Crime and Punishment_2of4_Guilty as Charred
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00:00I'm on a quest to discover the origins of our laws, who made them, and why.
00:07I started 2,000 years ago, when justice was determined by blood feuds until the first kings of England seized control.
00:16This week, I'll explore medieval justice and find out why flesh burning was legal.
00:22I'll go to a town where Norman Methods have inspired punishments for Hasbo offenders.
00:28And I'll find out who were the first rulers to use centralised state intelligence.
00:34In this amazing journey, I'll discover how the most turbulent 150 years in English law left us with professional judges, trial by jury, and a set of laws for the entire country.
00:45Guilty!
00:58A courtroom isn't really somewhere you'd want to be unless you had to.
01:06But at least if you did find yourself here, you'd know what to expect.
01:10If you were the defendant, you'd be stood in the dock here.
01:14The jurors would be sitting along here, all 12 of them of course.
01:18The clerks of the court would be around this table.
01:22The judge would be up there.
01:24The witnesses would come and give their evidence in the witness box there.
01:28And the barristers and solicitors would be arguing the case calmly and rationally from these benches until finally the jurors gave their verdict and the judge would pronounce sentence.
01:41But 900 years ago, the whole business of establishing guilt and innocence was very different.
01:49Before 1066, justice was often random and brutal.
01:54The law was frequently used to instil fear and control the common people.
01:59And the most important figure in a court of law wasn't human at all.
02:07Back in medieval times, no man could decide whether another man was guilty or innocent.
02:12That was up to God.
02:15And the court, which often took place in a church, was the place where God's judgment was revealed.
02:21And the usual way of doing this was by what was called a trial by ordeal.
02:26At the beginning of the trial, the priest would call upon God to give his judgment while the accused underwent an ordeal.
02:34For instance, the suspect might have to hold the hot end of a poker like this and walk five paces before letting go of it.
02:44Imagine the damage that that would have caused to your hand.
02:58So, what was the point of that?
03:00Well, if the hand healed quickly, then God had pronounced the man innocent.
03:05But if it took a long time to heal, or it blistered or festered, then God had said he was guilty.
03:15It was mostly petty criminals or innocent peasants who suffered this gruesome justice.
03:20But in 1066, when the Normans invaded, the whole population would feel the brutal force of the law.
03:28William the Conqueror and his army virtually wiped out the Saxon aristocracy and put the country under occupation.
03:37As well as their military strength, they knew how to use law to exert control over a rebellious population.
03:46Although they were also God-fearing people, they had some new and even more bloody means of achieving divine justice.
03:54When William the Conqueror arrived in England with his army, he said to Harold,
03:58right, we can sort this out, just the two of us.
04:01And he challenged Harold to a fight, man to man, single combat, and whoever won would rule the country.
04:09Harold refused, and the rest, as they say, is history.
04:13The two armies fought at the Battle of Hastings.
04:16Harold was killed, and the Norman conquest began.
04:20But William would have been happy if he and Harold had sorted the matter out between themselves,
04:25because man-to-man combat was the Norman way for men to settle legal disputes.
04:31It was called trial-by-battle, and it now took its place alongside trial-by-ordeal as part of English law.
04:39If a man was accused of a serious crime, such as murder or rape, he could prove his innocence by fighting his accuser.
04:48Fights took place in front of a large crowd, and had the atmosphere of a country fair.
04:59They'd last until one of the men surrendered or was killed.
05:03It was still divine justice, because God would ensure that the innocent would always prevail.
05:10But trial-by-battle had some obvious pitfalls.
05:13Because it relied on brute strength, it provided a legally sanctioned arena in which a big bloke could beat up a much smaller enemy.
05:22The Chronicle of York describes the story of two neighbours, one rich and feeble, the other poor but strong.
05:30The poor man was so jealous of the rich one that he wanted to kill him,
05:34so he thought he would accuse him of a crime so that he could fight him in battle, because he thought he could beat him.
05:41And it says here, the day of the lugubrious spectacle arrived.
05:46His wrath let forward to administer blows, and his cruelty was after blows.
05:52The man who was not fit to fight, fell in battle.
05:55In the sight of the multitude who were standing around, the just man was blinded by the unjust.
06:03Moreover, with bestial ferocity and doing his evil deed with sharp knife,
06:08he forcefully and completely cut off his virile parts.
06:13The man who was not fit to fight, fell in battle.
06:16In the sight of the multitude who were standing around, the just man was blinded by the unjust.
