the Emperor Henry
IV two centuries before). In the year 1213 John had been obliged to make
an ignominious peace just as Henry IV had been obliged to do in the year
1077.

Undismayed by his lack of success, John continued to abuse his royal
power until his disgruntled vassals made a prisoner of their anointed
ruler and forced him to promise that he would be good and would never
again interfere with the ancient rights of his subjects. All this
happened on a little island in the Thames, near the village of
Runnymede, on the 15th of June of the year 1215. The document to which
John signed his name was called the Big Charter--the Magna Carta. It
contained very little that was new. It re-stated in short and direct
sentences the ancient duties of the king and enumerated the privileges
of his vassals. It paid little attention to the rights (if any) of
the vast majority of the people, the peasants, but it offered certain
securities to the rising class of the merchants. It was a charter of
great importance because it defined the powers of the king with more
precision than had ever been done before. But it was still a purely
mediaeval document. It did not refer to common human beings, unless they
happened to be the property of the vassal, which must be safe-guarded
against royal tyranny just as the Baronial woods and cows were protected
against an excess of zeal on the part of the royal foresters.

A few years later, however, we begin to hear a very different note in
the councils of His Majesty.

John, who was bad, both by birth and inclination, solemnly had promised
to obey the great charter and then had broken every one of its many
stipulations. Fortunately, he soon died and was succeeded by his son
Henry III, who was forced to recognise the charter anew. Meanwhile,
Uncle Richard, the Crusader, had cost the country a great deal of money
and the king was obliged to ask for a few loans that he might pay his
obligations to the Jewish money-lenders. The large land-owners and the
bishops who acted as councillors to the king could not provide him with
the necessary gold and silver. The king then gave orders that a few
representatives of the cities be called upon to attend the sessions of
his Great Council. They made their first appearance in the year 1265.
They were supposed to act only as financial experts who were not
supposed to take a part in the general discussion of matters of state,
but to give advice exclusively upon the qu