It is perhaps worth a moment of our time this day – especially at a time when governmental overreach may be compromising fundamental rights – to reflect that Magna Carta was signed by England’s King John at Runnymeade on this day, June 15, approximately 798 years ago in 1215. Magna Carta – The Great Charter – is aptly named.

Magna Carta looms large in our history and in our daily lives for two important reasons: Magna Carta delineated certain rights, protections, and liberties which evolved into those we enjoy to this day, such as Due Process, Habeas Corpus, and trial by jury. Far more importantly, though, Magna Carta established The Fundamental Principle that The Government would be documentably Responsible To The Governed and documentably Limited In Its Powers. No King of England could claim as France’s Louis XIV did, “I am the state!” (Well, he said: “L’etat c’est moi!“)

Even when England’s monarchs enjoyed their greatest degree of personal power during the Tudor and Stuart dynasties, they were constrained by law in ways that other monarchs around the globe were not. Clause 29 of Magna Carta, which remains in force in English law to this day, requires due process of law for all punishments.

In April of 1603, as King James VI of Scotland made his procession from Edinburgh to London to ascend the English throne upon the death of his cousin Elizabeth, a thief was caught stealing from his household. King James ordered the officials of Newark to have the man hanged immediately, which was done. This autocratic exercise of power horrified King James’ English subjects. No King of England had been able to decree such punishment for almost four centuries. Sir John Harington wrote, “I hear our new King hath hanged one man before he was tried. ‘Tis strangely done; now if the wind bloweth thus, why not a man be tried before he hath offended?”

When the English began establishing colonies on the Atlantic Coast of North America, Magna Carta formed a fundamental basis for colonial law. The Virginia Charter of 1606 provided for the continuance of the liberties guaranteed English subjects in Magna Carta. The Charter of Massachusetts Bay did likewise. William Penn, founder and proprietor of Pennsylvania, expressly interpreted Magna Carta as providing for Habeas Corpus and Jury trial within his colony. Maryland wished to incorporate Magna Carta explicitly into the colony’s fundamental law, but a wary King Charles I, who insisted upon his devine right to rule, was unwilling to authorize such a check upon his desired powers. The English colonists in the New World expressly and implicitly carried Magna Carta with them. Indeed, it was the violations of the Rights of Englishmen by King George III and the Parliament which fomented the revolution which resulted in an independent United States of America. In the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson delineated the King’s many tyrannies, including several abrogations of Magna Carta. Specifically cited were the King’s refusal to respect colonial legislatures, the displacement of Common Law in Quebec, and the denial of the right to trial established in Magna Carta. The fundamental law established in Magna Carta was the basis for the very notion of a written and clearly codified constitution. Magna Carta is truly the direct ancestor of the Constitution of the United States of America. The heritage of Magna Carta was similarly profound in other English colonies.

The main features of Magna Carta were not for the general populace, of course, but rather for the elite nobility, the Barons. Our true inheritance from this document is that it paved the way for our own U. S. Constitution and the principle of the rule of law (even if it be often bent or breached!) It is no accident that the history of the English Common Law nations is not repleat with strong men and all-powerful monarchs; it is no accident that no English Common Law nation has ever been home to a brutal dictatorship. The precedent of Magna Carta – that The Law is above the ruler and not the ruler above The Law – makes hard ground for authoritarian regimes to flourish.

Jamie Rawson
Flower Mound, Texas

Further Reading:

Libraries of analyses and interpretations of Magna Carta have been written, of course, many for the legal scholar or specialist. But one very interesting and reasonably light treatment that is worth a look is:

1215: The Year Of Magna Carta, Danny Danziger and John Dillingham; Touchstone, 2005: ISBN-10: 0743257782

One can locate the portions of Magna Carta which remain in effect, unchanged, in English law by consulting this site:

http://www.legislation.gov.uk/aep/Edw1cc1929/25/9/section/XXIX

Take an unseasonably long and cold winter after a poor harvest, a minor epidemic, (probably flu) and an unsuccessful military campaign against restive local tribes, then add a few unprovable accusations from unlikely sources, a populace wary and uneasy, fearing attacks by unseen foes, and authorities inclined to presume the worst, and you have a witches’ brew of explosive and lethal ingredients. In Salem, Massachsuetts, in 1692, such a mixture produced deadly results that resonate yet today. On 10 June 1692, Bridget Bishop, the first victim of the infamous Salem Witch Trials, was hanged.

