Magna Carta

(proper noun)

A charter, granted by King John to the barons at Runnymede, Britain, in 1215, that is a basis of English constitutional tradition.

Related Terms

(proper noun)

A charter, granted by King John to the barons at Runnymede in 1215, that is a basis of English constitutional tradition.

Related Terms

Examples of Magna Carta in the following topics:

  • The Rights of Englishmen

    • It was not until the early seventeenth century that jurist Edward Coke interpreted Magna Carta to apply not only to the protection of nobles but to all subjects of the crown equally .
    • In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, several precedents from Magna Carta appeared in British legal documents and writings as fundamental rights of Englishmen.
    • As a social contract, therefore, Magna Carta represented a specific limit on arbitrary or despotic power and a protection of the people's rights and liberties.
    • Jurist Edward Coke interpreted Magna Carta to apply not only to the protection of nobles but to all subjects of the crown equally.
    • Magna Carta is one of the major documents in British history that set forth legal precedents that would later be interpreted as protecting the civil rights of English subjects

  • The Limits of Democracy

    • The Constitution's due process clause was partly based on common law and on the Magna Carta (1215), which established the principle that the Crown's powers could be limited and the once-sovereign King could be bound by law.

  • Paine's Common Sense

    • Paine proposed a Continental Charter (or Charter of the United Colonies) that would be an American Magna Carta and he wrote that a Continental Charter "should come from some intermediate body between the Congress and the people" and outlines a Continental Conference that could draft a Continental Charter.

  • The Dominion of New England

    • Protests were made that the town meeting and tax laws were violations of the Magna Carta, which guaranteed taxation by representatives of the people.
    • The inscription around the edge is an abbreviation for Iacobus Secundus Dei Gratia Magnae Britanniae, Franciae et Hiberniae Rex, Fidei Defensor ("James the Second, by the grace of God, of Great Britain, France and Ireland, King, Defender of the Faith"), the monarch's full title, an inscription which was also on the Great Seal of the Realm.