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The Magna Carta: A Medieval Charter of Rights and Freedoms
What the 1215 charter said, why King John's barons forced it on him at Runnymede, and what its famous clauses meant to the people who wrote it.
Power and Work
The charter of 1215, its clauses and its legacy.
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What the 1215 charter said, why King John's barons forced it on him at Runnymede, and what its famous clauses meant to the people who wrote it.
A close reading of the best-known Magna Carta clauses on justice, taxation and the Church, with each explained in plain language and in its 1215 context.
How the charter was revised and reissued under Henry III and confirmed by Edward I, and how it became part of English law during the thirteenth century.
The conflict between King John and his barons that produced the charter, the civil war that followed, and how it shaped later clashes between kings and nobles.
Weighs Magna Carta's grand reputation against its limited effect in 1215, and explains where historians disagree about how much it changed English history.
Why the 1215 charter failed as a peace treaty, what it still achieved in the thirteenth century, and which popular myths about it grew up later.
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