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Charta   Listen
noun
Charta  n.  (Law)
(a)
Material on which instruments, books, etc., are written; parchment or paper.
(b)
A charter or deed; a writing by which a grant is made. See Magna Charta.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Charta" Quotes from Famous Books



... extent to which the Netherlands exercised an influence in shaping the future of the American Commonwealth has not been determined, and can not be, though Douglas Campbell has maintained that to the Dutch, and not to the English Puritan, nor yet to the Magna Charta, does the American Republic owe its chief debt. The theme is productive and stimulative and worthy, though the facts are indeterminate. America is attached to the Dutch Republic as a bold attempt whose failure was nobler than many successes. The Puritan exodus from Holland, when Pastor ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle

... national ideals have their roots deep down in English history. Not long ago I heard a seventh-grade class discussing the Magna Charta. It was a class in American history, and yet the events that the pupils had been studying occurred three centuries before the discovery of America. They had become familiar with the long list of abuses that ...
— Craftsmanship in Teaching • William Chandler Bagley

... Scottish peerages, he buoyed himself up with the bright hope that some clever lawyer would yet find undoubted proofs of his claims in some of the written parchments which he might procure. Sir Robert Cotton is said to have discovered one of the original vellum copies of the Magna Charta in the shop of another tailor, who, holding it in his hand, was preparing to cut up this charter of the liberties of England into tape for measuring some of England's sons for coats and trousers. The missing manuscript of the History of Scotland, from the Restoration to ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson

... feudal knighthood, the roots of our primitive constitution, were early transplanted into that soil, and grew and flourished there. Magna Charta, if it did not give us originally the House of Commons, gave us at least a house of commons of weight and consequence. But your ancestors did not churlishly sit down alone to the feast of Magna Charta. Ireland was ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke

... productions of Caxton's press. Among the manuscripts contained in it are the celebrated manuscript of the four Gospels and Acts of the Apostles, known by the name of the Codex Bezae, which was presented to the university by that distinguished reformer; Magna Charta, written on vellum; and a Koran upon cotton paper superbly executed. In the library of Trinity College, Cambridge, there are several exceedingly interesting literary curiosities; amongst others, some manuscripts in the handwriting of Milton, consisting of the original copy of the "Masque ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various

... administer the oath at the coronation of King Athelstan. Other treasures are the original Bull of Pope Leo X. conferring on King Henry VIII. the title of Defender of the Faith; and a contemporary and official copy of Magna Charta, granted by King John, and dated at Runnymede, 15th June, in the seventeenth year of his reign, which was given to Cotton by Sir Edward Dering. Both these precious documents were unfortunately damaged by the fire at Ashburnham House, but have ...
— English Book Collectors • William Younger Fletcher

... made his first stand for the fundamental principle of the English constitution. He positively refused to lend a farthing. He was required to give his reasons. He answered, "that he could be content to lend as well as others, but feared to draw upon himself that curse in Magna Charta which should be read twice a year against those who infringe it." For this spirited answer, the Privy Council committed him close prisoner to the Gate House. After some time, he was again brought up; but he persisted in ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... of Ovid had 'Traditur haec elegis ultima charta meis.'"—Dyce. (The true reading is "Raditur hic ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe

... reign, and, fresh in charms, "My throne, like Magna Charta, raise "'Mong sturdy, free-born legs and arms, "That scorn the threatened ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al

... government with the state of France, disgraced, bankrupt, and incompetent, under autocratic rule. But the moral is never drawn by Voltaire. His references to political questions are slight and vague; he gives a sketch of English history, which reaches Magna Charta, suddenly mentions Henry VII., and then stops; he has not a word to say upon the responsibility of Ministers, the independence of the judicature, or even the freedom of the press. He approves of the English financial system, whose control by the Commons he mentions, but he fails to indicate ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey

... destruction. My country was founded upon the rock of property rights and the sanctity of contracts. Both the nation and the several States are forbidden to impair the obligation of contracts, or take away life, liberty, or property "without due process of law." The guarantee is as old as Magna Charta; for "due process of law" is but a paraphrase of "the law of the land," without which no freeman could be deprived of his ...
— The Constitution of the United States - A Brief Study of the Genesis, Formulation and Political Philosophy of the Constitution • James M. Beck

... Need scarcely put your government in such a mighty flurry; If tourists' handbooks be proscribed, pray have you ever tried To find a treasonable page in Bradshaws Railway Guide? This map, again, of Switzerland—nay, man, you needn't start or Look black at such a little map, as if't were Magna Charta; I know it is the land of TELL, but, curb your idle fury— We've not the slightest hope, to-day, to find a TELL in your ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton

... originally intended to go on to Magna Charta Island, a sweetly pretty part of the river, where it winds through a soft, green valley, and to camp in one of the many picturesque inlets to be found round that tiny shore. But, somehow, we did not ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome

... contract, agreement, bargain; affidation[obs3]; pact, paction[obs3]; bond, covenant, indenture; bundobast[obs3], deal. stipulation, settlement, convention; compromise, cartel. Protocol, treaty, concordat, Zollverein[Ger], Sonderbund[Ger], charter, Magna Charta[Lat], Progmatic Sanction, customs union, free trade region; General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, GATT; most favored nation status. negotiation &c. (bargaining) 794; diplomacy &c. (mediation) 724; negotiator &c. (agent) 758. ratification, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... is each left at large to be estimated by the court, according to the more or less aggravated nature of the offence, and, as it is said, also according to the quality and condition of the parties. That a fine should, in all cases, be reasonable, has been declared by Magna Charta; and the Bill of Rights has also provided, that excessive fine, or cruel and unusual punishments, should not be inflicted; but what may or may not be unreasonable or excessive, cruel or unusual, is left entirely to the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various

... other mortal man did, or ever will; and oh! Charley, a great deal because he is Sir Victor Catheron of Catheron Royals, with a rent-roll of twenty thousand a year, and more, and a name that is older than Magna Charta. If there be any virtue in truth, there—you have it, plain, unvarnished. I like him—who could help it; but love him—no!" She clasped her hands above her head, and gazed dreamily out at the sparkling sunlit scene. "I shall be very fond of him, very proud of ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming

