In the early 17th century, Britain was ruled by another unpopular and untrustworthy king, Charles I (who reigned from 1625-49) - a man who claimed to rule by divine right, and who imposed taxes without consulting Parliament. In 1626, Charles, fighting a war with Spain, levied a non-Parliamentary tax, called a "forced loan", on all taxpayers. Those who refused to pay were imprisoned without trial.

Petition of Right

Charles's leading opponent was the jurist and Parliamentarian Sir Edward Coke. In 1628, Coke drew up a "Petition of Right", a statement of the fundamental rights of the subject, which the King should respect. These rights included freedom from arbitrary arrest, from misuse of martial law, and from taxes which had not been agreed by Parliament. Coke looked back to Magna Carta for his legal precedent, and declared, "Magna Carta is such a Fellow, he will have no sovereign."

Read the Petition of Right here

However, the King refused to be bound by the Petition of Right. From 1629 until 1640, he ruled without Parliament, a period later called the ''Eleven Years Tyranny". This ended in 1640, when a Scottish rebellion forced Charles to summon a new Parliament. Yet the Commons refused to agree to the taxes the King demanded, and relations between King and Parliament worsened, leading to civil war in 1642.

Myth of Magna Carta

The 17th century saw the development of a myth of Magna Carta. It came to be seen as a document restoring ancient English rights, dating from a supposed "Golden Age" before the Norman Conquest. The rule of William the Conqueror and the kings who followed him was now called the "Norman Yoke". Many saw the trial and execution of Charles I in 1649 as a casting off of this yoke. In the words of the radical, Gerald Winstanley, "Seeing the common people of England by joint consent of person and purse have cast out Charles our Norman oppressor, we have by this victory recovered ourselves from under his Norman yoke."

Constitutional Monarchy

From the late 17th century, there were more Parliamentary acts limiting royal power, based on the precedent of Magna Carta. The Habeas Corpus Act of 1679 called for prisoners to be brought before a court promptly after arrest. The 1689 Bill of Rights drew up a list of further rights of the subject, such as of freedom of speech in Parliament. In 1701, the Act of Settlement defined the conditions under which a King or Queen could reign. As a result of these acts, Britain was given a constitutional monarchy - a monarchy whose powers were regulated and limited by a body of rules.

In the New World

Magna Carta had a great influence in the American colonies, whose founders demanded their own charters of rights from the crown. In 1639, for example, the General Assembly of Maryland agreed that "the Inhabitants of this Province shall have all their rights and liberties according to the great Charter of England."

When the colonists broke with the English Crown, in the 1770s, they appealed to Magna Carta for justification. Their rallying cry was "No taxation without representation". In 1787, after winning independence, the founders of the new Republic of the United States met in Philadelphia to draw up a constitution. They looked back to Magna Carta, and in particular its 39th clause:

"No free man shall be taken, imprisoned... outlawed, banished, or in any way destroyed, except by the lawful judgement of his peers and by the law of the land."

These words are echoed in the Fifth Amendment of the US Constitution:

"No person shall be deprived of life, liberty or property, without due process of law."

Find out more about the US constitution here