Content
Magna Carta was originally written in Latin. A large part of the Charter at Runnymede was copied, nearly word for word, from the Charter of Liberties of Henry I, issued when Henry became king in 1100, in which he said he would respect certain rights of the Church and the barons, for example not forcing heirs to purchase their inheritances.
As the Charter went through various issues many of the clauses included in the Runnymede charter were removed. Some clauses would form a supplementary Charter in 1217, the Charter of the Forest.
It is worth emphasising that the 1215 charter was not numbered and was not divided into paragraphs or separate clauses. The numbering system used today was created by Sir William Blackstone in 1759, and therefore should not be used to draw any conclusions regarding the intentions of the original creators of the charter.
Read more about this topic: Magna Carta
Famous quotes containing the word content:
“Not always can flowers, pearls, poetry, protestations, nor even home in another heart, content the awful soul that dwells in clay.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“He that has and a little tiny wit—
With heigh-ho, the wind and the rain—
Must make content with his fortunes fit,
Though the rain it raineth every day.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“I could be content that we might procreate like trees, without conjunction, or that there were any way to perpetuate the world without this trivial and vulgar way of coition.”
—Thomas Browne (1605–1682)