Magna Carta
John, by the grace of God, king of England, lord of Ireland, duke of Normandy and Aquitaine, and count of Anjou in the meadow which is called Runnymede, between Windsor and Staines, on the fifteenth day of June, 1215, signed the Great Charter in the presence of assorted heavily armed peers of the realm, who assured him it was the right thing to do.
The British Library has pictures of the Magna Carta available, and Wikipedia has a nice discussion of the document.
The Magna Carta of 1297 is permanently residing in the US National Archives.
The Avalon Project’s translation of the 1215 version with an index and definitions.
John abided by the charter for several months, before he returned to business as normal, but the principle was established – no one is above the law [no matter what John Yoo says].
2 comments
I find some irony in the fact that the copy of Magna Carta that I have seen, in the National Archives in Washington, is owned and loaned by… you got it… Ross Perot. Nothing says “take a stand against absolute power” quite like ownership of one of the original hand copies of that document by Perot.
(I’m sorry if you’re an admirer; I find Perot one of the more autocratic individuals to have aspired to high office in the U.S. He is possibly even more autocratic in nature than Texas House Speaker Tom “Otto” Craddick.)
You may have seen a movie about his “rescue” of his contractors in Iran. Do you know what they were doing in Iran? His company, in many instances, did not “play nice”, and was the contractor of choice for a lot of very “unkind” people.
I have a hard time supporting someone who is upset to discover that people in the Navy use bad language. That was the basis for his early discharge from the Navy.
If he had become President there would have been an anti-UFO defensive ring around the White House.
I know more about him than I want, and things I would like to say but can’t because of classification.