... whose ancestors in the darkest times excommunicated the breakers of Magna Charta do now by themselves, and their adherents, both write, preach, plot, and act against it, by encouraging Dr. Beale, by preferring Dr. Mainwaring, appearing forward for monopolies and ship- money, and if any were slow ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith

... mattered to such a little thing as I am whether King John was a good man or a bad one, or what sort of a thing Magna Charta was!" said she, reproachfully, to her book; "as if it mattered to anybody, indeed, when it was such an extremely long time ago! Eleven hundred and ninety-nine he came to the throne; and who'd care if he had never been born or never come to the throne? And ...
— Little Folks (December 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various

... speeches against Church and against State, and against the Aristocracy, and Habeas Corpus, and against Physic, and against Standing Armies, and Magna Charta, and every other rascally tyranny and oppression to which we are subjected, that I will!" Here Tom gave such a thump with the pestle, that I thought he would ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat

... memory of this poor, timid creature for saving that dear remembrance of "Matchless Mitchel." How many, like him, have thought they were preaching a new gospel, when they were only reaffirming the principles which underlie the Magna Charta of humanity, and are common to the noblest utterances of all the nobler creeds! But spoken by those solemn lips to those stern, simpleminded hearers, the words I have cited seem to me to have a fragrance like the precious ointment ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... Long before we can engage the curiosity of the child in the History of England—long before we can induce him to listen with pleasure to our stories even of Poictiers and Cressy—and (a fortiori) long before he can be taught an interest in Magna Charta and the Bill of Rights, he will of his own accord question us of the phenomena of nature—inquire how he himself came into the world— delight to learn something of the God we tell him to adore—and find in the rainbow and the thunder, in the meteor and the star, a thousand subjects of eager curiosity ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... policy. Peter, called the Great, the founder of the Russian Empire, in making it from a half-Asiatic a European State, bequeathed this policy as a sacred legacy to all his posterity, in his political testament, which is the Magna Charta of Russian power and despotism. All his successors have energetically followed that inherited direction. Alexander movingly avowed that Constantinople is the key to his own house, and his brother did and does more than all his ...
— Select Speeches of Kossuth • Kossuth

... After compelling his daughter to marry, not William of Austria, whom she loved, but Jagellon, Duke of Lithuania, who offered to unite his extensive and adjacent dominions with those of Poland, and to convert his own pagan subjects to Christianity, the nobles, in virtue of their Magna Charta, elected Jagellon (baptized under the name of Ladislas) to the throne of Poland, which thus became dynastically united (1386), ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various

... virgin gold he sees fit to encumber himself, and no one has any right at all to hinder and detain him in this procedure. I formulated that at last to myself, and repeated it over as a sort of private Magna Charta of my liberty. ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells

... Law; he formulated, more tellingly than any one else and for a people whose thought was permeated with legalism, the principles on which the integrity and ordered growth of their Nation have depended. Springing from the twin rootage of Magna Charta and the Declaration of Independence, his judicial statesmanship finds no parallel in the salient features of its ...
— John Marshall and the Constitution - A Chronicle of the Supreme Court, Volume 16 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Edward S. Corwin

... must dismiss from your minds the too common notion that there is now, in England, a governing Norman aristocracy, or that there has been one, at least since the year 1215, when Magna Charta was won from the Norman John by Normans and by English alike. For the first victors at Hastings, like the first conquistadores in America, perished, as the monk chronicles point out, rapidly by their own crimes; and very few of our ...
— Historical Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley

... Reigate Castle, built by the Saxons; where the barons of England, in the year 1212, with their followers, (frequently amounting to five hundred persons,) held their private meetings, and took up arms, previous to their obtaining Magna Charta at Runny Mead, near ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, Issue 353, January 24, 1829 • Various

... principle of justice requires such a policy? What motive of public welfare can fail to condemn it? Lands held by corporations were regarded by ancient laws as held in mortmain, or by "dead hand," and from the time of Magna Charta corporations required the royal license to hold land, because such holding was regarded as in derogation of public policy and common right. Preemption is itself a special privilege, only authorized by its supposed public benefit in promoting the settlement ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 6: Andrew Johnson • James D. Richardson

... heresy? The people were treated like a set of slaves, and stood for nothing in the designs of those great political rulers. In the very highest of the aristocracy, there lingered not a spark of the old brave spirit which wrung Magna Charta from the heart of a weak sovereign. The king or queen could fearlessly trample on every privilege of the nobility, send the proudest lords of the nation to the block, almost without trial, and confiscate ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud

... spurs, and it is apparently impossible to defend Walpole as a collector to be taken seriously. Walpole, however, collected things in a mood of fantasy as much as of connoisseurship. He did not take himself quite seriously. It was fancy, not connoisseurship, that made him hang up Magna Charta beside his bed and, opposite it, the warrant for the execution of King Charles I., on which he had written "Major Charta." Who can question the fantastic quality of the mind that wrote to Conway: "Remember, neither Lady Salisbury ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd

... the end of July, 1356. He found the Emperor wholly occupied with that famous Golden Bull, the provisions of which he settled with the States, at the diet of Nuremberg, and which he solemnly promulgated at another grand diet held at Christmas, in the same year. This Magna Charta of the Germanic constitution continued to be the fundamental law of the empire ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch

... gracefully to the bar).—Good morning, gentlemen. You behold how carefully we fulfil the letter of Magna Charta. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various

... Some of their offices and customs were of hoary antiquity. If age gives respectability, the office of constable may vie with that of king; and if the annual town-meeting is usually held in the month of March, it is because in days of old, long before Magna Charta was thought of, the rules and regulations for the village husbandry were discussed and adopted in time for ...
— Civil Government in the United States Considered with - Some Reference to Its Origins • John Fiske

... mutable in their apprehensions, doing one thing to-day, and soon again undoing what they did,—I conceive, to be judged in such an arbitrary way is repugnant to the fundamental law of England contained in Magna Charta, chap. 29, which says no freeman shall be disseized of his freehold but by the lawful judgment of his peers,—that is to say, by due process of law; which was also confirmed by the Petition of Right, by Act of Parliament, ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham

... shall we say? Let us spell out the Magna Charta of which we humbly catch sight. Let us say to the people of whom all peoples are made: "Wake up and understand, look and see; and having begun again the consciousness which was mown down by slavery, decide that everything must be ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse

... tenant's share being made his own to sell, and being preserved for his profitable use by a right to have the rent payable to his sleeping partner, the landlord, fixed by a judicial tribunal. These rights were the famous three F's—fixity of tenure, free sale, and fair rent—of the Magna Charta of the Irish peasant. If these concessions had only been made in time, they would probably have led to a strengthening of the economic position and character of the Irish tenantry, which would have enabled them to take full advantage of their new status, and meet any condition which ...
— Ireland In The New Century • Horace Plunkett

... he knew the utter contempt in which Henry held the terms of the Magna Charta which he so often violated along with his kingly oath to maintain it. But what all England did not know, De Vac had gleaned from scraps of conversation dropped in the armory: that Henry was even now negotiating with the leaders of foreign mercenaries, and with Louis IX of France, ...
— The Outlaw of Torn • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... visum fuerit eidem comiti de Rivers, vices nostras, appellatione remots." The office of constable was perpetual in the monarchy; its jurisdiction was not limited to times of war, as appears from this patent, and as we learn from Spellman; yet its authority was in direct contradiction to Magna Charta; and it is evident, that no regular liberty could subsist with it. It involved a full dictatorial power, continually subsisting in the state. The only check on the crown, besides the want of force to support all its prerogatives, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume

... own praises but stimulated other men to sing them. There was a moral infection of clap-trap in him. Strangers, modest enough elsewhere, started up at dinners in Coketown, and boasted, in quite a rampant way, of Bounderby. They made him out to be the Royal arms, the Union-Jack, Magna Charta, John Bull, Habeas Corpus, the Bill of Rights, An Englishman's house is his castle, Church and State, and God save the Queen, all put together. And as often (and it was very often) as an orator of this kind brought into ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*

... few examples which are best known, and which bear the greatest analogy to our particular case. The first to which this character ought to be applied, is the House of Commons in Great Britain. The history of this branch of the English Constitution, anterior to the date of Magna Charta, is too obscure to yield instruction. The very existence of it has been made a question among political antiquaries. The earliest records of subsequent date prove that parliaments were to SIT only every year; not that they were to be ELECTED every year. And even these annual sessions ...
— The Federalist Papers

... centuries after the Conquest, there is no doubt that the peasantry were liable to be bought and sold as slaves. Even in Magna Charta, there is a prohibition that a guardian shall not 'waste the men or cattle' in the estate of the ward: there is here no consideration for the men who might be 'wasted;' it is all for the property of the ward, which is not to ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 461 - Volume 18, New Series, October 30, 1852 • Various

... I have also made myself quite clear in the interview to which I have referred that my feelings are not anti-English, for I shall never forget that liberal government and all forms of liberalism have had their origin, ever since the Magna Charta, in that great nation whom we so often love to call our cousins. But, with all of this, can you ignore the fact that England even today, without the further power and prestige victory in the present conflict would give her, practically dominates the high seas, that she treats ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various

... is a volume of royal letters, from 1437 to the time of Charles I.. The next and last room of the manuscript department is appropriated to the ancient royal library of manuscripts, and Sir Robert Cotton's, with a few-later donations. On the table, in the middle of the room, is the famous Magna Charta of King John; it is written on a large roll of parchment, and was much damaged in the year 1738, when the Cotton library took fire at Westminster, but a part of the broad seal is ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan

... man has some rights by nature which the state ought not to disregard had no place in ancient nor medieval governments. The English Magna Charta purports to be a grant from the king and, though framed by the barons and forced upon the king, it contains no assertion of rights by nature. The rights claimed were claimed as accustomed rights previously conferred and enjoyed, such as the laws and customs of the time of Henry I. ...
— Concerning Justice • Lucilius A. Emery

... says that Magna Charta "converted the right of taxation into the shield of liberty," but it did nothing of the sort. The liberty existed before, and the right to be taxed was an efflorescence and instance of it, not a sub-stratum or a cause. The necessity ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot

... has a right never to finish anything. Certainly he has; and by Magna Charta. But he has no right, by Magna Charta or by Parva Charta, to slander decent men, like ourselves and our friend the author of the Opium Confessions. Here it is that our complaint arises against Mr. Gillman. ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey

... question, "Will it bring party success?" And to this a voteless constituency can not contribute in the smallest degree, even though it represent the Ten Commandments, the Sermon on the Mount, the Golden Rule, the Magna Charta and the ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various

... serious minds are exercised by deportation, and quite naturally. On December 13 nine Indians were arrested under a certain Indian Regulation of the year 1818, and they who reproach us with violating the glories of 1215 (which is Magna Charta) and the Petition of Rights, complain that 1818 is far too remote for us to be at all affected by anything that was then made law. Now what is the Regulation? I will ask you to follow me pretty closely for a minute or ...
— Indian speeches (1907-1909) • John Morley (AKA Viscount Morley)

... comes to notice outside the pages of a novel. He made no effort to eulogize himself. He was absorbed in generous admiration for the other man and with enthusiasm for the glorious chance that Rockefeller seemed to have to make a new Magna Charta of brotherhood between Capital and Labour. In this he was a tremendous idealist. In many respects one was forced to regret that the world somehow did not seem quite so full of brotherly intention as Mr. King said ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino

... reader remembers the way in which I was led, while teaching the Bakwains, to commence exploration, he will, I think, recognize the hand of Providence. Anterior to that, when Mr. Moffat began to give the Bible—the Magna Charta of all the rights and privileges of modern civilization—to the Bechuanas, Sebituane went north, and spread the language into which he was translating the sacred oracles, in a new region larger than France. ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie

... league for mutual protection and cooperation. The very parchment on which the terms of this union were written "has been preserved as a testimony to the early independence of the Forest Cantons, the Magna Charta of Switzerland." The formation of this confederacy may be regarded as the first combined preparation of the Swiss for that great struggle in defence of their liberties, in the history of which fact and legend, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... Englishmen for their Magna Charta and Bill of Rights, and that of Americans for their national Constitution, seem weak in comparison with the intense gratitude and reverence of the Five Nations for the "Great Peace," which Hiawatha and his colleagues established for them. Of the subsequent ...
— The Iroquois Book of Rites • Horatio Hale

