Topic > ""Bad King John" "; and - whisper it - that somehow this most traditionally maligned monarch was perhaps actually quite Good. Say no to plagiarism Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay Instead, l 'expected. a tsunami of popular and learned articles collectively assert, among other things, that John was at once cruel and coercive, treacherous and tyrannical, cowardly and pitiful, lazy and feeble public has widely supported Matthew Paris, the 13th century chronicler who claimed that John's greatest achievement was, by dying, to make the existing filth of Hell even more disgusting: John was not just bad, he was diabolical. Popular understanding of Magna Carta has significantly hindered the Magna Carta debate; nature and realization of John. The Magna Carta, we are told, represents the rule of law. Invoked by those in 17th-century England who sought to counter the supposedly despotic tendencies of Charles I, and later employed by American revolutionaries in the drafting of the United States Bill of Rights in 1789, the Magna Carta has become the totem of liberties through which Western societies identify with. Indeed, this trend has reached so far that the Magna Carta, according to G Hindley, “has acquired an almost mystical incantatory quality”. This, he argues, is partly evidenced by the fact that the government sponsored the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta website, which currently states that Magna Carta “is the foundation stone underpinning the freedoms enjoyed today by hundreds of millions of people in more than 100 countries.” . These are powerful words, and it follows that if John ignored the Magna Carta – which he did – then it must surely be true that he was indeed malicious. The ever-increasing extent to which the Magna Carta is celebrated and exalted necessarily means that, in equal and opposite measure, John's reputation is tarnished and diminished. In this context, claiming that John was anything other than "bad" seems inappropriate and somewhat unbelievable. However, the Magna Carta that John chose to ignore did not claim to be a constitutional document that overshadowed and guaranteed the liberties of all the English people. The Magna Carta of 1215 (it is important to realize that there were many reprints of the Magna Carta after John's reign, each different from the one presented to John) is best understood as a set of erroneous peace terms designed to heal the incipient conflict civil. war between John and an element of rebel barons. Please note: this is just an example. Get a custom paper from our expert writers now. Get a Custom Essay To try to bind John to their terms, the barons insisted that John agree to a A committee of 25 of them had the power to oversee and enforce the Magna Carta by seizing John's castles and assets when he was judged – by them, and against the criteria established by them – to have transgressed. No medieval monarch could have long accepted the Magna Carta of 1215, as it clearly made the king a ghost of a monarch. Indeed, this impact was so extreme that it is not beyond reasonable contemplation that the ambition of the rebellious barons was not to achieve a lasting peace, but instead to absolutely provoke John into breaking the newly agreed upon terms so that they could take possession of his generosity. John in fact overthrew the Magna Carta,.
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