-- No sheriff, royal official, or other person shall take horses or carts for transport from any free man, without his consent.
-- Neither we nor any royal official will take wood for our castle, or for any other purpose, without the consent of the owner.
-- We will not keep the lands of people convicted of felony in our hand for longer than a year and a day, after which they shall be returned to the lords of the `fees' concerned.
-- All fish-weirs shall be removed from the Thames, the Medway, and throughout the whole of England, except on the sea coast.
-- The writ called precipe shall not in future be issued to anyone in respect of any holding of land, if a free man could thereby be deprived of the right of trial in his own lord's court.
-- There shall be standard measures of wine, ale, and corn (the London quarter), throughout the kingdom. There shall also be a standard width of dyed cloth, russett, and haberject, namely two ells within the selvedges. Weights are to be standardized similarly.
-- In future nothing shall be paid or accepted for the issue of a writ of inquisition of life or limbs. It shall be given gratis, and not refused.
-- If a man holds land of the Crown by `fee-farm', `socage', or `burgage', and also holds land of someone else for knight's service, we will not have guardianship of his heir, nor of the land that belongs to the other person's `fee', by virtue of the `fee-farm', `socage', or `burgage', unless the `fee-farm' owes knight's service. We will not have the guardianship of a man's heir, or of land that he holds of someone else, by reason of any small property that he may hold of the Crown for a service of knives, arrows, or the like.
-- In future no official shall place a man on trial upon his own unsupported statement, without producing credible witnesses to the truth of it.
-- No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled, or deprived of his standing in any other way, nor will we proceed with force against him, or send others to do so, except by the lawful judgment of his equals or by the law of the land.
-- To no one will we sell, to no one deny or delay right or justice.
-- All merchants may enter or leave England unharmed and without fear, and may stay or travel within it, by land or water, for purposes of trade, free from all illegal exactions, in accordance with ancient and lawful customs. This, however, does not apply in time of war to merchants from a country that is at war with us. Any such merchants found in our country at the outbreak of war shall be detained without injury to their persons or property, until we or our chief justice have discovered how our own merchants are being treated in the country at war with us. If our own merchants are safe they shall be safe too.
-- If a man holds lands of any `escheat' such as the `honour' of Wallingford, Nottingham, Boulogne, Lancaster, or of other `escheats' in our hand that are baronies, at his death his heir shall give us only the `relief' and service that he would have made to the baron, had the barony been in the baron's hand. We will hold the `escheat' in the same manner as the baron held it.
-- People who live outside the forest need not in future appear before the royal justices of the forest in answer to general summonses, unless they are actually involved in proceedings or are sureties for someone who has been seized for a forest offence.
-- All barons who have founded abbeys, and have charters of English kings or ancient tenure as evidence of this, may have guardianship of them when there is no abbot, as is their due.
-- All forests that have been created in our reign shall at once be disafforested. River-banks that have been enclosed in our reign shall be treated similarly.
-- No one shall be arrested or imprisoned on the appeal of a woman for the death of any person except her husband.
-- If we have deprived or dispossessed any Welshmen of lands, liberties, or anything else in England or in Wales, without the lawful judgement of their equals, these are at once to be returned to them. A dispute on this point shall be determined in the Marches by the judgement of equals. English law shall apply to holdings of land in England, Welsh law to those in Wales, and the law of the Marches to those in the Marches. The Welsh shall treat us and ours in the same way.
Another copy of the Magna Carta
-- All these customs and liberties that we have granted shall be observed in our kingdom in so far as concerns our own relations with our subjects. Let all men of our kingdom, whether clergy or laymen, observe them similarly in their relations with their own men.
Both we and the barons have sworn that all this shall be observed in good faith and without deceit. Witness the abovementioned people and many others.
Given by our hand in the meadow that is called Runnymede, between Windsor and Staines, on the fifteenth day of June in the seventeenth year of our reign (i.e. 1215: the new regnal year began on 28 May).
All these aforesaid customs and liberties which we have granted to be held in our realm in so far as pertains to us are to be observed by all of our realm, both clergy and laity, in so far as pertains to them in respect to their own men. For this gift and grant of these liberties and of others contained in our charter over the liberties of the forest, the archbishops, bishops, abbots, priors, earls, barons, knights, fee holders and all of our realm have given us a fifteenth part of all their movable goods. Moreover we grant to them for us and our heirs that neither we nor our heirs will seek anything by which the liberties contained in this charter might be infringed or damaged, and should anything be obtained from anyone against this it is to count for nothing and to be held as nothing.
With these witnesses: the lord Stephen archbishop of Canterbury, Eustace bishop of London, Jocelin bishop of Bath, Peter bishop of Winchester, Hugh bishop of Lincoln, Richard bishop of Salisbury, W. bishop of Rochester, William bishop of Worcester, John bishop of Ely, Hugh bishop of Hereford, Ranulf bishop of Chichester, William bishop of Exeter, the abbot of Bury St Edmunds, the abbot of St Albans, the abbot of Battle, the abbot of St Augustine's Canterbury, the abbot of Evesham, the abbot of Westminster, the abbot of Peterborough, the abbot of Reading, the abbot of Abingdon, the abbot of Malmesbury, the abbot of Winchcombe, the abbot of Hyde Winchester, the abbot of Chertsey, the abbot of Sherborne, the abbot of Cerne, the abbot of Abbotsbury, the abbot of Milton Abbas, the abbot of Selby, the abbot of Cirencester, Hubert de Burgh the justiciar, H. earl of Chester and Lincoln, William earl of Salisbury, William earl Warenne, G. de Clare earl of Gloucester and Hertford, William de Ferrers earl of Derby, William de Mandeville earl of Essex, Hugh Bigod earl of Norfolk, William earl Aumale, Humphrey earl of Hereford, John constable of Chester, Robert de Ros, Robert fitz Walter, Robert de Vieuxpont, William Brewer, Richard de Montfiquet, Peter fitz Herbert, William de Aubigné, G. Gresley, F. de Braose, John of Monmouth, John fitz Alan, Hugh de Mortemer, William de Beauchamp, William de St John, Peter de Maulay, Brian de Lisle, Thomas of Moulton, Richard de Argentan, Geoffrey de Neville, William Mauduit, John de Baalon and others. Given at Westminster on the eleventh day of February in the ninth year of our reign.
We, holding these aforesaid gifts and grants to be right and welcome, concede and confirm them for ourselves and our heirs and by the terms of the present (letters) renew them, wishing and granting for ourselves and our heirs that the aforesaid charter is to be firmly and invariably observed in all and each of its articles in perpetuity, including any articles contained in the same charter which by chance have not to date been observed. In testimony of which we have had made these our letters patent. Witnessed by Edward our son, at Westminster on the twelfth day of October in the twenty-fifth year of our reign. Chancery warranty by John of Stowe.
Reference: http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/magnacarta.html
Diane Rufino has her own blog For Love of God and Country. Come and visit her. She'd love your company.