06:23And horrible sight publicly threw them to the people, together with the pupils of his eyes,
06:30so that the children and adults were astounded by his rage.
06:44900 years ago, justice was very brutal.
06:48And if God's will said that you were guilty, you could expect to be killed, mutilated,
06:53at the very least, to be severely humiliated.
06:57But we're in the 21st century now, aren't we?
06:59We like to think we've made a lot of progress,
07:01except that some Norman methods seem to be making a bit of a comeback.
07:08In 1066, England was under occupation.
07:11Just 7,000 Norman invaders had to control a population of around 2 million.
07:18They crushed opposition with military force,
07:20but they also relied on individual communities to enforce the law.
07:29I've come to Bridlington in Yorkshire to find out how local justice worked under the Normans.
07:39Local lad Jason Colley has been in trouble a few times for being drunk and disorderly,
07:44and earned himself an ASBO.
07:46He's keen on his history, so I'm going to show him how a young lawbreaker like him
07:51might have been treated 900 years ago.
07:55Right, Jason, when you were up in front of the court last time, what were you charged with?
08:00Breach of Asbo.
08:01It's a cycle of crime you're in, isn't it?
08:04If you'd done something like that in the medieval period,
08:07then you would have been chucked into this place.
08:10This is genuinely Bridlington's medieval prison.
08:13In you go.
08:16And you would have been banged up in here.
08:21You ever been in one of these places before?
08:23Yeah, a few times.
08:25All right, you're going to feel quite at home then, aren't you?
08:28If he'd done something really horrendous, then he wouldn't just have been thrown into prison.
08:33William the Conqueror's favourite punishment was to castrate somebody and then to blind them,
08:39but we won't do that to you because it would be a bit messy.
08:43Have you had enough?
08:44Yep.
08:45Are you a bad boy now?
08:46I am.
08:47Well, that's not the end because now the humiliation starts.
08:51We've got 200 extras and they're going to jeer at you while we go all the way into the town square.
08:57Come on.
09:01Actually, I was lying about the extras.
09:03Oh, good.
09:06How far is the old marketplace?
09:08About five minutes away.
09:09You would now be whipped all the way down to the marketplace with the crowds jeering at you.
09:16You have a go.
09:18This will be fun.
09:20Christ, that hurts.
09:32And finally, bruised and bleeding, we get to the market square.
09:37Lift that thing up for me.
09:39Do you know what this is?
09:40A pillory, Tony.
09:41It is a pillory indeed.
09:43And this is quite horrible because you can't move once you're in this thing
09:47and they might throw stones at you and excrement and all sorts of horrible stuff
09:53and people could actually die in the pillory.
09:56Thanks a lot.
09:58If you've done something like... Sit down here, please.
10:01Sit down here, please.
10:03Mess up your asbo, then you go in here.
10:06And the actual punishment would depend on who you were.
10:11If you were a baker and you'd been selling stale bread, then they'd probably just lob the bread at you.
10:18If you'd been a greengrocer selling stinking vegetables, you'd get those.
10:23What a tragedy it is that the tomato wasn't introduced into England until several hundred years later.
10:32Public humiliation was a common punishment in Norman times.
10:37With the absence of a police force, it was about the best they could do to deter petty criminals.
10:43But even though the Normans now ruled the entire country, justice was haphazard.
10:52Punishment in particular was a postcode lottery.
10:56It all depended on where you lived.
11:00In Winchester, a convicted thief would be mutilated.
11:03In Dover, he'd be chucked off a cliff.
11:06In Sandwich, he'd be buried alive.
11:08In some seaport towns, he'd be tied to a stake below the high water mark and left to drown.
11:16In other words, justice was local rather than national.
11:20And here in beautiful historic Bridlington, they've just reintroduced this notion of local justice.
11:27And the idea they've come up with has got something else in common with Norman times.
11:32It involves public humiliation.
11:38900 years after the Norman invasion,
11:41Bridlington Council has come up with a modern take on putting criminals in the stocks.
11:50Rat on a rat, helping the fight against drug dealers.
11:54I should think so too.
11:55The local council here have decided that ASBOs on their own aren't enough,
12:00and they've instigated their own initiative, which is basically this.
12:04It's right in the middle of the town centre, and it's become known as the Pillar of Shame.
12:09What they've done is they've stuck up posters of all the local kids on ASBOs for everyone to see.
12:16Here he is.
12:17Jason Michael Collie.
12:19Prohibited from entering licensed premises or drinking alcohol in any public place.
