Chapter VI: The Magna Carta States Church Independence

Actually, it was not until the decidedly unpopular King John ceded England as a secular feudal fiefdom to the Pope, that Rome had the slightest claim to authority in Britain—a claim swiftly and unequivocally disavowed in A.D. 1215 by the English Church and the English nobility in concert. They asserted independence of both England and the English Church in the document that forms the foundation of the English and American Constitutions. The very first provision of the Magna Carta—the Great Charter—reads: “The Church of England shall be free and hold her rights entire and her liberties inviolate …”

The independence of the Anglican Church, moreover, was considered so important that the Charter concludes with a reassertion of that right. The final clause states: “that the Church of England shall be free, and that all men have and hold the aforesaid liberties truly and peaceably, freely and quietly, and wholly in all things and in all places forever.”

Some modern historians claim these statements in the Magna Carta are not an assertion of independence from Rome, but, rather, an assertion of independence from royal authority. If this is so, the Pope certainly didn’t see it that way at the time. He excommunicated everybody who signed the document—prelates and nobles—for disavowing papal authority.

Roman church lawyers have contended King John’s decision to cede the realm of England to the Pope as a fiefdom—whether or not from ignoble motives—is legally binding in that John was the legitimate King of England. The question of John’s legitimacy has been challenged—he was, after all, not the direct heir to the throne. However, from a constitutional perspective, it is not unreasonable to argue that the legitimacy of John’s claim to the English has little bearing on the matter.

The throne of England, from its inception, has been, effectively, an elective office. This is in line with its Celtic and Anglo–Saxon origins. And, indeed, the assembled representatives of the English people have asserted this on numerous occasions. All of the Anglo–Saxon kings were elected, and a number of the Normans were accepted by assent of the ruling Council of State. In more recent history, Parliament exercised its prerogative in this regard in A.D. 1688 with the accession of William and Mary and with the accession of the Hanoverians in the 18th Century.

In the 13th and 14th Centuries, the English reasserted their independence from Rome by enacting the laws of mortmain and præmunire—ordinances that made it a criminal offense to abet papal efforts to encroach upon English ecclesiastical and temporal prerogatives. The laws reiterated that all appointees to English benefices be made in the name of the King and the Anglican Church—Ecclesia Anglicana—not in the name of the Pope. And they declared that anyone who sued for redress in papal courts put himself outside the protection of the laws of England and forfeit his goods to the State. In A.D. 1420—a hundred years before the Reformation—the Pope tried to reassert his claims over England by excommunicating all of the English clergy. But his bulls of excommunication were confiscated at the borders by the English government and burned. Indeed, the Pope’s efforts to deny the English faithful the Sacraments were wholly ignored.