On this day in the year 1215, King John put his seal on the Magna Carta at Runnymede (near Windsor). First drafted by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Cardinal Stephen Langton, to make peace between the unpopular king and a group of rebel barons who demanded that the King confirm the Charter of Liberties, it promised the protection of church rights, protection for the barons from illegal imprisonment, access to swift and impartial justice, and limitations on feudal payments to the Crown, to be implemented through a council of 25 barons.
After John’s death, the regency government of his young son, Henry III, reissued the document in 1216, stripped of some of its more radical content, in an unsuccessful bid to build political support for their cause. At the end of the war in 1217, it formed part of the peace treaty agreed at Lambeth, where the document acquired the name “Magna Carta”, to distinguish it from the smaller Charter of the Forest, which was issued at the same time. Short of funds, Henry reissued the charter again in 1225 in exchange for a grant of new taxes. His son, Edward I, repeated the exercise in 1297, this time confirming it as part of England’s statute law.
It influenced the early American colonists in the Thirteen Colonies and the formation of the United States Constitution, which became the supreme law of the land in the new republic of the United States.
King John on a stag hunt
Toddler in chief plays with his toys…
Poppin Fresh! Straight out of the oven!!
…not included…
Today is the birthday, in 1843, of Edvard Grieg, a Norwegian composer and pianist. He is widely considered one of the leading Romantic era composers, and his music is part of the standard classical repertoire worldwide. His use of Norwegian folk music in his own compositions brought the music of Norway to fame, as well as helping to develop a national identity, much as Jean Sibelius did in Finland and Bedřich Smetana in Bohemia. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7lKo6TYDXCQ
