried on their own testimony alone.

Clauses 36, 38, 39 and 40 collectively define the right of Habeas Corpus. Clause 36 requires courts to make inquiries as to the whereabouts of a prisoner, and to do so without charging any fee. Clause 38 requires more than the mere word of an official, before any person could be put on trial. Clause 39 gives the courts exclusive rights to punish anyone. Clause 40 disallows the selling or the delay of justice. Clauses 36 and 38 were removed from the 1225 version, but were reinstated in later versions. The right of Habeas Corpus as such was first invoked in court in the year 1305.

Clause 54 says that no man may be imprisoned on the testimony of a woman except on the death of her husband.

Anti-corruption and fair trade

Clauses 28 to 32 state that no royal officer may take any commodity such as grain, wood or transport without payment or consent or force a knight to pay for something the knight could do himself, and that the king must return any lands confiscated from a felon within a year and a day.

Clause 35 sets out a list of standard measures, and Clauses 41 and 42 guarantee the safety and right of entry and exit of foreign merchants.

Clause 45 says that the King should only appoint royal officers where they are suitable for the post. In the United States, the Supreme Court of California interpreted clause 45 in 1974 as establishing a requirement at common law that a defendant faced with the potential of incarceration is entitled to a trial overseen by a law-trained judge.^[5]

Clause 46 provides for the guardianship of monasteries.

Temporary provisions

Some provisions were for immediate effect and were not in any later charter. Clauses 47 and 48 abolish most of Forest Law (these were later taken out of Magna Carta and formed into a separate charter, the Charter of the Forests)^[6]. Clauses 49, 52 to 53 and 55 to 59 provide for the return of hostages, land and fines taken in John’s reign.

Article 50 states that no member of the D’Athée family may be a royal officer. Article 51 calls for all foreign knights and mercenaries to leave the realm.

Gérard D’Athée was a mercenary captain employed by King John of England from 1211 to 1215 to control southern Wales. He served King John in France as commander of Loches castle, one of the last castles to resist Philip Augustas in Normandy. D'Athée was captured by the French and, being so highly valued by King John, ransomed back to England in return for 1,000 marks. His kinsmen were granted estates in England, and D'Athée received the sheriffdom of Gloucestershire and Herefordshire. His rise in the English court caused resentment amongst the English barons. He is mentioned in clause 50 of the Magna Carta:

We will entirely remove from their bailiwicks, the relations of Gerard of Athee (so that in future they shall have no bailiwick in England); namely, Engelard of Cigogne, Peter, Guy, and Andrew of Chanceaux, Guy of Cigogne, Geoffrey of Martigny with his brothers, Philip Mark with his brothers and his nephew Geoffrey, and the whole brood of the same.^[1]

Articles 60, 62 and 63 provide for the application and observation of the Charter and say that the Charter is binding on the King and his heirs forever, but this was soon deemed dependent on each succeeding king reaffirming the Charter under his own seal.

Great Council

The first long-term constitutional effect arose from Clauses 14 and 61, which permitted a council composed of the most powerful men in the country to exist for the benefit of the state rather than in allegiance to the monarch. Members of the council were also allowed to renounce their oath of allegiance to the King in pressing circumstances and to pledge allegiance to the council and not to the King in certain instances. The common council was responsible for taxation, and although it was not representative, its members were bound by decisions made in their absence. The common council, later called the Great Council, was England's proto-parliament.

The Great Council only existed to give input on the opinion of the kingdom as a whole, and it only had power to control scutage until 1258 when Henry III got into debt fighting in Sicily for the pope. The barons agreed to a tax in exchange for reform, leading to the Provisions of Oxford. But Henry got a papal bull allowing him to set aside the provisions and in 1262 told royal officers to ignore the provisions and only to obey Magna Carta. The barons revolted and seized the Tower of London, the Cinque ports and Gloucester. Initially the King surrendered, but when Louis IX of France arbitrated in favour of Henry, Henry crushed the rebellion. Later he ceded somewhat, passing the Statute of Marlborough in 1267, which allowed writs for breaches of Magna Carta to be free of charge, enabling anyone to have standing to apply the Charter.

This secured the position of the Great Council forever, but its powers were still very limited. The council originally only met three times per year and so was subservient to the King’s council, Curiae Regis, who, unlike the Great Council, followed the king wherever he went.

Still, in some senses the council was an early form of parliament. It had the power to meet outside the authority of the King and was not appointed by him. While executive government descends from the Curiae Regis, parliament descends from the Great Council, which was later called the parliamentum. However, the Great Council was very different from modern parliament. There were no knights, let alone commons, and it was composed of the most powerful men, rather than elected citizens.

Magna Carta had little effect on subsequent development of parliament until the Tudor period. Knights and county representatives attended the Great Council (Simon de Montfort’s Parliament), and the council became far more representative under the model parliament of Edward I which included two knights from each county, two burgesses from each borough and two citizens from each city. The Commons separated from the Lords in 1341. The right of the Commons to exclusively sanction taxes (based on a withdrawn provision of Magna Carta) was re-asserted in 1407, although it was not in force in this period. The power vested in the Great Council by, albeit withdrawn, Clause 14 of Magna Carta became vested in the House of Commons but Magna Carta was all but forgotten for about a century, until the Tudors.

Tudor dynasty

Magna Carta was the first entry on the statute books, but after 1472, it was not mentioned for a period of nearly 100 years. There was much ignorance about the document. The few who did know about the document spoke of a good king being forced by an unstable pope and rebellious barons “to attaine the shadow of seeming liberties” and that it was a product of a wrongful rebellion against the one true authority, the king. The original Magna Carta was seen as an ancient document with shadowy origins and as having no bearing on the Tudor world. Shakespeare’s King John makes no mention of the Charter at all but focuses on the murder of Arthur. The Charter in the statute books was thought to have arisen from the reign of Henry III.^{[citation needed]}

First uses of the charter as a bill of rights

This statute was used widely in the reign of Henry VIII but was seen as no more special than any other statute and could be amended and removed. But later in the reign, the Lord Treasurer stated in the Star Chamber that many had lost their lives in the Baronial wars fighting for the liberties which were guaranteed by the Charter, and therefore it should not so easily be overlooked as a simple and regular statute.

The church often attempted to invoke the first clause of the Charter to protect itself from the attacks by Henry, but this claim was given no credence. Francis Bacon was the first to try to use Clause 39 to guarantee due process in a trial.

Although there was a re-awakening of the use of Magna Carta in common law, it was not seen (as it was later) as an entrenched set of liberties guaranteed for the people against the Crown and Government. Rather, it was a normal statute, which gave a certain level of liberties, most of which could not be relied on, least of all against the king. Therefore, the Charter had little effect on the governance of the early Tudor period. Although lay parliament evolved from the Charter, by this stage the powers of parliament had managed to exceed those humble beginnings. The Charter had no real effect until the Elizabethan age.

Reinterpretation of the charter

In the Elizabethan age, England was becoming a powerful force in Europe. In academia, earnest but futile attempts were made to prove that Parliament had Roman origins. The events at Runnymede in 1215 were "re-discovered", allowing a possibility to show the antiquity of Parliament, and Magna Carta became synonymous with the idea of an ancient house with origins in Roman government.

