CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE.
Cum autem pro Deo, et ad emendacionem regni nostri, et ad melius sopiendam discordiam inter nos et barones nostros ortam, hec omnia predicta concesserimus, volentes ea integra et firma stabilitate in perpetuum[[1069]] gaudere, facimus et concedimus eis securitatem subscriptam; videlicet quod barones eligant viginti quinque barones de regno quos voluerint, qui debeant pro totis viribus suis observare, tenere, et facere observari, pacem et libertates quas eis concessimus, et hac presenti carta nostra confirmavimus, ita scilicet quod, si nos, vel justiciarius noster, vel ballivi nostri, vel aliquis de ministris nostris, in aliquo erga aliquem deliquerimus, vel aliquem articulorum pacis aut securitatis transgressi fuerimus, et delictum ostensum fuerit quatuor baronibus de predictis viginti quinque baronibus, illi quatuor barones accedant ad nos vel ad justiciarum nostrum, si fuerimus extra regnum, proponentes nobis excessum, petent ut excessum illum sine dilacione faciamus emendari. Et si nos excessum non emendaverimus, vel, si fuerimus extra regnum justiciarius noster non emendaverit, infra tempus quadraginta dierum computandum a tempore quo monstratum fuerit nobis vel justiciario nostro si extra regnum fuerimus, predicti quatuor barones referant causam illam ad residuos de viginti quinque baronibus, et illi viginti quinque barones cum communa tocius terre distringent et gravabunt nos modis omnibus quibus poterunt, scilicet per capcionem castrorum, terrarum, possessionum, et aliis modis quibus poterunt, donec fuerit emendatum secundum arbitrium eorum, salva persona nostra et regine nostre et liberorum nostrorum; et cum fuerit emendatum intendent nobis sicut prius fecerunt. Et quicumque voluerit de terra juret quod ad predicta omnia exequenda parebit mandatis predictorum viginti quinque baronum, et quod gravabit nos pro posse suo cum ipsis, et nos publice et libere damus licenciam jurandi cuilibet qui jurare voluerit, et nulli umquam jurare prohibebimus. Omnes autem illos de terra qui per se et sponte sua noluerint jurare viginti quinque baronibus, de distringendo et gravando nos cum eis, faciemus jurare eosdem de mandato nostro, sicut predictum est. Et si aliquis de viginti quinque baronibus decesserit, vel a terra recesserit, vel aliquo alio modo impeditus fuerit, quominus ista predicta possent exequi, qui residui fuerint de predictis viginti quinque baronibus eligant alium loco ipsius, pro arbitrio suo, qui simili modo erit juratus quo et ceteri. In omnibus autem que istis viginti quinque baronibus committuntur exequenda, si forte ipsi viginti quinque presentes fuerint, et inter se super re aliqua discordaverint, vel aliqui ex eis summoniti nolint vel nequeant interesse, ratum habeatur et firmum quod major pars eorum qui presentes fuerint providerit, vel preceperit, ac si omnes viginti quinque in hoc consensissent; et predicti viginti quinque jurent quod omnia antedicta fideliter observabunt, et pro toto posse suo facient observari. Et nos nichil impetrabimus ab aliquo, per nos nec per alium, per quod aliqua istarum concessionum et libertatum revocetur vel minuatur; et, si aliquid tale impetratum fuerit, irritum sit et inane et numquam eo utemur per nos nec per alium.