12:23If he breaches this order, he's liable for a fine of up to £2,000 or a term of imprisonment not exceeding two years.
12:31Bang him up, I say.
12:33I have to tell you, that photo of you on the Pillar of Shame is the worst photo I've ever seen.
12:39Yeah, it does look a bit rough on there, doesn't it?
12:42Do you remember when you first heard that you were going to be on the Pillar of Shame?
12:45How did you feel?
12:46I felt embarrassed.
12:48Seeing my face up there and that, it wasn't really anything to be proud about.
12:53What about work?
12:54It has affected jobs and that, because people are obviously going to know you, the employers in town and that.
13:02I haven't had many job interviews in the last year or so.
13:07I wish I could wear my wand and change it or take it off or whatever.
13:11But tell me the truth, what would you prefer?
13:14To be stuck in the stocks or to have your photo on the Pillar of Shame?
13:17Stuck in the stocks.
13:18Why's that?
13:19Because it's over and done with. We haven't had the Pillar of Shame up for months.
13:24Putting Jason's face on the Pillar for several months was a deliberate move by Bridlington Council.
13:31They hoped that if anyone recognised him and caught him in breach of his ASBO,
13:35they could report him and therefore help the community in its fight against crime.
13:40Sounds like a sensible idea, but some civil liberties campaigners disapprove.
13:45So what's wrong with letting the locals play their part in law enforcement?
13:49There's a very fine line between community justice and mob rule.
13:55Once you start engaging a local population with spying on each other and enforcing the law against each other,
14:03it's a very short step to vigilantism and to picking on vulnerable members of your society.
14:12The naming and shaming of people under these orders is a very backward step.
14:33Community justice is controversial now, but in Norman times it was the standard way of dealing with petty criminals.
14:40It was never going to be enough, though, for an occupying army trying to suppress an entire population.
14:47Because they were unpopular, many Normans were being murdered by resistance fighters
14:52and the killers were being concealed by local villagers.
14:55The Normans had to put an end to these killings and decided they'd use the law to do it.
15:02For the first time in England's history, its rulers were strong enough to enforce their justice on the entire country.
15:09So they created this law that said if any Norman was murdered and the culprit wasn't handed over,
15:15then the entire village would be subject to a crippling fine.
15:19It was named after the Latin for secret killing and was called the murderum fine.
15:30But it had rather unexpected consequences.
15:34Early court records recall the story of a corpse turning up in the village of Sutton near London.
15:40Imagine the scene. An unidentified body turns up and the entire village of Sutton flies into a panic
15:47because if it's a Norman, they'll have the murderum fine slapped on them.
15:51So what do they do? They pick up the body and they dump it in a nearby village so that they'll get the blame.
16:04But shortly afterwards, they get a taste of their own medicine
16:08because in another nearby village, another body comes floating down the river.
16:14These villagers have exactly the same fears. They fish out the body and they dump it back in Sutton.
16:23What a farce. Normans being bumped off all over the place, bodies being shifted to and fro.
16:29Everyone's up to the same trick, trying to make sure that no unidentified bodies land on their turf.
16:40The murderum may not have been entirely foolproof,
16:43but it shows that a major shift was taking place in the evolution of the law
16:48from the local stocks to justice on a national level.
16:53Their next step towards national control was the establishment of centralised state intelligence.
17:00William the Conqueror was the first ruler of England to start gathering information on all his subjects.
17:11Twenty years after the Norman invasion, William embarked on a huge survey of the whole of England.
17:18In fact, it was so total and so invasive that the people of England called it the Doomsday Book
17:24because it reminded them of the Day of Judgment,
17:27that moment when all their sins and all their good deeds would be weighed up
17:32so that they would then know whether they were going to go to heaven or to hell.
17:38The Doomsday Survey was incredibly thorough.
17:41It recorded details of over 13,000 settlements in just two years.
17:46It was a shrewd move by William,
17:48because the survey would help ensure he could squeeze every penny in taxation from the English.
17:54Anyone who refused to cooperate would be severely punished.
18:01How many men do you employ? How many slaves?
18:04How many cow hides have you got? How much pasture? How many fishponds?
18:08Could you make more money from your estate than you currently do?
18:12The English were deeply suspicious of all these questions.
18:16They suspected something far more sinister than just a survey was going on,
18:20and they were right. It was an exercise in state control.
18:24If William knew who owned what, then he could threaten to take it away from them.
