But the authority of Magna Carta does not rest alone upon the
compact with John. When, in the next year, (1216,) his son, Henry
III., came to the throne, the charter was ratified by him, and
again in 1217, and again in 1225, in substantially the same form,
and especially without allowing any new powers, legislative,
judicial, or executive, to the king or his judges, and without
detracting in the least from the powers of the jury. And from the
latter date to this, the charter has remained unchanged.
In the course of two hundred years the charter was confirmed by
Henry and his successors more than thirty times. And although
they were guilty of numerous and almost continual breaches of it,
and were constantly seeking to evade it, yet such were the
spirit, vigilance and courage of the nation, that the kings held
their thrones only on the condition of their renewed and solemn
promises of observance. And it was not until 1429, (as will be
more fully shown hereafter,) when a truce between themselves,
and
a formal combination against the mass of the people, had been
entered into, by the king, the nobility, and the "forty shilling
freeholders," (a class whom Mackintosh designates as "a few
freeholders then accounted wealthy," [1]) by the exclusion of all
others than such freeholders from all voice in the election of
knights to represent the counties in the House of Commons, that a
repetition of these confirmations of Magna Carta ceased to be
demanded.
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