How did the Magna Carta affect the power of the king?

 (Asked on Quora). Here is my answer.

The Magna Carta was signed on the 15th of June 1215 by the English king John (aka Lackland) and the rebel barons at Runnymede (at a location near to Windsor Castle). The agreement was revolutionary in that it went beyond the standard grievances to provide a framework for political reform and the safeguarding of rights of free men (not serfs). A recourse to swift justice, opposition to illegal imprisonment and restrictions on taxation and feudal payments were the mainstay of the Great Charter. Its long term effect was to limit monarchical power.

The Signing of the Magna Carta source: Britannica

Nevertheless as a political treaty in the immediate it was largely a failure. John used a clause from an earlier agreement to win over a rebuke of the treaty by Pope Innocent III. This expedited its demise as a working agreement and necessitated the onset of the First Baron War (1215–1217).

John himself would pass away in 1216 and but what followed in the wake of the original agreement were various versions of the charter in 1216, 1217, 1225 and 1297. These had the cumulative impact of further entrenching the ethos of the original charter in English political and legal theory.

It was the Charter that underpinned the notion of “Due Process of Law” - a phrase that was coined under the reign of Edward III (1327–1377). During the War of the Roses (1455–1487) it was regularly cited with a mechanically printed edition becoming available in 1508.

The English jurist Edward Coke who was highly influential during the reign of James I (1603-1625) made extensive use of the Carta which he used to advance the idea of the Petition of Right. This forms the basis for Individual protection against the power of the state and plays a significant role in the US Constitution (3rd, 5th, 6th and 7th Amendments).

The Magna Carta source: History.com

The Magna Carta was regularly cited in the political upheaval of the 17th and 18th centuries to argue against the divine right of kings and was effectively used to argue against the position of Charles I during the time of the English Civil War. It would also play a role in the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and greatly influenced the American Revolution and of the course the thinking of the American Founding fathers.

Within a contemporary context today the Magna Carta plays both a legacy and a living role as exemplified by Clause XXIX shown here:

‘NO Freeman shall be taken or imprisoned, or be disseised of his Freehold, or Liberties, or free Customs, or be outlawed, or exiled, or any other wise destroyed; nor will We not pass upon him, nor condemn him, but by lawful judgment of his Peers, or by the Law of the Land,”