Since, moreover, for God and the amendment of our kingdom, and for the better allaying of the quarrel that has arisen between us and our barons, we have granted all these concessions, desirous that they should enjoy them in complete and firm endurance for ever, we give and grant to them the underwritten security, namely, that the barons choose five-and-twenty barons of the kingdom, whomsoever they will, who shall be bound with all their might, to observe and hold, and cause to be observed, the peace and liberties we have granted and confirmed to them by this our present Charter, so that if we, or our justiciar, or our bailiffs or any one of our officers, shall in anything be at fault toward anyone, or shall have broken any one of the articles of the peace or of this security, and the offence be notified to four barons of the foresaid five-and-twenty, the said four barons shall repair to us (or our justiciar, if we are out of the realm) and, laying the transgression before us, petition to have that transgression corrected without delay. And if we shall not have corrected the transgression (or, in the event of our being out of the realm, if our justiciar shall not have corrected it) within forty days, reckoning from the time it has been intimated to us (or to our justiciar, if we should be out of the realm), the four barons aforesaid shall refer that matter to the rest of the five-and-twenty barons, and those five-and-twenty barons shall, together with the community of the whole land, distrain and distress us in all possible ways, namely, by seizing our castles, lands, possessions, and in any other way they can, until redress has been obtained as they deem fit, saving harmless our own person, and the persons of our queen and children; and when redress has been obtained, they shall resume their old relations towards us. And let whoever in the country desires it, swear to obey the orders of the said five-and twenty[five-and twenty] barons for the execution of all the aforesaid matters, and along with them, to molest us to the utmost of his power; and we publicly and freely grant leave to every one who wishes to swear, and we shall never forbid anyone to swear. All those, moreover, in the land who of themselves and of their own accord are unwilling to swear to the twenty-five to help them in constraining and molesting us, we shall by our command compel the same to swear to the effect foresaid. And if any one of the five-and-twenty barons shall have died or departed from the land, or be incapacitated in any other manner which would prevent the foresaid provisions being carried out, those of the said twenty-five barons who are left shall choose another in his place according to their own judgment, and he shall be sworn in the same way as the others. Further, in all matters the execution of which is entrusted to these twenty-five barons, if perchance these twenty-five are present and disagree about anything, or if some of them, after being summoned, are unwilling or unable to be present, that which the majority of those present ordain or command shall be held as fixed and established, exactly as if the whole twenty-five had concurred in this; and the said twenty-five shall swear that they will faithfully observe all that is aforesaid, and cause it to be observed with all their might. And we shall procure nothing from anyone, directly or indirectly, whereby any part of these concessions and liberties might be revoked or diminished; and if any such thing has been procured, let it be void and null, and we shall never use it personally or by another.
This important chapter stands by itself, providing machinery for enforcing all that precedes it. It thus forms what modern jurisprudence would describe as the “sanction” of the whole, but what was known in the current phrase of its own day as “the form of security” (forma securitatis ad observandum pacem et libertates).[[1070]] It contains the only executive clause of the Charter, the sole constitutional machinery provided for enforcing the rights now defined on parchment, the sole protection against future attempts of the king to render them of no effect.
I. The Nature of the “Security” or legal Sanction. The procedure devised for enforcing the Charter was exceedingly crude: John conferred upon twenty-five of his most bitter enemies a legal right to organize rebellion, whenever in their opinion he had broken one of the provisions of Magna Carta. Violence might be legally used against him, until he redressed their alleged grievances “to their own satisfaction” (secundum arbitrium eorum). If it had been possible to put so violent an expedient in practice, the “sovereignty,” or supreme power in England, would have been split into two for practical purposes. While the old monarchy remained theoretically intact, John would have held the sceptre, still nominally his, only until his opponents declared that he had broken some part of the Charter, when, by his own previously-granted mandate, it would pass, along with wide powers of coercion, to the twenty-five barons forming what is sometimes described as a Committee of Executors, but which was rather a Committee of Rebellion.[[1071]] Instead of using, as was afterwards done with steadily increasing success, the king’s own administrative machinery and his own servants to restrain his own misdeeds, the barons preferred to set up a rival executive of their own, with wide but ill-defined powers, and connected with the older executive by no constitutional bonds. So long as a single alleged grievance remained unredressed, a new administration composed of John’s political antagonists existed in an attitude of, at best, armed neutrality, side by side with King John as the representative of the older system of monarchic administration.
The procedure for redressing grievances was described in some detail; the wronged party must make known his case to four barons of the twenty-five, and these would then personally make it known to the king, and ask redress. John was allowed time to effect this, but if he refused or delayed, then compulsion might be used. The Articles of the Barons had left the maximum term of delay unspecified, merely saying “within a reasonable time to be determined in the Charter.” The Charter did determine this, naming forty days. Compulsion might take any form (for example seizure of castles, lands, and personal estate), except violence against the person of the king, or against his wife or children. The present chapter, then, contained the only legal sanction mentioned in the Charter, and this may be briefly summarized as the delegation by John to a revolutionary committee of the baronial opposition, of wide powers of coercion to be used against him.
