Magna Carta ITS ROLE IN THE MAKING OF THE ENGLISH CONSTITUTION 1300-1629 by FAITH THOMPSON Associate Professor of History University of Minnesota THE UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA PRESS, Minneapolis LONDON GEOFFREY CTTMBEKLBGB OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS Copyright 1948 by the UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without the written permission of the publisher. Permission is hereby granted to review ers to quote brief passages in a review to be printed in a magazine or newspaper. Second Printing 1950 Old London Bridge From Gordon Homes Old London Bridge Job Lane the Bodley Head Ltd, PREFACE Magna Carta is well called the oldest of liberty, documents. It has come to serve as the prototype of all bills of rights, a symbol, a slogan that conies readily to the tongue of a public speaker. Its history, in these days when human progress seems to depend on the success of a world charter, may seem of mere antiquarian interest. Yet the New Yor Times of January n, 1946, saw fit to devote nearly a column to a description of the ceremony in which Dr. Luther H. Evans, Librarian of Congress, handed to his majes tys minister, John Balfour, one of the original parchment copies of the Great Charter for return to the Dean and Chapter of Lincoln Cathedral. Of the Charter, during its stay in the United States, Dr. Evans said Fifteen million Americans have made pilgrimage to see it American arms have been its guard. Mr. Balfour termed the Charter the forefather of the British and American bills of rights, the American Habeas Corpus Act, and the Declaration of Independence. The Federal Constitution of the United States, Mr. Balfour said, contained many of itsprovisions and even some of its actual words and this in turn has been the model for many constitutions in many lands. The line of descent extends to our time and we can, without flight of fancy, trace as an authentic offspring the preamble to the Charter of the United Nations. Here is a lineage without equal in human history. For this we honor the Great Charter, and for this, not as Britons or as Americans, but as members of the whole brotherhood of free peoples, we give our thanks to the Librarians of Congress for the care with which during these momentous years, they have guarded a document that is beyond re placement and above price. Magna Carta is not the private property of the British people. It belongs equally to you and to all who at any time and in any land have fought for freedom under the law. la the words of Professor A. B. White Today we study its history, yes terday it was our political Bible. If it became something of a myth few would question that the myth has been beneficent and still is. It was through Professor White that my interest in Magna Carta history was first awakened while preparing under his direction at the University of Minnesota a doctoral dissertation, published as The First Century of Magna Carta These studies attempt to trace through three more centuries the varied uses and increasingly significant interpretations of the famous document. It is a pleasure to express to Professor White my gratitude for his continued in terest and stimulating suggestions, and for reading parts of the manuscript. VI PREFACE The opportunity to use valuable sources available only in England was made possible by a Guggenheim Fellowship for the year 1938-39, For this I expresshearty thanks to the foundation, as well as to the Graduate School of the University of Minnesota for a grant-in-aid for a research assistant. I am indebted to Mr. Pulling of the Harvard Law Library, and to Professor Bade and Miss Caroline Brede of the University of Minnesota Law Library, for permission and aid in using their remarkable collections of early printed law books. Acknowledgment is also due the Treasurer and Masters of the Bench of the Inner Temple for permission to use certain Inner Temple Library manuscripts...

The Making of the Modern Law: Legal Treatises, 1800-1926 includes over 20,000 analytical, theoretical and practical works on American and British Law. It includes the writings of major legal theorists, including Sir Edward Coke, Sir William Blackstone, James Fitzjames Stephen, Frederic William Maitland, John Marshall, Joseph Story, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. and Roscoe Pound, among others. Legal Treatises includes casebooks, local practice manuals, form books, works for lay readers, pamphlets, letters, speeches and other works of the most influential writers of their time. It is of great value to researchers of domestic and international law, government and politics, legal history, business and economics, criminology and much more.++++The below data was compiled from various identification fields in the bibliographic record of this title. This data is provided as an additional tool in helping to insure edition identification: ++++Yale Law School LibraryCTRG99-B356Published also as thesis (Ph. D.) University of Minnesota, 1923. Text of the Magna Carta and the Forest Charter are in Latin--Appendix A and B (p. 110]-115).Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 1925. ix, 123 p.; 25 cm

