THE GREAT CHARTER

In May a list of articles to be signed was sent to John; and on his refusal the barons formally renounced their homage and fealty and flew to arms.

John was forced to surrender before this host. On June 15th he met the barons at Runnymede, between Staines and Windsor, and there, in the presence of Archbishop Stephen and "a mult.i.tude of most ill.u.s.trious knights," sealed the Great Charter of the Liberties of England.

This Great Charter was in the main a renewal of the old rights and liberties promised by Henry I. It set up no new rights, conferred no new privileges, and sanctioned no changes in the Const.i.tution. Its real and lasting importance is due to its being a written doc.u.ment--for the first time in England it was down in black and white, for all to read, what the several rights and duties of King and people were, and in what the chief points of the Const.i.tution consisted.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MAGNA CHARTA

A facsimile of the Original in the British Museum.]

The Great Charter is a great table of laws. It marks the beginning of written legislation, and antic.i.p.ates Acts of Parliament. Unwritten laws and traditions were not abolished: they remain with us to this day; but the written law had become a necessity when "the bonds of unwritten custom"

failed to restrain kings and barons. The Great Charter also took into account the rights of free men, and of the tenants of the King's va.s.sals.

If the barons and knights had their grievances to be redressed, the commons and the freeholding peasants needed protection against the lawless exactions of their overlords.[12]

Sixty-three clauses make up Magna Charta, and we may summarise them as follows:--

(1) The full rights and liberties of the Church are acknowledged; bishops shall be freely elected, so that the Church of England shall be free.[13]

(2-8) The King's tenants are to have their feudal rights secured against abuse. Widows--in the wardship of the Crown--are to be protected against robbery and against compulsion to a second marriage.

(9-11) The harsh rules for securing the payment of debts to the Crown and to the Jews (in whose debts the Crown had an interest) are to be relaxed.

(12-14) No scutage or aid (save for the three regular feudal aids--the ransom of the King, the knighting of his eldest son, and the marriage of his eldest daughter) is to be imposed except by the Common Council of the nation; and to this Council archbishops, bishops, abbots, earls, and greater barons are to be called by special writ, while all who held their land directly from the King, and were of lesser rank, were to be summoned by a general writ addressed to the sheriff of the county. Forty days'

notice of the meeting was to be given, and also the cause of the a.s.sembly.

The action of those who obeyed the summons was to be taken to represent the action of all.[14] (This last clause is never repeated in later confirmations of the Great Charter.)

(15-16) The powers of lords over their tenants are limited and defined.

(17-19) A Court of Common Pleas is to be held in some fixed place so that suitors are not obliged to follow the King's Curia. Cases touching the ownership of land are to be tried in the counties by visiting justices, and by four knights chosen by the county.

(20-23) No freeman is to be fined beyond his offence, and the penalty is to be fixed by a local jury. Earls and barons to be fined by their peers; and clerks only according to the amount of their lay property.

(24-33) The powers of sheriffs, constables, coroners, and bailiffs of the King are strictly defined. No sheriff is to be a justice in his own county.

Royal officers are to pay for all the goods taken by requisition; money is not to be taken in lieu of service from those who are willing to perform the service. The horses and carts of freemen are not to be seized for royal work without consent. The weirs in the Thames, Medway, and other rivers in England are to be removed.

(34-38) Uniformity of weights and measures is directed. Inquests are to be granted freely. The sole wardship of minors who have other lords will not be claimed by the King, except in special cases. No bailiff may force a man to ordeal without witnesses.

(39-40) No free man is to be taken, imprisoned, ousted of his land, outlawed, banished, or hurt in any way save by the judgment of his peers, or the law of the land. The King is not to sell, delay, or deny right or justice to anyone.

(41-42) Merchants may go out or come in without paying exorbitant customs.

All "lawful" men are to have a free right to pa.s.s in and out of England in time of peace.

(44-47) An inquiry into the Forest Laws and a reform of the forest abuses are promised. All forests made in present reign to be disforested, and all fences in rivers thrown down.

(49-60) The foreign mercenaries of the King, all the detested gang that came with horses and arms to the hurt of the realm, are to be sent out of the country. The Welsh princes and the King of Scots (who had sided with the barons) are to have justice done. A general amnesty for all political offences arising from the struggle is made.

The last three articles appointed twenty-five barons, chosen out of the whole baronage, to watch over the keeping of the Charter. They were empowered to demand that any breach of the articles should at once be put right, and, in default to make war on the King till the matter was settled to their satisfaction. Finally there was the oath to be taken on the part of the King, and on the part of the barons that the articles of the Charter should be observed in good faith according to their plain meaning.

The Great Charter was signed, and then in a wild burst of rage John shouted to his foreign supporters, "They have given me five-and-twenty over-kings!"

Within a week of Runnymede the Great Charter was published throughout England, but neither King nor barons looked for peace. John was ready to break all oaths, and while he set about increasing his army of mercenaries, he also appealed to the Pope, as his overlord, protesting that the Charter had been wrested from him by force.