II. Minor Details of the Scheme. Although the whole expedient seems utterly chimerical to the modern mind, the opposition leaders in 1215 evidently thought they had devised a practicable scheme of government. This is shown by the care with which they elaborated the procedure to be adopted at different stages and in various contingencies.
(1) Appointment of the twenty-five executors. The members of the committee were to be, in the first instance, “elected” (a loose word already discussed) by the “barons.” The majores barones of chapter 14 would undoubtedly have the controlling voice; but the minores barones might possibly have taken some share in the appointment. Vacancies which occurred through death, absence from England, or any other cause, were to be filled by the method now known as “co-optation.” The committee, once appointed, would form a close corporation; no one uncongenial to the majority could gain admission—an arrangement with a thoroughly oligarchic flavour. The provision for supplying vacancies caused by death proves that the scheme was not to be temporary, but to last during John’s lifetime or longer. Twenty-five magnates seem to have been actually selected. The writs issued to the Sheriffs on 19th June command the enforcement of the oath to the twenty-five barons, but do not mention them by name. Matthew Paris supplies the omission, and though he does not disclose the source of his information, it is unlikely that so comprehensive a list could be entirely a work of the imagination.[[1072]] They occur in the following order, the earls of Hertford, Aumâle, Gloucester, Winchester, Hereford, Norfolk, and Oxford, William Marshall the younger, Robert fitz Walter the elder, Gilbert de Clare, Eustace de Vesci, Hugh Bigod, William of Mowbray, William Hardell (Mayor of London), William de Lanvalei, Robert de Ros, John de Lacy (Constable of Chester), Richard de Perci, John fitz Robert, William Mallet, Geoffrey de Say, Roger de Mumbezon, William of Huntingfield, Richard de Muntfitchet, and William of Albini.[[1073]] There are here no churchmen and no members of the moderate party whose names appear in the preamble. All except two, or at the most three, of the twenty-five were drawn from those factions of the baronage who were the declared enemies of John.[[1074]] It was an oligarchy of disaffected Crown tenants, whose baronial homogeneity was only broken by the presence of one representative of other classes, the Mayor of London. Such a committee was not likely to use the excessive powers delegated to it by John to further any other interests than its own. Even Stephen Langton and his fellow-prelates were soon to discover this, as the two protests issued by them clearly prove.
(2) A majority of those present to form a quorum. Driven by the necessities of the case, the barons devised, or stumbled upon, a peculiarly modern expedient. The presence of every member of the committee of twenty-five could not reasonably be expected upon every occasion, while absolute unanimity on questions of delicacy would be difficult to obtain. It was provided, accordingly, that the will of the majority of those present should prevail. It would be inaccurate to say, in modern phraseology, that thirteen formed a quorum, since the quorum varied with the number of those present. It is notable that no provision was made for summoning or constituting meetings of the committee endowed with these tremendous powers. Room was thus left for packed meetings of one faction being hurriedly convened and usurping the rights of the whole body. The precedent thus tentatively introduced for the right of a majority to act for the whole was followed only timidly and at long intervals. Still, its appearance in John’s Charter marks a stage in the advance of the valuable principle of modern politics which substitutes the “counting of heads for the breaking of them.”
