Next, he had managed
to get into a quarrel with Pope Innocent III, the famous
enemy of the Hohenstaufens. The Pope had excommunicated
John (as Gregory VII had excommunicated the Emperor
Henry IV two centuries before). In the year 1213 John had
been obliged to make an ignominious peace just as Henry IV
had been obliged to do in the year 1077.
Undismayed by his lack of success, John continued to abuse
his royal power until his disgruntled vassals made a prisoner
of their anointed ruler and forced him to promise that he
would be good and would never again interfere with the ancient
rights of his subjects. All this happened on a little island in
the Thames, near the village of Runnymede, on the 15th of
June of the year 1215. The document to which John signed
his name was called the Big Charter--the Magna Carta. It
contained very little that was new. It re-stated in short and
direct sentences the ancient duties of the king and enumerated
the privileges of his vassals. It paid little attention to the
rights (if any) of the vast majority of the people, the peasants,
but it offered certain securities to the rising class of the
merchants. It was a charter of great importance because it defined
the powers of the king with more precision than had ever been
done before. But it was still a purely mediaeval document. It
did not refer to common human beings, unless they happened to
be the property of the vassal, which must be safe-guarded
against royal tyranny just as the Baronial woods and cows
were protected against an excess of zeal on the part of the
royal foresters.
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