biochem wrote:Thus establishing the importance of a clearly enunciated written rights aka a constitution of sorts. When the rights are "legal" and customary only, it is much easier to eat away at them as John was doing. He simply went to far, to fast to be successful. If he was smarter, he could have nibbled on the "legal" and customary rights his whole reign and slowly accomplished his desires.[/quote
You do not seem to understand much about the pre-Roman era lives of Kelts, Germans, Slavs or Balts. They had stable societies for many centuries; Anglo-norman England consolidated a lot more power into the monarchy because of the long series of wars and occupation by the Danes, not because it was somehow inevitable; his attitude that he didn't need to listen to the nobility, or respect their rights, was because he was his father's youngest and most spoiled brat; his failure cost the Angevin family every bit of their holdings in France (in his Father's day, 2/3 of the entire thing) except the area of Dunkirk/Calais. He got even less support and respect from the French noble vassals than he did from the English.
To be short, the customs you think are easily overset are the collective memory of entire tribes; and the notion of "kingship" changed rather drastically over what its authority actually was over the early middle ages. In the fifth century, a german König was the leader of a warband, with political authority left to elders; a king didn't inherit his father's holdings, he was considered for the position of war leader based on a blood connection to the ruling family (divine descent from Odin, usually) but it was a choice made by the FAMILY, and they could (and did) pick from anyone in the line of descent; and their bards and skalds and priests were always there to remind them of the laws.
Which was why the Romans killed the Druids, and destroyed all the pagan libraries--so no one could argue with
their interpretations of "law."
And, at the time of "King John" ecclesiastic courts could and did overrule secular courts whenvever they wanted to. And since at the time almost no one but priests were literate at all, and only the priests were writing histories or annals, there is just a bit of bias in the way they presented things.
Corruption of the courts, and corruption and overreaching by the nobles led to the peasant riots you will find, and are part of the rational that led to revolutions that altered politics in the West.
They didn't alter anything in the East, even after the Russian revolution.
Which, you seem to accept (along with the myth of democracy) entirely.
Democracy was established one step at a time. In this case the franchise was slowly expanded and expanded again and again... step after step until today's true democracy was established. It's not not the only path to democracy but it's not an unusual one. Many countries which are democracies today followed a similar path.
