At Easter (1215) the same barons, attended by two thousand armed
knights, met the King at Oxford and made known their demands. John
tried to evade giving a direct answer. Seeing that was impossible,
and finding that the people of London were on the side of the barons,
he yielded and requested them to name the day and place for the
ratification of the charter.
"Let the day be the 15th of June, the place Runnymede,"[1] was the
reply. In accordance therewith, we read at the foot of the shriveled
parchment preserved in the British Museum, "Given under our hand...in
the meadow called Runnymede, between Windsor and Staines, on the 15th
of June, in the seventeenth year of our reign."
[1] Runnymede: about twenty miles southwest of London, on the south
bank of the Thames, in Surrey.
199. Terms and Value of the Charter, 1215; England leads in
Constitutional Government.
This memorable document was henceforth known as the Magna Carta,[2] or
the Great Charter,--a term used to emphatically distinguish it from
all previous and partial charters.
[2] Magna Carta: Carta is the spelling in the medieval Latin of this
and the preceding charters. (See the Constitutional Documents in the
Appendix, p. xxix.)
It stipulated that the following grievances should be redressed:
First, those of the Church; secondly, those of the barons and their
vassals or tenants; thirdly, those of citizens and tradesmen;
fourthly, those of freemen and villeins or serfs (SS113, 150).
Such was the first agreement entered into between the King and all
classes of his people. Of the sixty-three articles which constitute
it, the greater part, owing to the changes of time, are now obsolete;
but three possess imperishable value. These provide:
(1) That no free man shall be imprisoned or proceeded against except
by his peers,[1] or the law of the land.
(2) That justice shall neither be sold, denied, nor delayed.
(3) That all dues from the people to the King, unless otherwise
distinctly specified, shall be imposed only with the conselt of the
National Council (S144).
This last provision "converted the power of taxation into the shield
of liberty."[2]
[1] Peers (from Latin pares): equals; this clause secures a fair and
open trial.
[2] Sir J. Mackintosh's "History of England." This provision was
dropped in the next reign (see W. Stubb's "Constitutional History of
England"); but after the great civil war of the seventeenth century
the principle it laid down was firmly reestablished.
Thus, for the first time, the interests of all classes were protected,
and for the first time the English people appear in the constitutional
history of the country as a united body. So highly was this charter
esteemed, that in the course of the next two centuries it was
confirmed no less than thirty-seven times; and the very day that
Charles II entered London, after the civil wars of the seventeenth
century, the House of Commons asked him to confirm it again (1660).
Magna Carta was the first great step in that development of
constitutional government in which England has taken the lead.