The madness started four months earlier when two young girls became sick with “fits” which were diagnosed as the results of a bewitching. In the course of their seizures, these girls identified several local women as possible witches. The hunt was on.

Local authorities arrested one of the women whom the girls had identified, a maid who was a West Indies native. This woman, Tituba, had used some of her folk remedies to try to cure the girls, and such remedies were rather akin to spells and magic. The investigating officials offered to spare Tituba the worst penalties if she would name other witches. Not surprisingly, she did so quite readily. During her examination, Tituba expanded and embellished her descriptions with lurid accounts of conversations with the “Devill,” sightings of monstrous “hayry” beasts, and rides through the misty nights on wooden poles. Several of Salem’s townfolk were named in the course of her account. The hunt expanded.

By June, the Governor of Massachusetts empowered a special court to conduct trials of the accused witches. The judges included an ancestor of writer Nathaniel Hawthorne, one John Hathorne. The president of the court, William Stoughton, was a fanatical prosecutor of witches, and he vowed to “clear the land” of witches and sorcerers. Most of the judges were not trained in the law, and had no idea as to how to conduct a proper trial, especially in the matter of witchcraft. As a result, the judges relied heavily on the advice of local clergymen such as the famous Cotton Mather.

Mather suggested admitting testimony that was even then quite improper, such as accounts of dreams, and third-hand reports of rumored conversations. With no effective restrictions upon what might be testified in court, folks with old grudges to settle made wild accusations about their neighbors. Bridget Bishop was particularly unpopular: she was a woman of “low character” (she may have run a small-time brothel!) and she was well-known for failing to pay her bills. She had no friends in Salem, but plenty of enemies.

Those who protested the madness, or simply failed to enthusiastically support it were at risk of being accused. John Proctor, who figures as a key character in Arthur Miller’s allegorical play about the witch hunts, The Crucible, was an outspoken sceptic and critic of the trials. He soon found himself accused. Though Proctor demanded the trial be moved to Boston, and denounced the confessed witches as liars, he was nevertheless hanged.

After Bridget was hanged on 10 June, the pace of the trials began to pick up. Before the summer was over, more than 150 of the Salem area’s perhaps 8,000 residents were accused of witchcraft. Twenty-four “witches”, 16 women and 8 men, were executed – mainly by hanging – or died in prison before the Governor at last dissolved the local court in October and and established a Superior Court to hear the remaining cases. The new court adhered to more stringent rules of evidence and subsequently handed down no more convictions. The madness was running out of steam.

In the later 19th Century and early 20th, Salem’s terrifying episode was explained as “mass delusion,” the theory being that everyone in town fell under the spell of suggestibility, as if a mass hypnosis had taken hold. That has some appeal: it would explain the flying and the visions that so many attested. Notably lacking, however, was an agent which could explain how this mass delusion/hypnotism was effected.

In the 1970’s, professor Linnda Caporael published a paper, Ergotism: The Satan loosed in Salem? Ergot is a grain fungus which is especially prevalent on rye growing in damp ground, or during mild, rainy weather. Rye was a standard crop in New England, and one may fairly assume it was grown in and around Salem, especially in the more poorly drained fields around the village which are known to have been cultivated, but which would have been unsuitable for wheat or barley.

The effect of ergot fungus is variable: ingested in small quantities it can make a person ill; in large quantities it causes hallucinations and convulsions, the sensation of things crawling on the skin, and a sense of soaring through the air. These symptoms may sound like a “bad acid trip,” and that is hardly surprising. Ergot fungus produces a variety of alkaloid compounds, including “isoergine,” lysergic acid amide, a weaker cousin of “LSD,” lysergic acid diethylamide.

