On the whole, the charter contains little that is absolutely new. It is restorative. [King] John in these last years has been breaking the law; therefore the law must be defined and set in writing. In several instances we can prove that the rule that is laid down is one that was observed during the early part of his reign. In the main the reforms of Henry II’s day are accepted and are made a basis for the treaty …. Even in the most famous words of the charter we may detect a feudal claim which will only cease to be dangerous when in course of time men have distorted their meaning: - a man is entitled to the judgement of his peers; the king’s justices are no peers for earls or barons. Foreign merchants may freely come and go; they may dwell here and buy and sell; yes, but all cities and boroughs are to enjoy all the franchises and free customs, and often enough in the coming centuries they will assert that their dearest franchise is that of excluding or oppressing the foreigner. And yet, with all its faults, this document becomes and rightly becomes a sacred text, the nearest approach to an irrepealable 'fundamental statute' that England has ever had. In age after age a confirmation of it will be demanded and granted as a remedy for those oppressions from which the realm is suffering, and this when some of its clauses, at least in their original meaning, have become hopelessly antiquated. For in brief it means this, that the king is and shall be below the law.[1]
Pollock
& Maitland, The History of English
Law (1895)
[1] Frederick Pollock and F.W. Maitland, The History of English Law, 2nd ed., Reissued, Vol. 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968), pp. 172, 173.
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