The Charter was interpreted as an attempt to return to a pre-Norman state of things. The Tudors saw the Charter as proof that their state of governance had existed since time immemorial and the Normans had been a brief break from this liberty and democracy. This claim is disputed in certain circles but explains how Magna Carta came to be regarded as such an important document.

Magna Carta again occupied legal minds, and it again began to shape how that government was run. Soon the Charter was seen as an immutable entity. In the trial of Arthur Hall for questioning the antiquity of the House, one of his alleged crimes was an attack on Magna Carta.

Edward Coke’s opinions

Jurist Edward Coke interpreted Magna Carta to apply not only to the protection of nobles but to all subjects of the crown equally. He famously asserted: "Magna Carta is such a fellow, that he will have no sovereign."

One of the first respected jurists to write seriously about the great charter was Edward Coke, who had a great deal to say on the subject and was influential in the way Magna Carta was perceived throughout the Tudor and Stuart periods, although his opinions changed across time and his writing in the Stuart period was more influential. In the Elizabethan period, Coke wrote of Parliament evolving alongside the monarchy and not existing by any allowance on the part of the monarch. However he was still fiercely loyal to Elizabeth, and the monarchy still judged the Charter in the same light it always had: an evil document forced out of their forefathers by brute force. He therefore prevented a re-affirmation of the charter from passing the House, and although he spoke highly of the charter, he did not speak out against imprisonments without due process. This came back to haunt him later when he moved for a reaffirmation of the charter.

Magna Carta’s role in the lead-up to the Civil War

Biost the time of the Stuarts, Magna Carta had attained an almost mythical status for its admirers and was seen as representing a ‘golden age’ of English liberties extant prior to the Norman invasion. Whether or not this 'golden age' ever truly existed is open to debate; regardless, proponents of its application to English law saw themselves as leading England back to a pre-Norman state of affairs. What is true, however is that this age existed in the hearts and minds of people of the time. Magna Carta was not important because of the liberties it bestowed, but simply as ‘proof’ of what had come before; many great minds influentially exalted the Charter; by the seventeenth century, Coke was talking of the Charter as an indispensable method of limiting the powers of the Crown, a popular principle in the Stuart period where the kings were proclaiming their divine right and were looking, in the minds of some of their subjects, towards becoming absolute monarchs.

It was not the content of the Charter which has made it so important in the history of England, but more how it has been perceived in the popular mind. This is something that certainly started in the Stuart period, as the Charter represented many things, which are not to be found in the Charter itself. Firstly it was used to claim liberties against the Government in general rather than just the Crown and the officers of the crown, secondly that it represented that the laws and liberties of England, specifically Parliament, dated back to a time immemorial and thirdly, that it was not only just but right to usurp a king who disobeyed the law.

For the last of these reasons Magna Carta began to represent a danger to the monarchy; Elizabeth ordered that John Coke stop a bill from going through Parliament which would have reaffirmed the validity of the Charter, and Charles I ordered the suppression of a book which Coke intended to write on Magna Carta. The powers of Parliament were growing, and on Coke’s death, parliament ordered his house to be searched; the manuscripts were recovered, and the book was published in 1642 (at the end of Charles I's Personal Rule). Parliament began to see Magna Carta as its best way of claiming supremacy over the crown and began to state that they were the sworn defenders of the liberties — fundamental and immemorial — which were to be found in the Charter.

In the four centuries since the Charter had originally catered for their creation, Parliament’s power had increased greatly from their original level where they existed only for the purpose that the king had to seek their permission in order to raise scutage. They had become the only body allowed to raise tax, a right which although descended from the 1215 Great Charter was not guaranteed by it, since it was removed from the 1225 edition. Parliament had become so powerful that the Charter was being used both by those wishing to limit Parliament's power (as a new organ of the Crown), and by those who wished Parliament to rival the king's power (as a set of principles Parliament was sworn to defend against the king). When it became obvious that some people wished to limit the power of Parliament by claiming it to be tantamount to the crown, Parliament claimed they had the sole right of interpretation of the Charter.

This was an important step; for the first time Parliament was claiming itself a body as above the law; whereas one of the fundamental principles in English law was that the law, Parliament, the monarch, and the church held all, albeit to different extents. Parliament was claiming exactly what Magna Carta wanted to prevent the king from claiming, a claim of not being subject to any higher form of power. This was not claimed until ten years after the death of Lord Coke, but he would not have agreed with this, because he claimed in the English Constitution the law was supreme and all bodies of government were subservient to the supreme law, which is to say the common law, as embodied in the Great Charter. These early discussions of Parliament sovereignty seemed to only involve the Charter as the entrenched law, and the discussions were simply about whether Parliament had enough power to repeal the document.

Although it was important for Parliament to be able to claim themselves more powerful than the King in the forthcoming struggle, the Charter provided for this very provision. Clause 61 of the Charter enables people to swear allegiance to what became the Great Council and later Parliament and therefore to renounce allegiance to the king. Moreover, Clause 61 allowed for the seizing of the kingdom by the body which later became Parliament if Magna Carta was not respected by the king or Lord Chief Justice. So there was no need to show any novel level of power in order to overthrow the king; it had already been set out in Magna Carta nearly half a millennium before. Parliament was not ready to repeal the Charter yet however, and in fact, it was cited as the reason why ship money was illegal (the first time Parliament overruled the king).

Trial of Archbishop Laud

Further proof of the significance of Magna Carta is shown in the trial of Archbishop Laud in 1645. Laud was tried with attempting to subvert the laws of England including writing a condemnation of Magna Carta claiming that as the Charter came about due to rebellion it was not valid (a widely held opinion less than a century before, when the ‘true’ Magna Carta was thought to be the 1225 edition, with the 1215 edition being considered less valid for this very reason). However, Laud was not trying to say that Magna Carta was evil, and he actually used the document in his defence. He claimed his trial was against the right of the freedom of the church (as the Bishops were voted out of Parliament in order to allow for parliamentary condemnation of him) and, that he was not given the benefit of due process contrary to Clauses 1 and 39 of the Charter. By this stage, Magna Carta had passed a great distance beyond the original intentions for the document, and the Great Council had evolved beyond a body merely ensuring the application of the Charter. It had gotten to the stage where the Great Council or Parliament was inseparable from the ideas of the Crown as described in the Charter and therefore it was potentially not just the King that was bound by the Charter, but Parliament also.

Civil War and interregnum

After seven years of civil war, the king surrendered and was executed; it seemed Magna Carta no longer applied, as there was no King. Oliver Cromwell was accused of destroying Magna Carta, and many thought he should be crowned just so that it would apply. Cromwell had much disdain for Magna Carta, at one point describing it as "Magna Farta" to a defendant who sought to rely on it^[7].

In this time of foment, there were many revolutionary theorists, and many based their theories at least initially on Magna Carta, in the misguided belief that Magna Carta guaranteed liberty and equality for all.

Levellers

The Levellers believed that all should be equal and free without distinction of class or status. They believed that Magna Carta was the ‘political bible’, which should be prized above any other law and that it could not be repealed. They prized it so highly that they believed all (such as Archbishop Laud) who “trod Magna Carta…under their feet” deserved to be attacked at all levels. The original idea was to achieve this through Parliament but there was little support, because at the time the Parliament was seeking to impose itself as above Magna Carta. The Levellers claimed Magna Carta was above any branch of government, and this led to the upper echelons of the Leveller movement denouncing Parliament. They claimed that Parliament’s primary purpose was not to rule the people directly but to protect the people from the extremes of the King; they claimed that Magna Carta adequately did this and therefore Parliament should be subservient to it.

