The 1215 charter is a single block of Latin text. Later editors divided it into 63 clauses, numbered for convenience. Reading it is like reading a list of grievances from a particular time and class. Most clauses deal with specific abuses; a few use language so broad that later generations could build on it.
The church
The first clause grants that the English church shall be free, with its rights and liberties intact, including free elections of bishops and abbots. This reflected Langton's influence and the recent conflict with the pope.
Feudal payments
Many early clauses address the abuses described in Level 1. Reliefs were fixed: £100 for the heir to an earl's or baron's estate, and much less for a knight. Guardians of underage heirs were forbidden to waste their estates. Heirs were not to be married to people of lower rank. Widows were not to be forced to remarry as long as they wished to live without a husband, and they were to receive their inheritance and marriage portion promptly.
Consent to taxation
Clause 12 declared that no scutage or aid, apart from three traditional payments, was to be levied except by the common counsel of the kingdom. The three exceptions were for ransoming the king's person, knighting his eldest son and marrying his eldest daughter once. Clause 14 explained how this common counsel would be gathered: by summoning archbishops, bishops, abbots, earls and greater barons individually, and others through the sheriffs. This was not yet a parliament, but it planted the idea that major taxes required the consent of those who paid them.
Justice
Several clauses tried to make royal justice fairer and more reliable. Common lawsuits were to be heard in a fixed place rather than following the king around. Fines for offenses were to be proportionate to the offense, and not so heavy as to deprive a man of his livelihood. Royal officials were to be men who knew the law.
Then come the two clauses that would become the most famous in the charter. In a close translation:
Clause 39: “No free man shall be taken or imprisoned, or deprived of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled, or ruined in any way, nor will we go against him or send others against him, except by the lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land.”
Clause 40: “To no one will we sell, to no one will we deny or delay, right or justice.”
Together they say that even the king must act through lawful process and that justice is not a commodity to be bought.
Daily life
Other clauses dealt with trade and ordinary life. Fish weirs, traps that blocked rivers, were to be removed from the Thames and the Medway, so boats could pass. There was to be one standard measure of wine, ale and corn throughout the kingdom. Merchants were to travel safely. London was to keep its ancient liberties.
The security clause
Clause 61, the security clause, created a committee of twenty-five barons to watch over the king's compliance. If he broke the charter and did not correct the wrong within forty days, the twenty-five, with the whole community of the land, could seize his castles and lands until he made amends. It was, in effect, a legal right of rebellion, and no king could accept it for long.
Who was left out
Many of the charter's protections applied to “free men,” a category that excluded the villeins, the unfree peasants who made up a large part of the population. Women appear mainly as widows and heiresses, and one clause limited a woman's right to bring an accusation of homicide to the death of her own husband. Two clauses limited the interest on debts owed to Jewish moneylenders when the debtor died leaving an underage heir, reflecting both the barons' debts and the hostility Jews faced; in 1290 Edward I would expel the Jews from England entirely.
Worked example: reading clause 39 closely
Take clause 39 apart, phrase by phrase, and ask what each meant in 1215 and what it could come to mean.
- “No free man.” In 1215, a limited group, mostly landholders. Later readers would extend it to everyone.
- “Taken or imprisoned … outlawed or exiled.” These were John's actual methods against barons who displeased him. The list is concrete, not abstract.
- “Nor will we go against him.” The king promises not to use force himself, outside legal process.
- “The lawful judgment of his peers.” For barons, judgment by fellow barons. Later generations read this as trial by jury, though historians doubt that was its original meaning.
- “Or by the law of the land.” The most powerful phrase. It does not say what the law is, only that the king must follow it. Centuries later it would be restated as “due process of law.”
The clause was written by men protecting their own privileges. But by stating a principle rather than only listing complaints, they created words that could be claimed by people they never had in mind. That is often how rights grow: a protection won by a few becomes a standard demanded by all.