class character of this clause is most evident for only the freemen, or in fact the privileged classes could make use of this right. [5, p.60] of years later, Magna Carta was used by Parliament to protect itself from a powerful king. In fact Magna Carta gave no real freedom to the majority of people in England. The nobles who wrote it and forced King John to sign it had no such thing in mind. They had one main aim: to make sure John did not go beyond his rights as feudal lord. [4, p.28] of the specific points of the Great Charter was the setting up of a permanent committee of 25 barons to see that John «s promises were kept. It also said that John must govern with the Council »s advice and permission. This particular device did not work well but it gave the barons the advantage to start a political struggle against the king if necessary as a class rather than as individuals. [5, p.60] Great Charter was based on the document compiled by Henry I when he confirmed the old Anglo - Saxon laws modernizing them to suit the feudal reality. Stephen Langton saw to it that the privileges of the church would be provided for. The document contained the aforementioned «list of grievances» that is criticism of the king «s abuses of power, and then fixed in writing what was always understood as the unwritten law of the lord? vassal relations. The bulk of the document enumerated measures and conditions that ensured the barons » uninterrupted exploitation of their peasant holders without fear of extra levies unstipulated by this class treaty. The people concerned were all «freemen» and at that time freemen constituted a quarter of the population of England. The people who «tired of the tyrant, flocked» to support the barons were completely disregarded. But the interests of merchants were seen to, for they were clearly becoming a power even at the dawn of the 13 th century; the Charter made a point of guarding them from the king «s arbitrary taxation; interests of trade were seen to in other ways. The Charter cancelled the right of the king to control the personal property and the personal liberty of all freemen, the towns were guaranteed their municipal liberties.is therefore with certain reservations that one should accept the statements of many English bourgeois historians who characterize the Charter as «a decisive settlement of the constitutional liberties of England.» The barons compiling it were hardly concerned with the whole of England. The king »s interference in their wealth-accumulating activities was to be checked, the king was not to be allowed to impose new taxes and to demand endless supplies and to arrest those who objected to paying without a murmur; he was not to be allowed to take the profitable cases from the barons « courts: four times a year at stated intervals, his courts were to function, and no more. All subsidies to the king were to be sanctioned by the common council, its composition was delineated: all the tenants-in-chief, both lay and ecclesiastical, barons, earls and knights. The council can hardly be considered as the germ of the future parliament, it was too numerous while only one class was represented; all the tenants-in-chief were never convened together.is equally hard to see any «democratic tendencies» in the stipulations of the article forbidding the king to ruin the people with fines (the culprits were to be left their means of making a living, as the goods were to be left to the mer...
