threads which run through this period, many of them highly important, we shall here follow only one—the struggle for the charters. The absence of Richard I had shown that it was possible for the machinery to work without a king to direct it, provided that there was a trusty minister to take his place. The great Archbishop Hubert Walter took this rôle, and assisted by the great council of magnates ruled well, retaining his power into the next reign. The brilliant outburst of literature, art, law and general culture which marked the close of the twelfth century was accompanied by the development of an idea of government of which Hubert Walter1 was the embodiment.
“King John, in fact, felt with much truth that he was not his own master so long as his great minister was alive. Hubert Walter held the view, natural in an ecclesiastical statesman, that the kingship was an office invested with solemn duties. Royal power must be inseparable from the law. And the Archbishop’s prestige was so great that a word from him on the interpretation of the law could set aside the opinion of the King and his advisers.”2
His successor, Stephen Langton, whom Pope Innocent III forced John to accept, was of the same school, holding that “loyalty was devotion, not to a man, but to a system of law and order which he believed to be a reflection of the law and order of the universe”.3 Conflict was inevitable between such statesmen and John, whose life had been spent in constant turbulence, intrigue and treachery, with complete indifference to “those principles of harmony in life and nature which underlay all the current belief in justice and responsibility”.4 The rapid growth of the central administration and the development of the courts of law (which we shall consider in more detail later5) was only equalled by the growth of local government, of boroughs, of trade both internal and foreign, and the close co-operation of central and local authorities. Litigation, negotiations, compromises, definitions of official power, the statement of precise limits to all sorts of jurisdictions public and private, organisation between groups of towns and the elaboration of machinery for holding international representative chapters in certain religious bodies—these are all signs of the spirit of legal order which filled the opening years of the thirteenth century. It is from this standpoint that the events leading to Magna Carta must be considered.
JOHN AND THE POPE
John’s troubles opened with Innocent III’s refusal to permit his candidate to become Archbishop of Canterbury, the Pope substituting his own much better choice, Stephen Langton.1 The Great Interdict followed, to which John replied by confiscating Church property. The political thought on both sides of the struggle is clear. John regarded bishops as higher civil servants, and looked back to the old days when Church and State in England were mingled, the papacy weak, and the Church subservient to the Crown. Hence he was able to strike the attitude of a patriot against foreign meddling. Langton started by assuming the separate sphere of Church and State, attacked the shifty details of John’s recent conduct, and proclaimed that John’s vassals were not bound to him after he himself had broken faith with the King of Kings, arguing “as an exponent of feudal custom in the light of those high principles of law to which all human law should conform”.2 The conflict was thus one of fundamental principle. John poured out money in Europe to buy support, and built up an imposing coalition against the Pope’s ally, King Philip Augustus of France. Then, in his customary sudden manner, he abandoned all his plans, submitted to Rome and did homage to the Pope’s legate. The next year his allies were ruined in one of the most important battles of the middle ages (Bouvines, 1214). It was now time to reckon with the discontent aroused by the reckless oppression to which John had resorted during the Interdict. Archbishop Langton undertook to force the King to make amends, and produced the old Charter of Henry I as the basis of what was normal and just, adding a long list of more recent grievances. London opened its gates to the barons, and soon after the fifteenth day of June, 1215, John had to put his seal to the Great Charter.3
THE GREAT CHARTER
This is a long document of sixty chapters and represents the extreme form of the baronial demands. The next ten years saw the progressive shortening of the Charter by omitting much that was temporary, by putting the important clauses concerning the forests into a separate document (called the Charter of the Forest), and by pruning the excesses of the victorious barons. John obtained a bull from his new over-lord, the Pope, annulling the charter.1 Indeed, some of its provisions were much too extreme, particularly the last, which erected a commission of twenty-five barons with power to enforce the Charter by coercing the King. The Great Charter of 1215 was therefore actually law for only about nine weeks. The King died shortly after (1216).
The council who ruled in the name of the infant Henry III re-issued the charter in 1216 (this time with papal assent) very much modified in favour of the Crown, with a promise to re-open the question when the French invasion, undertaken at the will of the rebel barons, had been defeated. This promise they fulfilled in 1217 on the occasion of the treaty whereby Prince Louis withdrew, and this, the third, Great Charter contains “numerous, important, and minute” changes whose general tendency was again in favour of the Crown. It was felt that the boy King ought not to suffer for his father’s sins, and that the difficult period of a minority was no time to weaken the central government; in any case, it was a committee of nobles who actually ruled in Henry’s name and any limitation on his power would only make their task of governing the harder. Hence the successive compromises of 1216 and 1217. At length, in 1225, Henry III came of age and issued the fourth Great Charter which differed from the third in slight details only. This is the document which is still law (except in so far as it has been repealed) and is cited by the old authors as the charter or statute of the ninth year of Henry III. It was not enrolled until many years later when, in 1297, it was put on the statute roll (word for word, except one slight slip), and so is also sometimes cited as the statute Confirmatio Cartarum of 25 Edward I.2 On numerous later occasions during the middle ages it was solemnly confirmed and from that day to this has been held in the deepest respect both in England and in America. After all these revisions Magna Carta as it now stands on the statute books of common law jurisdictions is a sober, practical, and highly technical document. A complete understanding of all its provisions would require a whole volume upon numerous aspects of mediaeval law and administration; for our present purpose the following summary will suffice.3
CONSTITUTIONAL PROVISIONS.
“First, we have granted to God, and by this our present charter have confirmed for us and our heirs for ever, that the English Church shall be free and shall have all her rights and liberties, whole and inviolable. We have also given and granted to all the freemen of our realm, for us and our heirs for ever, these liberties underwritten, to have and to hold to them and their heirs, of us and our heirs for ever (Chapter 1; note the formulas of a conveyance of real property which are here used).
“The City of London shall have all her old liberties and customs. And moreover we will and grant that all other cities, boroughs, towns... and ports shall have all their liberties and free customs” (Chapter 9).
“No freeman shall be taken or imprisoned, or disseised of his free tenement, liberties or free customs, or outlawed or exiled or in any wise destroyed, nor will we go upon him, nor will we send upon him, unless by the lawful judgment of his peers, or by the law of the land. To none will we sell, deny, or delay right or justice” (Chapter 29). These words have provoked centuries of discussion. Originally, it seems, “the law of the land” covered all the usual modes of trial, whether it be by indictment, petty jury, appeal or compurgation. “Trial by peers”, on the other hand, was undoubtedly an importation from continental feudal law, and was the solemn trial of a vassal by his fellow-vassals in the court of their lord.1 It has always been rather rare, and is apt to have a political aspect. King John himself was tried by his peers in the court of King Philip of France who was his overlord in respect of the lands held by John in France. In certain cases an English peer could claim to be tried by members of the House of Lords, either in Parliament or in the
