Oh, sorry, I didn't see you were working.0:05
I'm just finishing my history project.0:09
It's quite interesting, actually.0:11
It's Latin for the Great Charter.0:17
It's one of the most important documents that deals with human rights.0:20
It was written in 1215 by some English aristocrats and they forced King John to sign it.0:24
Ok, what sort of rights was it created to protect?0:31
Education, freedom of speech and things like that.0:34
Those are all rather modern ideas.0:38
It's basically a list of things the monarchy can and can't do.0:41
Quite a lot of it is about ownership of rivers and forests and things that aren't very relevant to today.0:45
But one part of the text is very important and very much applies in our modern times.0:52
It says that the Crown can't sentence anyone without a fair trial.0:57
In other words, the King or the Queen can't just throw anyone in prison.1:02
In many ways, it's the most important law we have.1:07
Now I remember when I did my history project on the 1787 United States Constitution, the they had the same law.1:11
The Americans read Magna Carta and took ideas from it.1:21
It's incredible to think of a document that's 800 years old, puts legal responsibilities on a ruler and abolishes unfair treatment of the common people.1:25
I'm sorry to disappoint you, Max, but that's not quite the whole story.1:33
You see, Magna Carta was really an agreement that protected only the rights of the wealthy, who felt that King John had too much control over them.1:38
It didn't really give rights to the common people and the rich lords went on treating the poor very badly.1:47
Also, neither King John nor the lords stuck to the agreement and went to war soon after.1:55
But the ideas were there.2:01
Even though people didn't always stick to the laws, judges and lawyers kept reading and discussing Magna Carta for hundreds of years afterwards.2:05
Can you go and see it like you can see the U.S. constitution in Washington, D.C. well, there are four copies from 1215 that are still in existence.2:13
The best one is in Salisbury Cathedral in the uk, but there are quite a few later copies.2:23
Sometimes they even come up for sale.2:29
If you have $20 million to spare, you'd need to be a lord to buy.2:31
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