The charter of 1215 failed almost at once. Within three months it was annulled, and England was again at war. Yet the charter survived, reissued in new forms, until by the end of the thirteenth century it had become part of the fundamental law of England.

Annulment

Neither side kept the peace for long. The barons distrusted John and held on to London; John sent envoys to Rome. Because England was now a papal fief, the pope regarded himself as its overlord. On 24 August 1215, Pope Innocent III declared the charter null and void, condemning it as shameful, unlawful and unjust, forced on the king by violence. He forbade John to observe it and the barons to demand it. Stephen Langton, who refused to excommunicate the rebels, was suspended from office.

The First Barons' War

Civil war resumed. John, with hired soldiers from the continent, campaigned effectively, taking rebel castles. Desperate, the rebels did something extraordinary: they invited Louis, the son of the king of France, to take the English throne. Louis landed in May 1216, entered London and was proclaimed king there, though never crowned. By the summer, perhaps half of England's barons supported him.

Then, in October 1216, John fell ill with dysentery. Chroniclers report that as he crossed the marshy estuary called the Wash, part of his baggage, perhaps including treasure, was lost to the tide. He died at Newark Castle on the night of 18 to 19 October 1216, and was buried, as he had asked, in Worcester Cathedral.

A child king and a wise regent

John's son, Henry III, was nine years old. His guardians, led by the old knight William Marshal, made a brilliant decision. In November 1216 they reissued Magna Carta in the boy's name, with the support of the pope's representative. The reissue dropped the security clause and some others, but kept the core promises. The message to rebel barons was clear: the king's side now stood for the charter, so there was no need to support a French prince to get it.

The strategy worked. Barons drifted back to the young king. In May 1217, royal forces defeated Louis's army at the Battle of Lincoln, and in August a fleet loyal to Henry won at sea off Sandwich. Louis accepted a payment to leave England.

The Charter of the Forest

In 1217 the charter was reissued again, alongside a second, shorter document: the Charter of the Forest. Royal forests, large areas under special laws protecting the king's hunting, covered much of England, and their laws were harsh. The new charter reduced their extent, restored rights of ordinary people to gather wood and graze animals, and declared that no one should lose life or limb for taking the king's deer. To distinguish the larger document from this smaller one, people began calling it Magna Carta, the Great Charter.

1225: the definitive text

In 1225 Henry III, now in his late teens, issued the charter again, this time as a freely given grant, in return for a tax of one fifteenth on movable goods approved by the great men of the realm. The bargain mattered: liberties were confirmed in exchange for consent to taxation. The 1225 text, slightly shorter than 1215, became the standard version, and the old clauses 39 and 40 were joined as a single clause, numbered 29.

Into the statute book

Over the next century, kings confirmed the charter many times, often when they needed money. In 1297 Edward I confirmed it, and it was entered on the official record of English statutes, which is why it is often counted as the oldest statute in the English statute book. By then it was read aloud in public places, displayed in churches and treated as the foundation of English liberties.

Four surviving originals

Of the copies made in 1215, four survive: two in the British Library in London, one at Lincoln Cathedral and one at Salisbury Cathedral. One of the British Library copies was badly damaged by fire in 1731 and is now barely legible.

Worked example: why reissue a failed charter?

Put yourself in William Marshal's place in November 1216. The king is a child. A French prince holds London. Half the barons have rebelled. Why reissue a document the pope himself condemned?

• Remove the rebels' cause. The barons rebelled to get the charter. If the king grants it, the main reason to back Louis disappears.
• Drop the dangerous parts. The security clause threatened royal authority. Leaving it out made the charter acceptable to the crown and the pope.
• Turn a defeat into legitimacy. A king who governs by an agreed charter looks lawful; a foreign prince looks like an invader.
• Trade liberties for consent. Later reissues, like 1225, showed that confirming liberties could win the taxes the crown needed.

The lesson is that rights often survive not because rulers love them but because protecting them becomes useful to those in power. Marshal reissued the charter to save the dynasty. In doing so, he helped turn a failed peace treaty into a lasting foundation of law.