MAGNA CARTA.
PREAMBLE.[[322]]
Johannes Dei gratia rex Anglie, dominus Hibernie, dux Normannie et Aquitannie, et comes Andegavie, archiepiscopis, episcopis, abbatibus, comitibus, baronibus, justiciariis, forestariis, vicecomitibus, prepositis, ministris et omnibus ballivis et fidelibus suis salutem. Sciatis nos intuitu Dei et pro salute anime nostre et omnium antecessorum et heredum nostrorum, ad honorem Dei et exaltationem sancte Ecclesie, et emendacionem regni nostri, per consilium venerabilium patrum nostrorum, Stephani Cantuariensis archiepiscopi tocius Anglie primatis et sancte Romane ecclesie cardinalis, Henrici Dublinensis archiepiscopi, Willelmi Londoniensis, Petri Wintoniensis, Joscelini Bathoniensis et Glastoniensis, Hugonis Lincolniensis, Walteri Wygorniensis, Willelmi Coventriensis, et Benedicti Roffensis episcoporum; magistri Pandulfi domini pape subdiaconi et familiaris, fratris Aymerici magistri milicie Templi in Anglia; et nobilium virorum Willelmi Mariscalli comitis Penbrocie, Willelmi comitis Sarresburie, Willelmi comitis Warennie, Willelmi comitis Arundellie, Alani de Galeweya constabularii Scocie, Warini filii Geroldi, Petri filii Hereberti, Huberti de Burgo senescalli Pictavie, Hugonis de Nevilla, Mathei filii Hereberti, Thome Basset, Alani Basset, Philippi de Albiniaco, Roberti de Roppeleia, Johannis Mariscalli, Johannis filii Hugonis et aliorum fidelium nostrorum.
John, by the grace of God, king of England, lord of Ireland, duke of Normandy and Aquitaine, and count of Anjou, to the archbishops, bishops, abbots, earls, barons, justiciars, foresters, sheriffs, stewards, servants, and to all his bailiffs and liege subjects, greeting. Know that, looking to God and for the salvation of our soul, and those of all our ancestors and heirs, and unto the honour of God and the advancement of holy Church, and for the reform of our realm, [we have granted as underwritten][[323]] by advice of our venerable fathers, Stephen, archbishop of Canterbury, primate of all England and cardinal of the holy Roman Church, Henry archbishop of Dublin, William of London, Peter of Winchester, Jocelyn of Bath and Glastonbury, Hugh of Lincoln, Walter of Worcester, William of Coventry, Benedict of Rochester, bishops; of master Pandulf, subdeacon and member of the household of our lord the Pope, of brother Aymeric (master of the Knights of the Temple in England), and of the illustrious men,[[324]] William Marshall, earl of Pembroke, William, earl of Salisbury, William, earl Warenne, William, earl of Arundel, Alan of Galloway, (constable of Scotland), Waren Fitz Gerald, Peter Fitz Herbert, Hubert de Burgh (seneschal of Poitou), Hugh de Neville, Matthew Fitz Herbert, Thomas Basset, Alan Basset, Philip of Albini, Robert of Ropesle, John Marshall, John Fitz Hugh, and others, our liegemen.
The Great Charter of John opens, in the form common to all royal charters of the period, with a greeting from the sovereign to his magnates, his officials, and his faithful subjects, and announces, in the pious legal formula used by impious and pious kings alike, that he had made certain grants by the advice of those counsellors whom he names. Three features of this preamble call for comment.
I. The King’s Title. Some points of interest are suggested by the form of the royal style adopted by John, which is connected by an unbroken thread of development with that of William I. on the one hand, and of His Majesty, Edward VII., on the other. John’s assumption of the royal plural “Sciatis Nos” reads, in the light of subsequent history, as a tribute to his arrogance rather than to his greatness, when compared with the humbler first person singular consistently used by his more distinguished father. In this particular, however, Richard, not John, had been the innovator on the usage of Henry II.[[325]] For a further alteration in the royal style John was alone responsible. To the titles borne by his father and brother, John invariably added that of “lord of Ireland,” a reminiscence of his youth. When the wide territories of Henry II., had been distributed among his elder sons, the young John (hence known as “John Lackland”) was left without a heritage, until his father bestowed on him the island of Ireland, recently appropriated; and this brought with it the right to style himself “dominus Hibernie.” This title of his younger days was not unnaturally retained by him after he had outlived all his brothers and inherited their wide lands and honours.
