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Indiana University Studies 
wrongs for which they were given, as criminal, tort, and 
contract. 
The criminal remedies of the state were no longer confined 
to fines but became very much as they are today, except that 
there was a strong inclination to impose the capital penalty for 
slight offenses. The accused also acquired some criminal 
remedies in this period. According to Magna Charta and the 
principles claimed prior thereto, it was wrong to delay justice, 
and four writs were invented, during the times of the Nor- 
mans and the first Plantagenets, to protect the subject against 
lying long in prison without trial. These were the writ de odio 
et alia, issued out of the King’s Bench to the sheriff command- 
ing him to hold an inquiry to determine whether or not 
he was holding a prisoner in custody upon a charge of murder 
on reasonable suspicion or only for malice, and if the latter 
to admit him to bail; the writ of main prize, also directed to 
the sheriff, directing him to take pledges in a fixed sum for 
the prisoners; the writ de homine replegiando, addressed to 
the sheriff, commanding him to repledge or take bail for a 
prisoner in custody; and the high prerogative writ of habeas 
corpus, directed not to the sheriff but to the jailer, ordering 
him to bring the body of the prisoner with the cause of his 
detention to the king’s court, so that the judges might deter- 
mine whether or not the prisoner ought to be allowed bail. 
The first instance of the use of the writ of habeas corpus is not 
found until the time of Edward I. 
The civil remedies were largely restorative. Chief among 
these were the real actions: writ of right to try the title to 
freeholds ; the assize of novel disseisin and the assize of mort 
d’ ancestor to regain possession by the one last seized; the 
assize of d’arrein presentment to determine who made the last 
presentment; and the writ of entry to regain possession for 
those last seized in other classes than those covered by the 
assize of novel disseisin and the assize of mort d’ancestor. 
The writ of right issued out of the Curia Regis probably as 
early as William the Conqueror. The assizes and the writ of 
entry were known by the time of Henry II. Real actions 
would lie only for freeholders. Hence the term “real prop- 
erty” came to be applied to freeholds only, and leaseholds were 
classed as personal property. However, by the time of Henry 
III, Bracton informs us that the tenant obtained a writ of 