(3) The sub-committee of four. Four of the twenty-five Executors were to act as a medium of intercourse between aggrieved individuals and the king, being charged with the duty of hearing complaints and laying them before John. Such a position would involve wide discretionary powers; for if the four barons refused to endorse the justice of the complaint, John also would be in safety to refuse.[[1075]]
(4) Local agents of the twenty-five executors. In each county the twelve knights, whose original function was to preside at inquiries into “evil customs,” came to act as the local representatives of the revolutionary committee, being associated with the sheriff in the discharge of all his duties and armed with power to constrain him to carry out the provisions of Magna Carta, very much as the twenty-five were authorized to constrain the king. In particular, these knights were charged with the enforcement of the oath of obedience to the revolutionary committee, and with the confiscation of the property of all who refused.[[1076]]
(5) The part to be played by the public. The king authorized his subjects to side with the executors and against him if he should violate the Charter, and to assist them in such acts of violence as the forcible seizure of his castles, lands, and personal estate; for his general mandate was granted to the twenty-five “cum communa totius terre,” while licence was “freely and publicly” bestowed on everyone so disposed to swear obedience to the Executors in all such acts, and to bring their weight to bear on the king to the best of their ability. Two aspects of this provision require special attention: (a) Its relation to allegiance and treason. It was intended to operate as a provisional release of John’s subjects from their oaths of fealty and homage, and consequently from the pains and penalties of the treason laws. John solemnly authorized his subjects, in certain circumstances, to transfer their allegiance from himself to the committee of his foes. If they refused, he promised to compel them; and on 27th June, 1215, writs were actually issued instructing the seizure of the lands and goods of all who would not swear to obey the twenty-five.[[1077]] (b) Communa totius terre. The “community of the whole land” was thus to afford active help in subjecting the king to the reign of law; and the phrase has been pressed into the service of democracy by enthusiasts who seek to magnify modern conceptions by finding their roots in the past. Few words of medieval Latin offer a more tempting field to enquirers than this communa, which, with its English and French equivalents, holds the key to many problems of constitutional origins. A group of interesting questions clusters round the three words “borough, guild, and commune,” and the appearance in Magna Carta of a body described as a “commune” (communa totius terre) in conjunction with an oath of obedience to a revolutionary committee suggests an interesting comparison with the form of civic constitution known in that age as “the sworn commune.”[[1078]] A second field of enquiry, equally alluring, is suggested by the fact that the lower chamber of the Mother of Parliaments, the English “House of Commons,” was originally composed of the representatives of the various communes or communities known as counties and boroughs respectively.
These wider questions are here referred to merely as illustrations of the difficulties that lurk in the word “commune,” and in the equally perplexing phrase “commune of the whole land.”[[1079]] The mere use of such a phrase cannot be accepted as a proof that the Charter rests on a broad popular basis.
III. Criticism of the Scheme. The faults of the scheme, whether viewed from the side of theory or of practice, are obvious. It was a violent and unnatural measure, full of immediate dangers, and calculated to exercise a baneful influence on constitutional development in the future. The fact that Magna Carta provided no better sanction for its own enforcement than the right of legalized rebellion has already been discussed as its cardinal defect.[[1080]] Instead of preventing the king from inflicting wrongs, it merely provided forcible measures for the redress of those already committed, thus adding the crowning evil of civil war to those minor evils it sought to reform. That the whole scheme was foredoomed to failure constitutes perhaps its least conspicuous fault in the eyes of later history. It is instructive to note a few of its other defects in detail.
(1) The scheme challenged hostility by its want of moderation. It aimed at reducing the Crown at one blow from the plenitude of irresponsible tyranny to a position of degrading impotence. On every vexed political question of the day, John’s authority would have been superseded by that of twenty-five of the most hostile faction of the baronage. If the king thought himself aggrieved in anything, he would require to plead his cause humbly before a tribunal in which his opponents sat as judges. The scheme was thus repugnant to the mass of loyal Englishmen, who cherished a respect for the time-honoured principle of monarchy. No king with a grain of self-respect would long submit tamely to a position so illogical and degrading—to remain a sovereign whose “sovereignty” existed merely on the sufferance of his enemies, a puppet-king whose subjects had the legal right to coerce him. The powers thus conferred on a baronial committee in 1215 were more sweeping than those conferred on a similar committee in 1258, and yet the Parliament which appointed the latter has been branded for all time as “the Mad Parliament,” because of the violence of its measures against the king.
(2) Rebellion, even where morally justified, is essentially and necessarily illegal; to attempt to map out for it a legitimate sphere of action is to attempt the logically impossible. The barons, in their dearth of political experience, and in the extremity of their need, had demanded and obtained something more dangerous than the amplest measure of constitutional authority. They had failed to rise to the true conception of a limited monarchy. Their scheme recognized a king still absolute in some matters, but in others powerless and abject. They set up side by side two rival Executives, each in different circumstances supreme. The relations of the two were far from accurately defined, even in theory, while collisions were certain to occur frequently in practice. The powers of the twenty-five, a body which received no proper organization, were those of aggression rather than of administration. Viewed in this light, the claims of the barons to constructive statesmanship rank extremely low.