After the Civil War, Cromwell refused to support the Levellers and was denounced as a traitor to Magna Carta. The importance of Magna Carta was greatly magnified in the eyes of the Levellers. John Lilburne, one of the leaders of the movement, was known for his great advocacy of the Charter and was often known to explain its purpose to lay people and to expose the misspeaking against it in the popular press of the time. He was quoted as saying the ground and foundation of my freedome I build upon the grand charter of England. However, as it became apparent that Magna Carta did not grant the level of liberty demanded by the Levellers, the movement reduced its advocacy of it. William Walwyn, another leader of the movement, advocated natural law and other doctrines as the primary principles of the movement. This was mainly because the obvious intention of Magna Carta was to grant rights only to the barons and the episcopacy, and not the general and egalitarian rights the Levellers were claiming. Also influential, however, was Spelman’s rediscovery of the existence of the feudal system at the time of Magna Carta, which seemed to have less and less effect on the world of the time. The only right, which the Levellers could trace back to 1215, possibly prized over all others, was the right to due process granted by Clause 39. One thing the Levellers did agree on with the popular beliefs of the time was that Magna Carta was an attempt to return to the fabled pre-Norman ‘golden age’.

Diggers

However, not all such groups advocated Magna Carta. The Diggers were a very early socialistic group who called for all land to be available to all for farming and the like. Gerrard Winstanley, a leader of the group, despised Magna Carta as a show of the hypocrisy of the post-Norman law, since Parliament and the courts advocated Magna Carta and yet did not even follow it themselves. The Diggers did, however, believe in the pre-Norman golden age and wished to return to it, and they called for the abolition of all Norman and post-Norman law.

Charles II

The Commonwealth was relatively short lived however, and when Charles II took the throne in 1660, he vowed to respect both the common law and the Charter. Parliament was established as the everyday government of Britain, independent of the King but not more powerful.^{[citation needed]} However, the struggles based on the Charter were far from over and took on the form of the struggle for supremacy between the two Houses of Parliament.

Within Parliament

In 1664, the British navy seized Dutch lands in both Africa and America leading to full-scale war with Holland in 1665. The Lord Chancellor Edward Lord Clarendon, resisted an alliance with the Spanish and Swedes in favour of maintaining a relationship with the French, who were the allies of the Dutch. This lack of a coherent policy led to the Second Anglo-Dutch War (1665-67), with the Dutch burning ships in the docks at Chatham, and the blame was placed on Clarendon. The Commons demanded that Clarendon be indicted before the Lords, but the Lords refused, citing the due process requirements of the Charter, giving Clarendon the time to escape to Europe.

A very similar set of events followed in 1678 when the Commons asked the Lords to indict Thomas Lord Danby on a charge of fraternising with the French. As with Clarendon the Lords refused, again citing Magna Carta and their own supremacy as the upper house. Before the quarrel could be resolved, Charles dissolved the Parliament. When Parliament was re-seated in 1681, again the Commons attempted to force an indictment in the Lords. This time Edward Fitzharris who was accused of writing libellously that the King was involved in a papist plot with the French (including the overthrowing of Magna Carta). However, the Lords doubted the veracity of the claim and refused to try Fitzharris saying Magna Carta stated that everyone must be subject to due process and therefore he must be tried in a lower court first. This time the Commons retorted that it was the Lords who were denying justice under Clause 39 and that the Commons were right to cite the Charter as their precedent. Again, before any true conclusions could be drawn Charles dissolved the Parliament, although more to serve his own ends and to rid himself of a predominantly Whig Parliament, and Fitzharris was tried in a regular court (the King’s Bench) and executed for treason. Here the Charter, once again, was used far beyond the content of its provisions, and simply being used as a representation of justice. Each house was claiming the Charter under Clause 39 supported its supremacy, but the power of the King was still too great for either house to come out fully as the more powerful.

Outside Parliament

The squabble also continued outside the Palace of Westminster. In 1667 the Lord Chief Justice and important member of the House of Lords, Lord Keeling, forced a grand jury of Somersetshire to return a verdict of murder when they wanted to return one of manslaughter.^[8] However, his biggest crime in the eyes of the Commons was that, when the jury objected on the grounds of Magna Carta, he scoffed and exclaimed "Magna Farta, [sic] what ado with this have we?"^[9] The Commons were incensed at this abuse of the Charter and accused him of endangering the liberties of the people.^[8] However, the Lords claimed he was just referring to the inappropriateness of the Charter in this context, but Keeling apologised anyway. In 1681 the next Lord Chief Justice, Lord Scroggs, was condemned by the Commons first for being too severe in the so-called ‘papist plot trials’ and second for dismissing another Middlesex grand jury in order to secure against the indictment of the Duke of York, the Catholic younger brother of the King later to become James II. Charles again dissolved Parliament before the Commons could impeach Scroggs, and removed him from office on a good pension. Just as it seemed that the Commons might be able to impose their supremacy over the Lords, the King intervened and proved he was still the most powerful force in the government. However, it was certainly beginning to become established that the Commons were the primary branch of Government, and they used the Charter as much as they could in order to achieve this end.

Supremacy of the Commons

This was not the end of the struggle however, and in 1679 the Commons passed the Habeas Corpus Act of 1679, which greatly reduced the powers of the Crown. The act passed through the Lords by a small majority, arguably establishing the Commons as the more powerful House. This was the first time since the importance of the Charter had been so magnified that the Government had admitted that the liberties granted by the Charter were inadequate. However, this did not completely oust the position of the Charter as a symbol of the law of the ‘golden age’ and the basis of common law.

It did not take long before the questioning of the Charter really took off and Sir Matthew Hale soon afterwards introduced a new doctrine of common law based on the principle that the Crown (including the government cabinet in that definition) made all law and could only be bound by the law of God, and showed that the 1215 charter was effectively overruled by the 1225 charter, further undermining the idea that the charter was unassailable, adding credence to the idea that the Commons were a supreme branch of Government. Some completely denied the relevance of the 1215 Charter as it was forced upon the King by rebellion (although the fact that the 1225 charter was forced on a boy by his guardians was overlooked). It was similarly argued against the Charter that it was nothing more than a relaxation of the rigid feudal laws and therefore had no meaning outside of that application.

Glorious Revolution

The danger posed by the fact that Charles II had no legitimate child was becoming more and more real, as this meant that the heir apparent was the Duke of York, a Catholic and firm believer in the divine right of kings, threatening the establishment of the Commons as the most powerful arm of government. Parliament did all it could to prevent James’s succession but was prevented when Charles dissolved the Parliament. In February 1685, Charles died of a stroke and James II assumed the thrones of England, Ireland and Scotland. Almost straight away James attempted to impose Catholicism as the religion of the country and to regain the royal prerogative now vested in the Parliament. Parliament was slightly placated when James’s four-year-old son died in 1677 and it seemed his Protestant daughter Mary would take his throne. However when James' second wife, Mary of Modena, gave birth to a male heir in 1688 Parliament could not take the risk that another Catholic monarch would assume the throne and take away their power, and in 1688 the Convention Parliament declared that James had broken the contract of Magna Carta and nullified his claim to the throne. This finally proved that Parliament was the major power in the British Government; Mary, James II's eldest daughter was invited to take the throne with her husband William of Orange. Many thought that, with bringing in a new monarch, it would be prudent to define what powers this monarch should have, so the Bill of Rights was created. The Bill of Rights went far beyond what Magna Carta had ever set out to achieve. It stated that the Crown could not make law without Parliament. Although the raising of taxes was specifically mentioned, it did not limit itself to such, as Magna Carta did. However, one important thing to note is that the writers of the Bill did not seem to think that the Bill included any new provisions of law; all the powers it ‘removes’ from the crown it refers to as ‘pretended’ powers, insinuating that the rights of Parliament listed in the Bill already existed under a different authority, presumably Magna Carta. So the importance of Magna Carta was not completely extinguished at this point, although it was somewhat diminished.

