Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
You scratch each letter onto a separate metal block, then arrange them into words, ink
them up, and press them onto paper. When one job was done you could reuse the same
letters for a new one.
This simple idea had immediate and revolutionary consequences. Suddenly, the Bible
was available for anyone to read, fueling the Protestant Reformation. Knowledge became
cheap and accessible to a wide audience, not just the rich. Books became the mass medium
of Europe, linking people by a common set of ideas.
Magna Carta
Duck into the Magna Carta Room to answer this question: How did Britain, a tiny island
with a few million people, come to rule a quarter of the world? Not by force, but by law.
The 1215 Magna Carta was the basis for England's constitutional system of government.
Though historians talk about
the
Magna Carta, several different versions of the document
exist, some of which are kept in this room.
The Articles of the Barons
(labeled
King John
): In 1215, England's barons rose in
revolt against the slimy King John. (The same King John appears as a villain in the le-
gends of Robin Hood.) After losing London, John was forced to negotiate. The barons
presented him with this list of demands. John, whose rule was worthless without the bar-
ons' support, had no choice but to affix his seal to it.
Magna Carta:
A few days after John agreed to this original document, it was rewrit-
ten in legal form, and some 35 copies of the final version of the “Great Charter” were
distributed around the kingdom.
