Magna Carta is an elaboration of the accession charter of Henry I., and is based upon the Articles of the Barons. It is, however, very much longer than the former charter and somewhat longer than the Articles. Moreover, it differs in several particulars from the Articles, these differences being doubtless the outcome of deliberation and of compromise. For instance, the provisions in Magna Carta concerning the freedom of the church find no place in the Articles, while a comparison between the two documents suggests that in other ways also influences favourable to the church and the clergy were at work while the famous charter was being framed. When one reflects how active and prominent Langton and other prelates were at Runnimede the change is not surprising. Another difference between the two documents concerns the towns and the trading classes. Certain privileges granted to them in the Articles are not found in Magna Carta, although, it must be noted, this document bestows exceptionally favoured treatment on the citizens of London. The conclusion is that the friends of the towns and the traders were less in evidence at Runnimede than they were at the earlier meetings of the barons, but that the neighbouring Londoners were strong enough to secure a good price for their support.
Magna Carta throws much light on the condition of England in the early 13th century. By denouncing the evil deeds of John and the innovations practised by him, it shows what these were and how they were hated; how money had been raised, how forest areas had been extended, how minors and widows had been cheated and oppressed. By declaring, as it does, what were the laws and customs of a past age wherein justice prevailed, it shows what was the ideal of good government formed by John’s prelates and barons. Magna Carta can hardly be said to have introduced any new ideas. As Pollock and Maitland (History of English Law) say “on the whole the charter contains little that is absolutely new. It is restorative.” But although mature study has established the truth of this proposition it was not always so. Statesmen and commentators alike professed to find in Magna Carta a number of political ideas which belonged to a later age, and which had no place in the minds of its framers. It was regarded as having conferred upon the nation nothing less than the English constitution in its perfect and completed form. Sir Edward Coke finds in Magna Carta a full and proper legal answer to every exaction of the Stuart kings, and a remedy for every evil suffered at the time. Sir William Blackstone is almost equally admiring. Edmund Burke says “Magna Carta, if it did not give us originally the House of Commons, gave us at least a House of Commons of weight and consequence.” Lord Chatham used words equally superlative. “Magna Carta, the Petition of Rights and the Bill of Rights form that code, which I call the Bible of the English Constitution.” Modern historians, although less rhetorical, speak in the highest terms of the importance of Magna Carta, the view of most of them being summed up in the words of Dr Stubbs: “The whole of the constitutional history of England is a commentary on this charter.”
Many regard Magna Carta as giving equal rights to all Englishmen. J. R. Green says “The rights which the barons claimed for themselves they claimed for the nation at large.” As a matter of fact this statement is only true with large limitations. The villains, who formed the majority of the population, got very little from it; in fact the only clauses which protect them do so because they are property—the property of their lords—and therefore valuable. They get neither political nor civil rights under Magna Carta. The traders, too, get little, while preferential treatment is meted out to the clergy and the barons. Its benefits are confined to freemen, and of the benefits the lion’s share fell to the larger landholders; the smaller landholders getting, it is true, some crumbs from the table. It did not establish freedom from arbitrary arrest, or the right of the representatives of the people to control taxation, or trial by jury, or other conceptions of a later generation.
The story of Magna Carta after the death of John is soon told. On the 12th of November 1216 the regent William Marshal, earl of Pembroke, reissued the charter in the name of the young king Henry III. But important alterations were made. War was being waged against Louis of France, and the executive must not be hampered in the work of raising money; moreover the personal equation had disappeared, the barons did not need to protect themselves against John. Consequently the chapter limiting the power of the crown to raise scutages and aids without the consent of the council vanished, and with it the complementary one which determined the method of calling a council. Other provisions, the object of which had been to restrain John from demanding more money from various classes of his subjects, were also deleted, and the same fate befell such chapters as dealt with mere temporary matters. The most important of these was Chapter LXI., which provided for the appointment of 25 executors to compel John to observe the charter. The next year peace was made at Lambeth (Sept. 11, 1217) between Henry III. and Louis and another reissue of the charter was promised. This promise was carried out, but two charters appeared, one being a revised issue of Magna Carta proper, and the other a separate charter dealing with the forests, all references to which were omitted from the more important document. The date of this issue appears to have been the 6th of November 1217. The issue of a separate forest charter at this time led subsequently to some confusion. Roger of Wendover asserts that John issued a separate charter of this kind when Magna Carta appeared. This statement was believed by subsequent writers until the time of Blackstone, who was the first to discover the mistake.
