The Birth of the Land Laws. i 75 



If the protection of goods and chattels had engaged the 

 minds of the Saxon lawyers, tenements and hereditaments 

 were now to occupy those of their Norman successors. 



From the earliest manuscript collections, mere digests of 

 local customs, to the incomplete attempts by later Saxon kings 

 to codify their jurisprudence, was a fair stride in a right direc- 

 tion. From the so-called Laws of the Confessor to the Charter 

 of Liberties granted by Henry L was another good step for- 

 ward ; but greater than either of these was that giant stretch 

 which carries the reader to the scene at Runnymede. 



There is indeed very little referring to the land in the legis- 

 lation prior to Magna Charta which need arrest our attention. 

 The jurisprudence of the first Henry was a blow to many 

 abuses arising out of feudal incidents. It eased the land of 

 illegal burdens exacted by reliefs, marriages, military tenan- 

 cies, and fines. His was a reign memorable rather for the en- 

 forcement than the enactment of laws. The legislation of the 

 second Henry referred more to the relationship between Church 

 and State than that between Land and State, and far more 

 important to the special subject in hand was the commutation 

 for personal military service by the payment of scutage, than 

 any of the clauses in the Constitutions of Clarendon. 



The expeditions to Palestine in the succeeding reign had 

 exhausted the revenues. Excessive taxation had ensued, and, 

 though personal property suffered, the land bore the greater 

 part of the burden. The tax of carucage (Danegeld in fact, 

 under a new guise) imposed a burden of five shillings on every 

 hundred acres of land. The clergy headed a carucage war. 

 The native English, who had made common cause with Henry 

 I. against the landlords, now swelled the ranks of the landed 

 interest. 



For a time the sparkle of glorious deeds dazzled the nation's 

 eyes and paralysed its energy. But the succession of a 

 meaner-spirited king brought the crisis to a head ; and the 

 throng that opposed John in the Egham meadow, on that 

 sunny June day in 1215, represented every class in the country. 

 Though the native English failed to get their longed-for resti- 

 tution of the Confessor's code, they foresaw that any restriction 



