(1): Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

Magna Carta, assuming apparently that perfect trust could be placed in the revolutionary committee, provided no machinery for controlling them, no guarantee that they would observe the Charter. The futility of this complacency was soon manifest. One tyrant had brought distress on the whole nation; and now he was to be superseded by five–and–twenty. Who was to restrain the new tyrants? A second committee was nominated, partly to assist and partly to control the twenty–five. Matthew Paris describes it as composed of thirty–eight “Obsecutores et Observatores,” including the Earl Marshal, Hubert de Burgh, the earls of Arundel and Warenne, and other prominent members of the moderate party, not unfriendly to the King. Dr. Stubbs dismisses their relations to the executors with the remark that they “swore to obey the orders of the twenty–five.” Miss Norgate takes what seems to be a better view, in emphasizing, as the chief reason for their appointment, the duty of compelling “both the King and the twenty–five to deal justly with one another.” The thirty–eight were required to constrain the twenty–five, as the twenty–five constrained the King.