Magna Carta

Type:

Book Chapter

Author:

John Baker

Published:

2023

The Magna Carta of 1215 was a peace treaty between King John and his warring barons. It set down in writing the customary rights and liberties which kings were expected to respect. Though broadly inspired by Henry I’s coronation charter of 1100, it took the precaution of spelling out the rights and liberties in minute detail. As a peace treaty it failed, and John (with papal approval) immediately repudiated it. But John died in 1216, and during the infancy of his son Henry III a more permanent document was crafted. The final version of 1225 was considered the first English statute, emerging from a great assembly which later in the century would be called parliament. It was confirmed at least thirty times, by king after king, establishing that England was a limited monarchy in which kings ruled under the law. The most influential provision down the centuries was that ‘No free person shall be taken or imprisoned or disseised or outlawed or exiled or in any way ruined, nor shall we go against him or put upon him, except by the lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land; to no one shall we sell, to no one deny or delay, right or justice.’ These words in later times inspired the principal legal remedies against governments and public officials, the writ of habeas corpus and the Petition of Right (1628). By 1604 it could be claimed that Magna Carta guaranteed ‘everything that anyone has in this world, or that concerns the freedom and liberty of his body or his freeho…

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