Magna Carta: A Commentary on the Great Charter of King John / With an Historical Introduction

by William Sharp McKechnie

II. Magna Carta and the Reforms of Edward I.

The Great Charter, alike from its excellences and from its defects, exercised a potent influence on the trend of events throughout the two succeeding reigns. It is hardly too much to say that the failure of Magna Carta to provide adequate machinery for its own enforcement is responsible for the spirit of unrest and for the protracted struggles and civil war which made up the troubled reign of Henry III.; while the difference of attitude assumed by Henry and by his son Edward respectively towards the scheme of reform it embodied explains the fundamental difference between the two reigns—why the former was so full of conflicts and distress, while the latter was so prosperous and progressive. To trace the history of these reigns in detail lies outside the scope of this Historical Introduction. It seems necessary, however, to emphasize such outstanding events as have an obvious and close connection with the Great Charter, and also to outline the policy of Edward, which led ultimately to the triumph of its underlying principles.

The fundamental difference between the reigns of Henry III. and Edward I. lies in this, that while Henry, in spite of numerous nominal confirmations of Magna Carta, never loyally accepted the settlement it contained, Edward, on the contrary, acquiesced in the main provisions of the Great Charter, under many subtle modifications it is true, yet honestly on the whole, and with a sincere intention to carry them into practice.

At the same time, the attitude even of Henry III. towards Magna Carta indicates a distinct advance upon that of his father. It was much that the advisers of John’s infant heir solemnly accepted, on behalf of the Crown, the provisions of the Charter, and strove to enforce them during the minority; and it was even more that Henry, on attaining majority, confirmed the arrangement thus arrived at, freely and on his own initiative, and found himself thereafter unable openly to repudiate the bargain he had made. Yet the settlement of the dissensions between Crown and baronage was still nominal rather than real. In the absence of proper constitutional machinery, the king was merely bound by bonds of parchment which he could break at pleasure. The victory of the friends of liberty proved a hollow one, since unsupported promises count for little in the great struggles fought for national liberties. Even the crude constitutional devices of the Charter of 1215 entirely disappeared from its confirmations; and, in the absence of all sanctions for its enforcement, the Charter became an empty expression of good intentions. If a quarrel arose, no constitutional expedient existed to reconcile the disputants—nothing to obviate a final recourse to the arbitrament of civil war. Thus, part of the blame for the recurring and devastating struggles of the reign of Henry III. must be attributed to the defects of the Great Charter.

The whole interest of the reign indeed lies in the various attempts made to evolve adequate machinery for enforcing the liberties contained in Magna Carta. Experiments of many kinds were tried in the hope of turning theory into practice. The system of government outlined in the Provisions of Oxford of 1258, for example, reproduced the defects of the crude scheme contained in chapter 61 of the Great Charter, and added new defects of its own. It sought to keep the king in the paths of good government by the coercion of a body of his enemies. This baronial committee was not designed to enter into friendly co-operation with Henry in the normal work of government, but rather to supersede entirely his right to exercise certain of the royal prerogatives. No glimmering was yet apparent of the true solution afterwards adopted with success. It was not yet realized that the best way to control the Crown was through the agency of its own ministers, and not by means of a hostile opposition organized for rebellion—that the correct policy was to make it difficult for the king to rule except through regular ministers, and to secure that all such ministers should be men in whom the Commune Concilium reposed confidence and over whom it exercised control.

It is true that Simon de Montfort may have had some vague conception of the real constitutional remedy for the evils of the reign; but his ideals were overruled in 1258 by the more extreme section of the baronial party. Earl Simon indeed had one opportunity of putting his theories into practice. During the brief interval between the battle of Lewes, which made him supreme for the moment, and the battle of Evesham, which ended his career, he enjoyed an unfettered control over the movement of reform; and some authorities find in the provisional scheme of government, by means of which he attempted to realize his political ideals in the closing months of 1264, traces of the true constitutional expedient afterward successfully adopted as a solution of the problem. In one respect, undoubtedly, the Earl of Leicester did influence the development of the English constitution; he furnished the first precedent for a national Parliament, which reflected interests wider than those of the Crown tenants and the free-holders, when he invited representatives of the boroughs to take their places by the side of the representatives of the counties in the national council summoned to meet in January, 1265. His schemes of government, however, were not fated to be realized by him in a permanent form. The utter overthrow of his faction followed his decisive defeat and death at Evesham on 4th August, 1265.

The personal humiliation of Simon de Montfort, however, in reality assured the ultimate triumph of the cause he had made his own. Prince Edward, from the moment of his brilliant victory at Evesham, was not only supreme over his father’s enemies, but henceforth he was supreme also within his father’s councils. He found himself in a position at once to realize some of his most important political ideals; and from the very moment of his victory, he adopted as his own, with some modification, it is true, the main constitutional conceptions of his uncle Earl Simon, who had been his friend and teacher before he became his deadliest enemy.

Edward Plantagenet, alike when acting as the chief adviser of his aged father and after he had succeeded him on the throne, not only accepted the main provisions of the Great Charter,[^[283]] but adopted also, along with them, a new scheme of government which formed their necessary counterpart. To Edward is due the first dim conception of “parliamentary government,” to this extent at least, that the king, as head of the executive government, should take a national council into partnership with him in the work of national administration. His political ideals were the natural result of the experience obtained during the later years of his father’s reign; and he endeavoured to embody in his scheme of government the best parts of the various experiments in which that reign abounded. His policy, although founded on that of his uncle Simon de Montfort, was profoundly modified by his own individual genius. The very fact of the adoption of Earl Simon’s ideals by the heir to the throne entirely altered their chances of success. All such schemes had been foredoomed to failure so long as they merely emanated from an opposition leader however powerful; but their triumph was speedily assured now that they were accepted as a programme of reform by the monarch himself. Henceforth the new political ideals, summed up in the conception of a national Parliament, were to be fostered by the Crown’s active support, not merely thrust upon the monarchy from without.

Under the protection of Edward I.—the last of the four great master-builders of the constitution—the Commune Concilium of the Angevin kings (itself a more developed form of the Curia Regis of the Conqueror and his sons) grew into the English Parliament. This implied no sudden dramatic change, but a long slow process of adjustment, under the guiding hand of Edward.

The main features of his scheme may be briefly summarized: Edward’s conception of his position as a national king achieving national ends, the funds necessary for effecting which ought to be contributed by the nation, naturally led him to devise a system of taxation which would fill the Exchequer while avoiding unnecessary friction with the tax-payer. His problem was to keep his treasury full in the way most convenient to the Crown, and at the same time to reduce to a minimum the discontent and inconvenience felt by the nation at large under the burden. In broadening the basis of taxation, he was led to broaden the basis of Parliament; and thus he advanced from the feudal conception of a Commune Concilium, attended only by Crown tenants, to the nobler ideal of a national Parliament containing representatives of every community and every class in England. The composition of the great council was altered; the principle of representation known for centuries before the Conquest in English local government, now found a home, and, as it proved, a permanent home, in the English Parliament. It was obvious that Parliament, whose composition was thus altered, must meet more frequently than of old. Edward elevated the national council from its ancient position of a mere occasional assembly reserved for special emergencies, to a normal and honoured place in the scheme of government. Henceforth, frequent sessions of parliament became a matter of course.