Its real and lasting importance is due to its being a written document--for the first time in England it was down in black and white, for all to read, what the several rights and duties of King and people were, and in what the chief points of the Constitution consisted.
[Illustration: MAGNA CHARTA A facsimile of the Original in the British Museum.] The Great Charter is a great table of laws.

It marks the beginning of written legislation, and anticipates Acts of Parliament.

Unwritten laws and traditions were not abolished: they remain with us to this day; but the written law had become a necessity when "the bonds of unwritten custom" failed to restrain kings and barons.

The Great Charter also took into account the rights of free men, and of the tenants of the King's vassals.
If the barons and knights had their grievances to be redressed, the commons and the freeholding peasants needed protection against the lawless exactions of their overlords.[12] Sixty-three clauses make up Magna Charta, and we may summarise them as follows:-- (1) The full rights and liberties of the Church are acknowledged; bishops shall be freely elected, so that the Church of England shall be free.[13] (2-8) The King's tenants are to have their feudal rights secured against abuse.

Widows--in the wardship of the Crown--are to be protected against robbery and against compulsion to a second marriage.
(9-11) The harsh rules for securing the payment of debts to the Crown and to the Jews (in whose debts the Crown had an interest) are to be relaxed.
(12-14) No scutage or aid (save for the three regular feudal aids--the ransom of the King, the knighting of his eldest son, and the marriage of his eldest daughter) is to be imposed except by the Common Council of the nation; and to this Council archbishops, bishops, abbots, earls, and greater barons are to be called by special writ, while all who held their land directly from the King, and were of lesser rank, were to be summoned by a general writ addressed to the sheriff of the county.