NOBODY IS ABOVE THE LAW - NOT EVEN THE KING OR QUEEN OF ENGLAND

Magna Carta originated as an unsuccessful attempt to achieve peace between royalist and rebel factions in 1215, as part of the events leading to the outbreak of the First Barons' War.

England was ruled by King John, the third of the Angevin kings. Although the kingdom had a robust administrative system, the nature of government under the Angevin monarchs was ill-defined and uncertain. Much as the British system tends to deny justice to victims of local authority abuses.

John and his predecessors had ruled using the principle of vis et voluntas, or "force and will", taking executive and sometimes arbitrary decisions, often justified on the basis that a king was above the law.

Many contemporary writers believed that monarchs should rule in accordance with the custom and the law, with the counsel of the leading members of the realm, but there was no model for what should happen if a king refused to do so.

MEANING OF MAGNA CARTA

Magna Carta is Latin for ‘great charter’ and the term was first used in 1217 to distinguish it from the Charter of the Forest, a document that also set out limits on the king’s administration, this time of the royal forest, areas of the country set aside for royal hunting and subject to much harsher laws and restrictions.

Both charters set out what the king could and could not do. In other words, Magna Carta set out the laws which the king and everyone else had to follow for the first time.

Copies of Magna Carta were sent out to be read out in each county of England so that everyone knew of its existence.

CLAUSES REMAINING IN ENGLISH LAW

Only three clauses of Magna Carta still remain on statute in England and Wales. These clauses concern 

1) the freedom of the English Church,

2) the "ancient liberties" of the City of London (clause 13 in the 1215 charter, clause 9 in the 1297 statute), and 

3) a right to due legal process (clauses 39 and 40 in the 1215 charter, clause 29 in the 1297 statute).

In detail, these clauses (using the numbering system from the 1297 statute) state that:

I. FIRST, We have granted to God, and by this our present Charter have confirmed, for Us and our Heirs for ever, that the Church of England shall be free, and shall have all her whole Rights and Liberties inviolable. We have granted also, and given to all the Freemen of our Realm, for Us and our Heirs for ever, these Liberties under-written, to have and to hold to them and their Heirs, of Us and our Heirs for ever.

IX. THE City of London shall have all the old Liberties and Customs which it hath been used to have. Moreover We will and grant, that all other Cities, Boroughs, Towns, and the Barons of the Five Ports, as with all other Ports, shall have all their Liberties and free Customs.

XXIX. NO Freeman shall be taken or imprisoned, or be disseised of his Freehold, or Liberties, or free Customs, or be outlawed, or exiled, or any other wise destroyed; nor will We not pass upon him, nor condemn him, but by lawful judgment of his Peers, or by the Law of the land. We will sell to no man, we will not deny or defer to any man either Justice or Right.

Of clause 29 (XXIX) the policy makers have been whittling this down so much in recent years that little remains of Article 6 and the right to a Level Playing Field, also known as Equality At Arms. 

GREAT CHARTER OF 1216

Although the Charter of 1215 was a failure as a peace treaty, it was resurrected under the new government of the young Henry III as a way of drawing support away from the rebel faction. On his deathbed, King John appointed a council of thirteen executors to help Henry reclaim the kingdom, and requested that his son be placed into the guardianship of William Marshal, one of the most famous knights in England. William knighted the boy, and Cardinal Guala Bicchieri, the papal legate to England, then oversaw his coronation at Gloucester Cathedral on 28 October.

The young King inherited a difficult situation, with over half of England occupied by the rebels. He had substantial support though from Guala, who intended to win the civil war for Henry and punish the rebels. Guala set about strengthening the ties between England and the Papacy, starting with the coronation itself, during which Henry gave homage to the Papacy, recognising the Pope as his feudal lord. Pope Honorius III declared that Henry was the Pope's vassal and ward, and that the legate had complete authority to protect Henry and his kingdom. As an additional measure, Henry took the cross, declaring himself a crusader and thereby entitled to special protection from Rome.

The war was not going well for the loyalists, but Prince Louis and the rebel barons were also finding it difficult to make further progress. John's death had defused some of the rebel concerns, and the royal castles were still holding out in the occupied parts of the country. Henry's government encouraged the rebel barons to come back to his cause in exchange for the return of their lands, and reissued a version of the 1215 Charter, albeit having first removed some of the clauses, including those unfavourable to the Papacy and clause 61, which had set up the council of barons. The move was not successful, and opposition to Henry's new government hardened.

GREAT CHARTER OF 1215

GREAT CHARTER OF 1216

GREAT CHARTER OF 1217

GREAT CHARTER OF 1225

GREAT CHARTER OF 1297

LINKS & REFERENCE

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Magna-Carta

https://www.parliament.uk/magnacarta

https://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/medieval-england/magna-carta/

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