This charter was practically an act of national pacification, the provisions of which king and people together undertook to enforce for the benefit of the commonweal.
Internal dissensions in 1884 led to the foundation of the Socialist League, and in February 1885 a new organ, Commonweal, began to print Morris's splendid rallying-songs.
In 1889 he was deposed from the management of Commonweal, and gradually lost all confidence in the movement as an active force.
In the Commonweal appeared News from Nowhere, published in book form in 1891, describing an England in which the principles of communism have been realized.
But the leading men among the baronage were undoubtedly swayed by ambition and resentment, by family ties and family feuds, far more than by enlightened statesmanship or zeal for the king or the commonweal.