National Society Magna Charta
Dames and Barons
Electronic Newsletter, March, 2016
801 Years Since 1215
TO MEMBERS AND FRIENDS OF THE
NATIONAL SOCIETY MAGNA CHARTA DAMES AND BARONS, POTENTIAL MEMBERS AND THOSE WHO
SHARE OUR INTEREST IN THE PRINCIPLES OF CONSTITUTIONAL LIBERTY
FROM LEWIS L. NEILSON JR., CHANCELLOR
DATE: March 31, 2016
If this is the first Electronic Newsletter that
you have received from our Society, please read the paragraph OUR E-MAIL LIST
below. The link to the Website is: www.magnacharta.org.
Please go to What's New for the version of this
E-News which has the links included.
Highlights:
Annual Dinner in Washington DC - Saturday,
April 9, 2016 - Subscribers and Patrons
Welcome – Subscription Form is on our Website.
The Rule of
Law in the Digital Age: Magna Carta & Protecting Freedoms in a Connected World”
We are pleased to announce that our speaker for this year’s dinner will be
Dr. Emm Barnes Johnstone, a public historian who last year led the Magna
Carta project at Royal Holloway University of London in Runnymede, just two
miles from the meadow where the Charter was sealed. Dr. Johnstone’s role
oversaw a festival at the University on the anniversary weekend, the
creation of an app that guided visitors through the historical and natural
sights in and about Runnymede field, and a suite of legacy projects
including the establishment of a doctoral center for Magna Carta and its
legacy at the college.
As a public historian, Dr. Johnstone specializes in sharing and developing
insights into our past with diverse audiences through objects and images.
Her fields of interest include medical history, in particular the history of
care for the chronically ill, and the history of the rule of law from 1215
to the present day. She is also the co-author of two books; The Art of
Medicine, University of Chicago Press 2011, and The Changing Faces of
Childhood Cancer, Palgrave MacMillan, 2014. She also led the development of
a massive open online course about the Magna Carta that launched in 2015 and
enrolled over 70,000 students.
Currently Dr. Johnstone is the Executive Officer at Queen Mary University of
London. Previously she was Senior Executive Manager and Science Outreach
Officer at Royal Holloway, University of London. She received her BA Honors
and PhD. in Natural Sciences from University of Cambridge. Her PhD. was in
Victorian Theories of Mind. She also studied at the University of
Pittsburgh.
Her husband, Professor Adrian Johnstone, will also be joining us for the
dinner. Professor Johnstone is in the Department of Computer Science at
Royal Holloway University of London, Centre for Software Language
Engineering. He led the bid for £1m from the Leverhulme Doctoral Training
Studentships scheme to create the Magna Carta Doctoral Centre, supporting
interdisciplinary PhD. research on the theme of Freedom and the Rights of
the Individual in the Digital Age.
Mailed
invitations to our April 9, 2016 dinner have been sent to those who have
expressed interest in attending, those who have recently attended, recent
contributors and leaders. It is not too late to request an invitation and
call us to let us know you are coming. Mailed invitations, like mailed
newsletters, involve significant cost and we appreciate that our members
with internet access share information. Electronic Newsletters especially
can provide considerable and lasting information which supports our
educational mission.
I encourage
you to attend the dinner and to consider how the 800th can be celebrated in
your community. Contributions, especially Patron Contributions, are welcome
and encouraged.
Next Trip - Our Educational Tour to Runnymede,
June 2016 - Fairhaven Lectures - Tentative Schedule Includes
-
11th June, Saturday, Magna Charta Day, Egham
-
12th June, Sunday, Commemorating the 63rd Year of the Reign of HM
the Queen, Details to Follow
-
13th June, Monday, ‘Terrorism and Tolerance’ David Anderson Q.C,
Speaker. First Fairhaven Lecture and Dinner, Royal Holloway, University
of London
-
14th June, Tuesday, Royal Ascot - Queen Anne or Windsor Enclosures
-
15th June: Magna Carta Day commemorations.