... established, and the alter-service is restored. It is a time when earnest men and women cannot be trifled with on soul concerns. Their property may perish or be confiscated, but the right to unmolested worship is older than Magna Charta, and as inalienable as life itself. What is to be done? Resistance or emigration—which? Resist and die, say Cromwell and Wentworth, Eliot and Hampden. Emigrate and live, say the men and women who came by thousands from all parts of England during the reign of this monarch, and made possible ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Vol. 1, Issue 1. - A Massachusetts Magazine of Literature, History, - Biography, And State Progress • Various

... five Historical Engravings,—1. Rowena presenting wine to Vortigern. 2. King John signing Magna Charta. 3. Henry VII. proclaimed at the Battle of Bosworth Field. 4. Oliver Cromwell dissolving the long Parliament. 5. Coronation of Queen Victoria—the Peers ...
— The World's Fair • Anonymous

... influence upon her husband, Henry the scholar, was seen in the wise laws he made, and the "Charter of King Henry" is said to have been gained by her intercession. This important paper was the first step toward popular liberty. It led the way to Magna Charta, and finally to our own Declaration of Independence. The boys and girls of America, therefore, in common with those of England, can look back with interest and affection upon the romantic story of "Good Queen Maud," the ...
— Historic Girls • E. S. Brooks

... Clare, married Isabelle de Marechal. His name, as also that of his father, is among the signatories of Magna Charta, and he was a strenuous supporter of the barons against the King. Though he died in Brittany, his body was brought home and buried in Tewkesbury, at the foot of the steps leading up to the high altar. In a few months' time his widow, Isabelle, ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Abbey Church of Tewkesbury - with some Account of the Priory Church of Deerhurst Gloucestershire • H. J. L. J. Masse

... authority of Rome. He declared that the Act of Parliament, which conferred on the king the title of supreme head of the Church, was opposed both to the laws of God and man, that it was in flagrant contradiction to the Magna Charta, and that the king of England could no more refuse obedience to the Holy See than a child could refuse obedience to his father. Even after his trial and condemnation another attempt was made to induce him to submit, but he refused, and on the 6th July he finished ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance • Rev. James MacCaffrey

... to my lips: "We are none the less Englishmen because we claim the rights of Englishmen, and, saving your presence, sir, are as loyal as those who do not. And if these principles be bad," I added to my uncle, "then should we think with shame upon the Magna Charta." ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... almost a unit. And these thirteen states have spread across a continent to which have been gathered the peoples of the earth. We are the "heirs of all the ages." Our inheritance of tradition is greater than that of any other people, for we trace back not alone to King John signing the Magna Charta in that little stone hut by the riverside, but to Brutus standing beside the slain Caesar, to Charles Martel with his battle-axe raised against the advancing horde of an old-world civilization, to Martin Luther declaring his square-jawed ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various

... law, and after filling various posts, was appointed a Welsh judge in 1757 and afterwards second justice of Chester. Though an indifferent judge, his Observations on the Statutes, chiefly the more ancient, from Magna Charta to 21st James I., cap. 27, with an appendix, being a proposal for new-modelling the Statutes (1766), had a high reputation among historians and constitutional antiquaries. In 1773 he published an edition of Orosius, with Alfred's Saxon version, and an ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various

... belonging to Sir Lionel's estate and dating, in part, to the days of King John. Flicking the ash from my cigarette, I studied the ancient tower wondering idly what deeds had had their setting within its shadows, since the Angevin monarch, in whose reign it saw the light, had signed the Magna Charta. ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer

... dates and significance of the following; and state whether they are persons or books: Stratford-on-Avon, Magna Charta, Louvain, Onamataposa, Synod of Whitby, Bunker ...
— The Story of Wellesley • Florence Converse

... of England, supported and guided by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Stephen Langton, had commenced against him the struggle which was to be ended some years afterwards by the forced concession of Magna Charta, that foundation-stone of English liberties. John, having been embroiled for five years past with the court of Rome, affected to defy the excommunication which the pope had hurled at him, and of which the King of France had been asked ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... is the formal grant by Duchess Mary of the "Groot Privilegie," or Great Privilege, the Magna Charta of Holland. Although this instrument was afterwards violated, and indeed abolished, it became the foundation of the republic. It was a recapitulation and recognition of ancient rights, not an acquisition ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... answer to those who grumble at the restriction of Sunday liberty. It is only the liberty of the senses that suffers. A higher and nobler civil liberty, moral liberty, social liberty, will work out of it. Sunday is the common people's Magna Charta." ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner

... families, and show that the misfortunes which overtake the rich and noble are greater in proportion than those which overwhelm the poor. This author points out that of the twenty-five barons selected to enforce the observance of Magna Charta, there is not now in the House of Peers a single male descendant. Civil wars and rebellions ruined many of the old nobility and dispersed their families. Yet their descendants in many cases survive, and are to be found among the ranks of the people. Fuller wrote in his ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles

... is what practically took place in the George Eliot and Lewes instance. Weighed, not by the steelyard of general principle, but by the delicate chemical balance of special detail, they were not found wanting. The Magna Charta is still only a pious aspiration. 'Every man shall be tried by a jury of his peers.' How profound! For only our equals can know our travails and temptations. How, now, if we had to try Shakespeare! which of us would dare ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill

... universally condemned, though the wholesale destruction of villages in our own Indian frontier wars and the methods employed on both sides in the civil war in Cuba appear to have borne much resemblance to it. In the treatment of merchants the rule of reciprocity which was laid down in Magna Charta is largely observed, and the Conference of Brussels in 1874 pronounced it to be contrary to the laws of war to bombard an unfortified town. The great Civil War in America probably contributed not a little to raise the standard of humanity in war; for while few long ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky

... south was very much such a democracy as Rome and Greece were at some periods of their history; a democracy founded upon the privileges of the few and the exclusion of the many. Very much like the democracy of the barons of Runnymede, who, when they met together to dictate Magna Charta to King John, guarded fully their own privileges as against the king, but cared but little for the rights of the people. And so with the south—the old south. But it was an ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman

... turned very red, and got into a towering rage, and threatened to tear up the Magna Charta to spite them all. Whereat ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed

