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The Magna Carta

Anonymous · 1215 primary

passage 12 of 26 · (12/26)

↪ you wandered here via “bailiff arrest debt imprisonment” — the connecting lines are tinted below

in brief
Further clauses restrict local seizure and coercion: bailiffs must tender money for provisions, limit forced service like castle-guard, protect freemen’s horses and wood, reform forests, and ensure fair justice in inquisitions and writs.

chattels shall be distributed by the hands of his nearest kinsfolk and friends, under supervision of the church, saving to every one the debts which the deceased owed to him.

  1. No constable or other bailiff of ours shall take corn or other provisions from any one without immediately tendering money therefor, unless he can have postponement thereof by permission of the seller.

  2. No constable shall compel any knight to give money in lieu of castle-guard, when he is willing to perform it in his own person, or (if he cannot do it from any reasonable cause) then by another responsible man. Further, if we have led or sent him upon military service, he shall be relieved from guard in proportion to the time during which he has been on service because of us.

  3. No sheriff or bailiff of ours, or other person, shall take the horses or carts of any freeman for transport duty, against the will of the said freeman.

  4. Neither we nor our bailiffs shall take, for our castles or for any other work of ours, wood which is not ours, against the will of the owner of that wood.

  5. We will not retain beyond one year and one day, the lands of those who have been convicted of felony, and the lands shall thereafter be handed over to the lords of the fiefs.

  6. All kiddles for the future shall be removed altogether from Thames and Medway, and throughout all England, except upon the seashore.

  7. The writ which is called praecipe shall not for the future be issued to any one, regarding any tenement whereby a freeman may lose his court.

  8. Let there be one measure of wine throughout our whole realm; and one measure of ale; and one measure of corn, to wit, “the London quarter;” and one width of cloth (whether dyed, or russet, or “halberget”), to wit, two ells within the selvages; of weights also let it be as of measures.

  9. Nothing in future shall be given or taken for a writ of inquisition of life or limbs, but freely it shall be granted, and never denied.

  10. If any one holds of us by fee-farm, by socage, or by burgage, and holds also land of another lord by knight’s service, we will not (by reason of that fee-farm, socage, or burgage) have the wardship of the heir, or of such land of his as is of the fief of that other; nor shall we have wardship of that fee-farm, socage, or burgage, unless such fee-farm owes knight’s service. We will not by reason of any small serjeanty which any one may hold of us by the service of rendering to us knives, arrows, or the like, have wardship of his heir of the land which he holds of another lord by knight’s service.

  11. No bailiff for the future shall, upon his own unsupported complaint, put any one to his “law,” without credible witnesses brought for this purpose.

  12. No freeman shall be taken or imprisoned or disseised or exiled or in anyway destroyed, nor will we go upon him nor send upon him, except by the lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land.

  13. To no one will we sell, to no one will we refuse or delay, right or justice.

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topics: crime and punishment · justice as a virtue

The Magna Carta · Anonymous · 1215