18:28He called a meeting of all the landowners in the country,
18:31told them he knew everything about them, and ordered them to swear allegiance to him.
18:36The Normans were on to something.
18:38They knew that knowledge was power,
18:40and had started the process of exercising control on a national rather than a local level.
18:46900 years later, we're now, more than ever, a nation under surveillance.
18:52The UK now has 14 million people in it.
18:56It's the largest country in the world.
18:58It's the largest country in the world.
19:00It's the largest country in the world.
19:02It's a country now under surveillance.
19:04The UK now has 14 million CCTV cameras.
19:08That's more than any other country in Europe.
19:13CCTV, go ahead.
19:15One thing's for sure, the Normans would have loved all this technology.
19:19Code 1, male, he's heading through the snicker onto King Street now.
19:23CCTV, I've got him. He's just approaching Prospect Street now.
19:27He's coming round the corner now.
19:29It seems the Norman desire for information-gathering has now become an addiction.
19:37These days, the state can get its hands on nearly all our personal information.
19:41Tax and medical records, e-mails, bank statements, travel details, mobile phone calls.
19:47Soon, there'll be ID cards and biometric passports,
19:51and eventually even our DNA could be stored on a national identity database.
19:56We're told it's for our own safety, but is it safe to let our political leaders have so much information?
20:02What if they lose it, God forbid?
20:05Even if you have nothing to hide, you might have some things you want to protect,
20:10like your privacy or your personal relations.
20:15Nearly a thousand years after the Doomsday Survey,
20:18people are once again worried by the threat posed by a state which constantly demands more information from us.
20:25But then, the law's always been a bit of a helter-skelter, even in medieval times.
20:32William the Conqueror had ruled England with an iron grip, using the law to great effect.
20:38The Murdrum Fine and Doomsday Book were oppressive measures which helped the Normans maintain control over the entire nation.
20:46But it wasn't to last.
20:49After William's death in 1089, the Norman dynasty began to fall apart,
20:54leading to 20 years of chaos and civil war.
20:58Powerful barons seized control of different parts of the country, taking the law into their own hands.
21:04A brutal regime was gone, only to be replaced by misery and injustice.
21:14Finally, in 1154, when William's great-grandson Henry II claimed the English throne,
21:20the country's fortunes began to change.
21:25A century after the Normans first arrived here, one of our most enlightened English kings
21:30turned the old Norman ideas on their head and began a revolution in English justice.
21:41What a bizarre lot judges are with their red robes and funny wigs.
21:46They're part of our quirky establishment.
21:50These days, they can sit in judgment on anyone who breaks the law.
21:54Prime ministers, Home Secretaries, even members of the royal family.
22:01Back in the 12th century, they had far less clout, and their rise to power happened almost by chance.
22:08When Henry II came to the throne, the country and its legal system were in tatters.
22:14He urgently needed to assert royal authority and rebuild respect for the law,
22:19and the means he chose to do that were much more sophisticated and less brutal than those of his Norman ancestors.
22:27He pulled together a team of senior judges and sent them all over the country.
22:33These travelling justices had got the power to overrule the local sheriffs
22:38and make sure that the king's law was implemented throughout the entire land.
22:43In fact, they were so successful that 800 years later, Henry's judges are still with us.
22:55The modern day travelling judges are known as Red Judges.
22:59Their HQ is in London, and they go round the country taking their expertise with them,
23:04making judgments in some of the country's toughest cases.
23:09This judge, Sir David Calvert-Smith, has come from London to Luton to preside over a murder trial.
23:17There was a big fuss made when Henry's men arrived in town.
23:20They were the top dogs, the king's heavy mob, and the local dignitaries would roll out the red carpet.
23:26These days, it's less grand, but official protocol is still practised.
23:33In the old days, I'd have been met, no doubt on my horse or in my carriage,
23:38by the high sheriff and escorted to make sure I wasn't set upon or robbed.
23:43Now, I'm met at the door of the court, having come off the train.
23:47Excuse me, my lord, can I introduce you to the high sheriff?
23:50Welcome. Lovely to meet you.
23:52Very nice to meet you.
23:54Wonderful.
23:57The high sheriff will normally sit with me, wearing his sword, to make sure I'm not set upon or beaten up,
24:03or indeed bribed, so that there's a good deal of ceremony.
24:10After the pleasantries with the high sheriff, it's down to business.
24:13The files are unpacked, papers sorted, and with the help of his clerk,
24:17Sir David dons the famous red robes, which gives the red judges their nickname.
