Runnymede is a water-meadow alongside the River Thames in the English county of Surrey, bordering Berkshire and just over 20 miles (32 km) west of central London. It is notable for its association with the sealing of Magna Carta, and as a consequence is, with its adjoining hillside, the site of memorials. Runnymede Borough is named after the area, Runnymede being at its northernmost point.
In the medieval kingdom of England, a feudal barony or barony by tenure, which could also be called a fief or honour held per baroniam was a specific type of large honour - a fief made up of several lordships, and generally held in chief directly from the king - except that these honours were treated differently for the purposes of taxation and inheritance. While the words honour, fief and barony could be used flexibly, these baronies are specially noted in fiscal records, and roughly correspond to the largest fiefs or honours which were created by the Norman dynasty between 1086, and the death of Henry I of England in 1135.
The duties owed by and the privileges granted to feudal barons are not exactly defined, but they involved the duty of providing soldiers to the royal feudal army on demand by the king, and the privilege of attendance at the king's feudal court, the Magnum Concilium, the precursor of parliament.
Magna Carta (Medieval Latin for "Great Charter"), sometimes spelled Magna Charta, is a royal charter of rights sealed by King John of England at Runnymede, near Windsor, on 15 June 1215. First drafted by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Cardinal Stephen Langton, to make peace between the unpopular king and a group of rebel barons who demanded that the King confirm the Charter of Liberties, it promised the protection of church rights, protection for the barons from illegal imprisonment, access to swift and impartial justice, and limitations on feudal payments to the Crown, to be implemented through a council of 25 barons. Neither side stood by their commitments, and the charter was annulled by Pope Innocent III, leading to the First Barons' War.
After John's death, the regency government of his young son, Henry III, reissued the document in 1216, stripped of some of its more radical content, in an unsuccessful bid to build political support for their cause. At the end of the war in 1217, it formed part of the peace treaty agreed at Lambeth, where the document acquired the name "Magna Carta", to distinguish it from the smaller Charter of the Forest, which was issued at the same time. Short of funds, Henry reissued the charter again in 1225 in exchange for a grant of new taxes. His son, Edward I, repeated the exercise in 1297, this time confirming it as part of England's statute law. However, Magna Carta was not unique; other legal documents of its time, both in England and beyond, made broadly similar statements of rights and limitations on the powers of the Crown. The charter became part of English political life and was typically renewed by each monarch in turn. As time went by and the fledgling Parliament of England passed new laws, it lost some of its practical significance.
In England, the baronage was the collectively inclusive term denoting all members of the feudal nobility, as observed by the constitutional authority Edward Coke. It was replaced eventually by the term peerage.
51°23′42″N 0°32′28″W / 51.395°N 0.541°W
The Borough of Runnymede is a local government district with borough status in Surrey, England. Its council is based in Addlestone and the borough also includes the towns of Chertsey and Egham. The borough is named after Runnymede, a water meadow on the banks of the River Thames near Egham, which is connected with the sealing of Magna Carta by King John in 1215.