John began his reign in 1199 as ruler over the undivided possessions of the House of Anjou at their widest stretch, extending without a break, other than the waters of the Channel, from the Cheviots to the Pyrenees. These lands were held by John, as by his father, under a variety of titles and conditions. Anjou, the original home and fief of the hot-blooded Plantagenet race, still carried with it only the modest rank of count. In addition to this paternal title, Henry II. had, at an early age, become duke of Normandy in his mother’s right, and thereafter duke of Aquitaine by marriage with Eleanor, its heiress. These three great fiefs were held by Henry and his sons under the king of France as their lord paramount. Long before 1215, John’s bad fortune or incompetence had lost to him these wide continental dominions except the most distant of them all, his mother’s dowry of Aquitaine. His ancestral domains of Anjou and Normandy had been irretrievably lost, but he still retained their empty titles; and in this his son Henry III. followed him, grasping the shadow long after the substance had fled. Entries relating to Gascony frequently appear on the Rolls of Parliament of Edward I.; and the kings of England were styled dukes of Aquitaine, dukes of Guienne, or dukes of Gascony (the three descriptions being used indifferently) until Edward III. merged all these titles in a wider one, when he claimed the throne of France.
England alone, of John’s possessions, real and nominal, was held by the higher style of “Rex,” implying strictly sovereign rule, independent of any overlord, and retained by John in 1215 in spite of his recent acceptance of Innocent III. as feudal overlord. Of Ireland, John was still content to describe himself, as formerly, “lord,” not king. The exact meaning of the word “Dominus” in medieval charters, particularly in those of Stephen, has been made the subject of much learned controversy; which has not yet resulted in a consensus of opinion as to the technical meaning, if any, borne by the word.[[326]] “Dominus,” indeed, seems to have been loosely used wherever something of substance or of ceremonial was lacking from the full sovereignty implied in the more specific name of king. In this connection much stress was laid on the solemn sacrament of coronation, implying among other things formal consecration by the church.[[327]]
John’s connection with England, then, is expressed in two simple words, “Rex Anglie,” no explanation being vouchsafed of how he had acquired this title. Such vindication, indeed, was not called for, as this was no coronation charter, John having already reigned for fifteen years without any serious rival—the claims of Arthur, the son of his elder brother Geoffrey, never having been taken seriously in England.[[328]] The simple words, “Dei gratia rex Anglie,” may be contrasted with the detailed titles set out in the coronation charters of Henry I. and Stephen respectively. Henry I. in 1100 had emphasized his relationship to preceding kings, describing himself as “Filius Willelmi regis post obitum fratris sui Willelmi, Dei gracia rex Anglorum”;[[329]] while Stephen in April, 1136, in his second and more deliberate charter, used an entirely different formula, “Dei gracia assensu cleri et populi in regem Anglie electus, et a Willelmo Cantuarensi archiepiscopo et sancte Romane ecclesie legato consecratus, et ab Innocentio sancte Romane sedis pontifice postmodum confirmatus,”[[330]] the laboured nature of which betrays the consciousness of weakness.
Thus Henry I. and Stephen each laid stress on the strong points of his title and ignored its defects. These two claims of kingship express, in a crude form, two rival theories of the title to the English Crown—(1) hereditary succession, and (2) election. Neither of these is an accurate reflection of the full theory and practice of the twelfth century, which blended both principles in proportions not easy to define with accuracy. Professor Freeman has pushed to excess the supposed right of the Witenagemot to elect the king, and has transferred wholesale to the Norman Curia (which, in some respects, took its place) all the powers enjoyed by its forerunner. A recent German writer, Dr. Oskar Rössler,[[331]] has gone equally far in the opposite direction, flatly denying that the Normans ever admitted the elective element at all. The theory now usually held is a mean between these extremes, namely that the Norman Curia (or the chief magnates who usually composed it) had a limited right of selecting among the sons, brothers, or near relations of the last king, the individual best suited to succeed him. Such a right, never authoritatively enunciated, gradually sank to an empty formality. Its place was taken, to some extent, by the successful assertion by the spiritual power (usually represented by the archbishop of Canterbury), of a claim to give or withhold the consecrating oil which accompanied the church’s blessing. Without this no dominus could be recognized as rex. On this theory the descriptions of their own titles given by Henry I. and Stephen were alike incomplete: each ignored the facts which did not suit him. John, on the contrary, secure in possession, condescends on no particulars, but contents himself with the terse assertion of the fact of his kingship: “Johannes, dei gratia, Rex Anglie.”
