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Thirteenth Century
by
Arthur Dent
—
last modified
Mar 14, 2008 11:07 PM
First statute of Westminster
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Volunteer meeting at Monash
The origins of our electoral freedom.
In one of these court actions, he had cited several legal precedents, including the Papal revolution of 1075 and the first Statutes of Westminster, 1275.
According to the latter:
“There shall be no Disturbance of Free Elections. AND because Elections ought to be free, the King commandeth upon great Forfeiture, that no Man by force of Arms, nor by Malice, or Menacing, shall disturb any to make free Election”
As part of his explanation to me of his position, he spoke to me about the Magna Carta of 1215:
“... if the King doesn’t keep the charter, then the barons are... allowed to rebel by chasing him out of his castles but they mustn’t harm his person... It was recognised that the way in which one enforces one’s constitutional rights was by chasing people out of their castles.”
Arthur further urged me to go to the web and read the original Magna Carta. After I had read it, he asked if I found that it clarified the point he had been arguing. No, I said, there was nothing about the barons being given a right to chase the king out of his castle.
We went back to the web, and looked more closely at the wording:
If we... offend in any respect against any man, or transgress any of the articles ... the twenty-five barons... may distrain upon and assail us... by seizing our castles, lands, possessions, or anything else saving only our own person and those of the queen and our children...
‘We’ in this case, I had assumed, referred to the barons - they could seize each other’s castles. “So what?” No, he pointed out, ‘we’ is the royal plural. At Runnymede, the king had been forced to sign this charter, that said that if he transgressed the articles, his castles could be seized.
The people now have the prerogative, and even the king must comply.