King Henry I of England lost his only legitimate son by drowning. When the old King died in 1135 the crown was offered to Henry's nephew, Stephen.
Stephen was a weak ruler. He did not oppose the invading Scott s and Welsh and his general inability to govern brought 8 years of civil war to England. The local lords built their own castles and fought their neighbors, sometimes with the help of mercenaries from all over Europe. These foreigners made things worse. They put men in prison for their gold and silver, they hung them up at their feet and smoked them with foul smoke. They put knotted strings round their heads and writhed them till they went into the brain. They put them into dungeons crawling with adders and snakes according to Richard of Hexham, an historian of the times.
While this went on the country went to ruin. Nothing was accomplished. Even those responsible for much of the crime eventually saw that if the state of affairs were allowed to continue, nothing could be gained for either party.
Henry II in 1153 rallied his supporters and within six months he completely transformed the scene. Henry was just 21. Henry was not just a scholar and a champion at arms, he also was an eloquent speaker. As soon as he came on the throne he set himself up to make great changes. He ordered all the mercenaries to leave England. He also demanded the return of all Crown lands which had been stolen during the troubled years. Some of the Earls and Dukes resisted and were subdued by force. In order to understand the situation in England at that time, it has to be realized that theoretically the King owned all the land. It was a feudal system which somewhat lingers on still today.
King Henry II. distributed land, estates to those who worthy of this honor. In return he demanded Loyalty. He instigated a fair system of justice - step by step. In cases of dispute over land or otherwise, the rightful owner was protected and could plead his case in the court of the King. Trial by combat was replaced by "twelve free and lawful men of the neighborhood. The twelve men, soon called jurymenwere men who were experienced in questions of this kind and how had special knowledge of the circumstances of the claim. They were required to answer questions of common knowledge put to them under oath by the king's judges. Soon the system of jurymen was extended to criminal justice. From then on it was only a short step to a system by which twelve men, ordinary men, having heard the facts of a case presented were required to determine whether the facts were true or not. there was never a fairer way in which a man might be judged. Twelve ordinary men, without knowledge of the law, required to base their decisions on ordinary common sense were without doubt the most impartial judges of all. The British jury system made British justice the envy of the world.
The Norman conquest had past, great developments had taken place, but not for all. The underprivileged did not see much of the so called "JUSTICE FOR ALL" laws degreed by the English Government.
A man came to the throne , five foot,five inches, a moody, spoiled little man. His name : John Lackland, better known as JOHN1 (1167? - 1216). He lacked two essential qualities of a good ruler - self descipline and balance. He was unpredictable and had fast mood changes. No one could be sure how he would react from one hour to the next. Compared to his older brothers, he possessed nothing. He was a suspicious character and greedy. He forever thought of others trying to defraud him. He trusted no one and never missed an opportunity to cheat others.
He was indeed a conglomeration of paradoxes, Suspicious, greedy, grasping, charming, sensual, self-indulgent, open-handed, mean, the victim of mad rages which so contorted his body that while they lasted he was unrecognizable, he grew up completely without morals or any sense of responsibility. With a ruler like that it was evident that the country was in for a sad, disturbing time.
Within 3 years of succeeding Richard in 1199, John had managed to lose two-thirds of his empire in France. By the end of three years more he had nothing left of his father's great overseas possessions but the Channel Islands and the province of Aquitaine. John made mistakes in dealing with King Philip Augustus of France whos ambition was to chase the English out of France.
John managed to pick a quarrel with Pope Innocence III (1161-1216). He disagreed in the selection of the future Archbishop of Canterbury. Several factions selected different candidates. The young monks of Canterbury elected one of their own and sent him to Rome to seek the Pop's approval. In the meantime they got cold feet and elected one of John's nominees, the Bishop of Norwich.
the Pope did not give his approval and requested the nomination of a new candidate. The Monks obeyed Cardinal Stephen Langton was elected Archbishop of Canterbury. When news of the election reached John, he flew into one of his terrible rages. He sent his soldiers to Canterbury and drove the monks out of the kingdom. He refused to allow Langton to take up his appointment.
for a year the Pope tried to argue with John, but at the end of that time, having made no progress, he excommunicated the king. As a result nearly all the churches were closed. For the next five years John made a lot of enemies among the nobles and his own barons. He was forever busy with his fortune-grabbing activies. He implimented new taxes , even employing merecenary captains as sheriffs to enforce the collection of money. Justice was not only blind but had fallen into a deep trance. Anyone who could not pay legal or illegal taxes was subject to be imprissioned without the opportunity of defending himself.
