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Magna Carta at Eight Hundred

Eight hundred years after King John affixed his seal to Magna Carta at the insistence of his rebel barons, one of the rare fourteenth-century versions of the Great Charter is coming to Canada. An edition of Magna Carta issued by Edward I, will be touring Canada in 2015 with stops at the Canadian Museum of History in Gatineau, the Fort York National Historic Site in Toronto, the Canadian Museum for Human Rights in Winnipeg, and the Legislative Assembly of Alberta Visitor Centre in Edmonton. This exhibition is not the first time one of the surviving versions of Magna Carta has come to Canada. In 2010, a 1217 Magna Carta was exhibited at the Manitoba Legislative Building. While Magna Carta was in Winnipeg, Queen Elizabeth II visited the city and unveiled a stone from Runnymede Meadow that she selected herself. The stone became the cornerstone of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights.

The global significance of Magna Carta is well known. The Great Charter is the first example of an English king accepting limits on his power imposed by his subjects, and its terms set precedents for a broad range of modern legal rights, including equality before the law, due process, trial by peers, and freedom from forced marriage. These rights informed the Petition of Right and the development of the constitutional monarchy in the United Kingdom, the American and French Revolutions, and the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In the United States, Magna Carta has been quoted since the seventeenth century as a foundation document for individual property rights in addition to legal rights. In books that examine the global impact of Magna Carta, however, Canada is rarely mentioned outside the history of the British Empire.

Magna Carta has had a profound impact on history, politics, and law in Canada. The Great Charter informed the development of common law in English Canada and continues to be cited in Canadian judicial proceedings. The principles codified in Magna Carta shaped the Royal Proclamation of 1763, which provides the framework for the Crown’s relationship with Canada’s First Nations. At the time of Confederation in 1867, Canada inherited Britain’s unwritten constitution, which was informed by Magna Carta and its successor documents, the Petition of Right and the Bill of Rights. These successor documents transformed England into a constitutional monarchy. Canada shares this system of government with fifteen other Commonwealth realms. These implicit principles in Canada’s constitutional framework became explicit with the federal Bill of Rights in 1960 and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which forms the first part of the 1982 Constitution Act.

The Magna Carta 2015 Canada touring exhibition highlights the unique impact of the Great Charter on Canada and the rest of the world. Neither King John nor his rebel barons expected Magna Carta to outlast the unique political circumstances of 1215, but the ideals enshrined in Magna Carta outlasted the thirteenth century to influence the making of the modern world.

There are four surviving versions of Magna Carta from 1215. This eight-hundred-year-old document is housed in the British Library.