As issued in 1217 Magna Carta consists of 47 chapters only. It declares that henceforward scutages shall be taken according to the precedents of Henry II.’s reign. New provisions were introduced for the preservation of the peace—unlawful castles were to be destroyed—while others were directed towards making the administration of justice by the visiting justices less burdensome. With regard to the land and the services due therefrom a beginning was made of the policy which culminated in the statutes of Mortmain and of Quia Emptores. The sheriffs were ordered to publish the revised charter on the 22nd of February 1218. Then in February 1225 Henry III. again issued the two charters with only two slight alterations, and this is the final form taken by Magna Carta, this text being the one referred to by Coke and the other early commentators. Subsequently the charters were confirmed several times by Henry III. and by Edward I., the most important occasion being their confirmation by Edward at Ghent in November 1297. On this occasion some supplementary articles were added to the charter; these were intended to limit the taxing power of the crown.
There are at present in existence four copies of Magna Carta, sealed with the great seal of King John, and several unsealed copies. Of the four two are in the British Museum. Both came into the possession of the Museum with the valuable collection of papers which had belonged to Sir Robert Cotton, who had obtained possession of both. One was found in Dover castle about 1630. This was damaged by fire in 1731; the other is undamaged. The two other sealed copies belong to the cathedrals of Lincoln and of Salisbury. Both were written evidently in a less hurried fashion than those in the British Museum, and the one at Lincoln was regarded as the most perfect by the commissioners who were responsible for the appearance of the Statutes of the Realm in 1810. The British Museum also contains the original parchment of the Articles of the Barons. Magna Carta was first printed by Richard Pynson in 1499. This, however, was not the original text, which was neglected until the time of Blackstone, who printed the various issues of the charter in his book The Great Charter and the Charter of the Forest (1759). The earliest commentator of note was Sir Edward Coke, who published his Second Institute, which deals with Magna Carta, by order of the Long Parliament in 1642. Modern commentators, who also print the various texts of the charter, are Richard Thomson, An Historical Essay on the Magna Carta of King John (1829); C. Bémont, in his Chartes des libertés anglaises (1892); and W. Stubbs in his Select Charters (1895). A more recent book and one embodying the results of the latest research is W. S. McKechnie, Magna Carta (1905). The text of Magna Carta is also printed in the Statutes of the Realm (1810-1828), and in T. Rymer’s Foedera (1816-1869). In addition to Blackstone, Coke and these later writers, the following works may also be consulted: John Reeves, History of English Law (1783-1784); L. O. Pike, A Constitutional History of the House of Lords (1894); W. Stubbs, Constitutional History of England (1897); Sir F. Pollock and F. W. Maitland, The History of English Law (1895); W. S. Holdsworth, A History of English Law (1903), and Kate Norgate, John Lackland (1902).