We are excited about the
continuation of a lecture series at Royal Holloway University. For the past
10 years, Royal Holloway University hosted Magna Charta lecture series,
which cumulated last year for the 800th Anniversary and featured
foremost experts on Magna Charta history and significance. A suggestion by
our society to continue the lecture series prompted Royal Holloway
University to prepare a grant request for the proposal to the Magna Charta
Trust, which was then matched by the Runnymede Magna Charta Legacy. The
lecture series, now dubbed the Fairhaven Lecture Series, will now continue
for another decade. To show our support for the continuation of this series,
our Society ambitiously plans to made a
yearly tour to England for this educational opportunity. The tour will
commence this June and be limited to 45 people. Please contact us if you have questions or are
interested in reserving a seat.
Report of Our Excellent Year - 2015 - Information About
the Extraordinary 2015 Tour
2015 was a year filled with
accomplishments, most notably our June 2015 tour to Runnymede, England to
celebrate the 800th Anniversary of the sealing of the Magna
Charta. After the ceremonies your Chancellor had the amazing opportunity to be greeted by
Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, a great honor for our society and the 107
society members that participated on the tour. He was able to tell her about
our trip, our society, and how we had brought 200 members to the 750th
in 1965 and are aiming for 200 in 2025. Prior to this, our society also
contributed to the planning and development of the 800th
festivities, including sitting as a member on the 800th
Anniversary Committee and a trustee of the Magna Charta Trust.
During our trip, we were able to
videotape educational speeches and photograph unique celebrations and sites
that were inspired by and created for the 800th. This year we
will be indexing and assembling this source material so that we may provide
access to it on our website. This addition to our online archive also will
include our 800th Anniversary Newsletter, another important
societal accomplishment, which was distributed via mail to approx. 9,000
primary members last spring.
.
The Password Protected Website – Link from magnacharta.org to
www.magnacharta1.org
Our regular
websites are unrestricted which is consistent with our educational mission.
Our members’
restricted website provides information specifically for our members and
provides the opportunity for our members to share information. Many of our
members and potential members (who have provided their email address) should
have received a username and password. If not, then please send us an email
requesting registration. If you have received the username and password and
the password does not work then you should observe a screen which allows you
to reset the password using the username (which has been assigned to you) or
your email address. We continue to work on the site to provide additional
information and welcome reasonable suggestions.
You may also
register online for this site if you are not a member of our Society and we
anticipate that the information available for the lineage community
generally will be expanding.
There are
two main features now within the "members" site:
There is a
page (accessible to members of our Society) for each Division, Colony or
Chapter with contact information, names of officers and upcoming meeting
dates (for many). If there are any changes you can go to the page using the
“blog” feature and provide additional information which we can then add to
the page.
There is a
drop down list of immigrant ancestors (accessible to anyone who registers
for the site) (about 200) (we
anticipate this number
will grow to exceed 1,000) with a direct link to the ancestor page on the
Brookfield site, each page listing Baron Ancestors (most qualifying
immigrants descend from multiple Barons). An addition to the dropdown list
for each is a page which has “[name of ancestor] – Share Information”. These
pages (which are accessible to members of our Society) have a “blog” feature
to add information about the ancestor. This information can include
discussions and can also include information which can then be added to the
ancestor page on the Brookfield site which is public. The immigrant
ancestors will be added to include both those qualified for our Society as
well as other immigrants who were prominent in the colonial period. We
anticipate that this site will be a significant genealogical resource
providing educational information concerning the descendants of the Magna
Charta Barons.
Reaching Out
I wish all of our Divisions Colonies and Chapters well
with your programs and meetings.
We have also sent an email to Regents explaining our
initiative to inform the Regents of members in their geographic area to contact
and encourage participation in local programs.