... shocks which the divisions between kings and the nobles gave to empires, the chains of nations were more or less heavy. Liberty in England sprang from the quarrels of tyrants. The barons forced King John and King Henry III. to grant the famous Magna Charta, the chief design of which was indeed to make kings dependent on the Lords; but then the rest of the nation were a little favoured in it, in order that they might join on proper occasions with their pretended masters. This great Charter, which is ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire

... the habitable globe. She does not govern one-fifth the habitable globe. She lets much of it govern itself; and it was Lord Durham, coming out as Governor-General and high commissioner at this time, who laid the foundations of England's success in colonizing. His report has been the Magna Charta and Declaration of Independence of the self-governing colonies of the ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut

... parchment. What the convention may agree upon, draw up, and the people ratify by their votes, is no constitution, for it is extrinsic to the nation, not inherent and living in it—is, at best, legislative instead of constitutive. The famous Magna Charta drawn up by Cardinal Langton, and wrung from John Lackland by the English barons at Runnymede, was no constitution of England till long after the date of its concession, and even then was no constitution of the ...
— The American Republic: Its Constitution, Tendencies, and Destiny • A. O. Brownson

... and write. The pride of the Ghadamseeah is, that all their children read and write. The whole population can read and write the Koran. This Saharan fact of the barbarians of The Desert suggests painful reflections to honest-minded Englishmen. We may boast of our liberties, our Magna Charta, our independence of character, our commerce, our wealth, the extent of the world which Providence (too good to us) has committed to our care. But after all we cannot boast of what the barbarians of The Desert boast. We cannot, dare not, assert, that every male child of our population can ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson

... universities have held before them. Naturally the method of training prescribed in the sixteenth century for the attainment of this goal is antiquated in some of its details, but it is no exaggeration, nevertheless, to speak of the Boke Named the Governour as the very Magna Charta of our education. The scheme of the humanist might be described in a word as a disciplining of the higher faculty of the imagination to the end that the student may behold, as it were in one sublime vision, the whole scale of being in its range from the lowest ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various

... day Humphrey, a serving-man no longer, followed his dear lad, not only in France, but later in England, when Magna Charta had been signed, and it was safe for them all ...
— A Boy's Ride • Gulielma Zollinger

... advantages. The destruction of the German power is not the only thing in question here; no, it concerns a great part of civilized Europe in regard to the suspension of their hard-won political liberty; and England, the people of the Magna Charta, the first free Constitution, can never be a party to that. That is why we call to you, Bernard Shaw, in the name of Europe, and ask you for your voice in ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various

... Gothorum, charta videbatur emitti, pacem cum Graeco Imperatore dissuadens, Britannos super Ligerim sitos impugnari oportere, demonstrans, cum Burgundionibus jure gentium Gallias dividi ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon

... we might collect many curious anecdotes concerning manuscripts. Sir Robert Cotton one day at his tailor's discovered that the man was holding in his hand, ready to cut up for measures—an original Magna Charta, with all its appendages of seals and signatures. This anecdote is told by Colomies, who long resided in this country; and an original Magna Charta is preserved in the Cottonian library exhibiting marks ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... by no means stayed the voice of local agitation, and the stream of petitions continued to grow. In a further letter to Governor Murray, dated December 5th, 1898, Mr Chamberlain laid down the great constitutional doctrine which is the Magna Charta of Greater Britain. Every student of colonial politics should be familiar ...
— The Story of Newfoundland • Frederick Edwin Smith, Earl of Birkenhead

... gradual subjection of the seaman to the needs of the nation, defensive or the contrary, we are confronted by an event as remarkable in its nature as it is epoch-making in its consequences. Magna Charta was sealed on the 13th of June 1215, and within a year of that date, on, namely, the 14th of April then next ensuing, King John issued his commission to the barons of twenty-two seaports, requiring them, ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson

... characteristic of the English reformers was the constant appeal to precedent, even in their most excited moods. They do not mention the rights of man; they invoke the 'revolution principles' of 1688; they insist upon the 'Bill of Rights' or Magna Charta. When keenly roused they recall the fate of Charles I.; and their favourite toast is the cause for which Hampden died on the field and Sidney on the scaffold. They believe in the jury as the 'palladium of ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen

... dissensisset, negans convenire ut apostoli, qui tum erant pauperes, iuberentur oves suas pascere subsidio temporali, et huius loco aliud quiddam substituisset: tertius, quod cum in contione dixisset 625 quosdam de charta contionari (id quod multi frigide faciunt in Anglia), oblique taxasset Episcopum, qui ob senium id solitus sit facere. Archiepiscopus, cui Coleti dotes erant egregie cognitae, patrocinium innocentis suscepit, e iudice factus patronus, ...
— Selections from Erasmus - Principally from his Epistles • Erasmus Roterodamus

... are, they form half the Magna Charta of the republic,* and the authority of the Convention is still ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady

... ever was done. From thence it fled forth, and made quick transmigration To goldy-lock'd Euphorbus, who was killed in good fashion, At the siege of old Troy, by the cuckold of Sparta. Hermotimus was next (I find it in my charta) To whom it did pass, where no sooner it was missing But with one Pyrrhus of Delos it learn'd to go a fishing; And thence did it enter the sophist of Greece. From Pythagore, she went into a beautiful piece, Hight Aspasia, the meretrix; and the next toss of her ...
— Volpone; Or, The Fox • Ben Jonson

... They acknowledge that there is a just and impartial God, and are not altogether unacquainted with the law of Christian love and kindness. They claim for themselves the broadest freedom. Boastfully they tell us that they have received from the court of heaven the Magna Charta of human rights that was handed down through the clouds, and amid the lightnings of Sinai, and given again by the Son of God on the Mount of Beatitudes, while the glory of the Father shone around him. They tell us that from the Declaration of ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various

... the Revolution showed an inclination to interfere with the management of the Church, and they positively refused to take the oath of allegiance to King William and Queen Mary until they should, on their part, have sworn to the Solemn League—and Covenant, the Magna Charta, as they termed it, ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... expenses which had been incurred by the crown officers in quartering troops in Boston. The members nobly met this demand by returning to the Governor (July 15, 1769) a grandly worded state-paper, in which, claiming the rights of freeborn Englishmen, as confirmed by Magna Charta and the Bill of Rights, and as settled by the Revolution and the British Charter, they expressly declared that they never would make provision for the purposes mentioned in the two messages. On the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various

