Magna Carta 2

Magna Carta 2

(30) No sheriff, royal official, or other person shall take horses or

carts for transport from any free man, without his consent.

 

(31) Neither we nor any royal official will take wood for our castle,

or for any other purpose, without the consent of the owner.

 

(32) We will not keep the lands of people convicted of felony in our

hand for longer than a year and a day, after which they shall be

returned to the lords of the `fees' concerned.

(33) All fish-weirs shall be removed from the Thames, the Medway, and

throughout the whole of England, except on the sea coast.

 

(34) The writ called precipe shall not in future be issued to anyone

in respect of any holding of land, if a free man could thereby be

deprived of the right of trial in his own lord's court.

 

(35) There shall be standard measures of wine, ale, and corn (the

London quarter), throughout the kingdom. There shall also be a

standard width of dyed cloth, russett, and haberject, namely two ells

within the selvedges. Weights are to be standardised similarly.

 

(36) In future nothing shall be paid or accepted for the issue of a

writ of inquisition of life or limbs. It shall be given gratis, and

not refused.

 

(37) If a man holds land of the Crown by `fee-farm', `socage', or

`burgage', and also holds land of someone else for knight's service,

we will not have guardianship of his heir, nor of the land that

belongs to the other person's `fee', by virtue of the `fee-farm',

`socage', or `burgage', unless the `fee-farm' owes knight's service.

We will not have the guardianship of a man's heir, or of land that he

holds of someone else, by reason of any small property that he may

hold of the Crown for a service of knives, arrows, or the like.

 

(38) In future no official shall place a man on trial upon his own

unsupported statement, without producing credible witnesses to the

truth of it.

 

(39) No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his

rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled, or deprived of his

standing in any other way, nor will we proceed with force against him,

or send others to do so, except by the lawful judgement of his equals

or by the law of the land.

 

(40) To no one will we sell, to no one deny or delay right or justice.

 

(41) All merchants may enter or leave England unharmed and without

fear, and may stay or travel within it, by land or water, for purposes

of trade, free from all illegal exactions, in accordance with ancient

and lawful customs. This, however, does not apply in time of war to

merchants from a country that is at war with us. Any such merchants

found in our country at the outbreak of war shall be detained without

injury to their persons or property, until we or our chief justice

have discovered how our own merchants are being treated in the country

at war with us. If our own merchants are safe they shall be safe too.

 

(42) In future it shall be lawful for any man to leave and return to

our kingdom unharmed and without fear, by land or water, preserving

his allegiance to us, except in time of war, for some short period,

for the common benefit of the realm. People that have been imprisoned

or outlawed in accordance with the law of the land, people from a

country that is at war with us, and merchants - who shall be dealt

with as stated above - are excepted from this provision.

(43) If a man holds lands of any `escheat' such as the `honour' of

Wallingford, Nottingham, Boulogne, Lancaster, or of other `escheats'

in our hand that are baronies, at his death his heir shall give us

only the `relief' and service that he would have made to the baron,

had the barony been in the baron's hand. We will hold the `escheat' in

the same manner as the baron held it.

 

(44) People who live outside the forest need not in future appear

before the royal justices of the forest in answer to general

summonses, unless they are actually involved in proceedings or are

sureties for someone who has been seized for a forest offence.

 

(45) We will appoint as justices, constables, sheriffs, or other

officials, only men that know the law of the realm and are minded to

keep it well.

 

(46) All barons who have founded abbeys, and have charters of English

kings or ancient tenure as evidence of this, may have guardianship of

them when there is no abbot, as is their due.

 

(47) All forests that have been created in our reign shall at once be

disafforested. River-banks that have been enclosed in our reign shall

be treated similarly.

 

(48) All evil customs relating to forests and warrens, foresters,

warreners, sheriffs and their servants, or river-banks and their

wardens, are at once to be investigated in every county by twelve

sworn knights of the county, and within forty days of their enquiry

the evil customs are to be abolished completely and irrevocably. But

we, or our chief justice if we are not in England, are first to be

informed.

 

(49) We will at once return all hostages and charters delivered up

to us by Englishmen as security for peace or for loyal service.

***here were some strange characters, not completely removed

(50) We will remove completely from their offices the kinsmen of

Gerard de Ath, Peter, Guy, and Andrew de Chanceaux, Guy de Cigogne, and in

future they shall hold no offices in England. The

people in question are Engelard de Cigogn, Geoffrey de Martigny and his

brothers, Philip Marc and his brothers, with Geoffrey his nephew,

and all their followers.