(3) The powers of the Revolutionary Committee, excessive though ill-defined, backed by the sworn obedience of all classes of the nation, would tend completely to paralyze the king. The nominal sovereign, always nervous under this sword of Damocles, would lose all power of initiative, while the committee, so powerful to reduce him to impotence, would be powerless alike to goad him into action or to act in his stead. The Revolutionary Committee had been planned as a drag on a bad executive, not as a good executive to take its place.
(4) Even as a drag, however, the efficiency of the committee would have been completely neutralized in either of two contingencies: if the barons composing it disagreed among themselves, or, if the king refused to surrender, preferring the appeal to arms. The monarch had always the alternative of civil war, and the material and moral advantage of acting on the defensive lay with him; while the committee had to face the risks to which an attacking party is invariably exposed. Not a single step to restrain the king could legally be taken until he had precipitated matters by committing a clear act of aggression, and had thereafter received formal intimation followed by an interval of forty days, during which he might complete his preparation for war without fear of interruption.
(5) If the scheme of the barons seems ill-suited to meet the needs of the hour of its conception, it was fraught with even greater dangers to the future development of the English constitution. The problem it sought to solve was one of no transient or unimportant nature, since it was nothing less than the devising of legal machinery to prevent the king from abusing the powers entrusted to him. The barons sought the best method of turning royal promises of reform into laws which succeeding kings must obey. In attempting this, Magna Carta moved along lines which were radically wrong; which, if not departed from in time, would have rendered any enduring progress impossible. The statesmanship which, while leaving one king on the throne, subjected him to the dictation of “five-and-twenty over-kings” in regard to all vital questions of the day, was crude and ill-advised. It is true that the party of reform throughout the long reign of Henry III. clung to the same erroneous solution, although under various modifications on points of detail; but they met with no success. After half a century of unrest a settlement seemed as far distant as before. If the same policy had been persisted in during Edward’s reign the English constitution, as it became known to after ages, would never have been evolved. The dangers and defects of schemes like those of 1215 and of 1258 are most clearly seen in contrast with the more tactful efforts of Edward I. towards a true solution, along lines leading in due time to complete success.
The true policy for the barons was to use the king’s own administrative machinery and the king’s own servants to control the king himself. The principle was slowly established that the sovereign could perform no single act of prerogative except through the agency of the proper minister or group of ministers. Each function of government became associated with a specific office or organ of the royal household. The rights of the official head of each department became stereotyped, and his position obtained full legal acknowledgment, while very gradually the doctrine of ministerial responsibility grew up, compelling each officer of the Crown to obey not only the law of the land, but also the Commune Concilium, fast changing into the modern Parliament. The expedients of an earlier age disappeared as no longer required, when the king’s good faith was secured by means of the friendly control of his own ministers, not by the violent compulsion of his opponents. The credit of starting the constitution on its right line of development is in great measure due to Edward I.[[1081]]
IV. Dr. Gneist’s Criticism. Dangerous and even absurd as this scheme appears, it has found its apologist. Dr. Gneist accuses English historians of making “very inappropriate comparisons” between this baronial committee and the continental expedients of the same period. While in most countries of Europe, each baron arrogated the right of private war against his sovereign in circumstances to be determined by his own individual judgment, Magna Carta conferred rights of rebellion only on the barons “in their collective capacity,” and “as represented by definite organs.”[[1082]] The substitution of collective repressive measures for the right of private feud undoubtedly marks an advance; but rebellion, even when organized, cannot be considered a satisfactory constitutional expedient. Dr. Gneist is scarcely more convincing when he argues that English historians and jurists have condemned too unreservedly a scheme which is “so far in harmony with the spirit of the feudal state of the Middle Ages as it was based upon a mutual relation of feudal protection and fealty, that is, upon compact.” “The concession by agreement,” he continues, “of the rights of distress was altogether so entirely consonant with the legal conceptions of the Middle Ages that in this way the committee of resistance loses a portion of its apparently revolutionary character.”[[1083]] That the Middle Ages approved of revolution does not, however, change it into constitutional action; while the fact that it was founded upon the feudal conception of mutual contract may explain it, but does not render it more worthy of admiration. The whole scheme was, of course, thoroughly in accord with the public opinion of the age, but that merely shows how wide is the gulf which separates medieval conceptions from modern ones, and how absurd it is to regard the Great Charter, as is sometimes done, as anticipating the fundamental principles of the English constitution of to-day.
