I. _The rights of the National Church._ A general promise that the English church should be free was accompanied by a special confirmation of the separate charter recently granted guaranteeing freedom of canonical election. (1) _Quod Anglicana ecclesia libera sit._ This emphatic, if vague declaration, which has no counterpart in the Articles of the Barons, is repeated twice in Magna Carta, each time in a prominent position, at the beginning and the end respectively. If the work of the barons showed no special tenderness for churchmen’s privileges, Stephen Langton and his bishops were careful to have that defect remedied in the formal document by which John expressed his final consent. In extorting this promise of a “free” English church, the prelates seem to have been satisfied that they need ask for nothing more; the other particulars in which the Charter differs from its draft show no trace of clerical bias. The phrase used, indeed, was deplorably vague and elastic; it scarcely needed stretching to cover the widest encroachments of clerical arrogance. Yet the formula was by no means a new one; Henry I. and Stephen had successively confirmed the claim of holy church to its freedom.[338] ----- Footnote 338: See these charters in Appendix. Henry II. was careful to avoid making any such promises: his whole reign was an effort, not unsuccessful in spite of the terrible disadvantage at which he was placed by the murder of Becket, to deprive the church of what her leaders considered her legitimate “freedom.” John in 1215, however, receded from the ground occupied by his father, confirming by the Great Charter the promise given by the weakest of his Norman predecessors, in a phrase repeated in all subsequent confirmations. It by no means follows that “freedom of the church,” as promised by Stephen, meant exactly the same thing as “freedom of the church” promised by John and his successors.[339] The value to be attached to such assurances varied in inverse ratio to the strength of the kings who made them, and this is well illustrated by a comparison of the charters of Henry I., Stephen, and John. Henry qualifies the phrase by words which illustrate if they do not limit its application. God’s holy church was to be free “_so that_ I shall neither sell nor let to farm, nor on the death of archbishop, bishop, or abbot, accept anything from the demesne of the church or from its tenants, until his successor has entered into possession.”[340] This suggests a somewhat narrow interpretation of the church’s freedom—exemption mainly from the iniquities of Rufus. Stephen’s charter, on the contrary, explains or supplements the same phrase by definite declarations that the bishops should have sole jurisdiction over churchmen and their goods, and that all rights of wardship over church lands were renounced, thus making it a “large and dangerous promise.”[341] ----- Footnote 339: