MAGNA CHARTA

The great charter. The name of a charter (or constitutional enactment) granted by King John of England to the barons, at Runnymede, on June 15, 1215, and afterwards, with some alterations, confirmed in parliament by Henry III. and Edward I. This charter is justly regarded as the foundation of English constitutional liberty. Among its thirty eight chapters are found provisions for regulating the administration of justice, defining the temporal and ecclesiastical jurisdictions, securing the personal liberty of the subject and his rights of property, and the limits of taxation, and for preserving the liberties and privileges of the church. Magna Charta is so called, partly to distinguish it from the Charta de Foresta, which was granted about the same time, and partly by reason of its own transcendent importance. Magna Charta et Charta de Foresta sont appeles les “deux grandes charters.” 2 Inst. 570. Magna Charta and the Charter of the Forest are called the “two great charters.”