I

One famous image of the signing of Magna Carta – there are many – depicts King John signing the Great Charter witnessed by a number of barons clad in armour. He is the loser. They are the winners. Symbolically, he is seated while most of them stand before him. King John and the barons were – or at first glance appear to have been – the sole wielders of political power in the England of that time: on the one hand, King John with his temporal power diminished; on the other, the rebellious barons boldly and successfully asserting their rights. That is the image of the signing of Magna Carta – verbal as well as pictorial – that most English schoolchildren have imprinted on their minds: the King being subdued by victorious barons.

But a closer look at the image reveals a more complex picture. Standing behind both the King and the barons are the shadowy figures of two bishops with their staffs and mitres. Although they remain in the background, they are shown as being, literally, powers behind the throne. And there is a good deal of truth in that way of depicting them. In 1215, the barons by no means subdued King John on their own. They had the Church's backing, and the Church was a powerful force in thirteenth-century England. A quarrel between the King of England and Innocent III, the Pope in Rome, had led to the suspension of all church services in England in 1207 and then to the excommunication of King John himself two years later. John was a Christian, as were his subjects, and no Christian king could reign for long in thirteenth-century Europe without the sanction of the Vicar of Christ. Even before John struck a deal with the barons in 1215, he had already compromised with the Church. Not only barons but also large numbers of abbots and bishops were parties to the Runnymede agreement.