A third myth is that the document was a ringing endorsement of liberty. Even a cursory reading reveals a number of oddities. One clause prevents Jews from charging interest on a debt held by an underage heir. Another limits women’s ability to bear witness to certain homicides. A third requires the removal of fish traps from the Thames.

Why, then, is Magna Carta so revered? The story begins in the early 17th century, when members of Parliament and the famous jurist Sir Edward Coke revived the document in their struggle with the Stuart monarchs. They argued that free Englishmen had enjoyed a set of rights and privileges until they were disrupted by the Norman Conquest of 1066. Magna Carta embodied these rights, so it was held up as a model of a glorious past and part of an “ancient constitution.”

In reality, Magna Carta was a result of an intra-elite struggle, in which the nobles were chiefly concerned with their own privileges. When they referred to the judgment of one’s peers, for example, they were not thinking about a jury trial. Indeed, in 1215, the jury trial as we know it did not exist; guilt was often determined by seeing how suspects reacted to physical ordeal. The reference to one’s peers meant that nobles could not be tried by commoners, who might include judges appointed by the king.

Throughout the tumultuous 17th century, Magna Carta was invoked by opponents of whoever was in power, leading Oliver Cromwell to famously refer to the document as “Magna Farta.” In the 18th century, parliamentary sovereignty replaced monarchical absolutism, but Magna Carta continued to be invoked by reformers, now focused on Parliament rather than the king.

Through Coke’s treatises, Magna Carta traveled across the Atlantic. William Penn published an edition in 1687, and in the 17th century several colonies enacted Magna Carta as part of their law. With the Stamp Act of 1765, the imagery of a tyrannical government impinging on ancient rights proved useful to both John Adams and Benjamin Franklin, who invoked different provisions of Magna Carta in calling for repeal. The founding fathers thought they were drawing on the document in drafting the Constitution, for example, in the clause “due process of law” — though that phrase was added to Magna Carta in English law only in the 14th century.