(
Latin for "
the Great Charter"), also called (Latin for "
the Great Charter of the Liberties"), is a
charter agreed by
King John of England at
Runnymede, near
Windsor, on 15 June 1215. First drafted by the
Archbishop of Canterbury to make peace between the unpopular King and a group of rebel
barons, it promised the protection of church rights, protection for the barons from illegal imprisonment, access to swift justice, and limitations on
feudal payments to
the Crown, to be implemented through a council of 25 barons. Neither side stood behind their commitments, and the charter was annulled by
Pope Innocent III, leading to the
First Barons' War. After John's death, the regency government of his young son,
Henry III, reissued the document in 1216, stripped of some of its more radical content, in an unsuccessful bid to build political support for their cause. At the end of the war in 1217, it formed part of the peace
treaty agreed at Lambeth, where the document acquired the name Magna Carta, to distinguish it from the smaller
Charter of the Forest which was issued at the same time. Short of funds, Henry reissued the charter again in 1225 in exchange for a grant of new taxes; his son,
Edward I, repeated the exercise in 1297, this time confirming it as part of England's
statute law.