1215 onwards

Magna Carta: the king must obey the law too

Under the feudal system of the Middle Ages, lords owed the king soldiers, but they also expected him to respect their rights. When was that idea first put in writing? The answer begins in 1215. That year King John fell out badly with his nobles. (There has only ever been one King John, which is why he has no number after his name.) He kept raising taxes and losing wars, and in the end the nobles had had enough. At Runnymede, a meadow beside the River Thames west of London, they made him accept a document called Magna Carta. The name is Latin for "Great Charter". Until then, almost nothing officially limited what a king could do.

The big idea behind it was simple: even the king has to follow the law. It protected the nobles' rights and stopped the king from raising taxes, or making and changing laws, just as he pleased.

In practice, Magna Carta lasted only about ten weeks. That August the Pope declared it invalid, and the king and the nobles were soon at war again; later kings issued several new versions, and only slowly did it become one of the foundations of English law. King John never actually signed it, either: his royal seal was attached instead. Only four copies from 1215 survive, two in the British Library and two belonging to the cathedrals of Lincoln and Salisbury.

The birth of Parliament

Kings had always had a circle of advisers, including powerful nobles and leaders of the Church. Whenever the king needed money, he called them together for a meeting. That is how Parliament began. Over time it divided into two parts, or "Houses":

Only a tiny number of people could vote for members of the House of Commons, though. Scotland's Parliament was made up of three groups, called the Estates: the lords, the commons and the clergy (church leaders).

In this period the idea that judges should be independent of the government also started to take shape. In England, judges settled cases by following earlier decisions and old traditions, and this built up into the common law. In Scotland the law was "codified", which means it was written down as a set of rules.

Era contents: 1200 – 1400