I am also an Anglophile, but I fail to see the significance in this document. Edward I, Edward III, Henry V, Henry VIII, Mary, and Elizabeth ruled with more power over their subjects than did Alfred, Stephen, or any of the Saxon/Dane kings in between. The only thing the Magna Carta tells me is that John was a weak and unpopular king that put his weakness in writing to save his head. Never understood the Magna Carta hype.
The Magna Carta wasn’t considered important until fairly recently in history. Shakespeare’s play about King John doesn’t even mention it.
Gee Whiz!! I think it was very significant regardless of what the post Magna Carta rulers did as to ‘power’.
It was the embryonic spark of liberty and the concept that the ruler governed by consent of those he ruled.
Furthermore, it proclaimed that freemen (non-serfs) could not be punished except through the law.
FWIW - John was my 21st GGF three different ways and my 22nd GGF a fourth way.
While he may have been a weak king but he had a truly exceptional mother, Eleanor of Aquitaine.
Garde la Foi, mes amis! Nous nous sommes les sauveurs de la République! Maintenant et Toujours!
(Keep the Faith, my friends! We are the saviors of the Republic! Now and Forever!)
LonePalm, le Républicain du verre cassé (The Broken Glass Republican)
Magna Carta was part of abegining in the evolution of political thinking in England.
They almost got it right when they beheaded Charles I, but made the mistake of replacing him with Cromwell. But the sons and grandsons and great grandsons of that experiment tried it again here in 1776 and got it right.
1. Our Declaration of Inedpendence, in its introductory clauses, which set froth the compact theory of Government, and the right to rise against a Government that violates the purposes for which it was created, reflects how important Magna Carta was conceptually to those who founded America.
2. It clarified property & inheritance rights in a Feudal era, where everything had been determined from the top down, previously. It also granted & protected marketing rights.
3. It not only recognized the right of people to rise against the Government, it set up a mechanism for their doing so. (This was left out of subsequent republications, but I note that the one posted, here, has the mechanism, in place.)
4. The concepts of Government & liberty in Magna Carta are the direct opposite of the dogma being promoted by the Left in the West since World War I--and in some circles since the French Revolution. It is, like our Declaration, a very Conservative document; a rallying of those who would defend what they had achieved against encroaching central power.
William Flax [Truth Based Logic]