(4): “Nec super eum ibimus, nec super eum mittemus.”

These words have been frequently misinterpreted. Read in the light of historical incidents of the immediately preceding years, they leave no room for ambiguity. Their object was to prevent John from substituting violence for legal process: he must never again attack per vim et arma men unjudged and uncondemned.

The meaning is plain. Yet Coke, following his vicious method of assuming the existence, in Magna Carta, of a warrant for every legal principle of his own day, misled generations of commentators. He maintained that John promised to refrain from raising, in his own courts, actions in which he was personally interested. In elaborating this error, he drew a distinction between the court of King’s Bench, otherwise known as coram rege, because the King was in theory present, and other courts to which he had “sent” a writ delegating authority. Ibimus, he seems to think, applied in the former case; mittemus in the latter. To quote his words, “No man shall be condemned at the King’s suit, either before the King in his bench, where the pleas are coram rege (and so are the words, nec super eum ibimus, to be understood) nor before any other commissioner, or judge whatsoever (and so are the words, nec super eum mittemus, to be understood), but by the judgment of his peers, that is, equals, or according to the law of the land.” Coke is in error; it was the use of brute force, not merely one particular form of legal process, which John in these words renounced.