The story goes that i was a greedy little man who coveted jewels, luxury and other people's wives but as well as the Pope giving me earache over my choice of Archbishop of Canterbury, i also had a war with the French to fight and wars are not cheap, so i tapped up the richest people who were the Barons and the Aristocracy who they took offence and made me sign up to a law which meant all men are free and limited my power and blah blah blah which i said sure, where do i sign your manky scroll and then minutes later poo-pooed it so it doesn't count and i was King.
It was said that i was forced to sign The Magna Carta so whoever followed me onto the throne could no longer ride roughshod over their subjects but in reality The Magna Carta provided plenty of personal rights and freedoms if you were wealthy or part of the Church, nothing in the charter corresponded to the rights of the common citizens and the rest of the country continued to toil in the fields under the control of the Barons and Aristocracy who treated the common folk with much more disdain and cruelty than even i treated the nobility.
Far from the Magna Carta being some incredibly important event in the rights of the common man, the only beneficiaries of it were the richest people who were able to continue oppressing the common man while being freed of paying their share of taxes and from where i am sitting, 800 years on, that hasn't really changed.
It did give me the chance to become famous as the Robin Hood baddie though, the guy who stole from the rich and gave to the poor with the rich being the very people the Magna Carta was designed to protect.
Magna Farta indeed.
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