24:27I can't sentence anybody to death now, as the old judges did,
24:31although I still carry the black cap into court with me.
24:34Everybody knows I can't actually put it on and use it.
24:39The law loves tradition, and even in the modern world,
24:43Henry's 12th century judges would recognise much of what goes on today.
24:49When you're sitting in court and you're wearing that red robe, I think you're quite scary.
24:54I think if I were a defendant, I'd find them quite scary.
25:11At the end of his day in court, Sir David is escorted to his lodgings,
25:15a residence used only for visiting judges.
25:18They're another rarely seen tradition that's been around since the time of Henry II.
25:24Do you think touring judges will survive?
25:26Yes, because if everybody's left alone, shall we say, in Chelmsford or Truro,
25:33or as it might be, and never visited by anybody from outside,
25:37local habits tend to kick in.
25:39You get postcode justice in the end, because one court will,
25:42we do it this way in Truro, and they do it their way in Chelmsford.
25:45So in a way, you're trying to do what they were doing in the medieval period,
25:48trying to make sure that law's the same everywhere.
25:51Absolutely. It's the same theory, really, as Henry II had,
25:55although he had other motives as well.
25:58He wanted to keep the barons in order, and raise taxes as well.
26:05These judges were vital to Henry II.
26:08They helped him spread the tentacles of royal authority all around the country.
26:12But Henry had inadvertently unleashed a formidable legal force,
26:16a force that would eventually have the power to sit in judgment over the king himself.
26:21450 years later, Henry's successor, Charles I,
26:25discovered just how powerful the judiciary could be
26:28when he was tried and executed for treason.
26:35But there was another unforeseen benefit to Henry II.
26:40But there was another unforeseen benefit to Henry sending his men round the country.
26:44It would lead to one of the most important and unique aspects of our legal system.
26:49Nowadays, if you go to London, you expect that the law will be the same there
26:53as it is in Manchester or Liverpool or any other city.
26:57But at the beginning of Henry's reign, that wasn't the case.
27:10The judges toured around in pomp and ceremony.
27:13They had royal authority,
27:15but there were countless different laws and procedures throughout the country.
27:19So they had to use their own discretion and expertise when passing judgment.
27:24Then they went back to London and shared their judgments with their fellow judges,
27:30and the number of judgments grew and grew and grew
27:35and grew and grew until it became a complete nightmare.
27:43How could any new judge be expected to learn all this?
27:49Eventually, Henry's most senior judge, Ranulph de Glanville,
27:53had what turned out to be a superb idea.
27:56He decided to write all of the judgments down in one book.
28:03It was like the invention of the Internet.
28:05Everybody said, how did we manage to live without it?
28:08Because from now on, all the judgments could be circulated
28:12and applied throughout the entire country.
28:15The result was what came to be known as English Common Law.
28:23It sounds obvious to us now that there should be a written record of all the laws of the land,
28:28but in those days, laws and procedures were known only to a few learned men.
28:33As the law wasn't consistent, judges had specific local knowledge,
28:38which they either shared with each other or kept locked up in their heads.
28:42By compiling it into a single volume, Glanville had unlocked this secret world
28:48and begun to standardize the practice of law throughout the land.
28:53This is Glanville's original effort.
28:58It was a small handbook with all the new and existing laws in it,
29:02so judges could refer to it.
29:04It was called The Treatise on the Laws and Customs of the Kingdom of England.
29:09But never in his wildest dreams could Glanville have imagined what he'd started,
29:15because from then on, every law that was made,
29:18every judgment that was given, had to be written down.
29:22All these books are law books.
29:25One professor of law has suggested that it would take you 450 years
29:30to read English law in its entirety.
29:33I shouldn't bother if I were you.
29:38To understand the significance of having a common law,
29:41I spoke to Paul Brand, a legal historian here in Oxford.
29:46Paul, what do we exactly mean by common law?
29:50Well, by the common law, we mean a law that is common to the whole of England
29:56and ultimately a law that is common also to all Englishmen.
30:01Prior to that, there were, in effect, local customs, county by county,
30:06often smaller areas than that.
30:09How do you think this heritage of common law has affected us today?
30:13It's affected us enormously because it has become the basis for legal systems
30:20all over the civilised and at least in part in the uncivilised world.
30:25It's left us a heritage of things like jury trial, professional lawyers,
30:31professional judiciary, people who will stand up to the government when they have to.
30:38It seems we've got a lot to thank Henry II for.
