1215: Magna Carta
Magna Carta (Latin for 'great charter') was sealed by King John at Runnymede in June 1215. Known as the Great Charter of English Liberties, it formed a peace treaty with barons who were in revolt against the King due to his disastrous foreign policy and arbitrary government.
After negotiations with the barons occupying several days, a preliminary draft of the charter was sealed by King John at Runnymede to mark his formal acceptance of their demands. This draft, known as the Articles of the Barons, and now kept in the British Museum, lists 49 specific grievances that the King agreed to remedy. From it, the full text of the charter was then prepared in the royal chancery, with some further clauses added. A few days later, while the parties remained gathered at Runnymede, copies of the actual charter began to be issued over the King's seal, for the general information of the realm, and this was the signal for dispersal. Four of these copies survive, at Lincoln and Salisbury Cathedrals, and the two in the British Museum. Translated from the original Latin, their text ends: 'Given by our hand in the meadow that is called Runnymede, between Windsor and Staines, on the fifteenth day of June in the seventeenth year of our reign' (i.e. 1215). This date, however, is thought to be that of the sealing of the preliminary draft, not of the issue of the completed charters.
The precise place on the meads at which the parties to these proceedings met is not recorded. The King and his entourage came to Runnymede for the negotiations from Windsor Castle and apparently returned there nightly. The headquarters of the disaffected barons was at Staines. Eight bishops were also present, including the Archbishop of Canterbury, Stephen Langton, and most of the notability of the land, with their followers. Runnymede was chosen because it was a conveniently large meeting place for so great a throng.
The effect of Magna Carta over the centuries was to guarantee the liberties of the King's free subjects and to restrict his absolute power. Between 1215 and 1225, a few clauses that had been directed against King John in person were dropped from it and some other revisions made, in the re-issues granted by his successor Henry III. After a number of further reissues, the text of the charter was copied on to the first English Statute Roll in the reign of Edward I and passed into English Law. It has since formed the basis of the constitutions and statues of many other countries in the English-speaking world, including the United States of America. It underlines the Declaration of Human Rights and the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, which goes well beyond its original purpose as a definition of the limitations of royal power.
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