These attacks by the king on purses, liberty and lives intimidated those very men and women on whose loyalty his throne depended on. It is amazing that the barons allowed themselves to be so mistrated for so long. The strain began to tell, not only on the people but on the mind of the king himself. He began to be afraid of what his people were thinking, and when in 1212 he gathered his armies to make an assault on the Welsh princes and learned that the barons were plotting to kill hjim, his nerve suddenly snapped. He dismissed the armies, and though he lived like a hermit. The following year the Pope declared the throne of England forfeit, and the King of FRANCE appointed himself the Pope's champion. He assembled a fleet at Boulogne to carry an army to seize England. Though the barons and people would even now have repsonded to call to keep the foreigners at bay, John feared what would happen if he brought the barons together, and seeing that there was only one way out, he took it.
He suddenly declared himself penitent and ready to obey the Pope's commands in all things. Thus he removed the threat of a French invasion. This thread rallied the Barons to right the enormous injustices of the past decade and to put an end to tyrannical rule. In 1215 the northern and eastern loard joined forces near Stamford on the Great North road, and marched on London. John was at Windsor, and hearing that bhe barons of the southwest were on their way to join the coalition of the north and east, which left him entirely alone, he agreed to meet the barons in a meadow beside the Thames called Runnymede.
The meeting took place on June 15. 1215. John was presented with a document. The demands in that document were not excessive, but were, in fact, eminently reasonable and just. The document claimed that neither in the Crown nor anywhere else did there lie any power or right to override the laws and customs or to change them without the common consent. Having established that, it laid down certain basic principles of justice which were to be accorded to every man and woman in the realm. No man might be punsihed without a fair trial; punishment must be proportionate to the offence; justice might not be denied or delayed, nor sold to any man.
John was in no position to refuse and gave his approval to the Magna Carta. Immediately copies were made and sent to all the sheriffs, who proclaimed it in the courts of every county, city, borough and market-town, so that all men should know what their rights were. John died on October 18. 1216 at age forty-eight. Intended to restore their ancient liberties to a people which had suffered personally at the hands of a tyrant king who still sat on the throne, the Magna Carta in effect went much much further than that. It did restore the liberties, and those who had drawn it up had done their best to make certain that so long as the nation survived, those liberties could never again be put in peril. By it John declared: " We grant to all the freemen of our realm , from us and our heirs for ever all the undermentioned liberties.
By the time that HENRY III (1154 - 1189) had established his very expert curia regis, or Kings Council,the high Court at Westminster had achieved such a reputation that the vast number of petitions presented to it - many of which in earlier times would have been presented to the lower courts, made it necessary for the King's Council to set up three committees to deal with them. These committees were known as the Common Pleas, the Court of Exchquer and the Kings' Bench; and it was when these three committees met together in one body that we find the word parliament - meaning deep discussion - first being used.
The next important step forward was taken in 1265, when the Earl of Leicester, Simon de Montford, let the barons in opposition to the tremendous personal power which the king was gradually seizing, and eventually took up arms against him and defeated him. Making himnself virtual dictator, he summond what some historians regard as the first real Parliament.
In 1265 Simon summmoned to a Parliament not only the greater barons and the bishops by separate writ, and two knights elected in the shire-court of every county, but also two burgesses from each of the larger towns to represent the freemen and taxpayers.
This was a far reaching decision. For the first time burgesses sat in every Parliament - the ordinary citizens had a voice in the financial affairs of the country, and could use their influence to determine what taxes should or should not be raised. Exactely five hundred years later, a British Government heavily loaded with debts, hit upon the idea of raising money by the sale of stamps which had to be affixed to certain documents before those documents became effective. On February 5., 1765, the House of Commons passed the Stamp Act, and immediately attempted to impose it also on the American colonies.
The American colonists had for some years been protesting against the tax on land imposed by the Parliament at Westminster for the purppose of paying part of the cost of the British Armies stationed in America.
The complaints of the colonists grew louder and in 1775 the situation exploded with the colonists declaring war on the British. The rest is history and being tought in Schools all over the US.
According to the media, a Canadian Citizen brought a Politician to court for allegedly lying (or promising something he would not consider following up). The Judge's decision was" A politican cannot be held responsible for any statements he makes".