a revival of the 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 mediaeval 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, th