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A man has been arrested on suspicion of trying to steal a Magna Carta from Salisbury Cathedral. Wiltshire police said the 45-year-old was arrested on Thursday after alarms were triggered by an attempt to smash the glass box in which the artefact was displayed. A man matching witnesses’ descriptions was arrested on suspicion of attempted theft, possession of an offensive weapon and criminal damage. Police said he remained in custody. The document was not damaged in the incident. Magna Carta, one of the most significant documents in British history, is a peace treaty that was sealed by King John in...

It won’t be long before Americans all across the country are celebrating our great national birthday. And we won’t do so quietly. “It ought to be commemorated as the day of deliverance by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty,” John Adams, our second president, wrote of July 4. “It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires and illuminations from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward forever more.” Indeed it should. I also frequently urge people to reread our founding charter, the Declaration of Independence, which...

Last week I was writing about Magna Carta and how the Catholic Church’s role has been written out, in particular the part of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Stephen Langton. But the same could also be said about much of English history from 600AD to 1600; from the very first law code written in English, which begins with a clause protecting Church property, to the intellectual flourishing of the 13th century, led by churchmen such as Roger Bacon, the Franciscan friar who foresaw air travel. However, the whitewashing of English Catholic history is mainly seen in three areas: political liberty, economic...

LONDON — June 19 will mark the 800th anniversary of the signing of the Magna Carta — the great charter of rights and freedoms drawn up by the Catholic Abbots of England’s Catholic monasteries and the feudal barons of the English counties and presented to King John to sign. Queen Elizabeth II will visit Runnymede on the Thames, where the signing took place, and various ceremonies and commemorative events are planned around the country for the occasion. But what most people perhaps do not recognize is the central role played by the ROMAN CATHOLIC Church in all of this.

On this day 800 years ago, King John was compelled to sign the Magna Charta, formally accepting a limit to his prerogative to ravage everything in England. But the ink on his signature was barely dry before he brought in foreign forces and tried to wipe out the barons who had compelled him to sign the Charta. The English almost lost their newly-recognized rights within months of the signing because they were not sufficiently suspicious of the King. As David Hume noted in his magisterial History of England, The ravenous and barbarous mercenaries, incited by a cruel and enraged...

Yesterday was the 800th anniversary of the signing of the Magna Carta at Runnymede. The “Great Charter” (actually, its full name was Magna Carta Libertatum, or Great Charter of Liberty) was the first codification in English history of the principle that the power of government had limitations. I attended a mini-conference to commemorate it on Sunday night and yesterday morning. Hosted by the American Freedom Alliance, in Bellaire (near the UCLA campus), it was an intellectual feast, with talks and panels from historical scholars and law professors (including Amy Peikoff, an Objectivist atheist who declared Ted Cruz to be the...

Baghdad, July 5, 2008 – Servicemembers from all over Iraq gathered here today in the Al Faw Palace rotunda on Camp Victory, to re-enlist and celebrate America’s Independence Day. U.S. Army Gen. David Petraeus, commanding general, Multinational Force Iraq, reenlisted 1,215 U.S. servicemembers from all over Iraq July 4, 2008, during a ceremony in the Al Faw Palace rotunda at Camp Victrory in Baghdad. Photo by MNF-I Public Affairs  (Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. All 1,215 servicemembers celebrated by raising their right hand and pledging to continue defending the ‘land of the free’ in what is the largest...