1 76 History of the English Landed Interest. 



on the king's powers of taxation would benefit them. To his 

 Norman subjects the charter was a preservation of their feudal 

 privileges. Whilst to the king it was a nauseous potion, in 

 which, only by the people's moderation, his roj^al supremacy 

 was allowed to serve the purposes of a carminative. 



Of the sixty-three clauses which it contains, the first part 

 refers to feudal obligations ; the second to the administration 

 of justice ; the third to constitutional principles ; the fourth to 

 cities and commerce ; and the fifth to royal exactions. As re- 

 gards the landed interest, it freed the villein from every other 

 master but his lord ; it protected the ward's estates from acts 

 of waste by his trustees ; it restricted the incidents of aids 

 to their three original purposes ; it reduced their dues to 

 proper proportions; it returned escheated lands to the lords of 

 the fees at the expiration of a year and a day ; it exempted 

 their tenants from any services not performable to their former 

 masters ; like the modern law of distress, it excepted the con- 

 tenement ^ of the soldier and artificer, and the wainage ^ of the 

 husbandman from amercements; by the writ of Praecipe in 

 capite it protected the local jurisdiction of the court baron ; 

 it replaced the king's power of levying scutage ^ by that of the 

 Court of Common Council ; it introduced trial by jury, and 

 established an uniformity in weights and measures ; it reduced 

 the heavy fine on the nation's agricultural produce caused by 

 purveyance and other royal exactions, so that a king's bailiff 

 could take no man's cow for food without a ready money pay- 

 ment, nor his horses and carts for carriage, nor his timber for 

 building, without consent ; and, except where there was a pre- 

 scriptive right, it stopped enforced labour for purposes of 

 bridging and banking. 



Nor was there any possibility for kingly evasion of its terms. 

 Every cathedral contained a copy which was publicly read twice 

 annually. The surrender of London, the custody of the Tower 



' The contenement was the generic term for any man's trade neces- 

 saries. 



* The wainage a specific term for the farmer's dead stock. 



^ Scutage was a new land-tax imposed upon the tenants in chivalry, 

 and not to be confused with the old Danegeld, which still existed under 

 the name of donum or hidage. 