Eighteenth century

The power of the Magna Carta myth still existed in the 18th century; in 1700 Samuel Johnson talked of Magna Carta being “born with a grey beard” referring to the belief that the liberties set out in the Charter harked back to the Golden Age and time immemorial. However, ideas about the nature of law in general were beginning to change. In 1716 the Septennial Act was passed, which had a number of consequences. Firstly, it showed that Parliament no longer considered its previous statutes unassailable, as this act provided that the parliamentary term was to be seven years, whereas fewer than twenty-five years had passed since the Triennial Act (1694), which provided that a parliamentary term was to be three years. It also greatly extended the powers of Parliament. Previously, all legislation that passed in a parliamentary session had to be listed in the election manifesto, so in effect the electorate was consulted on all issues that were to be brought before Parliament. However, with a seven-year term, it was unlikely, if not impossible, that all the legislation passed would be discussed at the election. This gave Parliament the freedom to legislate as it liked during its term. This was not Parliamentary sovereignty as understood today however, as although Parliament could overrule its own statutes, it was still considered itself bound by the higher law, such as Magna Carta. Arguments for Parliamentary sovereignty were not new; however, even its proponents would not have expected Parliament to be as powerful as it is today. For example, in the previous century, Coke had discussed how Parliament might well have the power to repeal the common law and Magna Carta, but they were, in practice, prohibited from doing so, as the common law and Magna Carta were so important in the constitution that it would be dangerous to the continuing existence of the constitution to ever repeal them.

Extent of the Commons' powers

In 1722 the Bishop of Rochester (Francis Atterbury (a Stuart Jacobite)), a member of the House of Lords, was accused of treason. The Commons locked him in the Tower of London, and introduced a bill intending to remove him from his post and send him into exile. This, once again, brought up the subject of which was the more powerful house, and exactly how far that power went. Atterbury claimed, and many agreed, that the Commons had no dominion over the Lords. Other influential people disagreed however; for example, the Bishop of Salisbury (also a Lord) was of the strong opinion that the powers of Parliament, mainly vested in the Commons, were sovereign and unlimited and therefore there could be no limit on those powers at all, implying the dominion of the lower house over the upper house. Many intellectuals agreed; Jonathan Swift went so far as to say that Parliament’s powers extended to altering or repealing Magna Carta. This claim was still controversial, and the argument incensed the Tories. Bolingbroke spoke of the day when “liberty is restored and the radiant volume of Magna Carta is returned to its former position of Glory”. This belief was anchored in the relatively new theory that when William the Conqueror invaded England he only conquered the throne, not the land, and he therefore assumed the same position in law as the Saxon rulers before him. The Charter was therefore a recapitulation or codification of these laws rather than (as previously believed) an attempt to reinstate these laws after the tyrannical Norman Kings. This implied that these rights had existed constantly from the ‘golden age immemorial’ and could never be removed by any government. The Whigs on the other hand claimed that the Charter only benefited the nobility and the church and granted nowhere near the liberty they had come to expect. However although the Whigs attacked the content of the Charter, they did not actually attack the myth of the ‘golden age’ or attempt to say that the Charter could be repealed, and the myth remained as immutable as ever.

America

The 1765 Stamp Act extended the stamp duty, which had been in force on home territory since 1694 to cover the American colonies as well. However, colonists of the Thirteen Colonies despised this since they were not represented in Parliament and refused to accept that an external body, which did not represent them, could tax them in what they saw was a denial of their rights as Englishmen. The cry ‘no taxation without representation’ rang throughout the colonies.

The influence of Magna Carta can be clearly seen in the U.S. Bill of Rights, which enumerates various rights of the people and restrictions on government power, such as:

No person shall be ... deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.

Article 21 from the Declaration of Rights in the Maryland Constitution of 1776 reads:

That no freeman ought to be taken, or imprisoned, or disseized of his freehold, liberties, or privileges, or outlawed, or exiled, or in any manner destroyed, or deprived of his life, liberty, or property, but by the judgment of his peers, or by the law of the land.

Parliamentary sovereignty

The doctrine of parliamentary supremacy (if not parliamentary sovereignty) had largely been established 1765 when William Blackstone argued strongly for sovereignty in his Commentaries on the English Law. He essentially argued that absolute supremacy must exist in one of the arms of Government; and he thought it resided in Parliament, as Parliament could legislate on anything, even legislating the impossible if they wished, regardless of whether it was practical. The debate over whether or not Parliament could limit or overrule the supposed rights granted by Magna Carta was to prove to be the basis for the discussion over parliamentary sovereignty. Blackstone thought however that despite Parliament's power, it should respect Magna Carta as a show of law from time immemorial. The other great legal mind of the time Jeremy Bentham used the Charter to attack legal abuses.

John Wilkes

In 1763 John Wilkes, an MP was arrested for writing an inflammatory pamphlet, No. 45, 23 April 1763. In his defence, he continually cited Magna Carta, and the weight that Magna Carta held at the time meant Parliament was wary of continuing the charge. He was released and awarded damages for the wrongful seizure of his papers, as the general warrant under which he was arrested was deemed illegal. He was still expelled from Parliament and spent a week in the Tower of London.

He spent a number of years abroad until 1768 when he returned and failed to be elected as the MP for London. Unperturbed he stood again for Middlesex but he was expelled again based on the earlier offence the next year. He stood again and was elected but the Commons ruled that he was ineligible to sit. At the next three re-elections Wilkes again was the champion, but the House did not relent and his opponent, Lutteral, was announced the winner.

The treatment of Wilkes caused a furore in Parliament, with Lord Camden denouncing the action as a contravention of Magna Carta. Wilkes made the issue a national one and the populace took up the issue. All over the country, there were prints of him being arrested whilst teaching his son about Magna Carta. He received the support of the Corporation of London, which had long sought to establish its supremacy over Parliament, based on the Charter.

Those who supported Wilkes often had little or no knowledge of the actual content of the Charter, or if they did, were looking to protect their own position based on it (such as the Corporation of London). Wilkes re-entered the House in 1774 having begun the cause for a reform movement to ‘restore the constitution’, through a more representative, less powerful, and shorter termed Parliament.

Granville Sharp

One of the principal reformists was the philanthropist Granville Sharp. Sharp called for the reform of Parliament based on Magna Carta, and to back this up he devised the doctrine of accumulative authority. This doctrine stated that because almost innumerable parliaments had approved Magna Carta it would take the same number of Parliaments to repeal it. Like many others, Sharp accepted the supremacy of Parliament as an institution, but did not believe that this power was without restraint, and thought that Parliament could not repeal Magna Carta. Many reformists agreed that the Charter was a statement of the liberties of the mythical and immemorial golden age, and there was a popular movement to have a holiday to commemorate the signing of the Charter in a similar way to the American 4th of July holiday; however, very few went as far as Sharp.

