Magna Carta: Muse and Mentor
Confirmation by Kings and Parliament

This finely rendered miniature manuscript contains the text of Magna Carta, the Charter of the Forest, and the thirteenth-century statutes of England. The illuminated letter “E” at the beginning of the text is the first letter of the name Eduardus, or King Edward I, who confirmed Magna Carta and the Charter of the Forest in 1297. Bound volumes of the statutes of England, like the one on display, were produced in large numbers in the fourteenth century to be used as portable legal references.

This early-fourteenth-century manuscript opens with Magna Carta. The gilt letter “H” at the beginning of the text is the first letter of the name Henricus, or King Henry III, son of King John, who reissued Magna Carta (through his regent, the Earl of Pembroke) in 1216, in 1217, and then again in 1225. The Magna Carta included in this manuscript is the heavily abridged 1225 issue of the charter, which eliminated many passages that appeared in King John’s original 1215 issue, including the requirement to take counsel with the kingdom’s stakeholders before raising taxes and the provisions that empowered the barons to enforce the charter if the king violated its terms.

King Edward I reissued Magna Carta and the Charter of the Forest in 1297 by an act known as the Confirmation of the Charters. The 1297 issue was especially important because it was the first time Magna Carta was recorded in the Statute Rolls, the official registry of the statutes of England. The Confirmation of the Charters adopted the text of King Henry III’s 1225 issue of Magna Carta, which has consequently been cited in legal contexts as a statute of King Henry III. The present work was part of a collection of all English statutes based on an examination of historical sources, including a review of the medieval documents of record.

Small reference works containing the laws of England circulated in manuscript form for two hundred years before they were reproduced in print. In 1508, English printer Richard Pynson produced this small format book that contains King Henry III’s 1225 Magna Carta and England’s earliest statutes. This book was immensely popular, appearing in at least twenty editions by 1587 and inspiring the creation of many similar collections of law by competing printers. Later collections of English statutes adopted Pynson’s custom of beginning the record of statutes with Magna Carta, a practice that continues in England today.

This item, printed by John Lettou and William De Machlinia as early as 1481, is the first printed abridgment of English statutes and may be the first law book to be printed in England. Created as a handbook for lawyers, the work summarizes the law and presents it in categories. Under the category “Peers of the Kingdom” can be found a summary of Chapter 29 of King Henry III’s 1225 Magna Carta (Chapter 39 in King John’s Magna Carta), which prohibits both the imprisonment and physical punishment of a free man without the legal judgment of his peers.