And so, in quite significant phrase the
towns zealously guarded their charters as the "title-deeds of their
liberties."
[Sidenote: The "Great Charter" (1215).]
After a while the word charter was applied in England to a particular
document which specified certain important concessions forcibly wrung by
the people from a most unwilling sovereign. This document was called
_Magna Charta_, or the "Great Charter," signed at Runnymede, June 15,
1215, by John, king of England. After the king had signed it and gone
away to his room, he rolled in a mad fury on the floor, screaming
curses, and gnawing sticks and straw in the impotence of his, wrath.[2]
Perhaps it would be straining words to call a transaction in which the
consent was so one-sided a "contract," but the idea of Magna Charta was
derived from that of the town charters with which people were already
familiar. Thus a charter came to mean "a grant made by the sovereign
either to the whole people or to a portion of them, securing to them the
enjoyment of certain rights." Now in legal usage a charter differs from
a constitution in this, that the former is granted by the sovereign,
while the latter is established by the people themselves: both are the
fundamental law of the land.
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