... city and of St. Katharine's Hospital. He surrendered the Tower to the citizens, led by John, in 1191. The church of St. Peter was in existence before 1210, and the whole Tower was held in pledge for the completion of Magna Charta in 1215 and 1216. In 1240 Henry III had the chapel of St. John decorated with painting and stained glass, and the royal apartments in the Keep were whitewashed, as well as the whole exterior. In the reign of Edward III it begins to assume its modern name, as "La Blanche Tour." During ...
— Authorised Guide to the Tower of London • W. J. Loftie

... other countries, and under other governments, from their allegiance to such rulers and governments. I will proceed to vindicate Mr. Wesley, and, by the proof, saddle the lie on you! Whilst John was King of England, he had the "Magna Charta," the great charter securing, among other things, the right of trial by jury, wrung from him at the point of the bayonet. This great charter was annulled by Pope ...
— Americanism Contrasted with Foreignism, Romanism, and Bogus Democracy in the Light of Reason, History, and Scripture; • William Gannaway Brownlow

... respectively. Here is the most unreasonble and unjust distinction, made between the subjects in Britain and America; as tho' it were designed to exclude us from the least share in that clause of Magna-Charta, which has for many centuries been the noblest bulwark of the English liberties, & which cannot be too often repeated; "No freeman shall be taken or imprison'd or disseiz'd of his freehold, or liberties, or free customs, or be outlaw'd, or exil'd, ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, volume II (1770 - 1773) - collected and edited by Harry Alonso Cushing • Samuel Adams

... grown weak and impotent, the barons at Runnymede wrested Magna Charta from King John; in defiance of statute laws grown weak and impotent, the free men of England wrested their Habeas Corpus Act from King Charles; in defiance of statute laws grown weak and impotent, the colonists of America wrested a virgin empire ...
— The Law of the Land • Emerson Hough

... House officers authority to enter not only stores, but private dwellings, break open chests, boxes, and closets in search of smuggled goods. Now if there is anything that Englishmen prize, it is the liberty secured by Magna Charta. Every man's house is his castle. Writs of Assistance violated the fundamental principle of English liberty. Our great lawyer, Mr. James Otis, has immortalized his name by his masterly oration in opposition to the measure. The writs have not prevented smuggling; on the contrary, ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin

... fit congregation one winter night, and Captain Self-denial another. We shall have another painful but profitable evening before a communion season with Mr. Prywell, and so we shall eat of that bread and drink of that cup. Emmanuel's livery will occupy us one evening, Mansoul's Magna Charta another, and her annual Feast-day another. Her Established Church and her beneficed clergy will take up one evening, some Skulkers in Mansoul another, the devil's last prank another, and then, to wind up with, Emmanuel's ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte

... "Anglo-Saxons"; they shall be desperately defending themselves against certain French-speaking Scandinavians called Normans. He will deplore the defeat, but will say it was all for the best. Magna Charta he will have signed at Runnymede—probably he will have it drawn up there as well. He will translate the most famous clause by the modern words "Judgment of his peers" and "law of the land." He will represent the Barons as having behind them the voice of the whole nation—and so forth. When ...
— First and Last • H. Belloc

... he replied, "may not be beautiful, but its origins are sufficiently venerable to inspire respect. It testifies to long political stability; it is rooted in Magna Charta. We foreigners, who upset our Governments and annihilate our aristocracies every ten years, will never attain that mellow stage. One may dislike it; one dislikes the by-products of many excellent institutions. Your Government, for example, does extraordinarily ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas

... It is unanswerable now. Do not elevate the sovereignty of the States against the Constitution of the United States. It is hardly less odious than the early pretension of sovereign power against Magna Charta, according to the memorable words of Lord Coke, as ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various

... most groundless, conceit to assume as a general principle, that the rights and liberties of the subject are impaired by the care and attention of the legislature to secure them. If so, very ill would the purchase of Magna Charta have merited the deluge of blood, which was shed in order to have the body of English privileges defined by a positive written law. This charter, the inestimable monument of English freedom, so long the boast and glory of this nation, would have been at once an instrument of our ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke

... Zenith's busiest architect. It was lofty and half-timbered, with Tudor leaded casements, an oriel, a somewhat musicianless musicians'-gallery, and tapestries believed to illustrate the granting of Magna Charta. The open beams had been hand-adzed at Jake Offutt's car-body works, the hinge; were of hand-wrought iron, the wainscot studded with handmade wooden pegs, and at one end of the room was a heraldic and hooded stone fireplace which the club's advertising-pamphlet ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis

... to treat him with respect.'" (1, 409.) What Dr. Krauth objected to was not so much the theology of the Platform as, on the one hand, the intolerance which it demanded, and, on the other hand, the mutilation of the venerable Augustana, the Magna Charta of Lutheranism. Also in the controversy between J. A. Brown and Schmucker, in which the latter's teaching on natural depravity, regeneration, and justification was declared unsound, Krauth, Jr., defended his former teacher with the result that the impeachment proceedings, ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 2: The United Lutheran Church (General Synod, General - Council, United Synod in the South) • Friedrich Bente

... learning, have not been sudden in their origin nor rapid in their progress. Christianity has been preached eighteen hundred years, yet it is not now received, even intellectually, by the larger part of the human race. Magna Charta is six centuries old, but its principles are not accepted by all the nations of Europe and America; and it is not, therefore, strange that a system of public instruction, originated by the Puritans of New England, should yet be struggling against prejudice and error. ...
— Thoughts on Educational Topics and Institutions • George S. Boutwell

... the strength of its wings both in Church and State, when individuals were claiming the right to freedom of conscience in their form of worship and the people were growing more insistent for the recognition of their ancient rights and liberties, secured to them, in the first place, by the Magna Charta,—just at this time looms up the obstruction of a King so imbued with the defunct ideal of the divine right of Kings that he is blind to the tendencies of the age. What wonder, then, if the swirling waters of discontent should rise higher and higher until ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke

... the feat accomplished by Karl Marx, through his celebrated treatise on Capital, which was published between fifty and sixty years ago, and which has, since then, throughout all Europe and America, been acclaimed as the Magna Charta, or the ...
— A Critical Examination of Socialism • William Hurrell Mallock

