MAGNA CARTA LIBERTATUM. - This name designates the basic act of English constitutional life issued by King John Lackland on June 19, 1215, at the request of the rebellious English barons. The value and significance of the M. C. L. of 1215, however, are not originally what they came to be affirmed as through a not always organic development over several centuries, down to the revolution of 1688 and even afterward. The English monarchy of the Plantagenets had sought in the 12th century, thanks to Henry II and Richard the Lionheart, to establish a strong centralizing royal government, suppressing feudal particularism. This did not happen easily: the monarchy had to make concessions, such as the Statutes of Clarendon of 1164 and the Assizes, also of Clarendon, of 1166.
John Lackland, a man of great ambitions but scant political ability, did not know how to preserve the results obtained by his father and his brother. The struggles undertaken with Philip Augustus of France and with Pope Innocent III drove him to fiscal measures that provoked protests and resistance from the clergy and the nobility, determined to defend their rights and immunities. The great feudatories, in May 1215, marched in arms on London and on June 15 presented to King John at Runnymede, between Staines and Windsor, their Capitula, which already contained the essential principles of the M. C. L., which the King sealed four days later. The M. C. L. granted to the Church of England its traditional rights and liberties, among which the principal ones were freedom of elections and the right to go to Rome to the Curia without asking royal consent; to the barons it granted respect for all old fiscal, military, and feudal rights. All cities, boroughs, and towns would preserve their liberty and customs. There followed, in the M. C. L., other rules concerning administration: the commitment to appoint judges, sheriffs, and bailiffs who were good connoisseurs of the laws of the Realm and would not tyrannize the populations, to restore sums extorted by way of fine, not to imprison or condemn any subject except on the basis of a lawful judgment of his Peers, not to impose taxes except with the Common Council of the Realm, for which he would convoke bishops, abbots, earls, and barons at least 40 days before the meeting. The barons would elect 25 representatives to enforce the peace and the liberties granted.
The M. C. I. undoubtedly represents a weakening of the monarchical autocracy founded by the kings of the 12th century, but to the advantage of the feudal caste. The latter took advantage of the weakness of King John to react victoriously against royal despotism, but it demanded nothing other than practical provisions for government, imbued with the feudal spirit, and it restored feudal customs and guarantees that had been superseded. On the contrary, there was no assertion of rights referring to a collectivity, whether popular or of class. But even while recognizing that the M. C. I. refers to the particular interests of the various feudal and ecclesiastical groups, one cannot deny that the clauses, in their theoretical indecision, permitted various interpretations and therefore that grand work of theoretical construction which became what is usually called the English parliamentary Constitution.
Strange are the vicissitudes that the M. C. I. went through in the 13th century: as soon as it was approved, the King appealed to Pope Innocent III, who already on 24 August declared the document null as iniquitous and injurious to the rights of the king and of the pope. On the other hand, the new king Henry III, on the advice of a pontifical legate, solemnly confirmed it in 1216; but then he was unable to uphold it nor even to destroy it, so that in 1258 the Great Council, which was beginning to call itself Parliament, rose up against the disorderly government of the King's favorites, and the good formed a league that imposed the convocation of a Committee of the XXV for the reform of the State. Thus came about the Provisions of Oxford, a developed reaffirmation of the M. C. I. of 1215; thus later, after an attempt by the King to escape the application of the Provisions of Oxford, there came a new reworking in the Provisions of Westminster. However, even then there was no lasting system that succeeded in controlling the monarchy; the latter could at will convoke Parliament, still always a feudal assembly. Only in the political struggles of the 14th century was there a more lively and innovative development of the charter of 1215, as a consequence of the activity carried on by the cities, in a completely new situation.
Bibliography5 works
Francesco Cognasso