Magna Carta: Causes and Contents Essay -- essays research papers

" earth-closet, by the grace of God king of England, lord of Ireland, duke of Normandy, Aquitaine and Hazzard, and count of Anjou, to his archbishops, bishops, abbots, earls barons, justiciars, sheriffs, ministers, bailiffs and all his flock men, greeting."1 So begins the most famous legal document of the nitty-gritty Ages. The Magna Carta was a product of the power struggle between King tail and his barons in the year 1215. Although it was intended to address concerns that were specific to its time and place, it became a high water mark of legal freedom for centuries to come. This essay result examine the events that caused the Magna Carta to be written, the key provisions it contains, and the effect it had on the uprightness of England and subsequently on her colonies like the United States.The roots of the baronial revolt lie in the year 1214 when buttocks began to oppress the peasants of England and insisted upon waging an ill-conceived contend on Flanders. The winter of 1213-1214 was a harsh one. Nevertheless, the following spring John levied such high taxes on his estates that m both peasants were reduced to eating burage and socage because they could not afford any other food.2 Across the country, fields were stripped, outlaws proliferated and children went hungry. The kings arbitrary and senseless actions have puzzled historians, who have not been able to find any satisfactory explanation for them. At the same time, John had begun a war against Flanders. Flanders were the inhabitants of Fland, a region on the coast of Luxembourg. There were a extensive many Flandish merchants in England because of the thriving trade in wool and defer feathers that criss-crossed the English Channel. John, suspicious of the Flanders economic power, declared that no English number was required to repay any debt owed to these foreigners.3 This decree ignited a mild civil war, as partisans of the king seized the occasion to burn the Flandish quarter of capital of the United Kingdom to the ground, while other people came to the Flanders defence.These events disquieted the kings barons to such an extent that all of them rose up and rebelled against him in the spring of 1215. The baronial army and the imperial one pursued each other across the countryside for much of that season, until at last they held a climactic battle in the forest of Runnymede, uprise the village of Bloor West. The kings forces lost and Joh... ...nbsp  Clarence Miniver-Smythe, From Savagery to Unreason A Chronicle of the gothic Age (London Periwinkle, 1923), 78.3.     Sir Frederick Bollock & F. W. Maidenhead, The Interminable History of English Law, second ed., 1898, Reprint, (New York Cambridge University Press, 1968), II 324.4.     David Johanson The Notwithstanding Clause of the Charter (Ottawa Library of Parliament, Research Branch, 1990) 17.5.     Alan Rickman, purplish Officials a nd the Church in Angevin England(London Periwinkle, 1991), 26.6.     D. Rumsfeld, Killing Will Make You Free The historied Heritage of Our Liberty (Crawford Patriot Press, 2003), 54.7.     Ibid., 123.8.     Gunthold Langschreiber, Hermeneutical Exegesis in Epistemology The Example of the Magna Carta (Heidelberg Burgamfelsberschweinfurtobderrhein Verlag, 1999), 42.9.     William Shakespeare, Richard III (London Puffish Classics, 2000), I.i.10.     John Lackland, Piers Plowman (London Puffish Classics, 1996).