Selections from the Great Charter, from The Great Charter

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AND if such [merchants from a hostile country] are found in our land at the beginning of war, they shall be attached* without injury to their bodies or goods, until it shall be known from us or from our principal justiciar in what way the merchants of our land are treated who shall be then found in the country which is at war with us; and if ours are safe there, the others shall be safe in our land.

And immediately after the reestablishment of peace we will remove from the kingdom all foreign-born soldiers, cross-bowmen, servants, and mercenaries who have come with horses and arms for the injury of the realm.

If any one shall have been dispossessed or removed by us without legal judgment of his peers, from his lands, castles, franchises, or his right, we will restore them to him immediately.

Moreover, all those customs and franchises mentioned above, which we have conceded in our kingdom, and which are to be fulfilled, as far as pertains to us, in respect to our men, all men of our kingdom, as well clergy as laymen, shall observe as far as pertains to them, in respect to their men.

from The Great Charter 1215

originally in Latin

Selected from ‘Readings in English History Drawn from the Original Sources’ (1908, 1922) edited Edward Potts Cheyney (1861-1947).

* Taken into custody.

Précis

The King promised not to place wartime sanctions on businessmen even from hostile nations, unless English merchants had been sanctioned abroad; but once peace came, he would send home foreign mercenaries who posed a public threat. And after undertaking to restore all confiscated property, the King required the barons to respect the Charter’s rights in their own domains too.

Questions for Critics

1. What is the author aiming to achieve in writing this?

2. Note any words, devices or turns of phrase that strike you. How do they help the author communicate his ideas more effectively?

3. What impression does this passage make on you? How might you put that impression into words?

Based on The English Critic (1939) by NL Clay, drawing on The New Criticism: A Lecture Delivered at Columbia University, March 9, 1910, by J. E. Spingarn, Professor of Comparative Literature in Columbia University, USA.

Précis

Questions for Critics

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