COMPREHENSION CHECK

Exercise 1. Answer the following questions.

a. What specific rights did Magna Carta express?

b. How many times was Magna Carta changed?

c. When did the document become a source of basic principles of the government?

d. What were the historical events that directed baronial rebellion into a demand for a solemn grant of liberties by the king?

e. When was the document known as the Articles of the Barons at last agreed upon and sealed by King John?

f. When was the final version of Magna Carta accepted by the king and the barons?

Exercise 2. Do you agree or disagree with the following statements?

a. English Great Charter meant less to contemporaries than to subsequent generations.

b. Magna Carta was a failure, for it was no more than a stage in ineffective negotiations to prevent civil war.

Exercise 3. Explain and extend the following statements.

a. Magna Carta was the first modern example of a constitution.

b. Magna Carta restated law and ensured feudal rights.

DISCUSS

Speak on the baronial rebellion and Magna Carta.

1.2 Habeas Corpus

Magna Carta (1215)laid the foundation of rights of judgment in English-speaking countries. King John was forced to promise that ‘no free man shall be taken or imprisoned except by the lawful judgment of his peers and by the law of the land’. In the Habeas Corpus Act of 1679 the British Parliament strengthened the law by imposing severe penalties upon judges and officers who refused to grant the writ of habeas corpus.The Act came about because a lady liked a drink or two. One night in 1621, Alice Robinson and her husband were holding a rowdy, drunken party at their home in High Holborn, London. A passing constableheard 'a brawling, fighting noise' and entered the house to investigate. Inside, he alleged, he found 'men and women in disordered and uncivil accompanying together', so the party-pooping policeman accusedAlice of keeping the whole parish awake with her revelry. When she swore at him, he arrested her and she was imprisoned in the Clerkenwell House of Correction.

Apparently Alice's fellow revellers missed her wild parties and pushed for her release, eventually forcing the authoritiesto bring her to trial. At the Old Bailey she told a harrowing tale, alleging that she had been stripped and given 50 lashes at the Clerkenwell House of Correction.

'I swooned,' she said, 'my flesh being torn by the whips.' She had been forced to sleep on the bare earth and fed nothing but water and black bread, which was harsh even by the standards of the time. When it transpired that she was pregnant, there was an outcry, the jury acquitted her and the constable who had taken her into custody found himself in Newgate Prison on the grounds that he had arrested her without a warrant — and the justice of the peace who had signed the warrant for her detention was reprimanded.

The result was the Habeas Corpus Act which takes its name from the first words of the writ issued toenforce it: 'Habeas corpus ad subjiciendum', which means 'You should have the body for submitting'. Once the writ had been presented a jailer had to produce the prisoner, or their corpse, within three days. This means that the authorities cannot hold a person or persons for a large amount of time before releasing them or bringing them before a court.

However, it took some time after Alice's release for the Habeas Corpus Act to reach the statute books as the Civil War was taking place at the time. In fact, the Act may not be a law at all because it was not actually approved by both Houses of Parliament. After the Restoration, the Habeas Corpus bill had to be introducedseveral times, each time being passedswiftly by the Commons before meeting stiff opposition in the House of Lords. In the end it was passed by a disgraceful piece of deception. According to the Bishop of Salisbury, Gilbert Burnet, some deceit was involved — the vote in the House of Lords was recorded as 57 to 55, even though the minute book of the Lords says that there were only 107 peers present. Realising that something was amiss, Lord Chancellor Shaftesbury, a fervent supporter of the bill, got to his feet and spoke for nearly an hour on several other matters, during which time a large number of peers entered and left the House, so it was impossible to have a recount. As Parliament was reaching the end of its session, the bill received royal assent without any further ado.

Date: 2016-01-14; view: 1110