Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of plates
- Preface to third edition
- Preface to second edition
- Preface to first edition
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 The Charter and its history
- 2 Government and society in the twelfth century
- 3 Privilege and liberties
- 4 Custom and law
- 5 Justice and jurisdiction
- 6 Crisis and civil war
- 7 Quasi Pax
- 8 The quality of the Great Charter
- 9 The achievement of 1215
- 10 From distraint to war
- 11 The re-issues and the beginning of the myth
- Appendices
- 1 The meeting at Bury St Edmunds, 1214
- 2 Notification of Thomas count of Perche, February 1215
- 3 Triplex forma pacis
- 4 The ‘unknown’ charter
- 5 The Articles of the Barons
- 6 Magna Carta, 1215
- 7 Translations of the Charters
- 8 The Twenty-Five barons of Magna Carta, 1215
- 9 The date of the London treaty
- 10 The Oxford Council, 16–23 July 1215
- 11 Select documents illustrative of the history of Magna Carta, 1215
- 12 Magna Carta, 1225
- 13 Charter of the Forest, 1225
- 14 Liberties and perpetuity
- References
- Index
- Plate section
1 - The meeting at Bury St Edmunds, 1214
from Appendices
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 July 2015
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of plates
- Preface to third edition
- Preface to second edition
- Preface to first edition
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 The Charter and its history
- 2 Government and society in the twelfth century
- 3 Privilege and liberties
- 4 Custom and law
- 5 Justice and jurisdiction
- 6 Crisis and civil war
- 7 Quasi Pax
- 8 The quality of the Great Charter
- 9 The achievement of 1215
- 10 From distraint to war
- 11 The re-issues and the beginning of the myth
- Appendices
- 1 The meeting at Bury St Edmunds, 1214
- 2 Notification of Thomas count of Perche, February 1215
- 3 Triplex forma pacis
- 4 The ‘unknown’ charter
- 5 The Articles of the Barons
- 6 Magna Carta, 1215
- 7 Translations of the Charters
- 8 The Twenty-Five barons of Magna Carta, 1215
- 9 The date of the London treaty
- 10 The Oxford Council, 16–23 July 1215
- 11 Select documents illustrative of the history of Magna Carta, 1215
- 12 Magna Carta, 1225
- 13 Charter of the Forest, 1225
- 14 Liberties and perpetuity
- References
- Index
- Plate section
Summary
Dr Antonia Gransden and Dr R. M. Thomson are more inclined than I am to accept the evidence of Roger of Wendover that a great baronial gathering occurred at Bury St Edmunds late in 1214 at which the barons swore on the high altar that they would fight, if necessary, in order to compel the king to confirm the charter of liberties of Henry I. We are all agreed that the difficulty arises from the abrupt termination of the Annales S. Edmundi in 1212; but it seems to me to carry speculation too far to suppose that the story of the meeting appeared in the lost continuation of the Annales or its source. Indeed Dr Thomson provides strong grounds for thinking that this was not the case, for the author of the later Cronica Buriensis used John of Wallingford, not the Bury annals, as the source for his account of the meeting. In Bury histories the story first appears in a condensed form in a chronicle of Bury composed by Bury monks at St Benet of Hulme in or after 1327.
The matter therefore depends on the evidence or lack of it, in the Electio Hugonis. Now the Electio mentions no such meeting, and, given its subjectmatter, it may reasonably be asked – why should it? Dr Gransden relies in some degree on this argument. However, both she and Dr Thomson go further by maintaining that the Electio does, in fact, contain veiled references to incipient rebellion which are consistent with Wendover's story.
Before examining these it is well to bear some dates in mind. First, John was at La Rochelle on 2 October and at Dartmouth on 15 October. He probably arrived in England about 7 October. Secondly, he visited Bury on 4 November, when he attempted to settle the disputed election. Thirdly, the most likely date for a baronial meeting would be 20 November, the feast of St Edmund, when there was a good excuse for an assembly at Bury; and indeed Wendover states that the barons gathered ‘as if for prayer’.
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- Magna Carta , pp. 335 - 339Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2015