a term used to emphatically distinguish it from
all previous and partial charters.

[2] Magna Carta: Carta is the spelling in the medieval Latin of this
and the preceding charters. (See the Constitutional Documents in the
Appendix, p. xxix.)

It stipulated that the following grievances should be redressed:
First, those of the Church; secondly, those of the barons and their
vassals or tenants; thirdly, those of citizens and tradesmen;
fourthly, those of freemen and villeins or serfs (SS113, 150).

Such was the first agreement entered into between the King and all
classes of his people. Of the sixty-three articles which constitute
it, the greater part, owing to the changes of time, are now obsolete;
but three possess imperishable value. These provide:

(1) That no free man shall be imprisoned or proceeded against except
by his peers,[1] or the law of the land.
(2) That justice shall neither be sold, denied, nor delayed.
(3) That all dues from the people to the King, unless otherwise
distinctly specified, shall be imposed only with the conselt of the
National Council (S144).

This last provision "converted the power of taxation into the shield
of liberty."[2]

[1] Peers (from Latin pares): equals; this clause secures a fair and
open trial.
[2] Sir J. Mackintosh's "History of England." This provision was
dropped in the next reign (see W. Stubb's "Constitutional History of
England"); but after the great civil war of the seventeenth century
the principle it laid down was firmly reestablished.

Thus, for the first time, the interests of all classes were protected,
and for the first time the English people appear in the constitutional
history of the country as a united body. So highly was this charter
esteemed, that in the course of the next two centuries it was
confirmed no less than thirty-seven times; and the very day that
Charles II entered London, after the civil wars of the seventeenth
century, the House of Commons asked him to confirm it again (1660).
Magna Carta was the first great step in that development of
constitutional government in which England has taken the lead.

200. John's Efforts to break the Charter (1215).

But John had no sooner set his hand to this document than he
determined to repudiate it. He hired bands of soldiers on the
Continent to come to his aid. The charter had been obtained by armed
revolt; for this reason the Pope opposed it. He suspended Archbishop
Langton (S196), and th