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Rethinking the Age of Reform: Britain 1780-1850
Editors: Arhtur Burns and Joanna Innes
Cambridge University Press, 2003
Everywhere the focus is on Democracy nowadays, and one constantly hears references to the significance of Magna Charta in this context, but Magna Charta was not specifically a progressive or democratic document. It was important to the extent that it reasserted some of the ancient privileges of Anglo-Saxon England, but it primarily asserted the rights of feudal barons against an overbearing feudal monarch.
Prior to the tenth century Norman Conquest, the Anglo-Saxon populace enjoyed a form of constitutional, virtually elective, monarchy they had brought with them from their German homeland. The king was king of the English (the cyning or 'father of the kin'), and he was aided by a council of nobles whose authority originated in their descent from the kings of lesser, local tribes. The common freemen had their rights as blood members of the overall polity. The election of a king required the approval of the people and, in theory at least, even war required the assent of the people, who had a right to be called to a witangemoot and be consulted in all matters of significance. But the Norman conquest of England brought fully developed feudalism to England. The victorious Norman king came as a conqueror, and (although related...