Proposed reform of Magna Carta

Although there was a popular movement to resist the sovereignty of Parliament based on The Charter, others thought that too much was claimed for the Charter. Cartwright pointed out in 1774 that Magna Carta could not have existed unless there was a firm constitution beforehand. He went even further later and claimed that the Charter was not part of the constitution, but merely a codification of the constitution that existed at the time. Cartwright went on to suggest that there should be a new Magna Carta based on equality and rights for all, not just for landed persons.

People like Cartwright were showing that the rights granted by the Charter were out of pace with the changes that had happened in the intervening six centuries. There were certain provisions, such as Clauses 23 and 39, which were not only still valid then but still form the basis of important rights in the present English law. Undeniably, though, the importance of Magna Carta was diminishing and the arguments for having a fully sovereign Parliament were increasingly accepted. Many in the House still supported the Charter, such as Sir Francis Burdett, who in 1809 called for a return to the constitution of Magna Carta, and denounced the House of Commons for taking proceedings against the radical John Gale Jones, who had accused Parliament of acting in contravention of Magna Carta. Burdett was largely ignored, but he continued, claiming that the Long Parliament (1640-60) had usurped all the power then enjoyed by the Parliament of the time. He stated that Parliament was constantly contravening Magna Carta (although he was referring to its judicial not legislative practice), and that it did not have the right to do so. He received popular support and there were riots across London when he was arrested for these claims.

Chartists

The major breakthrough occurred in 1828 with the passing of the Offences Against the Person Act 1828, which for the first time repealed a clause of Magna Carta, namely Clause 36. With the myth broken, in one hundred and fifty years nearly the whole charter was repealed.

The Reform Act 1832 fixed some of the most glaring problems in the political system, but did not go nearly far enough for a group that called itself the Chartists, who called for a return to the constitution of Magna Carta and eventually created a codification of what they saw as the existing rights of the People, the People's Charter. At a rally for the Chartists in 1838 the Reverend Raynor demanded a return to the constitution of the Charter; freedom of speech, worship and congress. This is a perfect example of how the idea of the Charter went so far beyond its actual content: it depicted for many people the idea of total liberty. It was this over-exaggeration of the Charter that eventually led to its downfall. The more people expected to get from the Charter, the less Parliament was willing to attempt to cater to this expectation, and eventually writers such as Tom Paine refuted the claims about the Charter made by those such as the Chartists. This meant that the educated no longer supported these claims, and the power of Magna Carta as a symbol of freedom gradually faded into obscurity.

Influences on later constitutions

Many later attempts to draft constitutional forms of government, including the United States Constitution, trace their lineage back to this source document. The United States Supreme Court has explicitly referenced Lord Coke's analysis of Magna Carta as an antecedent of the Sixth Amendment's right to a speedy trial.^[10]

Magna Carta has influenced international law as well: Eleanor Roosevelt referred to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as "a Magna Carta for all mankind". Magna Carta is thought to be the crucial turning point in the struggle to establish freedom and a key element in the transformation of constitutional thinking throughout the world. When Englishmen left their homeland to establish colonies in the new world, they brought with them charters that guaranteed they and their heirs would ‘have and enjoy all liberties and immunities of free and natural subjects.” (qtd. from wall of National Archives). In 1606, Sir Edward Coke, who drafted the Virginia Charter, had highly praised Magna Carta, which reflected many of its values and themes into the Virginia Charter (Howard 28). Colonists were also aware of their rights that came from Magna Carta. When American colonists raised arms against England, they were fighting not so much for new freedom, but to preserve liberties, many of which dated back to the 13th century Magna Carta. In 1787 when the representatives of America gathered to draft a constitution, they built upon the legal system they knew and admired: English common law that had evolved from Magna Carta (National Archives). The ideas addressed in the great charter that are found today are particularly obvious. The American Constitution is the “Supreme Law of the Land,” recalling the manner in which Magna Carta had come to be regarded as fundamental law. This heritage is quite apparent. In comparing Magna Carta with the Bill of Rights: the Fifth Amendment guarantees: “No person shall be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law.” In addition, the United States Constitution included a similar writ in the Suspension Clause, article 1, section 9: “ The privilege of the writ habeas corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion, the public safety may require it." Written 575 years earlier, Magna Carta states, “ No free man shall be taken, imprisoned, disseised, outlawed, banished, or in any way destroyed, not will we proceed against or prosecute him, except by the lawful judgment of his peers and by the law of the land.” (qtd. in Howard pg VI: Foreword). Each of these proclaim no man may be imprisoned or detained without proof that they did wrong.

Jews in England

Magna Carta contained two articles related to money lending and Jews in England. Jewish involvement with money lending caused Christian resentment, because the Church forbade usury; it was seen as vice and was punishable by excommunication, although Jews, as non-Christians, could not be excommunicated and were thus in a legal grey area. Secular leaders, unlike the Church, tolerated the practice of Jewish usury because it gave the leaders opportunity for personal enrichment. This resulted in a complicated legal situation: debtors were frequently trying to bring their Jewish creditors before Church courts, where debts would be absolved as illegal, while the Jews were trying to get their debtors tried in secular courts, where they would be able to collect plus interest. The relations between the debtors and creditors would often become very nasty. There were many attempts over centuries to resolve this problem, and Magna Carta contains one example of the legal code of the time on this issue:

If one who has borrowed from the Jews any sum, great or small, die before that loan be repaid, the debt shall not bear interest while the heir is under age, of whomsoever he may hold; and if the debt fall into our hands, we will not take anything except the principal sum contained in the bond. And if anyone die indebted to the Jews, his wife shall have her dower and pay nothing of that debt; and if any children of the deceased are left under age, necessaries shall be provided for them in keeping with the holding of the deceased; and out of the residue the debt shall be paid, reserving, however, service due to feudal lords; in like manner let it be done touching debts due to others than Jews.

After the Pope annulled Magna Carta, future versions contained no mention of Jews. The Church saw Jews as a threat to their authority, and the welfare of Christians, because of their special relationship to Kings as moneylenders. "Jews are the sponges of kings," wrote the theologian William de Montibus, "they are bloodsuckers of Christian purses, by whose robbery kings dispoil and deprive poor men of their goods." Thus the specific singling out of Jewish moneylenders seen in Magna Carta originated in part because of Christian nobles who permitted the otherwise illegal activity of usury, a symptom of the larger ongoing power struggle between Church and State during the Middle Ages.

Popular perceptions

In 1957 the American Bar Association acknowledged the debt American law and constitutionalism had to Magna Carta by erecting a monument at Runnymede.

Symbol and practice

Magna Carta is often a symbol for the first time the citizens of England were granted rights against an absolute king. However, in practice the Commons could not enforce Magna Carta in the few situations where it applied to them, so its reach was limited. Also, a large part of Magna Carta was copied, nearly word for word, from the Charter of Liberties of Henry I, issued when Henry I rose to the throne in 1100, which bound the king to laws which effectively granted certain civil liberties to the church and the English nobility.

