Magna Carta

This is a fully revised and extended edition of J. C. Holt's study of Magna Carta, the Great Charter, which sets the events of 1215 and the Charter itself in the context of the law, politics and administration of England and Europe in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The author has added to the first edition (1965) further comment on the development of local liberties, the significance of the famous provision nullus liber homo, the political manoeuvres of 1215, and the later history of the Charter, and many other matters. The book is broadened by the addition of an extensive chapter on justice and jurisdiction which embodies an entirely new approach to some of the most crucial and longest-lasting provisions of the Charter. New appendices have been added. Some of these are concerned with the political crisis of 1213–15, for example the alleged meeting at Bury St Edmunds; others examine the Anglo-Norman translations of the Charter and related documents, or the development of perpetual liberties. References are brought up to date throughout, and there is an entirely new index.

About the Author

Sir James Holt FBA was Professor of Medieval History, University of Cambridge, and Master of Fitzwilliam College from 1981–8. He died in 2014. George Garnett is a Fellow and Tutor of St Hugh's College, Oxford. He is the author of Conquered England: Kingship, Succession, and Tenure, 1066–1166, Marsilius of Padua and 'the Truth of History', and The Norman Conquest: A Very Short Introduction. He was also joint editor, with John Hudson, of Law and Government in Medieval England and Normandy: Essays in Honour of Sir James Holt. John Hudson is Professor of Legal History at the University of St Andrews and William W. Cook Global Law Professor at University of Michigan Law School. His books include The Formation of the English Common Law and The Oxford History of the Laws of England, Volume 2: 871–1216. He was also joint editor, with George Garnett, of Law and Government in Medieval England and Normandy: Essays in Honour of Sir James Holt.