Today I met members of the group who are putting together an exhibition at The Beaney in Canterbury, from 13 to 28 June, on ‘Our Great Charter’, which represents their response to Magna Carta and its relevance for making lives better today for all members of society. Their exhibition will be an audio, visual and tactile experience, whereby visitors can travel with the group in their exploration of what a modern Magna Carta might comprise that is founded on inclusion rather than exclusion. This journey of discovery for members of the group began a few weeks ago when they started looking at the voting process in the run-up to the recent General Election. Group members also examined the different policies put forward by the various parties to see how politics and government function today.

Rochester Castle, an important royal castle and the site of a siege by John against a rebel garrison.

courtesy: www.geograph.org.uk

Having investigated modern democracy in twenty-first century Britain, Candy Worf, the organiser of ‘The Great Citizens’ course, had devised a curriculum that involved delving into the past, and where better to do that than Canterbury Cathedral which amongst other matters has been the site of a number of ‘battles’ between State and Church, including, of course, Henry II and Archbishop Thomas Becket. Thus this morning the Skillnet Group arrived at Canterbury Cathedral to be met by Zoe Willis, the Schools Officer, for a tour of those sites in the cathedral which have a link to events in the early thirteenth century. Zoe was an excellent guide and interpreter, showing group members the tomb of Archbishop Stephen Langton and telling them that the archbishop was an important personage in events leading up to Magna Carta and in the actual composition of the charter itself. Moreover Langton was a considerable devotee of Thomas Becket, thus providing a link between the two men, which can also be seen through their opposition to the actions of their respective kings. And this connection can be pushed even further because in addition to Becket versus Henry II and Langton versus King John we can put in Henry VIII and King John versus Becket and Langton through John Bale’s play ‘King Johan’ and Henry VIII’s destruction of Becket’s shrine, both occurring in the late 1530s.

But to return to Zoe’s tour, having looked at Langton’s tomb, now greatly hidden from public view by the massive tomb of Margaret Holland and her two husbands in St Michael’s (the Warriors’) Chapel, the group examined the site of Becket’s martyrdom and later shrine, so events either side of 1215. This provoked a discussion about pilgrims and pilgrimage, and also ideas about possible responses to tombs in the cathedral by medieval visitors. Regarding the latter, the group considered the possible motives and hopes of Archbishop Chichele, who had commissioned and seen the building of his funeral monument during his life time. The archbishop’s transi-tomb is an extremely good example of this late medieval phenomenon of a double effigy, the sculpture of a rotting corpse below offering a stark contrast to the magnificence of the sculpture above of the archbishop in his splendid vestments with mitre and crozier, the whole easily observable from the archiepiscopal seat on the opposite side of the choir.

Following this introduction to the cathedral and its Magna Carta connections, members of the group headed to the cathedral archives to undertake the second part of their research day. This section was courtesy of Cressida Williams, the head of the archives, and formed a joint venture between archives and History, with this Research Centre, at Canterbury Christ Church University. In particular, it involved Professor Louise Wilkinson, a leading expert on Magna Carta and the thirteenth century more generally, and a member of the Magna Carta Project. Joining Louise in the archives was Zoe, and together we had produced a research booklet for group members to work through both today and for the future. Consequently there are sections on John’s oppressive kingship as seen through the words and illustrations of the chroniclers; information covering his relations with the Church, especially the papacy over the question of who should be the new archbishop – John’s nominee or Pope Innocent’s; John’s military and marital exploits in France that led to more problems and increased the number of his enemies, and finally how all these and other factors affected his barons in England, leading them to rebel and set in train the series of events that culminated in a meeting between the two sides at Runnymede.

Because group members are seeking to create a multiple sensory experience at their exhibition, the workshops included a number of practical tasks such as designing seals for use with their modern Great Charter and handwriting using quill pens, as well as testing just how tough parchment is as a material on which to write. We also discussed ideas about literacy, and just how difficult and expensive it must have been to produce high-quality documents in the Middle Ages, including the implications for the number of sheep necessary to create these documents.

The final session of the day involved role playing to practice further learning skills. The ‘English barons’ drew up a list of difficulties they were experiencing at the hands of King John and his royal officers using the information provided in the booklet. They then presented them, showing due reverence, to ‘King Philip of France’ and his ‘counsellors’, who they felt would support them in their dispute against John. It is worth noting that the ‘King’ listened carefully and then told them he would support them in their enterprise. So to bring the session to a close we looked to see whether the problems the barons had been experiencing were among the 63 clauses of Magna Carta. They were, and the group members were especially interested in clauses 1, 8 and 39. Clause 8 can be summarised as ‘no widow shall be forced to marry as long as she wishes to live without a husband’, and Louise, who specialises in medieval women’s history, was delighted with this choice. Similarly the focus on clause 39 was seen as valuable by everyone: ‘No freeman should be arrested, imprisoned, or in any way destroyed without a fair trial’, and this people felt would be a key issue when they came to formulate their own Great Charter.

And with that the session at the cathedral archives concluded, Candy escorting the group members back to their base and leaving the staff from the cathedral and Christ Church with their own attempts at medieval calligraphy. So any readers of this blog who live in or around Canterbury, why not check out ‘Our Great Charter’ exhibition at The Beaney in the second half of June, the group will be delighted to see you.