The obvious meaning, however, has not always been appreciated. Coke[419] reads the clause as allowing to widows of under-tenants a right denied (by chapter 8) to widows of Crown tenants—namely “freedom to marry where they will without any licence or assent of their lords.” This interpretation is inherently improbable, since the barons at Runnymede desired to place restrictions on their enemy, the king, not upon themselves; and it is opposed to the law of an earlier reign, as expounded by Bracton.[420] ----- Footnote 419: _Second Institute_, p. 16. Footnote 420: See _supra_, p. 253. ----- Daines Barrington[421] invents an imaginary rule of law in order to explain a supposed exception. An ordinary widow, he declares, could not in the normal case marry again before the expiry of a year after her first husband’s death. Some widows, however, were specially privileged. _Maritagium_ was a right conferred on widows of land-owners to cut short the period of mourning imposed on others. This is a complete inversion of the truth; the possession of land always restricted, instead of extending, freedom of marriage. Several later authorities follow Barrington’s mistake.[422] ----- Footnote 421: _Observations_, pp. 8-10. Footnote 422: _E.g._ Thomson, _Magna Charta_, p. 172. Dr. Stubbs has his own reading of _maritagium_, namely, “the right of bestowing in marriage a feudal dependant.” See Glossary to _Sel. Charters_, p. 545. The word may sometimes bear this meaning, but not in Magna Carta. ----- Such mistakes when made by recent writers are the more inexcusable in view of the clear explanation given a century ago by John Reeves,[423] who distinguished between two kinds of marriage portion: _liberum maritagium_, whence no service whatever was exigible for three generations, and _maritagium servitio obnoxium_, liable to the usual services from the first, although exempt from homage until after the death of the third heir.[424] ----- Footnote 423: See his _History of English Law_, I. 121 (3rd ed.). Footnote 424: Cf. _Ibid._ I. 242, where Reeves rightly points out that Coke is mistaken, although he fails to notice the distinction drawn in the passage criticized between the Crown and mesne lords. ----- (3) _Hereditas._ The first two words are thus readily understood: but what is _hereditas_? Is it simply another name for one of these, or is it something different? It is possibly used to denote estates acquired by the wife, not as a marriage portion, but in any other way, for example by the opening of a succession on the death of someone, her father or other relative, of whom she is the heir.