Blackstone suggests that this may be the true reading. (_Charters_, p. 41.) Also Mr. Hallam, who says: "Nisi per legale judicium parium suorum, _vel_ per legem terræ. Several explanations have been offered of the alternative clause; which some have referred to judgment by default, or demurrer; others to the process of attachment for contempt. Certainly there are many legal procedures besides trial by jury, through which a party's goods or person may be taken. But one may doubt whether these were in contemplation of the framers of Magna Carta. In an entry of the Charter of 1217 by a contemporary hand, preserved in the Town-clerk's office in London, called Liber Custumarum et Regum antiquarum, a various reading, _et_ per legem terræ, occurs. _Blackstone's Charters_, p. 42 (41.) And the word _vel_ is so frequently used for _et_, that I am not wholly free from a suspicion that it was so intended in this place. The meaning will be, that no person shall be disseized, &c., except upon a lawful cause of action, found by the verdict of a jury. This really seems as good as any of the disjunctive interpretations; but I do not offer it with much confidence."--2 _Hallam's Middle Ages, Ch._ 8, _Part_ 2, p. 449, _note_.[32] The idea that the word _vel_ should be rendered by _and_, is corroborated, if not absolutely confirmed, by the following passage in Blackstone, which has before been cited. Speaking of the trial by jury, as established by Magna Carta, he calls it, "A privilege which is couched in almost the same words with that of the Emperor Conrad two hundred years before: 'nemo beneficium suum perdat, nisi secundum consuetudinem antecessorum nostrorum, _et_ judicium parium suorum.'" (No one shall lose his estate unless according to the custom of our ancestors, and the judgment of his peers.)--_3 Blackstone_, 350. If the word _vel_ be rendered by _and_, (as I think it must be, at least in some cases,) this chapter of Magna Carta will then read that no freeman shall be arrested or punished, "unless according to the sentence of his peers, _and_ the law of the land." The difference between this reading and the other is important. In the one case, there would be, at first view, some color of ground for saying that a man might be punished in either of two ways, viz., according to the sentence of his peers, _or_ according to the law of the land. In the other case, it requires both the sentence of his peers _and_ the law of the land (common law) to authorize his punishment. If this latter reading be adopted, the provision would seem to exclude all trials except trial by jury, and all causes of action except those of the _common law_.