(A. W. H.*)
MAGNA GRAECIA (ἡ μεγάλη Ἑλλάς), the name given (first, apparently, in the 6th century B.C.) to the group of Greek cities along the coast of the “toe” of South Italy (or more strictly those only from Tarentum to Locri, along the east coast), while the people were called Italiotes (Ἰταλιῶται). The interior, which the Greeks never subdued, continued to be in the hands of the Bruttii, the native mountaineers, from whom the district was named in Roman times (Βρεττία also in Greek writers). The Greek colonies were established first as trading stations, which grew into independent cities. At an early time a trade in copper was carried on between Greece and Temesa (Homer, Od. i. 181).[1] The trade for a long time was chiefly in the hands of the Euboeans; and Cyme (Cumae) in Campania was founded in the 8th century B.C., when the Euboean Cyme was still a great city. After this the energy of Chalcis went onward to Sicily, and the states of the Corinthian Gulf carried out the colonization of Italy, Rhegium having been founded, it is true, by Chalcis, but after Messana (Zancle), and at the request of the inhabitants of the latter. Sybaris (721) and Crotona (703) were Achaean settlements; Locri Epizephyrii (about 710) was settled by Ozolian Locrians, so that, had it not been for the Dorian colony of Tarentum, the southern coast of Italy would have been entirely occupied by a group of Achaean cities. Tarentum (whether or no founded by pre-Dorian Greeks—its founders bore the unexplained name of Partheniae) became a Laconian colony at some unknown date, whence a legend grew up connecting the Partheniae with Sparta, and 707 B.C. was assigned as its traditional date. Tarentum is remarkable as the only foreign settlement made by the Spartans. It was industrial, depending largely on the purple and pottery trade. Ionian Greeks fleeing from foreign invasion founded Siris about 650 B.C., and, much later, Elea (540).
The Italian colonies were planted among friendly, almost kindred, races, and grew much more rapidly than the Sicilian Greek states, which had to contend against the power of Carthage. After the Achaean cities had combined to destroy the Ionic Siris, and had founded Metapontum as a counterpoise to the Dorian Tarentum, there seems to have been little strife among the Italiotes. An amphictyonic league, meeting in common rites at the temple of Hera on the Lacinian promontory, fostered a feeling of unity among them. The Pythagorean and Eleatic systems of philosophy had their chief seat in Magna Graecia. Other departments of literature do not seem to have been so much cultivated among them. The poet Ibycus, though a native of Rhegium, led a very wandering life. They sent competitors to the Olympic games (among them the famous Milo of Croton); and the physicians of Croton early in the 6th century (especially in the person of Democedes) were reputed the best in Greece; but politically they appear to have generally kept themselves separate. One ship of Croton, however, fought at Salamis, though it is not recorded that Greece asked the Italiotes for help when it sent ambassadors to Gelon of Syracuse. Mutual discord first sapped the prosperity of Magna Graecia. In 510 Croton, having defeated the Sybarites in a great battle, totally destroyed their city. Croton maintained alone the leading position which had belonged jointly to the Achaean cities (Diod. xiv. 103); but from that time Magna Graecia steadily declined. In the war between Athens and Syracuse Magna Graecia took comparatively little part; Locri was strongly anti-Athenian, but Rhegium, though it was the headquarters of the Athenians in 427, remained neutral in 415. Foreign enemies pressed heavily on it. The Lucanians and Bruttians on the north captured one town after another. Dionysius of Syracuse attacked them from the south; and after he defeated the Crotoniate league and destroyed Caulonia (389 B.C.), Tarentum remained the only powerful city. Henceforth the history of Magna Graecia is only a record of the vicissitudes of Tarentum (q.v.). Repeated expeditions from Sparta and Epirus tried in vain to prop up the decaying Greek states against the Lucanians and Bruttians; and when in 282 the Romans appeared in the Tarentine Gulf the end was close at hand. The aid which Pyrrhus brought did little good to the Tarentines, and his final departure in 274 left them defenceless. During these constant wars the Greek cities had been steadily decaying; and in the second Punic war, when most of them seized the opportunity of revolting from Rome, their very existence was in some cases annihilated. Malaria increased in strength as the population diminished. We are told by Cicero (De am. 4), Magna Graecia nunc quidem deleta est. Many of the cities completely disappeared, and hardly any of them were of great importance under the Roman empire; some, like Tarentum, maintained their existence into modern times, and in these only (except at Locri) have archaeological investigations of any importance been carried on; so that there still remains a considerable field for investigation.