But the authority of Magna Carta does not rest alone upon the compact with _John_. When, in the next year, (1216,) his son, Henry III., came to the throne, the charter was ratified by him, and again in 1217, and again in 1225, in substantially the same form, and especially without allowing any new powers, legislative, judicial, or executive, to the king or his judges, and without detracting in the least from the powers of the jury. And from the latter date to this, the charter has remained unchanged. In the course of two hundred years the charter was confirmed by Henry and his successors more than thirty times. And although they were guilty of numerous and almost continual breaches of it, and were constantly seeking to evade it, yet such were the spirit, vigilance and courage of the nation, that the kings held their thrones only on the condition of their renewed and solemn promises of observance. And it was not until 1429, (as will be more fully shown hereafter,) when a truce between themselves, and a formal combination against the mass of the people, had been entered into, by the king, the nobility, and the "_forty shilling freeholders_," (a class whom Mackintosh designates as "_a few freeholders then accounted wealthy_,"[106]) by the exclusion of all others than such freeholders from all voice in the election of knights to represent the counties in the House of Commons, that a repetition of these confirmations of Magna Carta ceased to be demanded and obtained.[107] The terms and the formalities of some of these "confirmations" make them worthy of insertion at length. Hume thus describes one which took place in the 38th year of Henry III. (1253): "But as they (the barons) had experienced his (the king's) frequent breach of promise, they required that he should ratify the Great Charter in a manner still more authentic and solemn than any which he had hitherto employed. All the prelates and abbots were assembled. They held burning tapers in their hands. The Great Charter was read before them. They denounced the sentence of excommunication against every one who should thenceforth violate that fundamental law. They threw their tapers on the ground, and exclaimed, _May the soul of every one who incurs this sentence so stink and corrupt in hell!_ The king bore a part in this ceremony, and subjoined, 'So help me God! I will keep all these articles inviolate, as I am a man, as I am a Christian, as I am a knight, and as I am a king crowned and anointed.'"--_Hume_, ch. 12. See also _Blackstone's Introd. to the Charters. Black. Law Tracts_, Oxford ed., p. 332. _Mackintosh's Hist. of Eng._, ch. 3. _Lardner's Cab. Cyc._, vol. 45, p. 233-4. The following is the form of "the sentence of excommunication" referred to by Hume: "_The Sentence of Curse, Given by the Bishops, against the Breakers of the Charters._