Content
Magna Carta was originally written in Latin. A large part of the Charter at Runnymede was copied, nearly word for word, from the Charter of Liberties of Henry I, issued when Henry became king in 1100, in which he said he would respect certain rights of the Church and the barons, for example not forcing heirs to purchase their inheritances.
As the Charter went through various issues many of the clauses included in the Runnymede charter were removed. Some clauses would form a supplementary Charter in 1217, the Charter of the Forest.
It is worth emphasising that the 1215 charter was not numbered and was not divided into paragraphs or separate clauses. The numbering system used today was created by Sir William Blackstone in 1759, and therefore should not be used to draw any conclusions regarding the intentions of the original creators of the charter.
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