The early historians were content to rely either on this version or on that contained in the Inspeximus of Edward I. Thus, in all early printed collections of statutes, the text which professes to represent the original Charter follows in reality the words of Henry’s third re-issue. The very earliest printed edition of Magna Carta seems to have been that published on 9th October, 1499, by Richard Pynson, the King’s printer,[[311]] and a contemporary of Wynkyn de Worde. This was not, of course, John’s Charter, but followed Edward’s Inspeximus of Henry’s Charter of 1225.
Since the middle of the eighteenth century, many editions of the text of John’s Great Charter have been published, either alone or along with the text of the various re-issues of the reign of Henry III.; but it seems unnecessary to mention more than four of these.
(1) In 1759 appeared Sir William Blackstone’s scholarly work entitled The Great Charter and The Charter of the Forest, containing accurate texts of all the important issues of the Charters of Liberties carefully prepared from the original manuscripts so far as these were known to him.[[312]]
(2) In some respects the Record Commissioners have improved even on Blackstone’s work in their edition of the Statutes of the Realm, published in 1810. A special section of the volume is devoted to Charters of Liberties, where not only the grants of John and Henry III., but also the charters which led up to them, and their subsequent confirmations, have received exhaustive treatment.
(3) A carefully revised text, Magna Carta regis Johannis, was published by Dr. Stubbs in 1868; and the various charters are also to be found, arranged in chronological order, in his well-known volume, first published in 1870, entitled Select Charters and other illustrations of English Constitutional History, a convenient collection easily accessible to all students of law and history.
(4) For the continuous study of the sequence of charters, the best book of reference is Chartes de Libertés Anglaises by M. Charles Bémont published in 1892, in the pages of which the various editions of John’s and Henry’s charters will be found in a form convenient for comparison with each other, and with previous and succeeding documents.
II. Commentaries and Treatises. It is doubtful whether any good purpose would be served by the preparation of a list of all the books which contain casual references to Magna Carta or to its provisions; and it is clear that the task would be an extremely burdensome one. There is no difficulty, however, in naming the few treatises of outstanding merit which have been exclusively or mainly devoted to the exposition of the Great Charter. Of these only nine require special mention.
(1) The mysterious medieval lawbook known as the Mirror of Justices contains a chapter upon Magna Carta which has some claims to rank as a commentary, although it represents the opinions of a political pamphleteer rather than those of an unbiassed judge. The date of this treatise is still the subject of dispute. It has been usual to place it not earlier than the years 1307-27, mainly because it makes mention of “Edward II.” Prof. Maitland, however, dates it earlier, maintaining on general grounds that it was “written very soon after 1285, and probably before 1290.”[[313]] He explains the reference to “Edward II.” as applying to the monarch now generally known in England as Edward I., but sometimes in his own reign known as Edward II., to distinguish him from an earlier Edward, still enshrined in the popular imagination, namely, Edward Confessor. Mr. Maitland is not disposed to treat this work of an unknown author too seriously, and warns students against “his ignorance, political bias, and deliberate lies.”[[314]]
(2) Dismissing the Mirror, then, as a dangerous and possibly disingenuous guide, the earliest serious commentary known to exist is that of Sir Edward Coke, formerly Lord Chief Justice. This elaborate treatise, forming the second of Coke’s four Institutes, was published in 1642 under direction of the Long Parliament, the House of Commons having given the order on 12th May, 1641.[[315]]
Although this commentary, like everything written by Coke, was long accepted as a work of great value, its method is in reality entirely uncritical and unhistorical. The great lawyer reads into Magna Carta the entire body of the common law of the seventeenth century of which he was admittedly a master. He seems almost unconscious of the great changes accomplished by the experience and vicissitudes of the four eventful centuries which had elapsed since the Charter had been originally granted. The various clauses of Magna Carta are thus merely occasions for expounding the law as it stood, not at the beginning of the thirteenth century, but in his own day. In the skilful hands of Sir Edward, the Great Charter is made to attack the abuses of James or Charles, rather than those of John or Henry, which its framers had in view. In expounding the judicium parium, for example, he carefully explains many minute details of procedure before the Court of the Lord High Steward, and describes elaborately the nature of the warrants to be issued prior to the arrest of any one by the Crown; while, in the clause of Henry’s Charter which secures an open door to foreign merchants in England “unless publicly prohibited,” he discovers a declaration that Parliament shall have the sole power to issue such prohibitions, forgetful that the regulation of trade was an exclusive prerogative of the Crown with which Parliament had no right to interfere for many centuries subsequent to the reign of Henry III.