30:42His reign gave rise to two pillars of our legal establishment,
30:46independent judges and the foundation of English common law.
30:51So, was everything all fair and hunky-dory?
30:54Not quite.
30:55The job of Henry's judges, just like our judges today,
30:58was to oversee the trial and pronounce punishment.
31:01The judges didn't say guilty or not guilty.
31:04For centuries, divine judgment had reigned supreme.
31:08Both the Norman system of trial by battle and the older system of trial by ordeal
31:13were still the main legal ways of establishing guilt or innocence.
31:19But now, church leaders have begun to question the practice of divine judgment.
31:24They've begun to question whether it's a good thing or a bad thing.
31:29But now, church leaders have begun to question the practice of subjecting a suspect to an ordeal.
31:35It wasn't that they thought it was barbaric or unjust, far from it.
31:39They simply thought it was wrong for priests to summon God at the drop of a hat
31:44every time they needed a verdict.
31:46God, after all, was busy and had his own agenda.
31:52Finally, in the year 1215, Pope Innocent III issued an edict
31:57banning the practice once and for all.
32:00And that signalled the end of trial by ordeal and trial by battle.
32:07For the first time in criminal trials, man-made justice was about to enter the courts of law.
32:18Even if God wasn't invited, court proceedings still took place in his house.
32:24And in the year 1220, a woman named Alice accidentally caused a legal revolution.
32:32She was in trouble with the law.
32:34And to save her own skin, she grasped on five men, accusing them of theft.
32:39In the past, anyone accused of a crime would have to undergo a trial by ordeal and await God's judgment.
32:46But not this time.
32:49The court arrested the five men, but they realised they had a problem.
32:53They couldn't use the traditional methods of trial by battle or trial by ordeal
32:58to prove their guilt or innocence, because they weren't allowed to anymore.
33:02They'd have to think of something else.
33:06Previously, in some less serious trials, the judge allowed the parties in the dispute
33:11to bring up to 12 of their friends and neighbours along to give evidence under oath on their behalf.
33:17They were known as juries.
33:19Now, with no other legal means to reach a verdict, the court decided for the first time
33:25that it would summon a jury to actually settle the case.
33:31The five men were asked to submit to the judgment of their neighbours.
33:35But this time, it wasn't just going to be their mates.
33:37The jury of 12 was going to be picked at random by the court.
33:41The men agreed, but they soon wished they hadn't,
33:45because the jury said that although one of them was innocent, the other four were thieves.
33:50And they were promptly hanged.
33:52Alice may have been trying to save her own skin,
33:55but she'd unwittingly started a system that's been with us ever since.
33:59Trial by jury had arrived.
34:02Guilty!
34:04Guilty.
34:06Guilty.
34:13With Alice, the jury system had begun.
34:16But it didn't exactly take off.
34:18The old kind of trials, trials by battle and trials by ordeal,
34:23were the judgment of God, and you can't argue with that.
34:26But since a jury is made up of men, and men are fallible,
34:31it was felt that nobody should be forced to have to accept a trial by jury.
34:35It should be voluntary, a bit like the gym.
34:38Might be good for you, but not everyone wants to go.
34:41Just a year after the Alice trial,
34:44judges were having problems persuading defendants to go before a jury.
34:49It was particularly unpopular, because in those days,
34:53juries would have been made up of neighbours of the accused,
34:56and might be biased against them,
34:58especially if they had a bad reputation in town.
35:02In the year 1221, a suspected murderess called Matilda
35:07refused to go in front of a jury,
35:09because she said that too many of them hated her so much.
35:12And another man called John refused,
35:15because he said he'd done so much evil in his life
35:18that he didn't want to trust his fate to his neighbours.
35:21And another man called William, who was a suspected sheep stealer,
35:26refused after he'd seen the jury hang the person in front of him.
35:31All three refused and escaped execution.
35:36After that, the judges decided to put their collective foot down.
35:44They realised that a little bit of persuasion was going to be needed
35:48to ensure that people volunteered for trial by jury.
35:51Hi, lads.
35:52So they instituted a proceedings called Pain Fort et Jury,
35:57which involved being crushed by weights.
36:03What happened was, if you said that you did want a trial by jury,
36:08then they would put some weights on you.
36:10And if you still said no, they would put more and more on
36:15until finally you were crushed to death.
36:21And ironically, a lot of people preferred to be crushed,
36:24because if they did, then their goods and chattels would go to their family.
36:29But if you were hung after a jury trial, then the Crown took everything.
