Page:The history of medieval Europe.djvu/530

 4 8o THE HISTORY OF MEDIEVAL EUROPE Although the Great Charter is the most important single document in English medieval history, it was not the m:st Granting of instance of a written charter in which a king of kings e before England made promises and concessions to his John people. William Rufus seems to have made merely verbal promises of good government in order to secure English support against his older brother Robert, whose claim to the throne the Norman barons were inclined to support. At any rate, whatever promises Rufus made, he did not keep them. But Henry I had issued at the open- ing of his reign a written charter of liberties in fourteen articles promising to abolish the evils of Rufus's reign. Henry II confirmed this charter at his accession, and it was taken as the precedent and model of the much longer Magna Carta. Hitherto in feudal England the nation had regularly sided with the king against the barons. The king, although at c. . a times a hard master, seemed to the people to Significance ' ^ ^ of Magna represent law and order better than the feudal lords. Under the tyranny of John, however, public opinion changed sides, and the barons, who by this time had themselves become more English, received general support in forcing the king to sign the charter. They were therefore in a sense representatives of the nation, and the provisions of the charter were beneficial to the country at large as well as to the tenants-in-chief of the king. A major- ity of the sixty-three clauses deal, it is true, with feudal mat- ters, and the greater part of these in turn are concerned with, the relations of the king with his immediate vassals. He is not to increase the amounts of their feudal reliefs, nor exceed his rights of wardship and marriage, nor take any other than the three customary feudal aids without the consent of the common council composed of his vassals. There are, however, provisions for the benefit of subvassals, of the merchants who are guaranteed standard measures and are allowed to move about freely, and of the freemen in general, while one clause mentions even the humble villein. Prominent among the provisions which benefit freemen in.