A plan for a was with next reign we will and grant that all other cities and boroughs and villages and ports shall have all their liberties and free customs. 14. And for holding a common council of the kingdom concommon cerning the assessment of an aid otherwise than in the three council or parliament. cases mentioned above, or concerning the assessment of a This promise scutage, we shall cause to be summoned the archbishops, bishdrawn in the ops, abbots, earls, and greater barons by our letters under seal; and besides we shall cause to be summoned generally, by our sheriffs and bailiffs, all those who hold from us in chief, for a certain day, that is at the end of forty days at least, and for a certain place; and in all the letters of that summons we will express the cause of the summons, and when the summons has thus been given the business shall proceed on the appointed day, on the advice of those who shall be present, even if not all of those who were summoned have come. The king's courts shall be held at convenient times and places 15. We will not grant to any one, moreover, that he shall take an aid from his freemen, except for ransoming his body, for making his oldest son a knight, and for once marrying his oldest daughter; and for these purposes only a reasonable aid shall be taken. 16. No one shall be compelled to perform for a knight's fee or for any other free tenement any greater service than is owed from it. 17. The common pleas shall not follow our court, but shall be held in some certain place. 18. The recognitions of novel disseisin, mort d'ancestor, and darrein presentment shall be held only in their own counties and in this manner: we, or, if we are outside of the kingdom, our principal justiciar, will send two justiciars through each county four times a year, who, with four knights of each county, elected by the county, shall hold in the county and on the day and in the place of the county court the aforesaid assizes of the county. 28. No constable or other bailiff of ours shall take any one's grain or other chattels without immediately paying for them in money, unless he is able to obtain a postponement at the good will of the seller. 29. No constable shall require any knight to give money in place of his ward of a castle, if he is willing to furnish that ward in his own person or through another honest man, if he himself is not able to do it for a reasonable cause; and if we shall lead or send him into the army, he shall be free from ward in proportion to the time which he has been in the army. 30. No sheriff or bailiff of ours or any one else shall take horses or wagons of any freeman for carrying purposes except on the permission of that freeman. 31. Neither we nor our bailiffs will take the wood of another man for castles, or for anything else which we are doing, except by the permission of him to whom the wood belongs. 35. There shall be one measure of wine throughout our whole kingdom, and one measure of ale, and one measure of grain, that is the London quarter, and one width of dyed cloth and of russets and of halbergets, that is two ells within the selvages; of weights, moreover, it shall be as of measures. 39. No freeman shall be taken or imprisoned or dispossessed, General free or outlawed or banished or in any way destroyed, nor will we dom from oppression go upon him, nor send upon him, except by the legal judgment of his peers or by the law of the land. 40. To no one will we sell, to no one will we deny, or delay right or justice. 41. All merchants shall be safe and secure in going out from England and coming into England, and in remaining and going through England, as well by land as by water, for buying and selling, free from all evil tolls, by the ancient and rightful customs, except in time of war, and if they are of a land at war with us; and if such are found in our land at the beginning of war, they shall be attached without injury to their bodies or goods, until it shall be known from us or from our principal justiciar in what way the merchants of our land are treated who shall be then found in the country which is at war with us; and if ours are safe there, the others shall be safe in our land. 47. All forests which have been afforested in our time shall be disafforested immediately; and so it shall be concerning. river banks which in our time have been fenced in. Expulsion 51. And immediately after the reëstablishment of peace we of mercenaries will remove from the kingdom all foreign-born soldiers, crossbowmen, servants, and mercenaries who have come with horses and arms for the injury of the realm. The crude plan for enforcing 52. If any one shall have been dispossessed or removed by us without legal judgment of his peers, from his lands, castles, franchises, or his right, we will restore them to him immediately; and if contention arises about this, then it shall be done according to the judgment of the twenty-five barons, of whom mention is made below concerning the security of the peace. Concerning all those things, however, from which any one has been removed or of which he has been deprived without legal judgment of his peers by King Henry our father, or by King Richard our brother, which