It is thus both excusable and necessary to place much stress on this sequence of coronation oaths and charters, as contributing both to the form and to the substance of the Magna Carta of John. Yet the tendency to take too narrow a view of the antecedents of the Great Charter must be carefully guarded against. Many ingredients went to the making of it. Numerous reforms of Henry II., whether embodied or not in one or more of the ordinances or assizes that have come down to us, must be reckoned among their number, equally with those constitutional documents which happen to be couched in the form peculiar to charters granted under the king’s great seal. It is also necessary to remember the special grants made by successive kings of England to the Church, to London and other cities, and to individual prelates and barons. In a sense, the whole previous history of England went to the making of Magna Carta. The sequence of coronation oaths and charters is only one line of descent; the Great Charter of John can trace its origin through many other lines of distinguished ancestors. II. Magna Carta: its Form and Juridical Nature. Much ingenuity has been expended, without adequate return, in the effort to discover which particular category of modern jurisprudence most exactly describes the Great Charter of John. Is it an enacted law, or a treaty; the royal answer to a petition; or a declaration of rights? Is it a simple pact, bargain, or agreement between contracting parties? Or is it a combination of two or more of these? Something has been said in favour of almost every possible view, perhaps more to the bewilderment than to the enlightenment of students of history uninterested in legal subtleties. The claim of Magna Carta to rank as a formal act of legislation has been supported on the ground that it was promulgated in what was practically a _commune concilium_. King John, it is maintained, met in a national assembly all the estates of his realm who were then endowed with political rights, and these concurred with him in the granting of Magna Carta. The consent of all who claimed a share in the making or repealing of laws—archbishops, bishops, abbots, earls, and crown-tenants, great and small—entitles the Charter to rank as a regular statute. Against this view, however, technical informalities may be urged. Both the composition of the Council and the procedure adopted there, were irregular. No formal writs of summons had been issued, and, therefore, the meeting was never properly constituted; many individuals with the right and duty of attendance had no opportunity to be present. Further, the whole proceedings were tumultuary; the barons assembled in military array and compelled the consent of John by turbulence and show of force. On these grounds, modern jurisprudence, if appealed to, would reject the claim of the Charter to be enrolled as an ordinary statute.