As modern-day Britain faces the threat of terrorism, the rights of the individual, born in this meadow in 1215, are being diminished.
Since the 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States, and with greater urgency since this summer's deadly bombings of the London transit system, government ministers have put forward a series of proposals that increase the power of government, narrow the kinds of speech protected as free and, in some cases, abridge the rights of individuals to jury trials.
Few dispute that this is happening. Government officials have been refreshingly candid on the subject.
Earlier this month, Home Secretary Charles Clarke, Britain's man in charge of policing, public safety and anti-terrorism measures, said that Europeans will have to accept that civil liberties must now be traded away in exchange for protection from terrorists. And if the European Convention on Human Rights - a document descended from the Magna Carta - gets in the way, Clarke said, it will have to be changed.
David Shaylor, who was jailed for six months in 2002 for revealing intelligence information to a newspaper, told the BBC that liberties lost would be hard to regain - and their loss could turn terrorists into ''martyrs.''
The debate in Britain today centers not so much on whether civil liberties are being diminished as on whether that trade-off makes the country more secure or less so.
Among the groups that argue the latter is Liberty, an organization that supports civil liberties.
''Liberty is very concerned that at the moment there is this false debate about balancing rights and security,'' said Doug Jewell, a spokesman for the group. ''We are as concerned as everyone else with protecting our society from the terrorist threat. But this cannot be done by simply ripping up our hard-won rights and freedoms.''
Liberty argues that diminishing individual rights will make Britain more susceptible to terrorism.
First, the measures will be seen as anti-Muslim, making British Muslims less likely to come forward with the kind of information that helped police solve the attempted London bombings of July 21, Jewell said.
And second, he said, if Prime Minister Tony Blair is right that the fight against terrorism is an ideological struggle, eroding Britain's freedoms makes the country's position weaker, not stronger.
Among the controversial anti-terrorism measures either already in place or being proposed:
Control orders: The government - with the approval of a judge but without a trial - can impose a control order on suspected terrorist if it has ''reasonable suspicion'' the person might be dangerous. The person will be subject to a curfew, tagged with an electronic bracelet, denied the use of the Internet or mobile phones, allowed only restricted use of a land line phone, and able to meet only with people approved by the government.
''Control orders are a punishment without trial,'' Jewell said.
''Why not charge these people with crimes?'' asked Professor Conor Gearty, director of the Center for the Study of Human Rights at the London School of Economics. The reason, he said, is that the government doesn't have the evidence to gain convictions.
Control orders are, however, less severe than what the British government first implemented after the 2001 attacks in the United States. Under the Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001, the government was, without trial, imprisoning indefinitely terrorist suspects who were not British citizens.
Limits on free speech: The government has announced its intention to ban speech that justifies terrorist violence or that might lead to inter-community violence. Bookstores and Internet sites may be shut down as well.
Human rights campaigners say that is a goal worthy of support. But they say the government's definitions of banned speech are too broad and too vague.
For example, three years ago, Cherie Blair, the prime minister's wife, made comments that appeared to show sympathy with Palestinian suicide bombers, saying they acted because they felt no hope.
Records keeping: Clarke is urging all European nations to require that companies preserve and store cell phone and e-mail records for considerable periods of time.
While some critics have raised concerns about privacy, others say they have no problem with this as long as access to this enormous data base is restricted to police officers investigating a specific crime.
The government's argument is that trimming civil liberties is better than getting blown up. Its critics contend that abridging those rights is giving in to the terrorists
Jewell said civil liberties are under greater threat in Britain now than at any time since World War II.
And Gearty said he is greatly concerned by ''the way in which a discourse is developing which sees civil liberties as respect for the equality of persons as somehow outmoded and outdated in the new circumstances post 7 July,'' the day of the deadly London attacks.
''This is incoherent nonsense, empty verbiage,'' he said. ''To take just one example, subversive violence was far, far worse in the 1970s and 1980s, and yet nobody suggested that our whole system of freedom needed to change. Quite the reverse, in fact. People were determined not to hand the subversives the victory.''
