It appears that the pervading view in our country has it that Magna Carta was the starting point for the civil liberties we now enjoy. The origin of this notion is somewhat obscure. It stems neither from our Founding Fathers nor from the 17th century colonists who laid the foundations of our country.
Magna Carta is mostly a common law document that spells out crimes, who stands in judgment of them, and what the punishment should be. The barons made sure that it protected their status and that of all “free men.” all free men, which included the barons, knights and the free peasantry and which formed a small portion of proportion of the population (British Library, www.bl.uk). It offers nothing for the common people. Three clauses address matters of governance that the nobles extorted from King John in June of 1215. They put some bounds on the expensive taxation John had levied to finance his failed military campaigns in France.
At best Magna Carta was one small step in the path to restoration of old Saxon customs in which generals and kings were elected by those who directly depended on their competence. The Norman invasion of 1066 led to the replacement of all nobility with a more feudal sort. Magna Carta was both endorsed and ignored by every monarchy up to the invasion of England by, and ascension to the Crown of, William and Mary in 1689, known as the Glorious Revolution.
William was the Prince of Orange-Nassau and the Stadholder (military leader) of the Dutch Republic. There his family had experienced for more than a century the liberties of free speech and religious freedom, the rule of law, and the republican, participatory form of government that was founded in 1477 with the Great Privilege. Under William's rule we saw the Bill of Rights, the Tolerance Act, and the "permanent" parliament. All but forgotten Magna Carta found a brief revival by Sir Edward Coke in the 1620s. He was looking for arguments to limit the power of the throne.
If the ancient document was indeed important to the development of liberties in the United States, we would expect that it be mentioned often in the discourse of the Founding Fathers. This author found 97 references to it in the whole of documents of the Founding Fathers during all of their lifetimes (Founders Online). Most mentions are in connection with common law. Many are merely an indication of a moment in time. Very few mention the document in reference to governance or liberties, and those that do, point out its insignificance.
In his speech before Congress on June 8, 1789, James Madison said, “Magna Charta does not contain any one provision for the security of those rights, respecting which, the people of America are most alarmed. The freedom of the press and rights of conscience, those choicest privileges of the people, are unguarded in the British constitution.” In his Report of 1800, he similarly assaulted England’s Bill of Rights as providing no guarantees. At that time, the rights that Madison speaks of existed only in the Dutch Republic.
This would explain why James Madison, when researching a "more perfect union" which resulted in our Constitution, devoted the plurality of his attention to the Dutch Republic. Before finding their way to America, the earliest colonists had found refuge in the Netherlands. They adopted the Republic's values and transported them across the ocean to found their little republics on the Atlantic Seaboard.
Mau VanDuren, author of "Many Heads and Many Hands, James Madison’s Search for a More Perfect Union.”