36:40The collapse in March of the Jubilee Line corruption trial
36:43was widely blamed on juries sloping off, being baffled by the city jargon.
36:49Yet again, it was claimed, wasting the taxpayer millions of pounds.
36:53The jury system has been around for eight centuries,
36:56but it often comes under attack.
36:58Critics argue juries are too costly,
37:01or that they can't understand complicated cases.
37:04So would we be better off if we just let our learned judges decide
37:08who's guilty and who isn't?
37:10If we get rid of the jury system, we will increasingly find
37:14one class of people receiving the justice
37:17and another class of people meeting it out.
37:20That can lead to a lack of legitimacy in the criminal justice system,
37:25a lack of trust in the system,
37:27the idea that privileged people meet out justice
37:30and poor and vulnerable people receive it.
37:33I think that juries have common sense, they have life experience,
37:37and they are the best people to decide whether someone is telling the truth or not.
37:46150 years after the Norman invasion,
37:49England had acquired three major planks of its legal system.
37:53Independent judges, trial by jury, and the common law.
37:58They'd all evolved in order to help the king maintain his power,
38:02and they all required his support.
38:04But when Henry's son, King John, came to the throne,
38:07he didn't care about all that.
38:09He ruthlessly abused his power and tried to turn the clock back.
38:14All that progress seemed to have been in vain.
38:19But just in time, something extraordinary happened in a field in Berkshire
38:23which put the king in his place.
38:26A simple document called the Magna Carta changed the world forever.
38:40Every summer in the Berkshire town of Egham, there's a special fete.
38:44It's held on the anniversary of the signing of Magna Carta,
38:48which is a world-famous historical document,
38:51and one of the cornerstones of our democracy.
38:54So presumably, the locals can tell us what it's all about.
38:58We don't know what it is, what is it?
39:00From the Magna Carta, the right for a man to own his own land and his own animals.
39:05I don't know, it's a piece of paper or something.
39:07It was written by some king, and it was like around here, so that's why they did it.
39:11I really can't remember it all, honestly.
39:14I mean, I'd be the last person to interview.
39:18So we've got this really major thing of international importance called the Magna Carta.
39:23In fact, it's so important that nobody around here seems to know anything about it at all.
39:30And it didn't take place in Egham town anyway.
39:32It happened over there on that rather boggy piece of marshland.
39:37And my cab driver's local, and he'd never heard of it, and it took him half an hour to find it.
39:43The king at the time was bad old King John from the Robin Hood stories.
39:48He was Henry II's son, but unlike his dad, he had little respect for justice.
39:54When his barons refused to contribute to his war chest,
39:58John put up taxes, stole their land and locked them up without trial.
40:03The barons started a rebellion.
40:06They took control of London and Lincoln, bringing the country to the verge of civil war.
40:12Finally, the king backed down and agreed to sign up to the barons' demands.
40:17They'd prepared a document, the Magna Carta, which limited the king's powers
40:22and required him to accept the idea that everyone in the country should have rights under the law.
40:28The two sides, still distrustful of each other, arranged to meet here at Runnymede to do the deal.
40:36Local mayor Hugh Mears thinks this field was chosen specifically for its bogginess.
40:42Hugh, what happened here on that fateful day?
40:46Well, on the morning of the 15th of June, 1215, King John was in a bit of trouble
40:52and his barons were in something of a high, having had some significant military successes.
40:56But neither side felt quite strong enough to test the outcome in a battle,
41:00so the stage was set for mediation, and they both came here to the meadows where they met.
41:06But why the meadows? It's not very grand, is it?
41:09Well, the meadows are an open space. You've got the river on one side, you've got a wooded hill on the other.
41:14It is very steep over there, isn't it?
41:16And not particularly suitable for deploying knights.
41:19And one of the chroniclers describes these as the water meadows near Staines.
41:23And I think that gives us something of a pointer, because if these were water meadows,
41:27then probably it wouldn't have been the ground where either side could rarely have mounted an unexpected attack.
41:32So how did the day end?
41:34Well, the final drafting points were settled, the barons renewed their homage to the king,
41:39and they exchanged the kiss of peace.
41:41The kiss of peace, I like that.
41:43Oh, you're taller than me.
41:46So, job done. King John had got his snog from the barons, he'd got the Magna Carta.
41:53From now on, would justice and freedom flourish throughout the entire land?
41:58Not a bit of it. King John wasn't going to be forced to stick to all this guff.
42:03He knew he could get the Pope to annul it.
