Think about what life was like for commoners before the Magna Carta. Now, in at least 150 to 200 words, write an essay that compares and contrasts what life might have been like for a commoner before the Magna Carta and what it might have been like after it came into effect. Use your imagination, and create a character or characters, and describe the legal change through their eyes.

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History

Amya Donovan

4 August, 23:10

Think about what life was like for commoners before the Magna Carta. Now, in at least 150 to 200 words, write an essay that compares and contrasts what life might have been like for a commoner before the Magna Carta and what it might have been like after it came into effect. Use your imagination, and create a character or characters, and describe the legal change through their eyes.

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Maya Gallagher · Answer 1

Most of us are familiar with the Magna Carta as the first document to limit the authority of kings and declare the rule of law and the rights of the governed. But Peter Linebaugh, an historian at the University of Toledo, offers a more provocative view in an essay, " The Secret History of the Magna Carta" (Boston Review, Summer 2003). As originally declared in 1215, the Magna Carta may have validated "freedom under law," as lawyers like to crow. But several mutations in the Magna Carta, later incorporated into the document we know today, recognize the rights of commoners.