Authors’ reply to Bradley

Stuart, Beth; Little, Paul; Moore, Michael; Francis, Nick

doi:10.1136/bmj.n1518

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“…96 No-one involved in Parker seems to have been aware that the established legal understanding of Magna Carta and its impact upon fishing rights was just about to be challenged as a matter of its historical accuracy in a book entitled The History and Law of Fisheries written by Stuart A. Moore and H. Stuart Moore and published in 1902. 97 They showed that the chapters about bridges and riverbank enclosures were aimed at controlling the king's hunting rather than his fishing rights. 98 They also demonstrated that subjects as well as kings made grants of fishings that excluded public rights therein and that in the king's case this flowed from property rather than prerogative.…”

Section: Scots Law Magna Carta and Musselsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Magna Carta, Scotland and Scots Law

MacQueen

2023

Law and Legal Consciousness in Medieval Scotland

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The 800th anniversary of the execution of Magna Carta by King John of England at Runnymede in June 1215 saw the publication of much new writing on the Charter and its significance, both at the time and over subsequent centuries. 1 Debate was renewed about the differences between historians' and lawyers' perceptions of the subject. 2 Discussion generally -and naturally -was from the perspective of English history and law, although also highlighted was the continuing importance of Magna Carta in the USA and the countries of the British Commonwealth. At the anniversary celebrations at Runnymede on 15 June 2015, however, the then Prime Minister, David Cameron, spoke of Magna Carta as British and an object of pride for British people, 3 while a few days later at Lincoln Cathedral, the then President of the UK Supreme Court, Lord Neuberger, remarked that the Charter was "the United Kingdom's greatest contribution to the world -the rule of law and democratic government." 4 These characterisations of Magna Carta as a "British" or "United Kingdom" achievement caused mild surprise in Scotland. It is true that the fifty-ninth of the 61 chapters of the 1215 version of Magna Carta may be translated as follows:"We [i.e. King John] will deal with Alexander, king of Scots, about the return of his sisters and hostages and about his liberties and his rights, in accordance with the form in which we deal with our other barons of England, unless it ought to be otherwise by the charters that we have from his father William, the late king of Scots; and this will be by judgment of his peers in our court." But this undertaking to the king of Scots did not reappear in the reissues of Magna Carta in 1216, 1217 and 1225, or indeed in any subsequent version of the charter. The attention given to Scotland in 1215 was thus fleeting and ephemeral. King John's promise in Chapter 59 was given no effect at all by him, nor did his * FBA, FRSE; Professor of Private Law, University of Edinburgh. This paper has its origins in a research consultancy on the Scottish dimension for the 2015 UK Supreme Court exhibition 'Chartered Voyage: The Impact of Magna Carta', held 3 August-25 September 2015. I am grateful to Lord Neuberger (President) and Lord Hodge for the invitation to participate in the preparation for the exhibition, to Jenny Rowe (then Chief Executive of the Court) for guidance on my role, and to John Forsyth, who prepared the exhibition's texts, for good questions and enjoyable discussions of the whole topic. In my research I received the usual but none the less appreciated courteous assistance of the university libraries of Aberdeen and Glasgow. Further (but not all) debts are acknowledged at relevant points in the footnotes below. But I alone am responsible for errors of fact, judgement, and opinion in the text that follows. All URLs cited were last checked on 18 January 2017. 1 Much of this writing is cited below. I have also found helpful Nicholas Vincent, Magna Carta: The Foundation of Freedom 1215-2015 2nd edn (London: Third Millennium P...

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Section: Scots Law Magna Carta and Musselsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Magna Carta, Scotland and Scots Law

MacQueen

2023

Law and Legal Consciousness in Medieval Scotland

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

Authors’ reply to Bradley

Cited by 1 publication

References 3 publications

Magna Carta, Scotland and Scots Law

Magna Carta, Scotland and Scots Law

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