Answer:
Imagine it's England, 1209, and you're a wealthy baron. You arrive home from London one day to discover that King John's minions have once again raided your stores of grain. It's the king's right, of course — he has a large household and armies to feed — and there's a promise of compensation.
But all too often that payment arrives late, if at all. And there was that incident last year where the bailiff was caught selling the seized goods instead of handing them over to the king's men.
These events aren't simply the makings of the next Robin Hood movie. The practice of seizing food for the king, known as "purveyance," was common in medieval England, as was the greed and corruption associated with it. It was one of the key gripes that drove England's barons to negotiate the Magna Carta with King John in 1215.
The Magna Carta is considered one of the great legal documents in the history of democracy. Five centuries later, the legal principles it set forth inspired American colonists in their own rebellion against the British crown. And Americans now have their own copy on display at the National Archives, thanks to a permanent loan from billionaire David M. Rubenstein, who bought a 1297 reissue of the Magna Carta at auction. Careful readers of the document — or, more likely, its translation — may be surprised at what the charter has to say about food.
