The Governments of Europe | Page 8

ancient militia system (the fyrd), he brought the control of the armed
forces of the nation effectually under royal control. By the frequent
summons of the Great Council and the systematic reference to it of
business of moment he contributed to the importance of an institution
through whose amplification a century later Parliament was destined to

be brought into existence.
[Footnote 9: Anson, Law and Custom of the Constitution, II., Pt. I., 13.]
[Footnote 10: Stubbs, Select Charters, 21.]
*10. The Great Charter, 1215.*--The period of Richard I. (1189-1199)
was, in constitutional matters, a continuation of that of Henry II.
Richard was absent from the kingdom throughout almost the whole of
the reign, but under the guidance of officials trained by Henry the
machinery of government operated substantially as before. Under John
(1199-1216) came a breakdown, occasioned principally by the
sovereign's persistence in evading certain limitations upon the royal
authority which already had assumed the character of established rules
of the constitution. One of these forbade that the king should impose
fresh taxation except with the advice and consent of the Great Council.
(p. 009) Another enjoined that a man should not be fined or otherwise
despoiled of his property except in virtue of judicial sentence. These
and other principles John habitually disregarded, with the consequence
that in time he found himself without a party and driven to the
alternative of deposition or acceptance of the guarantee of liberties
which the barons, the Church, and the people were united in demanding
of him. The upshot was the promulgation, June 15, 1215, of Magna
Carta.
No instrument in the annals of any nation exceeds in importance the
Great Charter. The whole of English constitutional history, once
remarked Bishop Stubbs, is but one long commentary upon it. The
significance of the Charter arises not simply from the fact that it was
wrested from an unwilling sovereign by concerted action of the various
orders of society (action such as in France and other continental
countries never, in mediæval times, became possible), but principally
from the remarkable summary which it embodies of the fundamental
principles of English government in so far as those principles had
ripened by the thirteenth century. The Charter contained little or
nothing that was new. Its authors, the barons, sought merely to gather
up within a reasonably brief document those principles and customs
which the better kings of England had been wont to observe, but which

in the evil days of Richard and John had been persistently evaded.
There was no thought of a new form of government, or of a new code
of laws, but rather of the redress of present and practical grievances.
Not a new constitution, but good government in conformity with the
old one, was the essential object. Naturally enough, therefore, the
instrument was based, in most of its important provisions, upon the
charter granted by Henry I. in 1100, even as that instrument was based,
in the main, upon the righteous laws of Edward the Confessor. After
like manner, the Charter of 1215 became, in its turn, the foundation to
which reassertions of constitutional liberty in subsequent times were
apt to return; and, under greater or lesser pressure, the Charter itself
was "confirmed" by numerous sovereigns who proved themselves none
too much disposed to observe its principles.
In effect the Charter was a treaty between the king and his dissatisfied
subjects. It was essentially a feudal document, and the majority of its
provisions relate primarily to the privileges and rights of the barons.
None the less, it contains clauses that affected all classes of society, and
it is especially noteworthy that the barons and clergy pledged
themselves in it to extend to their dependents the same customs and
liberties which they were themselves demanding of the crown. Taking
the Charter as a whole, it guaranteed the freedom of the Church,
defined afresh and in precise terms surviving feudal (p. 010) incidents
and customs, placed safeguards about the liberties of the boroughs,
pledged security of property and of trade, and stipulated important
regulations respecting government and law, notably that whenever the
king should propose the assessment of scutages or of unusual aids he
should take the advice of the General Council, composed of the
tenants-in-chief summoned individually in the case of the greater ones
and through the sheriffs in the case of those of lesser importance.
Certain general clauses, e.g., that pledging that justice should neither be
bought nor sold, and that prescribing that a freeman might not be
imprisoned, outlawed, or dispossessed of his property save by the
judgment of his peers or by the law of the land, meant in effect
considerably less than they sometimes have been interpreted to
mean.[11] Yet even they served to emphasize the fundamental principle
upon which the political and legal