Magna Carta: A Commentary on the Great Charter of King John With an Historical Introduction

------------------------------------------------------------------------

                          Transcriber’s Note:

This version of the text cannot represent certain typographical effects.
Italics are delimited with the ‘_’ character as _italic_. Superscripted
characters are denoted with a carat (‘^’), and if more than one
character is raised, they are enclosed with ‘{ }’.

Footnotes have been moved to follow the paragraphs in which they are
referenced.

Minor errors, attributable to the printer, have been corrected. Please
see the transcriber’s note at the end of this text for details regarding
the handling of any textual issues encountered during its preparation.








                              MAGNA CARTA

                   A COMMENTARY ON THE GREAT CHARTER
                              OF KING JOHN








                              PUBLISHED BY

                   JAMES MACLEHOSE AND SONS, GLASGOW
                 =Publishers to the University.=

                                  ---

                    MACMILLAN AND CO., LTD., LONDON.

        _New York_,               _The Macmillan Co._
        _London_,                 _Simpkin, Hamilton and Co._
        _Cambridge_,              _Macmillan and Bowes_.
        _Edinburgh_,              _Douglas and Foulis_.
        _Sydney_,                 _Angus and Robertson_.

                                 MCMV.

                              MAGNA CARTA
                       A COMMENTARY ON THE GREAT
                          CHARTER OF KING JOHN

                                 WITH AN
                         HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION

                                    BY

                         WILLIAM SHARP McKECHNIE

                           M.A., LL.B., D.PHIL.

 LECTURER ON CONSTITUTIONAL LAW AND HISTORY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW
  AUTHOR OF ‘THE STATE AND THE INDIVIDUAL; AN INTRODUCTION TO POLITICAL
                                 SCIENCE’








                                GLASGOW
                        JAMES MACLEHOSE AND SONS
                      PUBLISHERS TO THE UNIVERSITY
                                  1905








                GLASGOW: PRINTED AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS
                    BY ROBERT MACLEHOSE AND CO. LTD.








                                 TO THE

                          MEMORY OF MY FATHER

                        WILLIAM McKECHNIE, M.D.

                          BORN 1ST APRIL, 1814

                        DIED 2ND SEPTEMBER, 1887

                                PREFACE


No Commentary upon Magna Carta has hitherto been written from the
standpoint of modern research. No serious attempt has yet been made to
supersede, or even adequately to supplement, the works of Coke and
Richard Thomson, published respectively in 1642 and 1829, and now
hopelessly out of date. This lack of enterprise may be due in part to a
natural reluctance to undertake so laborious a task, but seems also to
suggest tacit acquiescence in the opinion of Bishop Stubbs that no
separate commentary is required, since “the whole of the constitutional
history of England is little more than a commentary on Magna Carta.”
Yet, for that very reason the Great Charter is surely worthy to be made
the subject of special and detailed study, since few documents can
compete with it in the variety and interest of its contents, in the
vividness of its historical setting, or in the influence it has
exercised on the struggle for constitutional liberty. That this
conspicuous gap in our historical and legal literature should have
remained so long unfilled is the more remarkable in view of the great
advance, amounting almost to a revolution, which has been effected since
Coke and Thomson wrote. Within the last twenty years, in especial, a
wealth of new material has been explored with notable results.
Discoveries have been made, profoundly affecting our views of every
branch of law, every organ of government, and every aspect of social and
individual life in medieval England. Nothing, however, has hitherto been
done towards applying to the systematic elucidation of Magna Carta the
new stores of knowledge thus accumulated.

With this object in view, I have endeavoured, throughout several years
of hard, but congenial work, to collect, sift, and arrange the mass of
evidence, drawn from many scattered sources, capable of throwing light
upon John’s Great Charter. The results have now been condensed into the
Commentary which fills two thirds of the present volume. This attempt to
explain, point by point, the sixty-three chapters of Magna Carta,
embracing, as these do, every topic—legal, political, economic and
social—in which John and his barons felt a vital interest, has involved
an analysis in some detail of the whole public and private life of
England during the thirteenth century. The Commentar