... execution should not issue against effects of the debtor which are indispensably necessary to him to maintain his position, such as the horses of a count or the armor of a knight. (Dialog. de Scaccario.) Magna Charta extended this provision so as to include the agricultural implements and cattle of the peasantry. The moment these laws, in consequence of a false principle of humanity, except anything but what is absolutely ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher

... John of England, yielding to the insistent demand of the barons, issued the Magna Charta, (Great Charter) the first grant of English constitutional liberty, pledging the right of trial by jury and protection of life, liberty and property from unlawful deprivation. It is immediately denounced by the pope, Innocent III, who absolves ...
— The Choctaw Freedmen - and The Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy • Robert Elliott Flickinger

... Magna Carta, not that it is great in quantity, for there be many voluminous charters commonly passed, specially in these later times, longer than this is; nor comparatively in respect that it is greater than Charta de Foresta, but in respect of the great importance and weightiness of the matter, as hereafter shall appear; and likewise for the same cause Charta de Foresta; and both of them are called Magnae Char- tae Libertatum Angliae, (The Great Charters ...
— An Essay on the Trial By Jury • Lysander Spooner

... advantage, writs were issued prohibiting all persons from employing them on pain of forfeiting all their goods and chattels." In presence of so simple and effective a definition of the rights of the workingman, strikes sink into nothingness. And Magna Charta had been signed a hundred and fifty years before! That document, however, in honor of which the free and enlightened Briton of to-day is wont to elevate his hat and his voice, was only in the name and on behalf of the barons. The English people derived under it neither name, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various

... Mathewes was accused of printing, for Sparke, William Prynne's Antithesis of the Church of England. Each party put in an answer, and of these, Michael Sparke's is the most interesting. He declared that the decree of 1586 was contrary to Magna Charta, and an infringement of the liberties of the subject, and he refused to say who, beside Mathewes, had printed Prynne's book; it afterwards turned out to be William Turner of Oxford, who confessed ...
— A Short History of English Printing, 1476-1898 • Henry R. Plomer

... relating to the Francogallia: "Quomodo potest aliquis ei succensere qui est tantum relator & narrator facti? Francogallista enim tantum narrationi & relationi simplici vacat, quod si aliena dicta delerentur, charta remaneret alba." ...
— Franco-Gallia • Francis Hotoman

... the "fanatical zealots of the Protestant Detectoral Association;" in moving tones referred to the shrinking of "quiet recluses, from the gaze of a rude, unsympathizing world;" cited cases from the time of Magna Charta, down; called upon the Court to vindicate Protestant justice, ending his peroration with the aphorism of Lord ...
— Ginx's Baby • Edward Jenkins

... action while we rely upon it is the best proof of its truth. The imaginative parsimony and discipline which such a theory involves are balanced by the immense extension and certitude it gives to knowledge. It is at once an act of allegiance to nature and a Magna Charta which mind imposes on the tyrannous world, which in turn pledges itself before the assembled faculties of man not to exceed its constitutional privilege and to harbour no magic monsters in unattainable lairs from which they might issue to disturb ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana

... house of commons? Tyranny was detestable in any shape, but especially when exercised by a number of tyrants. But that, he triumphantly asserted, was not the fact or the constitution of England, and he pointed out where the law of parliament might be found by every honest man; namely, in Magna Charta, in the statute-book, and in the Bill of Rights. The first principle of the constitution is, he observed, that the subject shall not be governed by the will of any man or body of men, but by the whole legislature, and by ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... seem disposed to give. A hundred thousand Orangemen, with their colours flying, might yet meet a hundred thousand Repealers on the banks of the Boyne; and, on a field presenting so many solemn reminiscences to all, sign the Magna Charta of Ireland's independence. The Repeal banner might then be Orange and Green, flying from the Giant's Causeway to the Cove of Cork, and proudly look down from the walls of ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis

... says: "Qui enim caput nutat, oculo connivet, digitum movet in aere, &c., (ad mentis cogitata exprimendum); is non minus vere scribit, quam qui Literas pingit in Charta, Marmore, ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery

... that of Magna Charta. You will see that Sir Edward Coke, that great oracle of our law, and indeed all the great men who follow him, to Blackstone,[84] are industrious to prove the pedigree of our liberties. They endeavor to prove that the ancient charter, the Magna Charta of King John, was connected ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... as it is often called by way of pre-eminence, is the magna charta of the liberties of the Gallican Church. Founded upon the results of the discussions of the Council of Basle, it probably embodies all the reformatory measures which the hierarchy of France was desirous ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird

... do what is right, and not too large to make him lazy or careless. Well then, in neither of them is a minister handed over to a faction to try. Them that make the charges ain't the judges, which is a Magna Charta for him. ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton

... And hence, a little later, the Mayoress let it be known that she meant to give a municipal ball. The news of the ball thrilled Bursley more than anything had thrilled Bursley since the signing of Magna Charta. Nevertheless, balls had been offered by previous mayoresses. One can only suppose that in Bursley there remains a peculiar respect for land, railway stock, steam ...
— The Card, A Story Of Adventure In The Five Towns • Arnold Bennett

... to do so. To this day they regard it as the Magna Charta of their liberties. They were fully aware that under it the supreme authority passed to the Queen; but they were quite able to understand that their tribal lands were guaranteed to them. In other words, they were recognised as the owners in fee simple of the whole of New Zealand. As one of ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves

... other people of the Empire. A heavy, stubborn race, these Wirtembergers, hating their French-speaking rulers and jealously safeguarding those ancient rights and liberties accorded to them by the testament of Eberhard der Greiner in 1514. This Magna Charta of Swabia granted the people a degree of freedom which was exceedingly irksome to the Dukes of Wirtemberg. The nobles of the land who regarded themselves as too mighty to attend the petty court of Stuttgart, for the most part sulked in their castles, ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay

... for him still the most important, although to one branch of it, constitutional history, he was totally blind. So were almost all Englishmen then, even Shakespeare, whose King John contains no allusion to Magna Charta. In his work On the Inventors {582} of Things Vergil showed the depth of his insight into the importance in history of culture and ideas. While his treatment of such subjects as the origin of myths, man, marriage, religion, language, poetry, drama, music, sciences and laws ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith

