Magna charta

The great charter. The name of a charter (or constitutional enactment) granted by King John of England to the barons, at Runnymede, on June 15, 1215, and afterwards, with some alterations, confirmed in parliament by Henry III. and Edward I. This charter is justly regarded as the foundation of English constitutional liberty. Among its thirty-eight chapters are found provisions for regulating the administration of justice, defining the temporal and ecclesiastical jurisdictions, securing the personal liberty of the subject and his rights of property, and the limits of taxation, and for preserving the liberties and privileges of the church. Magna Charta is so called, partly to distinguish it from the Charter of the Forest, and partly by reason of its own transcendent importance. Magna Charta et Charta de Foresta sont appeles les "deux grandes charters." 2 Inst. 570. Magna Charta and the Charter of the Forest are called the "two great charters."

The Great Charter: the principal guaranty of English liberties, obtained June 19, 1315, fi-om King John. With some alterations, confirmed in parliament by Henry III, his son. By 25 Bdw. I (1298), allowed as part of the common law; and copies were to be read twice a year in the churches, Contained few new grants — was declaratory of the grounds upon which the fundamental law rested. Redressed grievances incident to feudal tenures, and removed some forms of oppression by the crown, " Copies are presei-ved in the British Museum, The original was in Latin; in the statute-book it is printed in Latin and English in parallel columns. It consisted of thirty-seven chapters or distinct statutes. The first chapter confirms the pre-Norman liberties; the sev- ' 1 Bl. Com, 146, 338. ''Scanlan v. Wright, 13 Pick, 628 (1833), Shaw, C, J, s Gordon -u. Hobart, 2 Sumn, 404-5 (1836), Story, J., after quoting Blackstone, supra. enih chiefly concerns dower, and quarantine; the eighth relates to the collection of crown debts, their priority, sureties, etc,; the ninth perpetuates the right of self-goverfiment in London, and certain boroughs; the tenth provides that the court of common pleas should be held in some fixed place; fha fourteenth forbids excessive fines; the <«)enti/-mn Wi provides that life, liberty, and property shall be forfeited only by judgment of the subject's peers or by the law of the land, and that justice and right are not to be sold, denied, or deferred; the thirtieth directs that foreign merchants shall be treated as English merchants are treated while abroad; the thirty-sixth relates to gifts to religious houses; the thirty-seventh recites that the charter was bought of the crown with a fifteenth of the movable property, in consideration whereof the king, for himself and his heirs, covenanted not to infringe the liberties specified. Many of its provisions have been modified by later legislation; and many are preserved in the bills of rights or constitutions of the States, The concessions of Magna Charta were wrung from the king as guaranties against the oppressions and usurpations of his prerogatives,.. The actual and practical security for English liberty against legislative tyranny was the power of a free public opinion represented by the Commons,^ The words of Magna Charta stood for very different things at the time of the separation of the Anierican colonies from what they origiuall)' represented.. It is more consonant to the true philosophy of our historical legal institutions to say that the spirit of personal liberty and individual right, which they embodied, was,preserved and developed by a progressive growth and wise adaptation to new circumstances and situations of the forms and processes found fit to give, from time to time, new expression and greater effect to modem ideas of self-government,*