In 1215 Magna Carta was a failure. It was intended as a peace and it provoked war. It pretended to state customary law and it promoted disagreement and contention. It was legally valid for no more than three months, and even within that period its terms were never properly executed. Yet it was revived in the re-issues of 1216, 1217 and 1225. The last version became law, to be confirmed and interpreted in Parliament and enforced in the courts of law. Three of its chapters still stand on the English Statute Book. These embody, with some slight and occasional amendments, four of the original provisions of 1215. No other English legal enactment has enjoyed such long life. Some of these measures survived because they seemed to have a specific value. Until 1970, for example, the prohibition of fish-weirs in cap. 23 still sought to preserve navigation on the Thames and other rivers. Some survived because they were harmless confirmations of rights and privileges conveyed by other instruments. Hence the Charter till declares that the English church shall be free and still confirms, but does not define, the privileges of the city of London and other towns and boroughs. But the other surviving clause states deeper principles and less restricted privileges. At the other extreme from the fish-weirs of cap. 23 there stands cap. 29, which lays down that no free man is to be imprisoned, dispossessed, outlawed, exiled or damaged without lawful judgement of his peers or by the law of the land. Cap. 29 owes its continued existence to the pietas of legislators and lawyers, for it is not now essential or often even relevant to the liberty of the individual. But this pietas is in turn a product of the long struggles in which men appealed to this principle against authority. Individual freedom can be justified by many methods. There is no logical reason for including Magna Carta among them.