II. The Names of the Consenting Nobles. It was natural that the Charter should place formally on record the assent of those counsellors who attended John when he made terms with his enemies, of those magnates who remained in at least nominal allegiance, and were therefore capable of acting as the mediators by whose good offices peace was for a time restored.[[332]] The leading men in England during this crisis may be arranged in three groups: (1) the leaders of the great host openly opposed to John at Runnymede; (2) the agents of John’s oppressions, extreme men, mostly aliens, many of whom were in command of royal castles or of mercenary levies ready to take the field; and (3) moderate men, mostly churchmen or John’s ministers or relations, who, whatever their sympathies might be, remained in allegiance to the king and helped to arrange terms of peace—a comparatively small band, as the paucity of names recited in Magna Carta testifies.[[333]] The men, here made consenters to John’s grant of Magna Carta, are again referred to, though not by name, in chapter 63, in the character of witnesses.
III. The Reasons of the Grant. The preamble contains also a statement of what purport to be John’s reasons for conceding the Charter. These are quaintly paraphrased by Coke:[[334]] "Here be four notable causes of the making of this great charter rehearsed. 1. The honour of God. 2. For the health of the King’s soul. 3. For the exaltation of holy church, and fourthly, for the amendment of the Kingdom." The real reason must be sought in another direction, namely, in the army of the rebels; and John in after days did not scruple to plead consent given under threat of violence, as a reason for voiding his grant. The technical legal “consideration,” the quid pro quo which John received as the price of this confirmation of their liberties was the renewal by his opponents of the homage and fealty which they had solemnly renounced. This “consideration” was not stated in the charter, but the fact was known to all.[[335]]
[322]. The division of Magna Carta into a preamble and sixty-three chapters is a modern device, for convenience of reference, for which there is no warrant in the Charter itself. Cf. supra, 200. No title or heading precedes the substance of the deed in any one of the four known originals, but on the back of the Lincoln one (cf. supra, 197) these words are endorsed;—“Concordia inter Regem Johannem et Barones pro concessione libertatum ecclesie et regni Anglie.” The form of the document is discussed supra, 123-9. The text is taken from that issued by the Trustees of the British Museum founded on the Cottonian version No. 2. Cf. supra, 196.
[323]. The sentence is concluded in chapter one (see infra)—the usual division, here followed, being a purely arbitrary one.
[324]. The phrase “nobiles viri” was not used here in any technical sense; the modern conception of a distinct class of “noblemen” did not take shape until long after 1215. Cf. what is said of “peerage” under cc. 14 and 39.
[325]. Coke (Second Institute, pp. 1-2) is here in error; he makes John the innovator.
[326]. Various theories will be found in Round’s Geoffrey de Mandeville, 70; Dr. Rüssler’s Matilde, 291–4; and Ramsay’s Foundations of England, II. 403.
[328]. Geoffrey’s daughter Eleanor was in 1215, a prisoner in Corfe Castle.[Castle.] See infra, c. 59.
[329]. See Appendix.
[330]. See Appendix.
[331]. Matilde, passim.
[332]. Dr. Stubbs, Const. Hist., I. 582, gives the motive of thus naming them as “the hope of binding the persons whom it includes to the continued support of the hard-won liberties.” Those named were all moderate men. M. Paris (Chron. Maj. II., 589) describes them as “quasi ex parte regis,” while Ralph of Coggeshall (p. 172) narrates how “by the intervention of the Archbishop of Canterbury, with a few of his bishops and some barons, a kind of peace was made.” Cf. Annals of Dunstable, III. 43. The neutrality of the prelates is proved by other evidence. (a) C. 62 gave them authority to certify by letters testimonial the correctness of copies of the Charter. (b) The 25th of the Articles of the Barons left to their decision whether John should enjoy a crusader’s privileges; while c. 55 gave Langton a special place in determining what fines were unjust. (c) The Tower of London was placed in the custody of the archbishop as a neutral man whom both sides could trust. (d) Copies are preserved of two protests on different subjects by the prelates in favour of the king. See Appendix.
[333]. Cf. supra, 43–4, and for biographical information see authorities there cited.
[334]. Second Institute, 1, n.
[335]. Cf. supra, 41.