The Magna Charta Sureties 1215

At the signing of the Magna Charta, twenty-five men, representing the barons, signed as sureties of the baronial performance, in effect pledging the barons to fulfill their obligations to the Crown in accordance with the terms of the Great Charter. Of these twenty-five sureties only seventeen have identified descendants. Each of the seventeen is represented in the celebrated "Magna Charta Sureties," which traces their connections--line by line and generation by generation--to approximately 160 American colonists. Eight years have passed since the publication of the last edition of this work, however, and in the interval a great many additions, corrections, and revisions have accumulated. Brought to a very high standard by the unremitting efforts of its editor, Walter Lee Sheppard, Jr., this fifth edition incorporates new lines, corrects errors in existing lines, adds recently discovered material, and supplies references where they had previously been omitted. The result is a reliable and authoritative collection of interlocking pedigrees which carry the ancestry of some 160 American colonists back to the thirteenth century. With the possible exception of Weis's "Ancestral Roots" (also published by Genealogical Publishing Co.), this is probably the very best work ever written on the pre-colonial ancestry of American colonists.

Given by Eugene Edge III.

The Magna Charta (or Carta) is the cornerstone of Anglo-Saxon law, since it is the earliest agree. between sovereign & subject on the rights of both parties -- what each can do, & the limitation of powers. And, the Great Charter set up watchdogs for both sides: 25 men representing the barons, & the friends of the king, who were named in the Charter. The most useful book about the Charter is a 19th-cent. work by Richard Thomson, An Historical Essay on the Magna Carta of King John, pub. in London in 1828. It includes extensive bio. notes on the Sureties, & on those individuals mentioned in the Charter, or connected with it. There are two tables that supply lineage info., one on the Sureties, the other on those persons who appear as friends of the king.

This is a standard work on Americans claiming lineal descent from the Magna Charta Barons. The pedigrees referred to in the sub-title of the book pertain to the founders and members of the Order of Runnemede at the time the book was originally published (1898). The main body of the work, the pedigrees of the founders, is preceded by a history of the Magna Charta of 1215; by lists of the Magna Charta Barons; and by biographies of the Sureties (the twenty-five barons designated to enforce the Magna Charta).