Magna Carta

[murvic]

What relevance, if any, does the Magna Carta has with Scotland

[Peter Pedant]

None I think

King John of England signed it (or affixed his seal or whatever)

and the King of Scotland was someone else .....

[Johnmof]

It has relevance to Scotland in so far as Scotland is part of the United Kingdom. The Magna Carta was essentially about the balance of power. Up till then, the monarch's power was pretty much absolute. By forcing King John to accept Magna Carta, the barons required the monarch to consult them more. Over the following centuries, the balance of power moved gradually away from the monarch to the people, or at least those who claimed to represent the people. The Civil War was the most obvious example, but there had been incremental movement for a long time previously. By the time of the Union of the Crowns in 1707, the monarch could only rule through Parliament, and the day to day decisons were being taken by ministers. Without Magna Carta, the monarch might have continued to exercise total control, and might have ended up going the same way as the Bourbons in France or the Czars in Russia.

Which is a long winded way of saying that the system of government that the Scots bought into from 1707 owed a great deal to Magna Carta.

[Octavius]

Clause 59?

"We will return of the sisters and hostages of Alexander, king of Scotland, his liberties and his rights, in the same manner as we shall do towards our other barons of England, unless it ought to be otherwise according to the charters that we hold from his father William, formerly king of Scotland. This matter shall be determined by the judgement of his peers in our court."

In 1214 Alexander II of Scotland joined the English barons in their struggle against John, and led an army into England in support of their cause; but after John's death, on the conclusion of peace between his youthful son Henry III and the French prince Louis, the Scottish king joined in the pacification. Diplomacy further strengthened the reconciliation by the marriage of Alexander to Henry's sister Joanna (or Joan) on June 18 or June 25, 1221.