42:05As far as he was concerned, this wasn't worth the parchment it was written on.
42:11But the barons weren't daft.
42:13They insisted that copies were circulated throughout the entire kingdom,
42:17which is why the Magna Carta survived
42:20and has become one of the most famous legal documents in the whole world.
42:25But if it was just a piece of political convenience, why is it so important?
42:32Magna Carta contained some 63 clauses, most of them writing fairly minor wrongs.
42:39For example, clause 23 says that no town or man should be forced to make bridges at riverbanks
42:45unless there's some ancient rite telling them to do so.
42:50But one or two clauses have become fundamental cornerstones of our legal system.
42:55They stated that no one could be detained without being charged
42:59and that everyone had the right to a fair trial.
43:04These rights are now so important to us that anyone trying to remove them does so at their peril.
43:09In Northern Ireland in the 1970s, the government allowed police to hold IRA suspects without charge
43:15and put them on trial without witnesses.
43:19There was a huge public outcry that fundamental human rights were being abused.
43:25A particular objection was the government's suspension of the right of any citizen held in jail without charge
43:31to have a court hearing explaining the legal basis of their imprisonment,
43:35a right now known as habeas corpus.
43:41Dame Shirley Williams was an MP throughout that period.
43:45She now sits in the House of Lords and is a key advocate for the principles set down in Magna Carta.
43:52It is rather ironic that something that was essentially a stitch-up put together in haste should be so radical.
43:58Not that hasty. The stitch-up may have been the appearance that Runnymede.
44:02The document itself is not a stitch-up. It's a carefully thought through document
44:06and one which I think is a beautiful prose, actually.
44:10What is it that the Magna Carta says, Shirley, that's so important?
44:13Here's the quote.
44:15To no one will we sell, to none deny or delay right or justice,
44:19which some think might be the basis of habeas corpus.
44:22So habeas corpus is a very key element in the concept of English justice
44:28because it says you can't hold a person without a trial for more than a relatively short period of time.
44:34In England, traditionally, that period has been 24 hours,
44:38which is a standard from roughly King John to a few years ago.
44:42We then moved it to 48 hours, it then got moved to 7 days, it then got moved to 14 days
44:48and finally last year in Parliament it got moved to 28 days.
44:52Would you feel happy about voting for a longer period of time?
44:55I would not.
44:58Habeas corpus is enshrined in British law,
45:01but it often seems less important to politicians when the country is under threat.
45:06In 2004, the British authorities detained eight terror suspects in Belmarsh Prison.
45:12They were never charged or put on trial, but were being held indefinitely.
45:17After a lengthy dispute, they were eventually released
45:21because independent judges sitting in the House of Lords overruled the government.
45:27So, are the marshy fields of Runnymede all that's left of our great historical document?
45:35No, no, come over here, look, look, look, look, this is a great big thing!
45:39Look, to commemorate Magna Carta, symbol of freedom under law,
45:45great big steps leading up to it, fantastic columns,
45:49lovely gold stars on a blue background,
45:52makes you proud to be British, doesn't it?
45:55Erected by the American Bar Association.
45:59Maybe it doesn't matter that it doesn't look very English,
46:02it actually looks a bit more like a flying saucer, doesn't it?
46:05After all, the Americans have woven the Magna Carta into their entire constitution,
46:11but the point about the Magna Carta is that now it's become international.
46:17Magna Carta is still a symbol and an inspiration.
46:21And in Egham, there were at least some members of the community
46:24who were keen to remind us of its relevance.
46:27The greatest thing for me in the Magna Carta was the guarantee of freedom
46:32and the right to trial, and 12 good men and truth.
46:38As you might guess, I'm not English.
46:41I'm here because I'm a British citizen.
46:44As you might guess, I'm not English.
46:47I'm here because I grew up in the sort of part of the world
46:50where things like not putting people in prison without charge or trial
46:55doesn't come so automatically.
47:06In 1066, England was beset by random justice and superstition.
47:12The Normans ruled the country with an iron fist,
47:15combining brute force, community justice and Big Brother-style surveillance.
47:21But within just 150 years, the country had made some huge steps forward.
47:26The common law, professional judges, and in the Magna Carta,
47:30some fundamental human rights.
47:32And rather than relying on the hand of God,
47:35now people accused of a crime could be tried by a jury of men.
47:39So did sweet justice now reign in England?
47:42No. Way to go.
47:46In the next programme, we'll witness the battle over freedom of speech
47:50and find out how the king finally lost his power and his head.
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