we have in our hand, or which others hold, and which it is our duty to guarantee, we shall have respite till the usual term of crusaders; excepting those things about which the suit has been begun or the inquisition made by our writ before our assumption of the cross. When, however, we shall return from our journey, or if by chance we desist from the journey, we will immediately show full justice in regard to them. 60. Moreover, all those customs and franchises mentioned above, which we have conceded in our kingdom, and which are to be fulfilled, as far as pertains to us, in respect to our men, all men of our kingdom, as well clergy as laymen, shall observe as far as pertains to them, in respect to their men. 61. Since, moreover, for the sake of God, and for the improvement of our kingdom, and for the better quieting of the these promises hostility sprung up lately between us and our barons, we have made all these concessions; wishing them to enjoy these in a complete and firm stability forever, we make and concede to them the security described below; that is to say, that they shall elect twenty-five barons of the kingdom, whom they will, who ought with all their power to observe, hold, and cause to be observed, the peace and liberties which we have conceded to them, and by this our present charter confirmed to them. Thus if we or our justiciar, or our bailiffs, or any of our servants shall have done wrong in any way toward any one, or shall have transgressed any of the articles of peace or security, and the wrong shall have been shown to four barons of the aforesaid twenty-five barons, let those four barons come to us, or to our justiciar, if we are out of the kingdom, laying before us the transgression, and let them ask that we cause that transgression to be corrected without delay. And if we shall not have corrected the transgression, or, if we shall be out of the kingdom, if our justiciar shall not have corrected it, within a period of forty days, counting from the time in which it has been shown to us, or to our justiciar, if we are out of the kingdom, the aforesaid four barons shall refer the matter to the remainder of the twenty-five barons, and let these twenty-five barons with the whole community of the country distress and injure us in every way they can; that is to say, by the seizure of our castles, lands, possessions, and in such other ways as they can until it shall have been corrected according to their judgment, saving our person and that of our queen, and those of our children; and when the correction has been made, let them devote themselves to us as they did before. And let whoever in the country wishes take an oath that in all the above-mentioned measures he will obey the orders of the aforesaid twenty-five barons, and that he will injure us as far as he is able with them, and we give permission to swear publicly and freely to each one who wishes to swear, and no one will we ever forbid to swear. 63. Wherefore we will and firmly command that the church of England shall be free, and that the men in our kingdom shall have and hold all the aforesaid liberties, rights, and concessions, well and peacefully, freely and quietly, fully and completely, for themselves and their heirs, from us and our heirs, in all things and places, forever, as before said. It has been sworn, moreover, as well on our part as on the part of the barons, that all these things spoken of above shall be observed in good faith and without any evil intent. Witness the above named and many others. Given by our hand in the meadow which is called Runnymede, between Windsor and Staines, on the fifteenth day of June, in the seventeenth year of our reign. III. Rules etc. CHAPTER IX THE FORMATION OF A UNITED ENGLISH NATION, 1216–1337 I. THE UNIVERSITIES The growing activity and importance of the universities, which was so characteristic of this period, is marked by the adoption by the various colleges and by the university authorities, of a great number of rules on a variety of academic subjects. Some of the most familiar of these were for taking books from the college libraries, restricting expenditures at the common tables, regulating fees to the masters, requiring the use of Latin in conversation, establishing the conditions of graduation, etc. The following are examples, given in the collection called Munimenta Academica, describing conditions at Oxford from the thirteenth to the fifteenth century. Each book of the house, now or hereafter to be given out, for taking shall be taken only after leaving a large deposit, in order that out books, the one having it may the more fear to lose it; and let a duplicate receipt be made, of which one part shall be kept in the common custody, and the other be taken by the scholar having the book; and let no book be given out outside of the college without a still better bond, and with consent of all the scholars. . . . No one shall interfere with the regular arrangement of the household either in the choice of dinners or in the occupation of the rooms of the house, but each scholar shall give diligent assistance; and especially they shall not exceed an expense of twelve pence a week each from the common treasury, except |