9781422284155

The Magna Carta

When King John ruled England, he kept raising taxes and forcing his knights to fight in fruitless foreign wars. The knights decided that they wanted him to run the country more fairly, so in 1215, they wrote a document, the Magna Carta (meaning “Great Charter” in Latin), and made him sign it. It gave the knights certain rights and limited the king’s power, ensuring that he obeyed the law. Written by noblemen, the Magna Carta talks only about the rights of the nobility, but later on, people came to believe that everyone in a democracy should have rights, too.

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Understanding the Constitution