The Birth of the Land Laws. 177 



by the Primate for two montlis, and the election of twenty- 

 five barons as conservators of the public liberties, left John no 

 loophole for after evasion. This disturbance in the nation's 

 constitutional law had only been held in solution by the 

 agency of the Crusades. When its great men returned and 

 saw the devastating results of the Saladin tithe ^ and other 

 excessive taxes on their personal or real properties, it only 

 needed the acidity of John's disposition to precipitate matters 

 and cloud what had seemed all clear and limpid before, with 

 the turbid forces of resistance and rebellion.^ 



But besides liability to abuse by royal exactions, there were 

 other weak points in the feudal harness which required legisla- 

 tion. The propensity for alienation, always great in soccage 

 tenures, and now grown great in even military holdings, had 

 already begun to require legal restraints. It was thus 

 checked in Magna Charta ; it was checked again in the 

 reign of Henry III. ; and it was still further checked in the 

 reign of him who has been termed the English Justinian 

 (Edward I.). It has been already mentioned, that by the 

 process of subinfeudation the rear vassals had so lost sight 

 of the original owner as to have ceased to recognise his 

 rights to their escheats, wards, and marriages, which they 

 had come to consider as discharged if rendered to their own 

 immediate alienator. In order therefore to annul the powers 

 usurped by the lower grades of land tenure, such as mesne 

 lords and paravail, the Statute of Quia Emptores was enacted, 

 which however, though it restored the superior lord's rights, 

 weakened his power in another direction. Land (at any rate 

 in England, where the vigour of feudalism had become relaxed) 

 had been rendered by the new law as much a subject of com- 

 merce as had been allodial land in Saxon times. To the ex- 

 clusive and haughty soul of an hereditary aristocrat like the 

 Norman, the upstart landed proprietor was a grave shock. 

 That through the misfortunes or excesses of individuals his 

 select circles should be exposed to such intruders as wealthy 

 villeins was intolerable, and induced him to resort to the pro- 



^ This was a tax on personal propertj' imposed bj' Henry II. in 1188. 

 ^ Tor further particulars of Magna Charta vide Stubbs, i^or/a^ Charters. 



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