Magna Carta: A Commentary on the Great Charter of King John: With an Historical IntroductionMcKechnie, William Sharp
History
Magna Carta: A Commentary on the Great Charter of King John: With an Historical Introduction
McKechnie, William Sharp
Constitutional history -- England -- Sources; Law -- England -- History; Law -- England -- Sources; Magna Carta
II. _Civil and Political Rights._ After providing thus briefly for the
church, chapter one proceeds to give equal prominence, but at greater
length, to the grant or confirmation of secular customs and liberties.
This takes here the form of a general enacting clause, leaving details
to be specified in the remaining sixty-two chapters of the Charter. Some
of the more important points involved have already been discussed in the
Historical Introduction—for example, the feudal form of the grant,
better suited, according to modern ideas, to the conveyance of a
specific piece of land, than to the securing of the political and civil
liberties of a mighty nation; and the vexed question as to what classes
of Englishmen were intended, under the description of “freemen,” to
participate in these rights.[351]
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Footnote 351:
See _supra_, pp. 128-9 and 141-2. For the meaning of “freeman” and
Coke’s inclusion of villeins under that term for some purposes but not
for others, see _infra_, cc. 20 and 39.
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Another interesting point, though of minor importance, calls for
separate treatment. John does not state that his grants of civil and
political rights had been made spontaneously. Whether deliberately or
not, there is here a marked distinction between the phraseology applied
to secular and to ecclesiastical rights respectively. While the
concessions to churchmen are said to have been granted “_mera et
spontanea voluntate_,” no such statement is made about the concessions
to the freemen. John may have favoured this omission as strengthening
his contention that the Great Charter had been sealed by him under
compulsion. In the third re-issue of Henry III. (1225) this defect was
remedied—the words “_spontanea et bona voluntate nostra_” being used in
its preamble.[352] Some importance seems to have been attributed to this
addition, which formed the essence of a concession bought by the
surrender of one-fifteenth of the moveable property of all estates of
the realm.
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Footnote 352:
Cf. _supra_, p. 181.
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CHAPTER TWO.
Si quis comitum vel baronum nostrorum, sive aliorum tenencium de nobis
in capite per servicium militare, mortuus fuerit, et cum decesserit
heres suus plene etatis fuerit et relevium debeat, habeat hereditatem
suam per antiquum relevium; scilicet heres vel heredes comitis de
baronia comitis integra per centum libras; heres vel heredes baronis de
baronia integra per centum libras; heres vel heredes militis de feodo
militis integro per centum solidos ad plus; et qui minus debuerit minus
det secundum antiquam consuetudinem feodorum.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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