[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.