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| 19th C bronze showing Langton overseeing King John's issue of Magna Carta |
In an article for English Historical Review in 2011, David Carpenter (co-investigator of the Magna Carta Project) set out to reassess the role played by Stephen Langton (archbishop of Canterbury 1207-1226) in the drafting of Magna Carta in 1215, as well as in the Charter's subsequent survival.
'After King John’s settlement with the pope in
1213, his archbishop of Canterbury, Stephen Langton, was at last able to enter
England. That he then played a major part in national affairs is undisputed.
What is disputed is his precise contribution to Magna Carta. At one extreme, historians
have ascribed to Langton all that was best in the charter: the way it asserts
the fundamental principle that the ruler is subject to the law, and the way too
it reaches out to a wide constituency and is not just a selfish baronial
document. At the other extreme, led by J.C. Holt, they have argued that Langton
contributed little to the charter’s fundamentals, and was a mediator and
moderator rather than an originator. These divergent views reflect contemporary
testimony. In the (often challenged) account of the St Albans abbey chronicler,
Roger of Wendover, Langton seems very much the fons et origo of Magna Carta. In
the accounts of Ralph of Coggeshall and the Barnwell chronicle, in contrast, he
is far less prominent and appears essentially as an intermediary between the
sides. This article will seek to reveal a Langtonian role in the shaping and
survival of the charter very different from that found in previous accounts; it
will relate that role to the archbishop’s doubts about the validity of the 1215
charter, doubts only removed in the final and definitive version of 1225; and,
lastly, using evidence hitherto ignored, it will expose the seeming hypocrisy
of Langton’s conduct when set against the principles of the charter and the
canons of his own academic thought.'
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