Magna Carta
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Magna Carta was sealed by King John of England at Runnymede on 15 June 1215, under pressure from rebel barons who had captured London. The charter of sixty-three clauses did not create democracy: it was a feudal document protecting the privileges of the baronage, listing grievances about scutage, fishing weirs, forest law and the sale of justice. Yet two of its clauses became famous. Clause 39 said that no free man should be seized or dispossessed except by the lawful judgement of his peers or by the law of the land, and clause 40 promised that to no one would we sell, deny or delay right. Innocent III annulled the charter within ten weeks and England fell into civil war, but it was reissued in 1219, 1225 and 1297, and by the reign of Edward Coke it had become a weapon against the Stuart claim to rule without Parliament. The American colonists quoted it against George III, and the phrase due process of law now appears in the fifth and fourteenth amendments of the United States constitution. The 1215 text has been repealed almost entirely, but the idea that power is bound by law survived it. John ignored the charter until his death in 1216, and the barons soon invited a French prince to replace him.