For about two centuries after 1297, Magna Carta remained part of English law, but it gradually faded from public excitement. Then, in the seventeenth century, during a fierce struggle between kings and Parliament, it was rediscovered, reinterpreted and turned into a weapon. Much of what people now believe about Magna Carta comes from this period.

Quiet centuries

In the fourteenth century, Parliament passed statutes that expanded the charter's meaning. A statute of 1354 restated clause 29 so that it protected not only “free men” but any man “of whatever estate or condition he may be,” and it used the phrase “due process of law” in place of “the law of the land.” This phrase would have a long future, especially in America.

By the Tudor era, however, the charter attracted little attention. Shakespeare's play King John, written in the 1590s, does not mention Magna Carta at all. Tudor monarchs ruled powerfully with Parliament's cooperation, and the charter seemed a medieval relic.

The Stuarts and divine right

In 1603 James VI of Scotland became James I of England, beginning the Stuart dynasty. James believed in the divine right of kings, the idea that monarchs receive their authority from God and answer to God alone. His son Charles I, king from 1625, shared that view. Both clashed with Parliament over taxation, religion and the limits of royal power.

Sir Edward Coke

The central figure in the charter's revival was Sir Edward Coke (1552 to 1634), a brilliant and combative lawyer who served as chief justice and later as a leader in Parliament. Coke argued that the common law was ancient and supreme, binding even the king, and that Magna Carta was its great declaration. He read the charter as protecting the liberties of all English people, including trial by jury and freedom from imprisonment without cause.

In a parliamentary debate in 1628, Coke declared: “Magna Carta is such a fellow, that he will have no sovereign.” He meant that the charter's protections could not be overridden by the king's claim to special powers. His written commentary on the charter, published after his death, shaped how lawyers understood it for generations.

Historians now note that Coke read his own concerns back into the medieval text. The barons of 1215 had not imagined trial by jury as we know it, nor rights for all subjects. But Coke's interpretation was politically powerful precisely because it claimed ancient authority.

The Petition of Right, 1628

In 1626 to 1627 Charles I raised money through a forced loan, and imprisoned gentlemen who refused to pay without stating any charge. In the Five Knights' Case (1627), the court refused to release them, accepting that the king could imprison by his special command. Parliament responded in 1628 with the Petition of Right, drafted largely by Coke and citing Magna Carta. It declared illegal taxation without Parliament's consent, imprisonment without cause shown, forced billeting of soldiers in private homes and the use of martial law in peacetime. Charles accepted it reluctantly and then largely ignored it.

Civil war and after

Conflict between Charles and Parliament led to the English Civil War (1642 to 1651) and the king's execution in 1649. Radicals in the war, such as the Levellers, invoked Magna Carta while also arguing that it did not go far enough. After the monarchy was restored, Parliament passed the Habeas Corpus Act of 1679, strengthening the old remedy by which a prisoner could demand to be brought before a court so a judge could decide whether the detention was lawful. In the Glorious Revolution of 1688, James II was replaced by William and Mary, and the Bill of Rights of 1689 confirmed Parliament's control of taxation and limits on royal power. Each of these steps drew on the language and prestige of Magna Carta.

Worked example: Coke's argument against imprisonment

Picture Coke arguing in Parliament in 1628 about the knights imprisoned for refusing the forced loan. Trace how he used the charter.

1. The text. Clause 29 says no free man shall be imprisoned except by the lawful judgment of his peers or the law of the land.
2. The interpretation. “The law of the land” means the common law and due process, not the king's personal command.
3. The application. The knights were imprisoned by the king's order, with no charge stated and no trial. Therefore their imprisonment violated the charter.
4. The remedy. Courts must be able to demand the cause of any imprisonment, through habeas corpus, and release those held without lawful cause.

Each step is plausible, but the second does a lot of work. Coke made a medieval clause speak to a seventeenth-century problem by interpreting it boldly. Some call this distortion; others call it the way living law grows. Either way, his reading became the one that history remembered, and the right to challenge one's imprisonment before a court is now protected in constitutions around the world.