or dispossessed, or outlawed, or in any way brought to ruin:  we will not go against any man nor send against him, save by legal judgement of his peers or by the law of the land.”  “To no man will we sell,” runs another, “or deny, or delay, right or justice.”  The great reforms of the past reigns were now formally recognized; judges of assize were to hold their circuits four times in the year, and the King’s Court was no longer to follow the king in his wanderings over the realm but to sit in a fixed place.  But the denial of justice under John was a small danger compared with the lawless exactions both of himself and his predecessor.  Richard had increased the amount of the scutage which Henry the Second had introduced, and applied it to raise funds for his ransom.  He had restored the Danegeld, or land-tax, so often abolished, under the new name of “carucage,” had seized the wool of the Cistercians and the plate of the churches, and rated movables as well as land.  John had again raised the rate of scutage, and imposed aids, fines, and ransoms at his pleasure without counsel of the baronage.  The Great Charter met this abuse by a provision on which our constitutional system rests.  “No scutage or aid [other than the three customary feudal aids] shall be imposed in our realm save by the common council of the realm”; and to this Great Council it was provided that prelates and the greater barons should be summoned by special writ, and all tenants in chief through the sheriffs and bailiffs, at least forty days before.  The provision defined what had probably been the common usage of the realm; but the definition turned it into a national right, a right so momentous that on it rests our whole Parliamentary life.  Even the baronage seem to have been startled when they realized the extent of their claim; and the provision was dropped from the later issue of the Charter at the outset of the next reign.  But the clause brought home to the nation at large their possession of a right which became dearer as years went by.  More and more clearly the nation discovered that in these simple words lay the secret of political power.  It was the right of self-taxation that England fought for under Earl Simon as she fought for it under Hampden.  It was the establishment of this right which established English freedom.

The rights which the barons claimed for themselves they claimed for the nation at large.  The boon of free and unbought justice was a boon for all, but a special provision protected the poor.  The forfeiture of the freeman on conviction of felony was never to include his tenement, or that of the merchant his wares, or that of the countryman, as Henry the Second had long since ordered, his wain.  The means of actual livelihood were to be left even to the worst.  The seizure of provisions, the exaction of forced labour, by royal officers was forbidden; and the abuses of the forest system were checked by a clause which disafforested all forests made in John’s reign.