Next day {12 Nov.} there was issued a provisional Charter, purporting to be granted by the boy-King “under the guidance of God, and for the salvation of our soul and of the souls of all our ancestors and successors, to the honour of God, and the exaltation of Holy Church, and the amendment of our realm, by the counsel of our venerable fathers” Gualo and the other prelates and magnates enumerated. Of course it began with the declaration which had already been, and was to be again, so often made, and so often proved but an empty form: “The English Church shall be free, and have her rights and liberties entire and undisturbed;” but the recital in the first article of the Great Charter of John’s grant, made to the Church before his quarrel with the barons, of one special liberty--that of free election--was omitted.[34] The clauses of John’s Charter regulating the reliefs due from tenants-in-chief,[35] the wardship of heirs under age,[36] the marriage of heirs and widows,[37] were reproduced with a few very slight alterations, of which the most significant was an addition to the clause relating to the custody of estates: that the obligations laid down as binding on the guardian of a lay fief were to be binding likewise on the custodian of a vacant ecclesiastical dignity, and that a wardship of this kind was not to be bought or sold.[38] The article protecting the King’s debtors and their sureties against arbitrary distraint;[39] that which protected free tenants against arbitrary requirement of service other than what was legally due from their lands;[40] that which ordered common pleas to be held in a fixed place instead of following the King;[41] the regulations for taking recognitions of novel disseisin, mort d’ancester, and darrein presentment;[42] the clause protecting men of all classes against the infliction of arbitrary fines for offences;[43] the clauses which forbade the exaction of contributions for bridge-building from persons or places not legally bound thereto,[44] and the holding of pleas of the Crown by sheriffs or other royal bailiffs,[45] the regulations concerning ward-penny and castle-guard;[46] the royal promises to seize no timber for building without the owner’s consent,[47] not to withhold the lands of a convicted felon from his lord beyond a year and a day,[48] to abolish all weirs except on the sea-coast,[49] to issue no more writs of _praecipe_ in cases where a freeman might thereby be deprived of the means of obtaining justice,[50] to grant writs of inquisition concerning life or limb freely without payment,[51] to cease from unjust interference with other men’s rights of wardship in the case of heirs holding land of a mesne lord by military service and other land of the Crown by some other tenure;[52] the clause ordaining equal weights and measures to be used throughout the realm;[53] that which forbade any man to be sent to the ordeal on the sole accusation