Magna Carta (Latin "The Great Charter"), Also Called Magna Carta Libertatum (Latin "The Great Charter of The Liberties of England"), Was A

Magna Carta (Latin; "the Great Charter"), also called Magna Carta Libertatum (Latin; "the Great
Charter of the Liberties of England"), was a charter issued by King John at Runnymede,
near Windsor, England, on 15 June 1215.[a] Originally an attempt to negotiate a peace between the
unpopular King and a group of rebel barons, overseen by the Archbishop of Canterbury, it promised
the protection of church rights, protection for the barons from illegal imprisonment, access to swift
justice and limitations on feudalpayments to the Crown, to be implemented through a council of 25
neutral barons. Neither side stood behind their commitments and it was annulled by Pope Innocent
III, leading to civil war. After John's death, the regency government of John's young son, Henry III,
reissued the document in 1216, stripped of some of the more radical content, in an unsuccessful bid
to build political support for their cause. At the end of the First Barons' War in 1217, it formed part of
the peace treaty agreed at Lambeth, where it acquired its name Magna Carta, referring to its
considerable size. Short of funds, Henry reissued the charter again in 1225 in exchange for a grant
of new taxes, and his son, Edward I repeated the exercise in 1297, this time confirming it as part of
England's statute law.
The charter became part of English political life and was typically renewed by each monarch in turn,
although as time went by and the fledgling English Parliament passed new laws, it lost some of its
practical significance. At the end of the 16th century, however, there was an upsurge in interest in
Magna Carta. Lawyers and historians at the time believed that there was an ancient English
constitution, going back to the days of the Anglo-Saxons, that protected individual English freedoms.
They argued that the Norman invasion of 1066 had overthrown these rights, and that Magna Carta
had been a popular attempt to restore them, making the charter an essential foundation for the
contemporary powers of Parliament and legal principles such as habeas corpus. Although this
historical account was badly flawed, jurists such as Sir Edward Coke used Magna Carta extensively
in the early 17th century, arguing against the divine right of kings propounded by
the Stuart monarchs. Both James I and his son Charles I attempted to suppress the discussion of
Magna Carta, until the issue was curtailed by the English Civil War of the 1640s and the execution of
Charles.
The political myth of Magna Carta and its protection of ancient personal liberties persisted after
the Glorious Revolution of 1688 until well into the 19th century. It influenced the early American
colonists in the Thirteen Colonies and the formation of the American Constitution in 1789, which
became the supreme law of the land in the new republic of the United States. Research
by Victorianhistorians showed that the original 1215 charter had concerned the medieval relationship
between the monarch and the barons, rather the rights of ordinary people, but the charter remained
a powerful, iconic document, even after almost all of its content was repealed from the statute books
in the 19th and 20th centuries. Magna Carta still forms an important symbol of liberty today, often
cited by politicians and campaigners, and is held in great respect by the British and American legal
communities, Lord Denningfamously describing it as "the greatest constitutional document of all

times the foundation of the freedom of the individual against the arbitrary authority of the despot".[1]
In the 21st century, four exemplifications of the original 1215 charter remain in existence, held by
the British Library and the cathedrals of Lincoln and Salisbury. There are also a handful of the later
1216, 1217, 1225 and 1297 versions in public and private hands, including copies of the 1297
charter in both the United States and Australia. The original charters were written on vellum sheets
using quill pens, in a particular style of abbreviated Latin. Each was sealed with the royal great
seal using beeswax and resin, most of which have not survived. Although academics refer to the 63
numbered "clauses" of Magna Carta, these are a modern system of numbering, introduced by
Sir William Blackstone in 1759, as the original charters formed a single, long unbroken text. The four
original 1215 charters will be on joint display at the British Library in 2015 to mark the 800th
anniversary of Magna Carta.

Magna Carta (Latin "The Great Charter"), Also Called Magna Carta Libertatum (Latin "The Great Charter of The Liberties of England"), Was A

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Magna Carta (Latin "The Great Charter"), Also Called Magna Carta Libertatum (Latin "The Great Charter of The Liberties of England"), Was A

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Magna Carta (Latin; "the Great Charter"), also called Magna Carta Libertatum (Latin; "the Great

communities, Lord Denningfamously describing it as "the greatest constitutional document of all

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