Magna Carta ITS ROLE IN THE MAKING OF THE ENGLISH CONSTITUTION 1300-1629 by FAITH THOMPSON Associate Professor of History University of Minnesota THE UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA PRESS, Minneapolis LONDON GEOFFREY CTTMBEKLBGB OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS Copyright 1948 by the UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without the written permission of the publisher. Permission is hereby granted to review ers to quote brief passages in a review to be printed in a magazine or newspaper. Second Printing 1950 Old London Bridge From Gordon Homes Old London Bridge Job Lane the Bodley Head Ltd, PREFACE Magna Carta is well called the oldest of liberty, documents. It has come to serve as the prototype of all bills of rights, a symbol, a slogan that conies readily to the tongue of a public speaker. Its history, in these days when human progress seems to depend on the success of a world charter, may seem of mere antiquarian interest. Yet the New Yor Times of January n, 1946, saw fit to devote nearly a column to a description of the ceremony in which Dr. Luther H. Evans, Librarian of Congress, handed to his majes tys minister, John Balfour, one of the original parchment copies of the Great Charter for return to the Dean and Chapter of Lincoln Cathedral. Of the Charter, during its stay in the United States, Dr. Evans said Fifteen million Americans have made pilgrimage to see it American arms have been its guard. Mr. Balfour termed the Charter the forefather of the British and American bills of rights, the American Habeas Corpus Act, and the Declaration of Independence. The Federal Constitution of the United States, Mr. Balfour said, contained many of itsprovisions and even some of its actual words and this in turn has been the model for many constitutions in many lands. The line of descent extends to our time and we can, without flight of fancy, trace as an authentic offspring the preamble to the Charter of the United Nations. Here is a lineage without equal in human history. For this we honor the Great Charter, and for this, not as Britons or as Americans, but as members of the whole brotherhood of free peoples, we give our thanks to the Librarians of Congress for the care with which during these momentous years, they have guarded a document that is beyond re placement and above price. Magna Carta is not the private property of the British people. It belongs equally to you and to all who at any time and in any land have fought for freedom under the law. la the words of Professor A. B. White Today we study its history, yes terday it was our political Bible. If it became something of a myth few would question that the myth has been beneficent and still is. It was through Professor White that my interest in Magna Carta history was first awakened while preparing under his direction at the University of Minnesota a doctoral dissertation, published as The First Century of Magna Carta These studies attempt to trace through three more centuries the varied uses and increasingly significant interpretations of the famous document. It is a pleasure to express to Professor White my gratitude for his continued in terest and stimulating suggestions, and for reading parts of the manuscript. VI PREFACE The opportunity to use valuable sources available only in England was made possible by a Guggenheim Fellowship for the year 1938-39, For this I expresshearty thanks to the foundation, as well as to the Graduate School of the University of Minnesota for a grant-in-aid for a research assistant. I am indebted to Mr. Pulling of the Harvard Law Library, and to Professor Bade and Miss Caroline Brede of the University of Minnesota Law Library, for permission and aid in using their remarkable collections of early printed law books. Acknowledgment is also due the Treasurer and Masters of the Bench of the Inner Temple for permission to use certain Inner Temple Library manuscripts...

A Short History of Parliament was first published in 1953. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.

Magna Carta was first published in 1948. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.This important study in English constitutional history is the story of the Magna Carta from the end of the reign of Edward I to the dissolution of parliament and the completion of Sir Edward Coke's Commentary (1300-1629).Miss Thompson surveys the various ways, practical and theoretical, in which the Charter was used by groups and individuals in English society. She examines the pertinent sources and finds that the Charter was never eclipsed in the later Middle Ages or even in the Tudor period and that its reinterpretation in the early Stuart period was not an abrupt and novel phenomenon. The statesmen who transformed a charter of feudal "liberties" into a charter of "liberty of the subject" were using a document with a long history and a reputation already made in plea rolls and Year Books, parliament and statute rolls, law treatises, and even chronicles.Miss Thompson provides considerable background material to support her emphasis on this process of interpretation, and she clearly interprets the character and motives of successive sponsors of the Charter.The value of Miss Thompson's study is in the unusual thoroughness of her treatment of Magna Carta and in her corrections of misconceptions about the role the Magna Carta has played in the making of the English constitution.