Constitutional history -- England -- Sources; Magna Carta
(29) No constable may compel a knight to pay money for castle-guard if
the knight is willing to undertake the guard in person, or with
reasonable excuse to supply some other fit man to do it. A knight taken
or sent on military service shall be excused from castle-guard for the
period of this service.
(30) No sheriff, royal official, or other person shall take horses or
carts for transport from any free man, without his consent.
(31) Neither we nor any royal official will take wood for our castle,
or for any other purpose, without the consent of the owner.
(32) We will not keep the lands of people convicted of felony in our
hand for longer than a year and a day, after which they shall be
returned to the lords of the ‘fees’ concerned.
(33) All fish-weirs shall be removed from the Thames, the Medway, and
throughout the whole of England, except on the sea coast.
(34) The writ called precipe shall not in future be issued to anyone in
respect of any holding of land, if a free man could thereby be deprived
of the right of trial in his own lord’s court.
(35) There shall be standard measures of wine, ale, and corn (the
London quarter), throughout the kingdom. There shall also be a standard
width of dyed cloth, russett, and haberject, namely two ells within the
selvedges. Weights are to be standardised similarly.
(36) In future nothing shall be paid or accepted for the issue of a
writ of inquisition of life or limbs. It shall be given gratis, and not
refused.
(37) If a man holds land of the Crown by ‘fee-farm’, ‘socage’, or
‘burgage’, and also holds land of someone else for knight’s service, we
will not have guardianship of his heir, nor of the land that belongs to
the other person’s ‘fee’, by virtue of the ‘fee-farm’, ‘socage’, or
‘burgage’, unless the ‘fee-farm’ owes knight’s service. We will not
have the guardianship of a man’s heir, or of land that he holds of
someone else, by reason of any small property that he may hold of the
Crown for a service of knives, arrows, or the like.
(38) In future no official shall place a man on trial upon his own
unsupported statement, without producing credible witnesses to the
truth of it.
(39) No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his
rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled, or deprived of his
standing in any other way, nor will we proceed with force against him,
or send others to do so, except by the lawful judgement of his equals
or by the law of the land.
(40) To no one will we sell, to no one deny or delay right or justice.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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