With a boy’s simplicity the young King had unconsciously passed judgement on the demand which had just been made to him and on the repeated demands for confirmation of the Charters which resound through the history of the next seventy years. He had sworn to maintain the liberties which he was asked to confirm; he was bound by his oath; no amount of repetitions could make that oath any more binding than it was already, and no amount of confirmations could really give any additional security for its observance. But behind the question of confirmation lay, probably, a question of definition. One article, at least, of the Charter as republished in 1217 left a wide field open for contention: the forty-sixth article, which reserved to all the King’s subjects “the liberties and free customs which they formerly had.” This clause had replaced the one in the Charter of 1216 which reserved for future consideration certain important articles in the Great Charter of 1215.[962] It is probable that what Stephen and the magnates with whom he was acting--whoever these may have been--really wanted was a revision of the Charter, to include the substitution of some definite provisions on these reserved points for the vague saving clause of 1217. If so, William Brewer’s attitude must have shewn them that the cleavage of political opinion within the royal Council was too sharp for agreement on the subject to be possible at that moment. For the observance of the Charter as it stood they had the word of the King, and there was no reason to expect that the King would be worse than his word.[963]