Our Divisions, Colonies, and Chapters have a special
role in our Society, enabling our members throughout the United States to
participate in educational programs with friendship and fellowship. We continue
to look to our Divisions, Colonies, and Chapters to encourage membership
development and to provide educational content for our web presence. If you
share our passion for the purposes of our Society and wish to start a Division,
Colony, or Chapter, please let us know.
Greetings and Thank You
On behalf of the Officers and Council of the Society, I bring greetings with
this Newsletter. We continue to develop awareness of Magna Charta and its
message. We ask each of you to participate with us in continuing the long
tradition of friendship and fellowship which has continued over many years. We
continue to be pleased with the response from our members to update addresses
and provide new addresses for those who have been lost. Many members who were
eligible to do so have appointed successors.
Magna Charta Partners
We are emphasizing Magna Charta Partners for those who share interest in our
purposes but are not members. We plan for an Advisory Council. You may be a MC
Partner by application, either by explaining your service in support of our
purposes or by including an annual contribution, currently $125.00. There is detailed information on our
website. While we have grown to over 17,000 members, I am still surprised at the
number of people who are proposed for membership but have not completed the
lineage forms as well as the number of people, who have responded to our “lost
members” pages but have not taken the next step to become members. We would like
you to participate as Magna Charta Partners in support of our Society and our
purposes. Please look at what's new.
News From Brookfield Publishing
Additional information continues to be added to the Brookfield Publishing Web
Site. Please use the links on the entry page to go to the "beta" site and to the
2015 Page.
A Lineage Form has been added which can be completed by computer and then
printed out and mailed with supporting documentation. Original signatures are
needed for the application and the supporting documentation needs to be
included.
Indexing continues of archival information and we look forward to exciting and
interesting initiatives.
Potential Members
If you are not a member of our Society and are eligible, I hope that you will
join. If you are not eligible but share our interest in history and
genealogy, we encourage you to remain on our Email list. We also welcome your
participation in our ongoing genealogical research projects and our Tours. We
welcome and encourage new members and remind those submitting lineage
information to include copies of referenced material.
As mentioned in prior E-Newsletters, membership continues to be of vital
importance to our Society. If you wish to speed up or facilitate the membership
process, please include with the Proposal Form a well-documented lineage
(including copies of the documentation) to either a known ancestor or to one of
the qualifying Barons. If you have sent lineage information without the copies,
you may also speed up the process by sending copies of the documentation.
Lineage Forms are provided on the Website.
Contributions
We rely on member contributions for our Society operations and we plan to build
our endowment in connection with the 800th Anniversary of the sealing
of Magna Charta. We hope you will consider contributions, including
contributions of appreciated securities. Our Society is a public charity under
Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code.
OUR E-MAIL LIST
We continue to significantly increase our e-mail list. To those of you who are
new to our list we welcome you to receive our Electronic Newsletter and hope
that you will find our Society and our mission to be interesting. Since the
primary mission of our Society is to develop awareness of Magna Charta, we wish
to expand the circulation of our Electronic Newsletter by increasing our e-mail
address list. We particularly wish to include those who are members of lineage
societies and/or those who share our interest in the principles of
Constitutional Liberty. I would like to thank those who have shared their email
lists since our last Electronic Newsletter.
We encourage you to check our Website regularly for new developments and
information. The link to the Website is:
http://www.magnacharta.org
Our E-mail list is made up of those who have sent us e-mail, of members and
friends of the Society who have responded to our Newsletter request for E-mail
addresses, and others who we believe might be interested in our Society or
mission. If you would prefer not to receive future Electronic Newsletters,
please let us know. If you have friends who you believe might be interested
in our Society, please forward this e-mail. If you have received this as a
forwarded e-mail, please visit our Website at for more information about our
Society. You may also contact our Society Office at 215-836-5022.
Do not hesitate to contact me with questions or suggestions.
Chancellor@magnacharta.org
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