outcome, though, has not always been to strengthen the power of those who held it. In 1215 the barons, the layer of the elite beneath the king, stood up to King John and made him sign the Magna Carta(“ the Great Charter”) at Runnymede( see Map 9, this page). This document enacted some basic principles that were significant challenges to the authority of the king. Most important, it established that the king had to consult with the barons in order to raise taxes. The most contentious clause was number 61, which stated that“ the barons shall choose any twenty-five barons of the realm they wish, who with all their might are to observe, maintain and cause to be observed the peace and liberties which we have granted and confirmed to them by this our present charter.” In essence, the barons created a council to make sure that the king implemented the charter, and if he didn’ t, these twenty-five barons had the right to seize castles, lands, and possessions“… until, in their judgement, amends have been made.” King John didn’ t like the Magna Carta, and as soon as the barons dispersed, he got the pope to annul it. But both the political power of the barons and the influence of the Magna Carta remained. England had taken its first hesitant step toward pluralism.
Conflict over political institutions continued, and the power of the monarchy was further constrained by the first elected Parliament in 1265. Unlike the Plebeian Assembly in Rome or the elected legislatures of today, its members had originally been feudal nobles, and subsequently were knights and the wealthiest aristocrats of the nation. Despite consisting of elites, the English Parliament developed two distinguishing characteristics. First, it represented not only elites closely allied to the king but also a broad set of interests, including minor aristocrats involved in different walks of life, such as commerce and industry, and later the“ gentry,” a new class of commercial and upwardly mobile farmers. Thus the Parliament empowered a quite broad section of society— especially by the standards of the time. Second, and largely as a result of the first characteristic, many members of Parliament were consistently opposed to the monarchy’ s attempts to increase its power and would become the mainstay of those fighting against the monarchy in the English Civil War and then in the Glorious