The CHARTER of
LIBERTIES of HENRY I

This charter, granted by Henry when he ascended the throne, is important in two ways. First, Henry formally bound himself to the laws, setting the stage for the rule of law that parliaments and parliamentarians of later ages would cry for. Second, it reads almost exactly like the Magna Carta, and served as the model for the Great Charter in 1215.

---

Henry, king of the English, to Bishop Samson and Urso de Abetot and all hisbarons and faithful, both French and English, of Worcestershire, [copies weresent to all the shires] greeting.

1. Know that by the mercy of God and the common counsel of the barons of thewhole kingdom of England I have been crowned king of said kingdom; and becausethe kingdom had been oppressed by unjust exactions, I, through fear of god andthe love which I have toward you all, in the first place make the holy churchof God free, so that I will neither sell nor put ot farm, nor on the death ofarchbishop or bishop or abbot will I take anything from the church's demesne orfrom its men until the successor shall enter it. And I take away all the badcustoms by which the kingdom of England was unjustly oppressed; which badcustoms I here set down in part:

2. If any of my barons, earls, or others who hold of me shall have died, hisheir shall not buy back his land as he used to do in the time of my brother,but he shall relieve it by a just and lawful relief. Likewise also the men ofmy barons shall relieve their lands from their lords by a just and lawfulrelief.

3. And if any of my barons or other men should wish to give his daughter,sister, niece, or kinswoman in marriage, let him speak with me about it; but Iwill neither take anything from him for this permission nor prevent his givingher unless he should be minded to join her to my enemy. And if, upon the deathof a baron or other of my men, a daughter is left as heir, I will give her withher land by the advice of my barons. And if, on the death of her husband, thewife is left and without children, she shall have her dowry and right ofmarriage, and I will not give her to a husband unless according to her will.

4. But if a wife be left with children, she shall indeed have her dowry andright of marriage so long as she shall keep her body lawfully, and I will notgive her unless according to her will. And the guardian of the land andchildren shall be either the wife or another of the relatives who more justlyought to be. And I command that my barons restrain themselves similarly indealing with the sons and daughters or wives of their men.

5. The common seigniorage, which has been taken through the cities andcounties, but which was not taken in the time of King Edward I absolutelyforbid henceforth. If any one, whether a moneyer or other, be taken with falsemoney, let due justice be done for it.

6. I remit all pleas and all debts which were owing to my brother, except mylawful fixed revenues and except those amounts which had been agreed upon forthe inheritances of others or for things which more justly concerned others. And if any one had pledged anything for his own inheritance, I remit it; alsoall reliefs which had been agreed upon for just inheritances.

7. And if any of my barons or men shall grow feeble, as he shall give orarrange to give his money, I grant that it be so given. But if, prevented byarms or sickness, he shall not have given or arranged to give his money, hiswife, children, relatives, or lawful men shall distribute it for the good ofhis sould as shall seem best to them.

8. If any of my barons or men commit a crime, he shall not bind himself to apayment at the king's mercy as he has been doing in the time of my father or mybrother; but he shall make amends according to the extent of the crime as hewould have done before the time of my father in the time of my otherpredecessors. But if he be convicted of treachery or heinous crime, he shallmake amends as is just.

9. I forgive all murders committed before the day I was crowned king; andthose which shall be committed in the future shall be justly compensatedaccording to the law of King Edward.

10. By the common consent of my barons I have kept in my hands forests as myfather had them.

11. To those knights who render military service for their lands I grant of myown gift that the lands of their demesne ploughs be free from all payments andall labor, so that, having been released from so great a burden, they may equipthemselves well with horses and arms and be fully prepared for my service andthe defense of my kingdom.

12. I impose a strict peace upon my whole kingdom and command that it bemaintained henceforth.

13. I restore to you the law of King Edward with those amendments introducedinto it by my father with the advice of his barons.

14. If any one, since the death of King William my brother, has taken anythingbelonging to me or to any one else, the whole is to be quickly restored withoutfine; but if any one keep anything of it, he upon whom it shall be found shallpay me a heavy fine.

Witnesses Maurice bishop of London, and William bishop elect of Winchester, andGerard bishop of Hereford, and earl Henry, and earl Simon, and Walter Giffard,and Robert de Montfort, and Roger Bigot, and Eudo the steward, and Robert son of Hamo, and Robert Malet. At London when I was crowned. Farewell.

Many documents form Magna Carta

The document commonly known as Magna Carta today is not the 1215 charter, but a later charter of 1225, and is usually shown in the form of the Charter of 1297 when it was confirmed by Edward I. At the time of the 1215 charter, many of the provisions were not meant to make long-term changes but simply to right some immediate wrongs; therefore, the Charter was reissued three times in the reign of Henry III (1216, 1217 and 1225). After this, each king for the next two hundred years (until Henry V in 1416) personally confirmed the 1225 charter in his own charter. It should not be thought of as one document but rather a variety of documents coming together to form one Magna Carta, in the same way as the treaties of Rome and Nice (among others) come together to form the treaties of the European Union and the European Community.

The document was unsigned

Popular perception is that King John and the barons signed Magna Carta. There were no signatures on the original document, however, only a single seal placed by the king. The words of the charter--Data per manum nostram--signify that the document was personally given by the king's hand. By placing his seal on the document, the King and the barons followed common law that a seal was sufficient to authenticate a deed, though it had to be done in front of witnesses. John's seal was the only one, and he did not sign it. The barons neither signed nor attached their seals to it.^[11]

America

The document is also honoured in America, where it is an antecedent of the United States Constitution and Bill of Rights. The United States has contributed the Runnymede Memorial and Lincoln Cathedral offers a Magna Carta Week.^[12] The UK lent one of the four remaining copies of Magna Carta to the U.S. for its bicentennial celebrations and donated a gold copy which is displayed in the U.S. National Archives Building in Washington, D.C.^[13]

21st Century Britain

In 2006, BBC History held a poll to recommend a date for a proposed "Britain Day". 15 June, as the date of the signing of the original 1215 Magna Carta, received most votes, above other suggestions such as D-Day, VE Day, and Remembrance Day. The outcome was not binding, although the then Chancellor Gordon Brown had previously given his support to the idea of a new national day to celebrate British identity.^[14] It was used as the name for an anti-surveillance movement in the 2008 BBC series The Last Enemy. According to a poll carried out by YouGov in 2008, 45% of the British public do not know what Magna Carta is.^[15] However, its perceived guarantee of trial by jury and other civil liberties led to Tony Benn to refer to the debate over whether to increase the maximum time terrorist suspects could be held without charge from 28 to 42 days as "the day Magna Carta was repealed".^[16]

Usage of the definite article

Since there is no direct, consistent correlate of the English definite article in Latin, the usual academic convention is to refer to the document in English without the article as “Magna Carta” rather than “the Magna Carta”. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the first written appearance of the term was in 1218: “Concesserimus libertates quasdam scriptas in magna carta nostra de libertatibus” (Latin: “We concede the certain liberties here written in our great charter of liberties”). However, “the Magna Carta” is frequently used in both academic and non-academic speech. In the past, the document has also been referred to as “Magna Charta”.^{[citation needed]}

Copies

1297 copy of the Magna Carta, owned by the Australian Government and on display in the Members' Hall of Parliament House, Canberra.

