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

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The chief factor in the coalition which ultimately triumphed over John was undoubtedly the baronial party led by those strenuous nobles of the north, who were, beyond doubt, goaded into active opposition by their own personal and class wrongs, not by any altruistic promptings to sacrifice themselves for the common good. Their complaints, too, as they appear reflected in the imperishable record of Magna Carta, are mainly grounded on breaches of the technical rules of feudal usage, not upon the broad basis of constitutional principle.

The feudal grievances most bitterly resented may be ranged under one or other of two heads—increase in the weight of feudal obligations and infringement, of feudal jurisdictions. The Crown, while it exacted from its tenants the fullest measure of services legally exigible, interfered persistently at the same time with those rights and privileges which had originally balanced the obligations. The barons were compelled to give more, while they received less.

With the first group of baronial grievances posterity can sympathize in a whole-hearted way, since the increase of feudal obligations inflicted undoubted hardships on the Crown tenants, while the redress of these involved no real danger to constitutional progress. One and all of the grievances included in this first group could be condemned (as they were condemned by various chapters of Magna Carta) without unduly reducing the efficiency of the monarchy which still formed under John, as it had done under William I., the sole source of security against the dangers of feudal anarchy. Posterity, however, cannot equally sympathize with the efforts of the barons to redress their second class of wrongs. However great may have been the immediate hardships inflicted on members of the aristocracy by the suppression of their feudal courts, lovers of constitutional progress can only rejoice that all efforts to restore them failed. Those clauses of Magna Carta which aimed at reversing the great currents flowing towards royal justice, and away from private baronial justice, produced no permanent effect, and posterity has had reason to rejoice in their failure.