Eight hundred years ago, in St. Albans, England, King John’s restless and dissatisfied Norman barons entered into a series of negotiations with the king’s representatives. The talks dragged on for two years. On June 15, 1215, in a famous meadow named Runnymede, the king’s representatives and the barons assented to a “Great Charter”—a formal royal grant stamped with the king’s Great Seal of approval.