Magna Carta Archives - Richard M. Langworth

Churchill on July 4, 1918

4 July 2015 Comments 0 Comments

“The Third Great Title-Deed of Anglo-American Liberties”

Winston S. Churchill, Liberty Day Meeting, Central Hall, Westminster, July 4, 1918. Excerpted from Robert Rhodes James, Winston S. Churchill: His Complete Speeches 1897-1963, 8 vols. (New York: Bowker, 1974), III 2613-16.

I move that the following resolution be cabled from the meeting as a greeting to the President and people of the United States of America: This meeting of the Anglo-Saxon Fellowship assembled in London on the 4th of July, 1918, sends to the President and people of the United States their heartfelt greetings on the 142nd anniversary of the Declaration of American Independence.…

“Here is a law which is above the King”

6 May 2009 Comments 0 Comments

Do you know where Churchill made this statement? “Here is a law which is above the King which even he must not break. This reaffirmation of a supreme law and its expression in a general charter is the great work of Magna Carta; and this alone justifies the respect in which men have held it.” —J.F.

Yes, in a book in 1956. Churchill was explaining Magna Carta, the Great Charter of Freedoms, one of the towering benchmarks of Western Civilization. In his History of the English-Speaking Peoples, vol. 1, The Birth of Britain (London: Cassell, 1956), 256-57.…