The Plantagenet Era Saw the First Checks on Royal Authority, and the Birth of Parliament
The rule of law and the earliest stirrings of what we view as civil rights occurred during the Plantagenet era – often against the opposition of Plantagenet monarchs, or only with their lukewarm and reluctant acquiescence. Henry II took the first step by reforming the legal system and establishing the rule of law in England. The next step, taken during the reign of his son John I, was to establish the principle that the king’s power is not absolute, but is limited by law and custom.
John I (1166 – 1216), the baddie in Robin Hood stories, was king from 1199 until his death, and his reign was a disaster. Before him, his father and elder brother, Richard the Lionheart, had cobbled together and defended territories stretching from Ireland to the Spanish border – the Angevin Empire. John lost the Duchy of Normandy to the French king, resulting in the collapse of that once-mighty empire.
On top of that, he got into a dispute with Pope Innocent III, that led to John’s excommunication in 1209. Between the preceding, his high handed treatment of English nobles, and high taxes, John’s barons finally had enough of his misrule, and rose up in rebellion. In 1215, the barons forced the king to sign the Magna Carta Libertatum (“The Great Charter of Liberty”). The document promised protections from illegal imprisonment, and curbed the king’s powers in a variety of ways. It applied to the barons, not to commoners, but its core principles of due process and limiting the king’s absolute authority by law were the first steps towards civil rights.
The next step on the march towards liberty was Parliament. It began as a royal consultative body, but gradually grew in power over the centuries until it came to wield absolute power, reducing monarchs to figureheads. As with the Magna Carta, it began with tensions between the king and his barons – in this case king Henry III, and barons led by Simon de Montfort, 6th Earl of Leicester.
The tensions finally erupted into the Second Baronial Revolt, which defeated and captured king Henry and his son, Prince Edward, in 1264. De Montfort then called England’s first Parliament, to which cities and boroughs sent representatives. Although the uprising was eventually crushed, and de Montfort killed in battle, the concept of a Parliament took hold. Plantagenet kings found that body useful as an instrument for raising taxes, in exchange for allowing Parliament’s representatives to air concerns and grievances, little dreaming that it would someday become the true power in the realm.