In spite of all apologies, the crudeness of the only sanction provided by Magna Carta for its own enforcement prevents it from ranking as a great monument of constructive statesmanship.
V. Failure of the Scheme. Almost before John’s Magna Carta, in its completed form, had been engrossed and sealed, the futility of its sanction was recognized. Each side grew suspicious and demanded new “sanctions,” new guarantees not contained in the Charter.
(1) Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Magna Carta, assuming apparently that perfect trust could be placed in the rectitude and wisdom of the Revolutionary Committee, provided no machinery for controlling them, no guarantee that they would observe the Charter without misinterpreting its provisions to suit their own selfish interests. The futility of this complacency was soon manifest. One tyrant had brought distress on the whole nation; and now he was to be superseded by five-and-twenty. Who was to restrain the new tyrants? A second committee was nominated partly to assist and partly to control the twenty-five. Matthew Paris[[1084]] describes it as composed of thirty-eight “Obsecutores et Observatores,” including the Earl Marshal, Hubert de Burgh, the earls of Arundel and Warenne, and other prominent members of the moderate party, not unfriendly to the king. Dr. Stubbs dismisses their relations to the executors with the remark that they “swore to obey the orders of the twenty-five.”[[1085]] Miss Norgate takes what seems to be a better view, in emphasizing as the chief reason for their appointment the duty of compelling “both the king and the twenty-five to deal justly with one another.”[[1086]] The thirty-eight were required to constrain the twenty-five, as the twenty-five constrained the king.[[1087]]
(2) Suspicions of the barons’ good faith. Whether the appointment of the committee of thirty-eight was due partly to John’s influence or was entirely the result of mutual jealousies in the ranks of those opposed to him, there is absolute evidence that the king was distrustful of the barons’ good faith, and desired on his part some “sanction” that they would not again renounce that allegiance, the renewal of which was the quid pro quo for which he had granted the Charter. Apparently the leading barons did renew their oath of fealty and homage on 19th June at Runnymede; but refused to grant a formal Charter to that effect, although they had promised to give any security John might require, except hostages or castles. The prelates when appealed to sided with the king; they executed a formal declaration or protest, recording the barons’ promise and subsequent refusal to give effect to it. There is no reason to doubt the testimony of the prelates; they had been present at all the negotiations, and it was by their mediation that the terms of peace embodied in Magna Carta had been settled. This was not the only matter on which the bishops found it necessary to intervene on the king’s behalf. The new baronial executive and the twelve knights who acted as their agents in each county, pushed to unfair lengths the authority to reform abuses conferred on them in terms of Magna Carta. In particular, they proceeded virtually to abolish the royal forests altogether by abrogating as evil customs the procedure on which this branch of the Crown’s prerogative rested. The prelates placed on record a formal protest on this head also.[[1088]]
(3) Suspicions of John’s good faith. If neither the king nor the nation at large considered that the Great Charter contained sufficient safeguards of their interests against the Committee of Executors, the barons themselves soon came to the conclusion that the Committee, in spite of all its powers, formed an inadequate sanction against John. Accordingly they demanded further “security.” The city of London was placed in their hands, and the Tower of London in the neutral custody of the primate, as pledges of John’s good faith, until 15th August or longer if need were. Those terms were reduced to writing in a document entitled “Conventio facta inter Regem Anglie et barones ejusdem regni,” which thus supplied a new sanction, or “form of security,” supplementing, if not superseding, that contained in chapter 61 of Magna Carta.[[1089]]
(4) Precautions against papal intervention. The Articles of the barons afford undoubted evidence of its framers’ suspicions that John would apply to Rome for absolution from his bargain. They showed considerable shrewdness in demanding that the English prelates and the papal legate should become the king’s sureties that he would not procure from the Pope anything to invalidate the Charter or diminish its efficacy. If Pandulf, as the Pope’s accredited agent, had actually put his seal to such a document, he would have seriously embarrassed his august master in supporting John in a course of repudiation.
