No sooner were the confederate nobles informed of John’s reply than they chose Robert Fitz-Walter their general, whom they called “the mareschal of the army of God and of Holy Church “; and they proceeded without further ceremony to levy war upon the King, They besieged the castle of Northampton during fifteen days, though without success; the gates of Bedford castle were willingly opened to them by William Beauchamp, its owner; they advanced to Ware on their way to London, where they held a correspondence with the principal citizens; they were received without opposition into the capital; and finding now the great superiority of their force, they issued proclamations, requiring the other barons to join them, and menacing them, in case of refusal or delay, with committing devastation on their houses and estates.  In order to show what might be expected from their prosperous arms, they made incursions from London, and laid waste the King’s parks and palaces; and all the barons, who had hitherto carried the semblance of supporting the royal party, were glad of this pretence for openly joining a cause which they always had secretly favored.  The King was left at Odiham, in Hampshire, with a poor retinue of only seven knights, and after trying several expedients to elude the blow, after offering to refer all differences to the Pope alone, or to eight barons, four to be chosen by himself, and four by the confederates, he found himself at last obliged to submit at discretion.

A conference between the King and the barons was appointed at Runnymede, between Windsor and Staines; a place which has ever since been extremely celebrated, on account of this great event.  The two parties encamped apart, like open enemies; and after a debate of a few days, the King, with a facility somewhat suspicious, signed and sealed the charter which was required of him.  This famous deed, commonly called the “Great Charter,” either granted or secured very important liberties and privileges to every order of men in the kingdom:  to the clergy, to the barons, and to the people.  The freedom of elections was secured to the clergy; the former charter of the King was confirmed, by which the necessity of a royal conge d’elire and confirmation was superseded; all check upon appeals to Rome was removed, by the allowance granted every man to depart the kingdom at pleasure, and the fines to be imposed on the clergy, for any offence, were ordained to be proportional to their lay estates, not to their ecclesiastical benefices.

The privileges granted to the barons were either abatements in the rigor of the feudal law or determinations in points which had been left by that law or had become, by practice, arbitrary and ambiguous.  The reliefs of heirs succeeding to a military fee were ascertained:  an earl’s and baron’s at a hundred marks, a knight’s at a hundred shillings.  It was ordained by the charter that, if the heir be a minor, he shall, immediately upon his majority, enter upon his estate, without paying any relief; the king shall not sell his wardship; he shall levy only reasonable profits upon the estate, without committing waste or hurting the property; he shall uphold the castles, houses, mills, parks, and ponds, and if he commit the guardianship of the estate to the sheriff or any other, he shall previously oblige them to find surety to the same purpose.