Civil Government in the United States Considered with Some Reference to Its OriginsFiske, John
History
Civil Government in the United States Considered with Some Reference to Its Origins
Fiske, John
United States -- Politics and government
34. The writ which is called _præcipe_, for the future, shall not be
made out to any one, of any tenement, whereby a freeman may lose his
court.
35. There shall be one measure of wine and one of ale through our
whole realm; and one measure of corn, that is to say, the London
quarter; and one breadth of dyed cloth, and russets, and haberjeets,
that is to say, two ells within the lists; and it shall be of weights
as it is of measures.
36. _Nothing from henceforth shall be given or taken for a writ of
inquisition of life or limb, but it shall be granted freely, and not
denied._[36]
[Footnote 36: This important writ, or "writ concerning hatred and
malice," may have been the prototype of the writ of _habeas
corpus_, and was granted for a similar purpose.]
37. If any do hold of us by fee-farm, or by socage, or by burgage, and
he hold also lands of any other by knight's service, we will not have
the custody of the heir or land, which is holden of another man's fee
by reason of that fee-farm, socage,[37] or burgage; neither will we
have the custody of the fee-farm, or socage, or burgage, unless
knight's service was due to us out of the same fee-farm. We will not
have the custody of an heir, nor of any land which he holds of another
by knight's service, by reason of any petty serjeanty[38] by which he
holds of us, by the service of paying a knife, an arrow, or the like.
[Footnote 37: "Socage" signifies lands held by tenure of performing
certain inferior offices in husbandry, probably from the old French
word _soc_, a plough-share.]
[Footnote 38: The tenure of giving the king some small weapon of war in
acknowledgment of lands held.]
38. No bailiff from henceforth shall pat any man to his law[39] upon
his own bare saying, without credible witnesses to prove it.
[Footnote 39: Equivalent to putting him to his oath. This alludes to
the Wager of Law, by which a defendant and his eleven supporters or
"compurgators" could swear to his non-liability, and this amounted to
a verdict in his favour.]
39. _No freeman shall be taken or imprisoned, or disseised, or
outlawed, or banished, or any ways destroyed, nor will we pass upon
him, nor will we send upon him, unless by the lawful judgment of his
peers, or by the law of the land._
40. _We will sell to no man, we will not deny to any man, either
justice or right._
41. All merchants shall have safe and secure conduct, to go out of,
and to come into England, and to stay there and to pass as well by
land as by water, for buying and selling by the ancient and allowed
customs, without any unjust tolls; except in time of war, or when they
are of any nation at war with us. And if there be found any such in
our land, in the beginning of the war, they shall be attached, without
damage to their bodies or goods, until it be known unto us, or our
chief justiciary, how our merchants be treated in the nation at war
with us; and if ours be safe there, the others shall be safe in our
dominions.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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