Courtesy of It Begins: The Magna Carta
In 1215, at Runneymede in England, King John set his seal upon the document known as Magna Carta and thus kicked off nearly a thousand years of property madness. The charter was the result of the King’s ruthless trampling over the rights of existing nobles and, extracted from him at the point of a sword, gave all freemen of England certain, inalienable rights.
One of these was the right not to be unlawfully deprived of their property and, such is the way of these things, this was to lead to the Anglo-Saxon obsession with housing which has been at the heart of so many recent financial debacles. It may be that “an Englishman’s home is his castle” but mistaking a heavily mortgaged property for a safe financial haven isn’t the cleverest bet you’ll ever make. Although it may still be better than investing in the stockmarket for most people.
Property Rights
At the heart of the Magna Carta were a number of provisions that echo down the ages:
"No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled, or deprived of his standing in any other way, nor will we proceed with force against him, or send others to do so, except by the lawful judgement of his equals or by the law of the land."
The document is, to be fair, rather a rambling read and at points gets oddly excited about making the King give back all the stuff he’d stolen from Wales including "the son of Llywelyn." Quite why King John had such a liking for the Welsh isn’t recorded, but they clearly weren’t happy with the attention. According to the charter he’d also acquired the sisters of the King of Scotland on his travels, so he seems to have been an inveterate Celtic kleptomaniac.
Although the charter enshrined a lot of rights, many of which are traceable into important future constitutional documents like the American Declaration of Independence, the English more or less observed it in the breech for a few hundred years. Kings may have nominally been as one with everyone else before God but in practice they had the biggest armies, the
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Philip R. Davis is a founder Phil's Stock World, a stock and options trading site that teaches the art of options trading to newcomers and devises advanced strategies for expert traders...
Ilene is editor and affiliate program
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