Page:A History and Defence of Magna Charta.djvu/60

14 K. . The reſtitution of Magna Charta you may call it, for the birth of it you ſee it was not. What I have recited is undoubted hiſtory and record, and clear matter of fact. And I have confined myſelf only to theſe three laſt years, in which the barons were in purſuit of this buſineſs, and took the quickeſt ſteps towards it; and above all, were put into a right method by the advice of, the archbiſhop, to claim their eſtate with the writings of it in their hand. For above a dozen years before, in the third of this King’s reign upon a ſummon of his to the earls and barons to attend him with horſe and arms into Normandy, they held a conference together at Leiceſter, and by general conſent they ſent him word, “That unleſs he would render them their rights and liberties, they would not attend him out of the kingdom.” But that impotent demand of their liberties, by the by, did them no good, but expoſed them to ſtill more and more intolerable oppreſſions. They ſhould have gone to him according to their ſummons, they ſhould not have sent. Not to mention that his faith was plighted by the archbiſhop, lord marſhal earl of , , chief juſticiary of England, (whom he ſent as his commiſſioners to