Two important alterations in the completed Charter were effected, however, whether at John’s instance, or at that of Pandulf, or of the English prelates, is matter of conjecture. No mention was made of Innocent by name, the clause being made quite general in its terms. John merely promised to procure a dispensation “from no one,” while the question of sureties was quietly ignored. The reason for the omission readily suggests itself; Pandulf would naturally object to commit his principal or himself to any pledge of the kind. The Pope preserved perfect freedom, and the use which he made of this is matter of common knowledge.[[1090]]
[1070]. This phrase occurs in the 49th (and last) of the Articles of the Barons as the title of a clause which is separated from the others by a blank on the parchment of the width of several lines of writing: “Haec est forma securitatis,” etc. The words are not used as a heading in the present chapter itself, but c. [52] refers to c. [61] as the clause “in securitate pacis,” and c. [62] refers to the same as “super securitate ista.”
[1071]. Cf. S. R. Gardiner, Short History of England, 183: “a permanent organization for making war against the king.”
[1072]. R. Wendover, from whom Paris borrows so freely, gives no list.
[1073]. The list is taken from Matthew Paris, Chron. Maj., II. 604-5, as corrected by Blackstone, Great Charter, p. xx., after collation with a marginal note on the Harleian MS. of the charter (cf. supra, 198, n). Paris gives “Boys” in place of “Ros,” and “Roger de Munbrai” in place of “Roger of Mumbezon.” This list should be contrasted with (a) that of the moderate party named in the preamble to Magna Carta, and (b) that of John’s foreign favourites named in c. [50]. For biographical information, see Thomson, Magna Charta, 270–312.
[1074]. These three were Earl Aumâle (a title apparently sometimes exchanged for that of Earl of York, see Round, Geoffrey de Mandeville, 157, n.), William of Albini, and, possibly, Geoffrey de Say (see Stubbs, Const. Hist., I. 583).
[1075]. An alternative explanation is also possible, namely, that the function of intermediary might be exercised by any four members of the twenty-five. In that view, an aggrieved individual might have pressure placed upon the king if he persuaded any four to act together in support of his claim. This would imply a second quorum, this time of four, for a special purpose, in addition to the quorum of varying numbers already discussed. In either view, the road to redress would be easier for the great man than for his obscure neighbour.
[1077]. See Appendix.
[1078]. It was only fourteen years since London (in 1191), probably following the lead of Rouen, had extorted its “sworn commune” from Prince John as the price of its support (cf. supra, c. [13]). It might be dangerous, however, to push so tempting an analogy too far.
[1079]. Cf. supra, pp. [137-8].
[1081]. Cf. supra, pp. 189-193 for a sketch of Edward’s policy.
[1082]. Gneist, English Const., 251.
[1083]. Ibid.
[1084]. Chron. Maj., II. 605-6.
[1085]. Const. Hist., I. 583, n.
[1086]. John Lackland, 236.
[1087]. One version of the narrative of Matthew Paris is much fuller than the other. The first MS. merely says, “Isti omnes juraverunt quod obsequerentur mandato viginti quinque baronum.” The second gives the important addition, “Omnes isti juraverunt cogere si opus esset ipsos xxv. barones ut rectificarent regem. Et etiam cogere ipsum si mutato animo forte recalcitraret,” II. 606, n.
[1088]. The texts of both Protests are given in the Appendix.
[1089]. See supra, 51–2. The text is given in Appendix. Thirteen of the twenty-five executors are mentioned by name as agreeing to this new treaty on behalf of themselves and other earls, barons and freeholders unnamed. Cf. R. Wendover, III. 319 (“et turrem Londonarum”). A third sanction, or form of security, appears in the garbled versions of the Charter given by R. Wendover (III. 317) and M. Paris (II. 603): the constables of the four royal castles of Northampton, Kenilworth, Nottingham and Scarborough, were to swear to hold these strongholds under orders of the twenty-five executors. See M. Paris (Ibid.). This clause has not been found in any known copy of any issue of Magna Carta. Cf. Mr. H. R. Luard’s preface to the second volume of Matthew Paris, pp. xxxiii. to xxxvi., where he discusses the peculiarities of the versions given by Wendover and Paris.