... Civil War to be nullified by any change in the Constitution. So long as the Fifteenth Amendment stands, the rights of colored citizens are ultimately secure. There were would-be despots in England after the granting of Magna Charta; but it outlived them all, and the liberties of the English people are secure. There was slavery in this land after the Declaration of Independence, yet the faces of those who love liberty have ever turned to that immortal document. ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt

... Charta or The doings of the Dutch, Or capes, or towns, or verbs, or nouns Do not excite me much; But when you mention motor rides— Down by the sea for choice Or chasing games, or chocolates, I ...
— A Book for Kids • C. J. (Clarence Michael James) Dennis

... liberty and the growth of a spirit of nationality that worked to the destruction of absolute government. The power of the common people began to assert itself. In 1215, England forced from John Lackland the Magna Charta, the foundation of all the liberty of English speaking people even in modern times. The very year in which Dante was born, representatives of the townspeople were admitted as members of the English Parliament. In France, during the thirteenth century, the centralization ...
— Dante: "The Central Man of All the World" • John T. Slattery

... consider the misgovernment and illegal acts of King John. Archbishop Langton laid before the assembly the charter of Henry I., and commented on its provisions. The result was an oath, taken with acclamation, that they would, if necessary, die for their liberties. And this led up to Magna Charta. But it was a scene as ignominious as the first surrender before Pandulf, when Pope Innocent accepted the homage of King John as the price of supporting him against his barons, and the wretched King, before the altar of St. Paul, ceded his kingdom as a fief of the Holy See. The Archbishop ...
— Old St. Paul's Cathedral • William Benham

... public is here represented by the great endowed libraries of the seven universities, the British Museum," &c., &c. But prima facie, this was that selling of justice which is expressly renounced in Magna Charta; and why were proprietors of copyright, more than other proprietors, to make an "acknowledgment" for their rights? But supposing that just, why, especially, to the given public bodies? Now, for my part, I think that this admits of an explanation: nine tenths of the authors in ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey

... Diogenes soap-box, The old Elijah, Jeremiah, John-the-Baptist soap-box, The Rousseau, Mirabeau, Danton soap-box, The Karl Marx, Henry George, Woodrow Wilson soap-box. We will make the wide earth safe for the soap-box, The everlasting foe of beastliness and tyranny, Platform of liberty:— Magna Charta liberty, Andrew Jackson liberty, bleeding Kansas liberty, New-born Russian liberty:— Battleship of thought, The round world over, Loved by the red-hearted, Loved by the broken-hearted, Fair young Amazon or proud tough rover, Loved by the lion, Loved ...
— Chinese Nightingale • Vachel Lindsay

... administration were rather more severe than ever. "The proceedings of the Council were assailed by argument, eloquence, and satire, in prose and verse, in squib and essay. One number, issued just after James Franklin's release, was nearly filled with passages from 'Magna Charta,' and comments upon the same, showing the unconstitutionality of the treatment to which he had been subjected. It is evident that a considerable number of the people of Boston most heartily sympathized with the Courant in its gallant contest ...
— From Boyhood to Manhood • William M. Thayer

... of parchment in the British Museum to-day, attests to the keeping of this appointment. That old Oak at Runnymede, under whose spreading branches the name of John was affixed to the Magna Charta, was for centuries held the ...
— The Evolution of an Empire • Mary Parmele

... instance, is meant by the territory to the north of the Vaal River? According to the letter of the agreement, Messrs. Hogg and Owen ceded all the territory between the Vaal and Egypt. This historical document was the Charta of the new-born South African Republic. Under its provisions, the Boers, now safe from interference on the part of the British, established their own Government and promulgated their ...
— Cetywayo and his White Neighbours - Remarks on Recent Events in Zululand, Natal, and the Transvaal • H. Rider Haggard

... fourteen northern counties from the State. When Congress changed the northern boundary of Illinois, it had deviated from the express provisions of the Ordinance of 1787, which had drawn the line through the southern bend of Lake Michigan. This departure from the Magna Charta of the Northwest furnished the would-be secessionists with a pretext. But an editorial in the Northwestern Gazette and Galena Advertiser, January 20, 1842, naively disclosed their real motive. Illinois was overwhelmed ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson

... a Boy and his Friends. Edited by Henry Randall Waite. Old Ocean. By Ernest Ingersoll. Door Yard Folks. Amanda B. Harris. Magna Charta Stories. Arthur Gilman and others. Great Composers. Hezekiah Butterworth. The Travelling Law School. Benjamin Vaughan Abbott Pleasant Authors. Amanda ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Vol. II, No. 6, March, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various

... Ashbourne, whom I had not seen since I met them some years ago under the hospitable roof of Lord Houghton. Lord Ashbourne was then Mr. Gibson, Q.C. He is now the Lord Chancellor of Ireland, and the author of the Land Purchase Act of 1885, which many well-informed and sensible men regard as the Magna Charta of peace in Ireland, while others of equal authority assure me that by reversing the principle of the Bright clauses in the Act of 1871 it has encouraged the tenants to expect an eventual concession of the land-ownership to them on merely ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (1 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert

... named originally after the material upon which they were painted or drawn. Map from Mappa, meaning cloth, and chart from charta, meaning parchment. Even today maps are made on cloth when for use in the open by cyclists, military men, and so forth, and charts are those maps filling the needs of seamen. Savage tribes used maps made of ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts

... officials, giving them and their deputies a general power to enter houses and stores where it might be suspected that contraband goods were concealed. This was a violation of one of the dearest principles of Magna Charta which recognizes the house of every Briton as his castle. The idea of such latitude being given to "the meanest deputy of a deputy's deputy" created general indignation and alarm. It might cover the grossest abuses, and no man's privacy would be free from the intrusions of these ministerial ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various

... contents of the Twelve Tables, which is really as monstrous as if we could fancy ourselves reading in the pages of a native historian of mark, Hume, Henry, or Lingard, some blunder, into which a schoolboy could not fall, about the contents of Magna Charta, the Bill of Rights, the Declaration of Rights, or any other well known English law, on which the constitution of the country is primarily founded. In a work given out as written by Tacitus we are told that the Twelve Tables first fixed interest for usury at an ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross



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