Читать книгу Magna Carta: A Commentary on the Great Charter of King John. With an Historical Introduction онлайн

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ssss1. Rot. Pat., p. 181. As we have to depend for our knowledge of this important protest on one copy, engrossed on the back of a membrane of an official roll (No. 18 of John’s 17th year), it is possible to doubt its genuineness; but it is unlikely to be purely a forgery.

ssss1. See Rot. Pat. and New Rymer, I. 134.

ssss1. See R. Wendover, III. 302-318.

ssss1. Great Charter, p. xxi.

ssss1. Chron. Maj., II. 605-6.

ssss1. Stubbs, Const. Hist., II. 3.

ssss1. The original bull with the seal of Innocent still attached is preserved in the British Museum (Cotton, Cleopatra E 1), and is carefully printed by Bémont, Chartes des Libertés Anglaises, p. 41. It may also be read inter alia in Rymer and in Blackstone.

ssss1. The text is given by Rymer.

ssss1. See Rymer, and Bémont, Chartes, xxv.

PART II.

FEUDAL GRIEVANCES AND MAGNA CARTA.

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I. The Immediate Causes of the Crisis.

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Many attempts have been made to explain why the storm, long brewing, broke at last in 1214, and culminated precisely in June of the following year. Sir William Blackstone[60] shows how carefully historians have sought for some one specific feature or event, occurring in these years, of such moment as by itself to account for the rebellion crowned for the moment with success at Runnymede. Thus Matthew Paris, he tells us, attributes the whole movement to the sudden discovery of Henry I.’s charter, long forgotten as he supposes, while other chroniclers agree in assigning John’s inordinate debauchery as the cause of the civil dissensions, dwelling on his personal misdeeds, real and imaginary. “Sordida foedatur foedante Johanne, gehenna.”[61] Blackstone himself suggests a third event, the appointment as Regent in John’s absence of the hated alien and upstart, Peter des Roches, and his misconduct in that office.

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