John had already lost an earlier dispute with Pope Innocent III and had agreed to recognize the Pope as his feudal lord as part of the settlement. So Innocent didn’t see overruling the Magna Carta as supporting John so much as he saw it upholding Papal authority over England that passed through John.
I think the three legislators who submitted this bill deserve full credit: Bob Kingsbury of Belknap County’s 4th District, Tim Twombly of Hillsborough County’s 25th District, and Lou Vita of Strafford County’s 3rd District. The entire text of the bill states: “All members of the general court proposing bills and resolutions addressing individual rights or liberties shall include a direct quote from the Magna Carta which sets forth the article from which the individual right or liberty is derived.”
I can see New Hampshire bills now referencing the requirement that “no member of the d’Athée family could be a royal officer” and calling “for all foreign knights and mercenaries to leave the realm”, not to mention “the return of Welsh and Scottish hostages”. 
I mean, if you were a Welsh or Scottish hostage, no doubt you would wish to leave New Hampshire also.
The phrase “evil customs of the forest” keeps conjuring up banjo music.
I’m descended from a Scottish POW sent to work in the Saugus Ironworks in the 1650’s - we left all of New England as soon as we could 
For too long our inquests of novel disseisin, of mort d’ancestor, and of darrein presentment have been held all over the place. No more I say. They should be held at county court twice a year under two justiciaries sent by the chief justiciar just like they were back in my great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather’s time.
Ah, that makes much more sense to me. Thanks for the explanation.
Seriously though - can anyone tell me the thinking behind this seemingly bizzare New Hampshire suggested requirement? What on earth, other than employing some jokers to make hilariously tangental attributions, is it supposed to accomplish?
Presumably they are being extremely conservative, and don’t want any new human rights being claimed in New Hampshire: “new” meaning not thought of by the English barons 800 years ago. Perhaps they want New Hampshire to return to being a colony under the British crown, under the feudal rule of a Baron of New Hampshire.
There are and have been places whose laws weren’t written at all, though. King Teobaldo I (or Thibault I) of Navarre found out when he took posession of the kingdom he’d inherited from a distant cousin that there were very few written laws, and those were mostly (temporary) privileges granted to a gvien area to attract population and/or minutes from parliament (which wasn’t anything as fancy as what we call by that name nowadays). Criminal law, what’s that? At the same time, the legal system inherited from the Romans to which he was used was clearly not what people used. His solution was the compilation called the Old Fueros, obtained by asking people how would they deal with suchandsuch case and reaching agreements. Other cultures have been even less literate, yet they had legal systems.
Thibault inherited in 1234; the kingdom had been born c. 817
It sounds like people determined to gum up the works and waste as much of everyone’s time and money as they can.
Scumbags, in other words.
Heh the law as drafted states that everyone has to draw a direct quote from the Magna Carta as the origin of rights. I guess the notion is that if you can’t, then you can’t claim the right … I wonder if the opposite is true: that is, if you can support it with a quote, you can claim the right.
Like the right not to be imprisioned on the testimony of a woman!
Of course: letting women testify in courts would be like letting women own property, or letting men below the rank of a knight vote for the parliament.
The lawyer in me protests!
Nothing stopping a woman from testifying. Nor from having her testimony believed. You just can’t exact the punisment of imprisonment on a man based on that testimony. Presumably you can fine him, though.
See? perfectly reasonable.
No, it says the court can’t imprison the man until the witness’s husband is killed. Presumably on order of the court, if my reading is correct.
Only one way to solve this - draft a bill to that effect in New Hampshire.
A.P. Herbert’s Misleading Cases, a parody of the legal reports, dealt with this question in R. v. Haddock: Is Magna Carta Law?– Punch, 16 February 1927
A fine idea, indeed.
I’m hereby throwing my hat in the ring for the crown of Baron New Hampshire. My right honoured and noble lineage extends as far back as last Tuesday ; my claim to dominion over the land is made even more unshakeable that I’ve never set foot in the wretched place and as such can’t be denied through tiresome red tape, land deeds or old feuds ; and I can pinpoint NH on a map of the US on the fiftieth try, tops. In other words, I’m the best possible candidate.
If anyone is wondering, my second edict will be to make the colour orange illegal. My first edict will of course be “bring me all of the beer in all of the land”, as befits the ancestral customs of House Kobal.
'Tis not a crown, neither, 'tis one of these coronets.