Constraints on kingship

Model answer

X is a relief: the payment an heir had to make to the king before he could inherit his father's lands.

Model answer

Source A is useful for studying why the barons rebelled because it shows the immediate trigger of the crisis. The baron writes that the king had come home 'beaten' from Poitou with his allies 'scattered at Bouvines'. This is accurate: at the Battle of Bouvines in July 1214 Philip II defeated John's allies, ending John's hopes of winning back Normandy and Anjou and wasting the treasure he had collected. When John returned in October 1214 he demanded scutage from the barons who had refused to serve, and many northern barons argued, like this writer, that they owed no service overseas. The letter also shows longer-term grievances: John took scutage about 11 times, took barons' sons as hostages and charged huge reliefs, like the 10,000 marks demanded of Nicholas de Stuteville. The demand that John keep 'the good laws of King Henry' matches the barons' call for him to confirm Henry I's Coronation Charter of 1100, which they made in January 1215.

The provenance adds to its usefulness. It was written at the time by a baron directly affected, in a private letter to a relative, so he is likely to express his real feelings. However, it is only one man's view, and he has a personal interest in avoiding payment, so he may exaggerate. The northern barons were the heart of the rebellion, but many barons, such as William Marshal, stayed loyal, and the rebels were a minority.

The source also leaves out other important causes, such as the loss of Normandy in 1204, the quarrel with the Pope that led to the Interdict, and John's cruelty towards Arthur and the de Braose family. Overall, Source A is useful for the financial trigger and the grievances of the northern barons, but it does not give a complete picture of why the rebellion happened.

Model answer

The reissue of Magna Carta in 1225 was significant because it changed the charter from a document forced on a king into one granted by the Crown in return for taxation. In 1225 Henry III, now aged seventeen and issuing charters under his own seal, needed money to defend Gascony from the French. A great council of barons and churchmen agreed to a tax of a fifteenth on moveable goods, and in return Henry reissued Magna Carta and the Charter of the Forest. The charter stated that it was given of Henry's 'own spontaneous and free will', which was very different from 1215, when John had been forced to agree to it at Runnymede.

This had an important consequence for the relationship between the Crown and its subjects, because it set the precedent that subjects could bargain with the king: in return for granting taxes, they could demand that he confirm their rights. Over the following decades, barons and later Parliament repeatedly demanded confirmation of the charters when kings asked for money, as in 1297, when Edward I confirmed them. The great councils that agreed taxes developed into Parliament, which by the fourteenth century claimed the right to consent to taxation.

The reissue was also significant because the 1225 text became the definitive version of Magna Carta. Copies were sent to every county and read out in public, so its terms were widely known. It was entered on the statute roll in 1297 and became treated as the first statute of English law. Its clause 29, which combined the famous clauses 39 and 40 of 1215, is still part of the law today, and it was the version that Sir Edward Coke used against Charles I in 1628. Overall, 1225 was significant because it made Magna Carta a permanent part of the law and linked the rights of subjects to the Crown's need for their consent to taxation.

Model answer

Economic grievances, such as heavy taxation, low wages and hardship, have caused many of the most important protests and rebellions in British history. However, protest has also been driven by religion, by the actions of governments and by new ideas about rights and equality, and economic problems were often most powerful when they combined with these other factors.

The rebellion against King John shows the importance of the economy, especially taxation. John needed money to win back Normandy, which he had lost in 1204, so he took scutage about 11 times, charged reliefs as high as the 10,000 marks demanded of Nicholas de Stuteville in 1205, sold the marriages of widows and heiresses, and in 1207 taxed a thirteenth of income and moveable goods. Many barons fell deeply into debt to the Crown. When John demanded the scutage of Poitou in 1214, the northern barons refused and the rebellion began. Many clauses of Magna Carta were economic: clause 2 limited reliefs to £100 for an earl's or a baron's heir, clause 8 protected widows, and clause 12 banned scutage without the common counsel of the kingdom.

The economy was also central to the Peasants' Revolt of 1381. After the Black Death of 1348-49 killed perhaps a third or more of the population, labourers could demand higher wages, but the Statute of Labourers of 1351 tried to hold wages at old levels. The poll taxes of 1377, 1379 and 1380, the last charging a shilling a head, were the final straw. In later centuries economic hardship caused protest again and again: post-war depression and high bread prices under the Corn Laws led to the mass meeting at Peterloo in 1819; the Chartists drew support from distressed workers in the industrial north; and the General Strike of 1926 was called in support of miners facing wage cuts and longer hours.

However, the economy was not always the main cause. Religion was the main reason for the Pilgrimage of Grace in 1536, when tens of thousands of northerners marched under the banner of the Five Wounds of Christ to protest against the dissolution of the monasteries, although taxation and enclosure added to their anger. Religion also mattered in the 1640s, when Puritans opposed Archbishop Laud's changes to the Church.

The actions of governments were also important. The barons in 1215 were angry not just at the cost of John's rule but at his arbitrary punishments, his use of hostages and the death of Matilda de Braose and her son in his prison, which is why clause 39 promised that no free man would be imprisoned without lawful judgement. Charles I's belief in the Divine Right of Kings and his eleven years of Personal Rule, collecting ship money without Parliament, turned a financial dispute into a constitutional one. In 1981 the Brixton riots followed unemployment, but the immediate cause was resentment at heavy-handed policing, which the Scarman Report later criticised.

Finally, ideas drove some of the most important protests. John Ball's preaching about equality inspired the rebels of 1381, the Levellers demanded votes for most men in the 1640s, and the campaign for women's suffrage after 1897 was about equal rights rather than economic hardship.

In conclusion, the economy has been the most common cause of protest and rebellion, especially taxation in the medieval period and wages and working conditions in the industrial age, and it was the trigger in 1215, 1381 and 1926. However, economic grievances usually became rebellion when they were combined with anger at unjust government or with new ideas about rights. The economy was the main factor, but rarely the only one.