[MUSIC]

My name is Nigel Saul and

I teach English Medieval History
in the University of London.
And I'm a member of
the Magna Carta 800 Committee,
which is coordinating the anniversary,
celebrations for the 800th of Magna Carta.
>> My name's Jonathan Phillips and
I teach Medieval European History at
Royal Holloway University of London.
We're here at Runnymede 25
miles from Central London.
We're on the banks of the River Thames.
And close by us we've got
Heathrow Airport in the background.
We've got cars, trains, planes,
trains, and automobiles.
Things that weren't around
in the early 13th century.
I suppose when we set the scene for
the events of Magna Carta,
it's perhaps worthwhile thinking
what was different about life then.
And by mention of the Thames,
I guess we have a, a Medieval motorway.
>> [LAUGH] Yes.
>> Medieval communications was
very different to the modern time,
very much slower.
Very much more localized
society in many senses.
One of the best ways of getting
around was by, was by river.
>> Yes, that's right.
England in the beginning of
the thirteenth century was a country in
many ways totally
different from ours today.
But there were also some similarities.
I suppose the biggest difference
was that it was much less, crowded.
Not England's population today,
about 60 million I think.
Population of England at
the beginning of the 13th century in
King John's reign was
about 3 to 4 millions.
And of course it was
a predominantly rural population.
Towns and cities were fewer and
individually very much smaller.
>> So Nigel, how big was Medieval London?
>> London's population today is about 8 or
9 millions.
London's population at the beginning of
the 13th century was about
40 to 50,000 at most.
That's an amazing difference, isn't it?
>> Yeah.

>> 50, 50,000,

what's that a small sports stadium?
Imagine that, the whole population of
London inside a small sports stadium.
Really does bring out the contrast.
>> Small sports stadium,
or think of it in terms of
they were all packed into the one
square mile of the city today.
And Westminster, down the road the seat
of government was completely separate,
not absorbed in a big
connovation as it is today.
>> So most of the population
lives in the countryside then.
>> It was basically a rural society and
the fruits of wealth were
the fruits of the soil.
So we have to picture a country
peppered with villages
surrounded by the three,
big open fields, tilled by the peasantry,
small proportion of that peasantry were
free but most of them were unfree.
In the terminology of the day,
they were known as villeins.
They were not slaves.
No, definitely not slaves.
But they were tied to the land and they
toiled on the land, producing a surplus,
most of which was handed over to
the aristocracy, the great landowners,
princes of church and state and
they were the people who ruled England.
>> When we think of the Medieval world I
suppose we imagine the great buildings,
castles, cathedrals,
some of which are still with us today.
>> And we have one of grandest of all
Europe's royal castles just a few miles up
the road from us,
at Windsor, one of the most
important of the king's castles.
And that's a castle,
that's one of the biggest in Europe.
In London the king also had the Tower
of London, still there today, and
intact Medieval castle.
So the king and the barons, yes.
They lived in palatial scale castles.
The knights, the country gentry,
lived in manor houses, and
as you say, this was the age when our
great Medieval cathedrals were built.
Just after Magna Carta was agreed, one of
the greatest of all was started in 1220.
Salisbury Cathedral built in 38 years,
between 1220 and 1258.
Around here where we're standing today,
great church landowner was Chertsey Abbey.

All the land around here

belonged to Chertsey Abbey,
one of the great abbeys
of Medieval England.
But does anything survive of it today?
No, it was swept away by Henry
the Eighth at the Reformation.
>> And talking of abbies and
cathedrals reminds us of the centrality
of religion to Medieval life.
And that's something that obviously
stretched across Europe rather than
having a national boundary.
So Nigel how does England
compare to Europe at this time?
>> England was in one sense
economically less developed
than other parts of continental Europe.
It was less industrial.
Industrial heartlands of Medieval Europe
were Flanders and northern Italy.
That was where the cloth
industry flourished.
England had a cloth industry but
on a much smaller scale.
So England was less industrialized.
But what England did have,
was millions of sheep.
Far more sheep in Medieval England
than there were people.
And it was the clips, the wool clips
from the sheep, exported to Flanders,
that provided the raw materials for
the Flemish cloth industry.
And the export of wool made England rich.
Wool then was like oil today,
we had it, they wanted it.
So, on the strength of
the profits of the wool trade,
England was actually, by the standards
of the day, quite a rich country.
And that is one respect in which I
think I would say England then was
similar to England today.
It was a wealthy country.
And it was governed by
a powerful monarchy.
And you need to understand
those two things,
to understand the background
to the making of Magna Carta.
It was the product of
a relatively advanced society.
A relatively wealthy society
by the standards of the day,
and the society in which
the monarchy was a dynamic force.
>> I'm getting the impression that
England was well governed and
relatively advanced compared

to its European counterpart.

>> Yes, that's quite correct.
England then, like England today,
was a much governed country.
At the top,
there was the king.
In the period we're talking about,
King John.
Beneath him were a group
of about a hundred or
so barons, the great landowners.
Administratively, England was divided,
as it is today,
into shires or counties,
the two words describe the same thing.
The units of local government today,
Warwickshire, Berkshire, Hampshire,
were the units of government then.
And the Chief Administrator,
the chief official of the king
in each county was the sheriff.
And the sheriff, of course,
was in charge of local tax collection, and
that was why he was so bitterly unpopular.
Think of the Sheriff of Nottingham
in the Robin Hood legends.
And the Robin Hood legends help us to
understand one other thing, and that is,
that England was quite densely forested.
Robin lived in Sherwood Forest
in Nottinghamshire.
And the forest third or a quarter of
England was covered by the forest, and
its own law and
the forest law was oppressive.
If you were caught hunting the king's
game you would suffer imprisonment, or
mutilation, or both.
That helps to explain why there
are clauses in Magna Carta both limiting
the forest boundaries and regulating their
operation of the law within the forests.
>> Okay.
Well,
should we walk over to where it's thought
Magna Carta was actually granted?
>> Yeah.