* As soon as peace is restored, we will remove from the kingdom all

the foreign knights, bowmen, their attendants, and the mercenaries

that have come to it, to its harm, with horses and arms.

* To any man whom we have deprived or dispossessed of lands,

castles, liberties, or rights, without the lawful judgement of his

equals, we will at once restore these. In cases of dispute the

matter shall be resolved by the judgement of the twenty-five

barons referred to below in the clause for securing the peace. In

cases, however, where a man was deprived or dispossessed of

something without the lawful judgement of his equals by our father

King Henry or our brother King Richard, and it remains in our

hands or is held by others under our warranty, we shall have

respite for the period commonly allowed to Crusaders, unless a

lawsuit had been begun, or an enquiry had been made at our order,

before we took the Cross as a Crusader. On our return from the

Crusade, or if we abandon it, we will at once render justice in

full.

* We shall have similar respite in rendering justice in connexion

with forests that are to be disafforested, or to remain forests,

when these were first aforested by our father Henry or our brother

Richard; with the guardianship of lands in another persons fee,

when we have hitherto had this by virtue of a fee held of us for

knights service by a third party; and with abbeys founded in

another persons fee, in which the lord of the fee claims to own a

right. On our return from the Crusade, or if we abandon it, we

will at once do full justice to complaints about these matters.

* No one shall be arrested or imprisoned on the appeal of a woman

for the death of any person except her husband.

* All fines that have been given to us unjustly and against the law

of the land, and all fines that we have exacted unjustly, shall be

entirely remitted or the matter decided by a majority judgement of

the twenty-five barons referred to below in the clause for

securing the peace together with Stephen, archbishop of

Canterbury, if he can be present, and such others as he wishes to

bring with him. If the archbishop cannot be present, proceedings

shall continue without him, provided that if any of the

twenty-five barons has been involved in a similar suit himself,

his judgement shall be set aside, and someone else chosen and

sworn in his place, as a substitute for the single occasion, by

the rest of the twenty-five.

* If we have deprived or dispossessed any Welshmen of lands,

liberties, or anything else in England or in Wales, without the

lawful judgement of their equals, these are at once to be returned

to them. A dispute on this point shall be determined in the

Marches by the judgement of equals. English law shall apply to

holdings of land in England, Welsh law to those in Wales, and the

law of the Marches to those in the Marches. The Welsh shall treat

us and ours in the same way.

* In cases where a Welshman was deprived or dispossessed of

anything, without the lawful judgement of his equals, by our

father King Henry or our brother King Richard, and it remains in

our hands or is held by others under our warranty, we shall have

respite for the period commonly allowed to Crusaders, unless a

lawsuit had been begun, or an enquiry had been made at our order,

before we took the Cross as a Crusader. But on our return from the

Crusade, or if we abandon it, we will at once do full justice

according to the laws of Wales and the said regions.

* We will at once return the son of Llywelyn, all Welsh hostages,

and the charters delivered to us as security for the peace.

* With regard to the return of the sisters and hostages of

Alexander, king of Scotland, his liberties and his rights, we will

treat him in the same way as our other barons of England, unless

it appears from the charters that we hold from his father William,

formerly king of Scotland, that he should be treated otherwise.

This matter shall be resolved by the judgement of his equals in

our court.

* All these customs and liberties that we have granted shall be

observed in our kingdom in so far as concerns our own relations

with our subjects. Let all men of our kingdom, whether clergy or

laymen, observe them similarly in their relations with their own

men.

***Strange characters may have ended here.

SINCE WE HAVE GRANTED ALL THESE THINGS for God, for the better

ordering of our kingdom, and to allay the discord that has arisen

between us and our barons, and since we desire that they shall be

enjoyed in their entirety, with lasting strength, for ever, we give

and grant to the barons the following security:

* The barons shall elect twenty-five of their number to keep, and

cause to be observed with all their might, the peace and liberties

granted and confirmed to them by this charter.

* If we, our chief justice, our officials, or any of our servants

offend in any respect against any man, or transgress any of the

articles of the peace or of this security, and the offence is made

known to four of the said twenty-five barons, they shall come to

us - or in our absence from the kingdom to the chief justice - to

declare it and claim immediate redress. If we, or in our absence

abroad the chief justice, make no redress within forty days,

reckoning from the day on which the offence was declared to us or

to him, the four barons shall refer the matter to the rest of the

twenty-five barons, who may distrain upon and assail us in every

way possible, with the support of the whole community of the land,

by seizing our castles, lands, possessions, or anything else

saving only our own person and those of the queen and our

children, until they have secured such redress as they have

determined upon. Having secured the redress, they may then resume their normal obedience to us.