Magna Carta: The Delivery of Liberty

“Dan Jones has an enviable reward for telling a dramatic story whereas on the similar time inviting us to think about severe matters like liberty and the seeds of consultant authorities.” —Antonia Fraser

From the New York Occasions bestselling creator of The Plantagenets, a vigorous, action-packed historical past of how the Magna Carta got here to be—by the creator of Crusaders.

 

The Magna Carta is revered world wide because the founding doc of Western liberty. Its rules—even its language—will be present in our Invoice of Rights and within the Structure. However what was this unusual doc and the way did it acquire such legendary standing?

Dan Jones takes us again to the turbulent yr of 1215, when, beset by international crises and cornered by a rising home rise up, King John reluctantly agreed to repair his seal to a doc that may change the course of historical past. On the time of its creation the Magna Carta was only a peace treaty drafted by a bunch of insurgent barons who have been uninterested in the king’s excessive taxes, arbitrary justice, and limitless international wars. The delicate peace it established would final solely two months, however its rules have reverberated over the centuries. 

Jones’s riveting narrative follows the story of the Magna Carta’s creation, its failure, and the warfare that subsequently engulfed England, and charts the excessive factors in its surprising afterlife. Reissued by King John’s successors it protected the Church, banned illegal imprisonment, and set limits to the train of royal energy. It established the precept that taxation have to be tied to illustration and paved the way in which for the creation of Parliament. 

In 1776 American patriots, impressed by that long-ago defiance, dared to select up arms in opposition to one other English king and to demand much more far-reaching rights. We consider the Declaration of Independence as our founding doc however those that drafted it had their eye on the Magna Carta.