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Stop going on about the Magna Carta please. Excessive concentration on this one text, though, especially when set in this particular narrative, is redolent of what is known as the Whig view of history, lampooned long ago by the historian Herbert Butterfield. In that view, English (or British, the terms are treated as interchangeable) history is a grand tale of progress culminating in the Rise of Parliament: it’s a narrative which provides a means of judging what was important in the past (anything that helped Parliament to Rise, like Magna Carta) and what wasn’t (anything else). - Dr Charles West University of Sheffield