Though Caporael’s thesis is unproven, and ultimately unprovable, it does have the great advantage of potentially explaining the symptoms of the Salem “victims of witchcraft,” and being plausible as well. Ergotism is real, its symptoms do present in a manner akin to demonic possession, and rye was a staple in the region. So, while we cannot know whether or not ergotism is the true cause of the victim’s distress, it seems likely. And it is comforting to think that there may have been an actual, organic cause for the afflictions, rather than either mass hysteria or over-arching malice.

Other organic causes have been suggested as well, including various viral and genetic diseases, and the matter is still fiercely debated. As I say, it is almost certain that we will never be able to know for certain. But there must have been some actual cause, I believe. I am not yet ready to be convinced that the Devil himself dwelt for nine months among and within the villagers of Salem.

And what of those who never developed symptoms, yet perpetuated the prosecutions and the persecutions? One historian has sought to explain the astonishing culpability of the judges involved by noting that they may have been using the witch hysteria to deflect their own roles in the unsuccessful campaigns on the frontiers. The military adventures had been ill prepared, and the citizens of Massachusetts were unhappy with their leadership. A focus on a new, far more manageable threat may have been politically expedient: it was an easy way to show that the authorities were doing something to protect the colony.

Five years later, the judges – except Stoughton – issued a collective admission of error and guilt, and made a public apology; Massachusetts observed an annual day of prayer and fasting for forgiveness due for the sins of the trials, and even paid compensation to the survivors.

Salem’s experience has ever after stood as a reminder that in times of anxiety and stress, it is especially crucial to be careful and deliberate when identifying the source of our woes. And from Salem we have inherited the term “Witch hunt” to describe an energetic, often paranoid and self-satisfying quest to find enemies within.

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Jamie Rawson
Flower Mound, Texas

FURTHER READING:

The Witchhunt:

The Devil in Massachusetts: A Modern Enquiry Into The Salem Witch Trials, Marion L. Starkey; Anchor Books, 1949 (reprint ed. 1969): ISBN: 0385035098

In the Devil’s Snare: The Salem Witchcraft Crisis of 1692, Mary Beth Norton; Vintage, 2002: ISBN: 0375706909

Salem Possessed: The Social Origins of Witchcraft, Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum; Harvard University Press, 1976: ISBN: 0674785266

Ergotism:

The Day Of Saint Anthony’s Fire, John Grant Fuller; MacMillan and Company, 1968: Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 68-23632

It was on this day, 8 June 1887, that Herman Hollerith filed for United States Patent 395,781 – his second – for an electro-mechanical tabulating machine which used punch cards to record and store data. Though punched cards had been used for more than a century to control looms and to program music boxes, clock organs, and the like, Hollerith was the first to use them to tabulate data electronically. As such, this patent represents a major milestone in the evolution of the Information Age and of the computers which are so completely ubiquitous in our daily lives. Hollerith’s original tabulators were not programmable, and were built to perform specific tasks, but later modifications permitted limited, dynamic repurposing of the tabulators, a precursor of true programmability.

Hollerith’s tabulators were first used by the U.S. Census Bureau to tabulate the data on the 1890 Census. Previous census data had taken many years to produce; the first reports of the 1890 Census were available in late 1891. Such an impressive result led to an immediate interest in the machines and their potential business applications. Hollerith founded the Tabulating Machine Company in 1896. This corporation later merged with two competitors to form the Computing Tabulating Recording Company, which in 1924 under the leadership of Thomas J. Watson was rechristened the International Business Machines Company, better known as IBM.

There are numerous sources about Hollerith and his patents, but the definitive material resides with The United States Patent and Trademark Office. These days, one can use that child of Hollerith’s heritage, “The Web,” to access the USPTO database. Search for Hollerith, and you will find a wealth of data, including drawings of his machines. Take a look at:

http://www.uspto.gov/patents/resources/methods/afmdpm/examples/395781.jsp

Jamie Rawson
Flower Mound, Texas

Digital technology is the solvent leaching the glue out of all of our traditional institutions. — Paul Saffo, S.F. Chronicle, 19 February 2006