Langton and the bishops left for Rome to attend a general council. Pope Innocent declared the Charter annulled on the ground that both King and barons had made the Pope overlord of England, and that consequently nothing in the government could be changed without his consent. But with Langton, the bishops, and the Papal legate all away at Rome, there was no one to publish the Papal repudiation of the Charter, and the King and barons were already at civil war. Pope Innocent III. was dead in the spring of 1216, and John's wretched reign was over when the King lay dying at Newark in October.

Stephen Langton was back again at Canterbury in 1217, and for eleven more years worked with William the Marshall and Hubert of Burgh to maintain public peace and order during Henry III.'s boyhood. At Oxford, in 1223, the Charter was confirmed afresh, and two years later it was solemnly proclaimed again when the King wanted a new subsidy. As long as the great statesmen were in office Henry III. was saved from the weakness that cursed his rule in England for nearly forty years. But William the Marshall died in 1219, Archbishop Stephen in 1228, and Hubert was dismissed from the justiciarship in 1234. A horde of greedy aliens from Poitou fed at the Court of Henry and devoured the substance of England, until men arose, as Langton had arisen, to demand the enforcement of charters and a just administration of the laws.

Again a national party arises under the leadership of Simon of Montfort, and in their victory over the King we get the beginnings of Parliamentary government and popular representation. Every step forward is followed by reaction, but the ground lost is recovered, and the next step taken marks always a steady advance. Over and over again it has seemed that all the liberties won in the past were lost, but looking back we can see that there has been no lasting defeat of liberty. Only for a time have the forces of oppression triumphed; it is soon found impossible in England to rest under tyranny, or to govern without the consent of the governed. And every fresh campaign for the restriction of kingly power brings us nearer the day of democratic government.

CHAPTER II

THE BEGINNING OF PARLIAMENTARY REPRESENTATION

DEMOCRACY AND REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT

To-day democracy takes the form of representative government in civilised countries; and for representative government contend the nations and peoples seeking democracy.

The weak spots in all popular electoral systems are obvious, and the election of representatives is always a subject for jokes and satire. It could hardly be otherwise. For the best machinery in the world needs some sort of sympathetic intelligence in the person who manipulates it, and the machinery of popular elections can only be worked successfully with a large measure of sincerity and good will. In the hands of the ambitious, the self-seeking, and the unscrupulous, democratic politics are a machine for frustrating popular representation, and as this state of things is always prevalent somewhere, the humorist and the satirist naturally treat politics without respect.

But in spite of all its faults and failings--glaring as these are--mankind can at present devise nothing better than representative government, and the abuse of power, the cunning, roguery, and corruption that too often accompany popular elections and democratic administration, rather stir honest men to action than make them incline to dictatorship and absolutism.

The present notion about representative government is that it makes possible the expression of popular will, and can ensure the fulfilment of that will. In the thirteenth century, when we get the beginnings of representative government, there is no question of the people making positive proposals in legislation, but there is a distinct belief that the consent of the governed ought to be obtained by the ruling power. The mere legal maxim from the Code of Justinian, that "that which touches all shall be approved by all,"[15] "becomes trans.m.u.ted by Edward I. into a great political and const.i.tutional principle."[16]

REPRESENTATIVE THEORY FIRST FOUND IN ECCLESIASTICAL a.s.sEMBLIES

More than a century earlier the first recorded appearances of town representatives are found in the Spanish Cortes of Aragon and Castile.[17]

St. Dominic makes a representative form of government the rule in his Order of Preaching Friars, each priory sending two representatives to its provincial chapter, and each province sending two representatives to the general chapter of the Order.

In England, Simon of Montfort, the son of Simon, the great warrior of the Albigensian wars and the warm friend of Dominic, was in close a.s.sociation with the friars. Hence there was nothing so very remarkable in Earl Simon issuing writs for the Full Parliament of 1265 for the return of two burgesses from each city and borough. He had seen representative government at work among the friars in their chapters. Why should the plan be not equally useful in the government of the country?[18] There is no evidence that the summons to the burgesses was regarded as a revolutionary proposal--so lightly comes political change in England.

The name of Simon of Montfort, Earl of Leicester, must always be a.s.sociated with the beginning of representative government in England. Let us recall how it was the great Earl came to be in power in 1265.

THE MISRULE OF HENRY III.

Henry III. was always in want of money, and his crew of royal parasites from Poitou drained the exchequer. Over and over again the barons called on the King to get rid of his favourites, and to end the misrule that afflicted the country; and the King from time to time gave promises of amendment. But the promises were always broken. As long as Henry could get money he was averse from all const.i.tutional reform. In 1258 the barons were determined that a change must be made. "If the King can't do without us in war, he must listen to us in peace," they declared. "And what sort of peace is this when the King is led astray by bad counsellors, and the land is filled with foreign tyrants who grind down native-born Englishmen?"

William of Rishanger, a contemporary writer, expressed the popular feeling in well-known verses:

"The King that tries without advice to seek his country's weal Must often fail; he cannot know the wants and woes they feel.

The Parliament must tell the King how he may serve them best, And he must see their wants fulfilled and injuries redressed.

A King should seek his people's good and not his own sweet will.

Nor think himself a slave because men hold him back from ill."

"The King's mistakes call for special treatment," said Richard, Earl of Gloucester.

SIMON OF MONTFORT, LEADER OF THE NATIONAL PARTY