Edmund Burke

But the principles of freedom were predominant, though the thing itself was not yet fully formed.

Thus was the nation kept continually fluctuating between freedom and servitude.

These concessions were so just and reasonable, that, if we except the force, no prince could think himself wronged in making them.

This prevented the kingdom from degenerating into the worst imaginable government, a feudal aristocracy.

But the grand article, and that which cemented all the parts of the fabric of liberty, was this,--that "no freeman shall be taken, or imprisoned, or disseized, or outlawed, or banished, or in any wise destroyed, but by judgment of his…

A tribunal, a creature of mere law, independent of personal power, was established; and this separation of a king's authority from his person was a matter of vast consequence towards introducing ideas of freedom, and confirming the…

His freehold, his merchandise, and those instruments by which he obtained his livelihood were made sacred from such impositions.

But by Magna Charta, things were so ordered, that a delinquent might be punished, but not ruined, by a fine or amercement; because the degree of his offence, and the rank he held, were to be taken into consideration.

There were other provisions made in the Great Charter that went deeper than the feudal tenure, and affected the whole body of the civil government.

All these were marks of a real and grievous servitude.

As the king seized into his hands the estate of every deceased tenant in order to secure his relief, the widow was driven often by an heavy composition to purchase the admission to her dower, into which it should seem she could not enter…

Now, as the king claimed no right over his immediate tenants that they did not exercise in the same or in a more oppressive manner over their vassals, it is hard to conceive a more general and cruel grievance than this shameful market…

The ancient records of the Exchequer afford many instances where some women purchased by heavy fines the privilege of a single life, some the free choice of an husband, others the liberty of rejecting some person particularly disagreeable.

In fact, marriage was publicly set up to sale.

It was of importance to the lord that the person who received the feud should be submissive to him; he had, therefore, a right to interfere in the marriage of the heiress who inherited the feud.

But its consequent rights being once supposed, many real charges and burdens grew from a fiction made only for the preservation of subordination; and in consequence of this, a great power was exercised over the persons and estates of the…

Their idea even of liberty was not (if I may use the expression) perfectly free; and they did not claim to possess their privileges upon any natural principle or independent bottom, but just as they held their lands from the king.

The Common Law, as it then prevailed in England, was in a great measure composed of some remnants of the old Saxon customs, joined to the feudal institutions brought in at the Norman Conquest.

The Charter of the Forests had for its object the disafforesting several of those tracts, the prevention of future afforestings, the mitigation and ascertainment of the punishments for breaches of the Forest Law.

The instruments by which the barons secured their liberties were drawn up in form of charters, and in the manner by which grants had been usually made to monasteries, with a preamble signifying that it was done for the benefit of the…

Without questioning in any part the terms of a treaty which he intended to observe in none, he agreed to everything the barons thought fit to ask, hoping that the exorbitancy of their demands would justify in the eyes of the world the…

All in complete armor, and in the guise of defiance, they presented a petition, very humble in the language, but excessive in the substance, in which they declared their liberties, and prayed that they might be formally allowed and…

These were the liberties which their ancestors had received by the free concession of a former king, and these the rights which their virtue was to force from the present, if (which God forbid!) they should find it necessary to have…

The English barons had privileges, which they knew to have been violated; they had always kept up the memory of the ancient Saxon liberty; and if they were the conquerors of Britain, they did not think that their own servitude was the just…

In the oath which he administered to John on his absolution, he did not confine himself solely to the ecclesiastical grievances, but made him swear to amend his civil government, to raise no tax without the consent of the Great Council…