Numerous copies were made each time it was issued, so all of the participants would each have one — in the case of the 1215 copy, one for the royal archives, one for the Cinque Ports, and one for each of the 40 counties of the time. Several of those copies still exist and some are on permanent display. If there ever was one single 'master copy' of Magna Carta sealed by King John in 1215, it has not survived. Four contemporaneous copies (known as "exemplifications") remain, all of which are located in England:

• The 'burnt copy', which was found in the records of Dover Castle in the 17th century and so is assumed to be the copy that was sent to the Cinque Ports. It was subsequently involved at a house fire at its owner's property, making it all but illegible. It is the only one of the four to have its seal surviving, although this too was melted out of shape in the fire. It is currently held by the British Library.
• Another supposedly original, but possibly amended version of Magna Carta is on show just outside of the chamber of the House of Lords situated in Westminster Palace.
• One owned by Lincoln Cathedral, normally on display at Lincoln Castle. It has an unbroken attested history at Lincoln since 1216. We hear of it in 1800 when the Chapter Clerk of the Cathedral reported that he held it in the Common Chamber, and then nothing until 1846 when the Chapter Clerk of that time moved it from within the Cathedral to a property just outside. In 1848, Magna Carta was shown to a visiting group who reported it as “hanging on the wall in an oak frame in beautiful preservation”. It went to the New York World Fair in 1939 and so had to be held in Fort Knox, next to the original of the US Constitution, until the end of the Second World War. Having returned to Lincoln, it has been back to America on various occasions since then.^[17] It was taken out of display for a time to undergo conservation in preparation for its visit to America, where it was exhibited at the Contemporary Art Center of Virginia from 30 March to 18 June 2007 in recognition of the Jamestown quadricentennial.^[18][19] From 4 July to 25 July, the document was displayed at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia^[20], returning to Lincoln Castle afterwards.
• One owned by and displayed at Salisbury Cathedral. It is the best conserved of the four.^{[citation needed]}

Other early versions of Magna Carta survive. Durham Cathedral possesses 1216, 1217, and 1225 copies.^[21]

A near perfect 1217 copy is held by Hereford Cathedral and is occasionally displayed alongside the Mappa Mundi in the cathedral's chained library. Remarkably, the Hereford Magna Carta is the only one known to survive along with an early version of a Magna Carta ‘users manual’, a small document that was sent along with Magna Carta telling the Sheriff of the county to observe the conditions outlined in the document.^[22]

Four copies are held by the Bodleian Library in Oxford. Three of these are 1217 issues and one a 1225 issue. On 10 Dec 2007, these were put on public display for the first time.^[23]

Magna Carta Place, within Canberra, Australia's Parliamentary Triangle opened on 24 May 2003.

In 1952 the Australian Government purchased a 1297 copy of Magna Carta for £12,500 from King's School, Bruton, England.^[24] This copy is now on display in the Members' Hall of Parliament House, Canberra. In January 2006, it was announced by the Department of Parliamentary Services that the document had been revalued down from A$40m to A$15m.

Only one copy (a 1297 copy with the royal seal of Edward I) is in private hands; it was held by the Brudenell family, earls of Cardigan, who had owned it for five centuries, before being sold to the Perot Foundation in 1984. This copy, having been on long-term loan to the US National Archives, was auctioned at Sotheby's New York on 18 December 2007; The Perot Foundation sold it in order to "have funds available for medical research, for improving public education and for assisting wounded soldiers and their families."^[25] It fetched US$21.3 million,^[26] It was bought by David Rubenstein of The Carlyle Group,^[27] who after the auction said, "I thought it was very important that the Magna Carta stay in the United States and I was concerned that the only copy in the United States might escape as a result of this auction." Rubenstein's copy is on permanent loan to the National Archives in Washington, DC.^[28]

Participant list

Barons, Bishops and Abbots who were party to Magna Carta.^[29]

Barons

Surety Barons for the enforcement of Magna Carta:

• William d'Aubigny, Lord of Belvoir Castle.
• Roger Bigod, Earl of Norfolk and Suffolk.
• Hugh Bigod, Heir to the Earldoms of Norfolk and Suffolk.
• Henry de Bohun, Earl of Hereford.
• Richard de Clare, Earl of Hertford.
• Gilbert de Clare, heir to the earldom of Hertford.
• John FitzRobert, Lord of Warkworth Castle.
• Robert Fitzwalter, Lord of Dunmow Castle.
• William de Fortibus, Earl of Albemarle.
• William Hardel, **Mayor of the City of London.
• William de Huntingfield, Sheriff of Norfolk and Suffolk.
• John de Lacy, Lord of Pontefract Castle.
• William de Lanvallei, Lord of Standway Castle.
• William Malet, Sheriff of Somerset and Dorset.
• Geoffrey de Mandeville, Earl of Essex and Gloucester.
• William Marshall Jr, heir to the earldom of Pembroke.
• Roger de Montbegon, Lord of Hornby Castle, Lancashire.
• Richard de Montfichet, Baron.
• William de Mowbray, Lord of Axholme Castle.
• Richard de Percy, Baron.
• Saire/Saher de Quincy, Earl of Winchester.
• Robert de Roos, Lord of Hamlake Castle.
• Geoffrey de Saye, Baron.
• Robert de Vere, heir to the earldom of Oxford.
• Eustace de Vesci, Lord of Alnwick Castle.

Bishops

These bishops being witnesses (mentioned by the King as his advisers in the decision to sign the Charter):

• Stephen Langton, Archbishop of Canterbury, Cardinal of the Holy Roman Church,
• Henry, Archbishop of Dublin, Henry de Loundres,
• E. Bishop of London
• J. Bishop of Bath, Jocelin of Wells,
• P. Bishop of Winchester, Peter des Roches,
• H. Bishop of Lincoln, Hugh de Wells,
• R. Bishop of Salisbury, Herbert Poore aka "Robert",
• W. Bishop of Rochester,
• W. Bishop of Worcester, Walter de Gray,
• J. Bishop of Ely, Geoffrey de Burgo,
• H. Bishop of Hereford, Hugh de Mapenor,
• R. Bishop of Chichester, Richard Poore (brother of Herbert/Robert above),
• W. Bishop of Exeter.

Abbots

These abbots being witnesses:

• the Abbot of St. Edmunds
• the Abbot of St. Albans
• the Abbot of Bello
• the Abbot of St. Augustines in Canterbury
• the Abbot of Evesham
• the Abbot of Westminster
• the Abbot of Peterborough
• the Abbot of Reading
• the Abbot of Abingdon
• the Abbot of Malmesbury Abbey
• the Abbot of Winchcomb
• the Abbot of Hyde
• the Abbot of Certesey
• the Abbot of Sherborne
• the Abbot of Cerne
• the Abbot of Abbotebir
• the Abbot of Middleton
• the Abbot of Selby
• the Abbot of Cirencester
• the Abbot of Hartstary

Others

• Llywelyn the Great Also the other Welsh Princes
• Master Pandulff, subdeacon and member of the Papal Household
• Brother Aymeric, Master of the Knights Templar in England
• Alexander II of Scotland

See also

• The Baronial Order of Magna Charta
• Divine Right of Kings
• Fundamental Laws of England
• History of democracy
• Magna Carta Place
• New Brabantian Constitution
• Quia Emptores
• subpoena ad testificandum
• Henry de Bracton
• Cestui que
• Statutes of Mortmain
• Charter of Liberties
• Concordat of Worms

