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The real story of Henry and Matilda is still to be told. The princess made a stipulation. Before she would leave the convent and become his wife, he must sign a charter which Englishmen had been praying for, a guarantee of the rights of individuals and a promise to relinquish some at least of the dictatorial practices of his father and brother; in other words, a return to constitutional rule as understood in the time of Edward the Confessor.

Henry agreed and the Charter was duly signed. It was a great historic document from many standpoints. Not only did it repudiate the concept of absolute rule which William I had imposed on the people, a necessity of conquest, but it named and denounced the evils of William II—all the ingenious ideas on inheritance and wardship which Ralph Flambard had invented, and most particularly the delay in appointments to church posts which had been the Red King’s favorite misdemeanor. It specified that certain taxes only should be levied on the baronage and other landowners instead of the oppressive opportunism of exaction which had been the method of the first two Norman kings. It went further than that and established some exemptions for the common man from the ruthless tyranny of the nobility. “And I also command,” it read, “that my barons conduct themselves in this manner toward the sons, daughters, and wives of their tenants.” It promised, openly and unequivocally, to return to the laws which had existed in the time of Edward, which carried the implication of government with the consent of the governed.

The Charter of Henry I was the forerunner of Magna Charta and as such should be ranked high among the historic documents of all time. What farseeing mind conceived the Charter? What hand worded its clauses? It could not have been Henry’s work. No king, at least not one who combined with a highly developed capacity for government the calculating selfishness which Henry was to display later, would thus forge shackles for his own wrists. It was not the work of a Norman. Most of the aristocracy were for Robert at the start, and none was close enough to the landless prince to lend him advice at the time of his seizure of the throne; and had there been such, the advice would not have been in this direction. There is no hint in the chronicles of the day of a leader among the Anglo-Saxons of the stature to dictate terms to the new King.

One early authority at least attempted to give the credit to Matilda: Robert of Gloucester, who wrote a history of Norman times in limping verse. In one place he declares:

Many were the good laws that were made in England,

Through Maude the good queen, as I understand.

It would be absurd to assume that a girl who had lived most of her life in the seclusion of a nunnery would reach this realization of the needs of the nation. The laws referred to in the doggerel record of Master Robert of Gloucester must have been the writs issued throughout Henry’s reign in which individual injustices were righted at the Queen’s behest. The means by which Henry was induced to sign is a different matter, and here it is not hard to detect the hand of the bride who was to become known as the Good Queen. Who else was in a position to force his consent? Henry was dependent at this stage on the support of the people, but so also had been William Rufus, and for the same reason (the superior right of Robert, the first-born son, and the tendency of the Norman nobility, who did not want England and the duchy separated, to back him), and the Red King had set an example in handling the situation which would appeal mightily to Henry and which he would have followed if left to make his own decision.

If further proof is needed, there is the elaborate system of precautions which was adopted. One hundred copies of the Charter were made, and these were distributed throughout the kingdom, one being deposited in each of the cathedrals and the more important of the monasteries. Here they were open to inspection and scrutiny; here they lay as evidence of the King’s promises, the surety of the rights of man. Again it must be pointed out that Henry himself would not have conceived this method of proclaiming the limitations of his own power, nor would he have carried it out of his own free will. Some force was at work, some influence strong enough to bring him to a decision so foreign to his arrogant nature. He would have rejected political pressure: that much is certain in the light thrown on his character in succeeding years. But a man in love (and by this time Henry was determined to have as consort and bedfellow the fair and hard-to-attain Saxon princess) will yield to gentle persuasion, particularly if he is sure that later he can rid himself of the inconvenience of compliance. The credit for winning Henry over to this method of registration of his promises must be awarded to Matilda if for no other reason than the absolute lack of any other acceptable explanation.

But it is too much to assume that the gentle lady saw the need for some such check and that she worked out the plan herself. Someone prompted her. Here is a mystery which can never be solved and which nags at the imagination. Was there in England at this time a man with the sagacity of a Dunstan or Godwine, some mute inglorious Simon de Montfort? Did such a man, a modest thane or courageous priest, perhaps, enjoy the opportunity of talking to the princess in the nunnery and of converting her to his own ideals? Did he also advise her on the answers she was to give before the Council at Lambeth so that the chance of seating her on the throne beside Henry would not be missed?

The records have no hint of such a man, but that does not mean he did not live. If he existed, he must be given credit for this first sublime vision of the way freedom could be won for mankind. His was the first effort to limit the power of kings by legal statute, openly arrived at and openly proclaimed.

This, however, is not the whole story. One hundred years later the barons of England rose against John, the extremely bad King who occupied the throne at the time, and forced him to sign Magna Charta in which it was established that man enjoyed certain inviolable rights. When the need for this universal law was felt, it was pointed out by Stephen Langton, Archbishop of Canterbury, that the Charter of Henry I contained the basis for the new understanding. And now we come to the final phase of the mystery and, perhaps, to a confirmation of certain beliefs or theories. Of the hundred copies which had been distributed and displayed, one only could be found (later two more were discovered, at York and St. Albans), and this was produced by Stephen Langton himself. It served as the starting point in the drawing up of the Great Charter.

What had happened to the other copies? It is inconceivable that documents of such supreme importance could have been lost in a sudden wave of carelessness taking hold of all the clerical custodians. A few might have been stolen or mislaid, but not ninety-seven out of a hundred! Historians who have commented on this very strange fact have assumed that Henry himself was responsible. Once married to the lady of his choice, and with a secure hold on the throne, he is supposed to have gone to some pains to gather up and destroy the proofs of his earlier weakness. This is an entirely reasonable explanation. Henry from the start had ruled as he pleased and without any concern for these fair promises he had made his subjects, but it would be much more comfortable to be freed of the physical existence of the Charter. But if Henry took it on himself to make away with the evidence, it becomes clear indeed that the Charter was not his own idea and that he had not been responsible for its distribution.

This leads to another interesting speculation. The power was in the King’s hands to hunt down and destroy each copy, and this he would have done if some special effort had not been made earlier to thwart him. Can it be that the same sagacious mind which gave birth to the Charter foresaw the likelihood of a change of heart on the part of its signer and made sure that at least one copy would survive in spite of everything? The fact that it was Stephen Langton who produced it suggests that it had been kept at Canterbury. Had the conscience of Anselm seen the need for precautions against any attempts later to do away with it? The pleasantest supposition of all, of course, is the possibility that it was the Queen herself who was responsible.

And why have the eyes of the world focused on Magna Charta and overlooked the earlier Charter which prompted it? Was it because Magna Charta was wrung spectacularly from the perfect model of a wicked king by the awakened will of a people in arms, while nothing definite is known of the genesis of the earlier measure?