How did it help the nobles by King John signing the magna carta?

Answer 1

King John signing Magna Carta, despite it being rescinded almost straight away by the Pope, Innocent III, paved the way for a parliament in England. It took some time and more wars and conflict between king and baron, but Magna Carta started it.

Kings had coronation charters setting out what they were going to do, a sort of manifesto when the succession was less than certain (William II and Henry I and to an extent John with his nephew Arthur) and Magna Carta took those promises to improve on what the previous monarch did and made it more formal, taking the onus away from the king and handing it to the barons to enforce.

Magna Carta was the first time that a king's obligations were written down by anyone other than the king himself, limiting the power of the king and placing a board of twenty-five barons to watch over him with the power to remove castles from his control. This clause, 61, was never going to work - the country, regardless that it was the barons who chose to include this, were not ready for a country without a king. It was the person of the king they objected to, not the position of King itself. That was why, despite the limitations placed on John in Magna Carta, the rebels had invited Prince Louis of France to become king in John's stead. They NEEDED a king on the throne. They could not truly conceive of a government of any other kind.

Magna Carta gave certain safeguards to the barons, limited payments to the crown, for instance the payment to inherit one's father's lands, or to be recognised as the legitimate heir where there was doubt. Widows and orphans were granted extra protection against exploitation by the crown. It outlined what the barons could expect from the king against a backdrop of King John moving the goal posts to suit his own personal whims. It also reversed some of John's more cruel actions, the keeping of hostages from Scotland and Gwynedd, which in itself was an indication that the goings on in the other kingdoms and principalities of the island were linked inextricably to England.

When Magna Carta was reissued on the accession to the throne of Henry III, John's nine year old son, it was missing the most contentious clauses, such as Clause 61. It went against the Pope's decree that it was 'shameful and base but also illegal', and also was a PR masterstroke, negating the rebel baron's reasons for supporting Louis of France as the new king was agreeing to abide by what they wanted. It secured the position of the underage Henry and ended the rebellion.