Notes

1. ^ "United States Constitution Q + A". The Charters of Freedom. http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/constitution_q_and_a.html. Retrieved on 2009-02-16.
2. ^ Within this article dates before 14 September 1752 are in the Julian calendar, later dates are in the Gregorian calendar.
3. ^ ^{a b} "(Magna Carta) (1297) (c. 9)". UK Statute Law Database. http://www.statutelaw.gov.uk/content.aspx?activeTextDocId=1517519. Retrieved on 2007-09-02.
4. ^ by 9 Geo. 4 c. 31 s. 1
5. ^ Gordon v. Justice Court, 12 Cal. 3d 323 (1974).
6. ^ "Magna Carta". Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. 1913. http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Catholic_Encyclopedia_(1913)/Magna_Carta.
7. ^ Department for Constitutional Affairs - Speeches - Speech by The Lord Chief Justice - Magna Carta: a Precedent For Recent Constitutional Change
8. ^ ^{a b} Grey, Anchitell (1769). Debates of 1667: December. Grey's Debates of the House of Commons. volume 1. pp. 54–70. http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=40337. Retrieved on 2008-11-04.
9. ^ Volcansek, Mary L.; De Franciscis, Maria Elisabetta; Lafon, Jacqueline Lucienne (1996). Judicial Misconduct: A Cross-national Comparison. University Press of Florida. pp. 72. ISBN 9780813014210.
10. ^ KLOPFER v. NORTH CAROLINA, 386 U.S. 213 (1967)
11. ^ Browning, Charles Henry (1898). "The Magna Charta Described". The Magna Charta Barons and Their American Descendants.... Philadelphia. pp. 50. OCLC 9378577. http://books.google.com/books?vid=0XPZLx6VcMoY1KO0KO&id=hTUfAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA50&lpg=PA50&dq=king+john+did+not+sign+magna+carta&as_brr=1&ie=ISO-8859-1#PPA45,M1.
12. ^ "Homepage". Lincoln Cathedral. http://www.lincolncathedral.com/. Retrieved on 2007-09-02. (Select "Visits & Events" > "Magna Carta" to navigate to the page with this information.)
13. ^ Featured Document: The Magna Carta
14. ^ "Magna Carta tops British day poll". BBC News. 2006-05-30. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/5028496.stm. Retrieved on 2007-09-02.
15. ^ "Magna Carta what? English charter 'a mystery to 45pc of population'". Daily Telegraph. 2008-03-13. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/03/13/ncarta113.xml. Retrieved on 2008-03-13.
16. ^ "So will the revolution start in Haltemprice and Howden?". The Independent. 14 June 2008. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/so-will-the-revolution-start-in-haltemprice-and-howden-846938.html. Retrieved on 2008-06-16.
17. ^ Knight, Alec (2004-04-17). "Magna Charta Our Heritage and Yours". National Society Magna Charta Dames and Barons. http://www.magnacharta.org/DeanofLincolnsRemarks2004.htm. Retrieved on 2007-09-02.
18. ^ "Magna Carta & Four Foundations of Freedom". Contemporary Art Center of Virginia. 2007. http://www.cacv.org/exhibitions/MagnaCarta.asp. Retrieved on 2007-09-02.
19. ^ "By Our Heirs Forever". Contemporary Art Center of Virginia. 2007. http://www.cacv.org/MagnaCarta.asp. Retrieved on 2007-09-02.
20. ^ National Constitution Center (2007-05-30). Magna Carta on Display Beginning 4 July. Press release. http://www.constitutioncenter.org/PressRoom/PressReleases/2007_05_30_17687.shtml. Retrieved on 2007-09-02.
21. ^ "Magna Carta: Where Can I See A Copy?". Icons: A Portrait of England. Culture Online. http://www.icons.org.uk/theicons/collection/magna-carta/features/where-can-i-see-a-copy. Retrieved on 2007-09-02.
22. ^ "Magna Carta at Hereford Cathedral". http://www.herefordcathedral.org/read.asp?newsID=215.
23. ^ "Magna Carta on display at the Bodleian". 10 December 2007. http://www.ox.ac.uk/media/news_stories/2007/071210a.html. Retrieved on 2007-12-12.
24. ^ Harry Evans, Bad King John and the Australian Constitution
25. ^ "Magna Carta Is Going on the Auction Block". The New York Times. 25 September 2007. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/25/nyregion/25magna.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin. Retrieved on 2007-12-19.
26. ^ "Magna Carta copy fetches $24m". The Sydney Morning Herald. 19 December 2007. http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/magna-carta-copy-fetches-24m/2007/12/19/1197740327098.html. Retrieved on 2007-12-19.
27. ^ Magna Carta Sells for $21.3M in New York, Washington Post, 2007-12-19, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/19/AR2007121900459.html, retrieved on 2007-12-19
28. ^ Ruane, Michael E. (2008-03-04), To Magna Excitement, Magna Carta Returns, The Washington Post, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/03/AR2008030302422_pf.html, retrieved on 2008-05-11
29. ^ Magna Charta translation, Magna Charta Surety Baron Listing, Magna Charta Period Feudal Estates

References

· "Magna Carta". In Encyclopedia Britannica Online.

· Article from Australia's Parliament House about the relevance of Magna Carta

· J. C. Holt (1992). Magna Carta. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-27778-7.

· I. Jennings: Magna Carta and its influence in the world today

· H. Butterfield; Magna Carta in the Historiography of the 16th and 17th Centuries

· G.R.C. Davis; Magna Carta

· J. C. Dickinson; The Great Charter

· G. B. Adams; Constitutional History of England

· W. S. McKechnie; Magna Carta: A Commentary (2d ed. 1914, repr. 1960)

· A. Pallister; Magna Carta the Legacy of Liberty

· A. Lyon; Constitutional History of the United Kingdom

· G. Williams and J. Ramsden; Ruling Britannia, A Political History of Britain 1688-1988

· Royal letter promulgating the text of Magna Carta (1215), treasure 3 of the British Library displayed via The European Library

External links

Magna Carta

• Official text of Magna Carta 1297 (c. 9) as amended and in force today within the United Kingdom, from the UK Statute Law Database
• "Treasures in Full: Magna Carta", two copies from 1215 from the British Library in multi-media format.
• Annotated English translation of 1215 version
• "Magna Carta" Side-by-side Latin with English translation
• "Magna Carta" Latin Text
• Baronial Order of Magna Charta
• The Magna Carta Manifesto: Liberties and Commons for All by Peter Linebaugh U of C Press 2008
• "Magna Carta and Its American Legacy" The influence of Magna Carta on the United States Constitution and Bill of Rights
• Magna Carta page at historicaldocuments.com
• Parliament House, Canberra, Australia
• The Magna Carta English translations. Project Gutenberg celebratory etext 10000
• Text of Magna Carta English translation, with introductory historical note. From the Internet Medieval Sourcebook.
• Notes prepared by Nancy Troutman
• Magna Carta glossary
• Timelines TV - history, documentary and television on the web.
• Magna Carta copy to be auctioned from BBC News
• Scholarly essay on Magna Carta at Sotheby's website
• Magna Carta - a Guide from Unlock Democracy.
• New York Daily News article on Magna Carta coming to Manhattan, 7/5/2008
• Interactive, high-resolution view of a copy from 1297, previously owned by Ross Perot and given to the US National Archives [1]