What is the Magna Carta? The 1215 charter and its legend

The Magna Carta, Latin for "Great Charter", is the agreement King John of England sealed at Runnymede, beside the River Thames, on 15 June 1215, to make peace with barons who had rebelled against him. It promised that the king would respect the Church's rights, limit his feudal taxes and imprison or punish free men only by lawful judgment. It failed within weeks, but its reissues became law, and its promise of justice under law outlived almost everything else in it.

In short

• The 1215 charter was a failed peace treaty: the Pope annulled it in August 1215 and civil war followed.
• Reissued in 1216, 1217 and 1225, it became a lasting part of English law, and three clauses still stand in England and Wales.
• Its most famous promise, no punishment without lawful judgment or "the law of the land", fed into due process and habeas corpus.

Not legal advice

This note explains history and general principles; it isn't legal advice about any jurisdiction.

What happened in 1215?

King John had lost Normandy and most of his French lands, and he squeezed England's barons for money to win them back: heavy scutage, the payment knights made instead of military service, inflated fees to inherit land, and fines that looked like the sale of justice. When his last campaign in France failed in 1214, a group of barons turned against him. In May 1215 they renounced their loyalty and took London.

John met the rebels at Runnymede, a meadow on neutral ground between his castle at Windsor and their base at Staines. A draft prepared largely under Stephen Langton, the Archbishop of Canterbury, became the charter John sealed on 15 June. Kings did not sign such documents; the royal seal made them valid. Copies were written out and sent around the kingdom, and four of the 1215 originals survive: two in the British Library, one at Lincoln Cathedral and one at Salisbury Cathedral.

The charter, later numbered into 63 clauses, was mostly about practical feudal grievances: inheritance fees, widows' rights not to be forced to remarry, debts to Jewish moneylenders, fish weirs on rivers, royal forests. Clause 61, the "security clause", set up a council of 25 barons who could seize the king's castles and lands if he broke his word. Neither side trusted the other. John asked Pope Innocent III for help, and in a letter dated 24 August 1215 the Pope declared the charter "not only shameful and demeaning but also illegal and unjust" and void. The First Barons' War followed, and the rebels invited Prince Louis of France to take the throne.

How did a failed treaty become law?

It was revived to win a war. John died in October 1216, leaving a nine-year-old son, Henry III. His regents, led by the knight William Marshal, reissued the charter, minus its most radical clauses, to draw rebels back to the young king. It worked well enough that it became the government's standard offer, reissued again and again in exchange for loyalty or tax.

Date	Event
15 June 1215	King John seals the charter at Runnymede
24 August 1215	Pope Innocent III annuls it; civil war resumes
October 1216	John dies; Henry III, aged nine, becomes king
November 1216	Henry's regents reissue it, without the security clause
1217	Reissued again at the end of the war, with a separate Charter of the Forest; the bigger of the two becomes known as the "great" charter
1225	Henry III reissues it in exchange for a tax, "of his own spontaneous and free will": the definitive version
1297	Edward I confirms it, and it is entered on the statute rolls
1354	A statute recasts its key promise as "due process of law" and extends it to every man, "of whatever estate or condition"
1628	Edward Coke and Parliament cite it in the Petition of Right against imprisonment without cause
1969	Parliament repeals all but three clauses, with effect from 1 January 1970

What does clause 39 say, and why does it matter?

Clause 39 of 1215 is the promise that made the charter famous, and in the 1225 and 1297 versions it was merged with clause 40 into chapter 29. The 1297 text is still in force, and the official statute book gives it in an old English translation: "NO Freeman shall be taken or imprisoned, or be disseised of his Freehold, or Liberties, or free Customs, or be outlawed, or exiled, or any other wise destroyed; nor will We not pass upon him, nor condemn him, but by lawful judgment of his Peers, or by the Law of the Land. We will sell to no man, we will not deny or defer to any man either Justice or Right."

In 1215 that was aimed at John's habit of seizing barons' lands and people on his own word. Its lasting idea is that the government may not punish anyone except through the law, and that justice is not for sale. The 1354 statute's phrase "due process of law" crossed to America, where the Fifth Amendment to the US Constitution says no person shall be "deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law". In 1627 a lawyer arguing the Five Knights' Case invoked Magna Carta for the right of habeas corpus, the writ that makes a jailer justify a detention before a judge, and that link was repeated for centuries.

What does Magna Carta not do?

Much of its fame rests on later readings rather than on what it said in 1215:

Claim	What the record shows
King John signed it	He sealed it, as kings did
It gave rights to everyone	Most of it protected "free men", above all the barons; most English peasants were unfree serfs, mentioned in only a few clauses
It was the birth of democracy	It created no elections or parliament; a clause requiring the barons' "common counsel" for some taxes was dropped in 1216
It created trial by jury	"Lawful judgment of his peers" meant judgment by equals; jury trial developed separately
It ended the conflict	The Pope annulled it after about ten weeks, and war followed
It is all still law	Only three clauses survive: chapter 1, the freedom of the English Church; chapter 9, the liberties of the City of London; and chapter 29
There is one original	There were many copies; four 1215 originals survive, and later issues too

Victorian historians such as William Stubbs still read it as the founding of English liberty; from the early 20th century, starting with Edward Jenks's 1904 article "The Myth of Magna Carta", historians argued that it dealt with the medieval relationship between a king and his barons, not with the rights of ordinary subjects. Its larger meaning was built up later, by lawyers in the 17th century who needed an ancient precedent against the Stuart kings, above all Edward Coke, who treated it as the foundation of English liberties.

Why does Magna Carta still matter?

Because the idea it came to stand for, that the ruler is under the law, became one of the foundations of the rule of law, as explained in what law is. English colonists carried it to America, where they read it as guaranteeing their rights as Englishmen, and its language echoes in state constitutions and the Bill of Rights, a line of argument that ran through the American Revolutionary War. The US National Archives displays one of four surviving originals of the 1297 version, describing how the Pope nullified the first charter "just 10 weeks later" (National Archives). In 1948, Eleanor Roosevelt said the Universal Declaration of Human Rights might become "the international Magna Carta for all men everywhere".

It also shows how law grows. A deal forced on one king by his richest subjects, nullified within weeks and stripped of its sharpest clauses, became a symbol of liberty because later generations kept appealing to it. That is a different story from the birth of democracy, and a more interesting one.

Check yourself

• Without looking back, explain why the 1215 charter failed, and how it came back.
• What does clause 39 promise, and how did that promise reach the US Constitution?
• Name two common claims about Magna Carta that the record doesn't support.

Sources

• Magna Carta 1297, chapter 29 — legislation.gov.uk, The National Archives (UK)
• Magna Carta — U.S. National Archives and Records Administration
• Magna Carta, 1297: translation by Nicholas Vincent — U.S. National Archives and Records Administration
• Magna Carta: teaching resources — The National Archives (UK)
• Magna Carta — Wikipedia