te safeguard to personal liberty. It also
contains the first game law, protecting "salmons." "There are salmons
in Wye," says Shakespeare, and we are reminded of it because the
Statute of Winchester in the same year contains a provision that is
almost literally quoted by Dogberry in "Twelfth Night." It provides
for the gates of great towns to be shut at sunset, and that no citizen
should bear arms, and no tavern sell drink after 9 P.M., and then it
comes to the duties of the watch, which are described in such like
manner that Dogberry's language seems a mere paraphrase. Whoever wrote
the play certainly had read the Statutes of the Realm for the year
1285, but so far as I am aware, the Baconians have not yet called
attention to this. And the same statute shows us how much better
police protection the England of 1285 gave than the New York or
Chicago of 1909; for all the people dwelling in the hundred or country
(county) if they do not deliver the body of the offender, "shall be
answerable for the robberies done and also the damages." The same year
was a statute of "The common customs of the City of London," among
which was one that "taverns should not be open after 9 P.M. for the
selling of wine or ale," a regulation for their "tenderloin," which
itself is described in quite modern terms; "none shall walk the
streets after curfew." Possibly the same year is the Statute of
Bakers, with careful provisions against putrid meat, worthy of
consideration by our cold-storage plants. Butchers selling unwholesome
flesh, or buying it of the Jews, were severely punished.

(1289) The Statute of Quo Warranto is another historical landmark,
showing the jealousy our ancestors felt of officials, bureaucracy; a
writ specially devised to enable them to challenge the right of any
magnate who pretended to power by virtue of holding office, and the
predecessor of our modern _quo warranto_, which we still use at all
times for that purpose, not only as against officers but to test
any special privileges or charters claimed, such as the right to a
monopoly, a franchise, a ferry, etc. These may be still tried by _quo
warranto_; meaning, by what warrant do you claim to exercise this
office, this monopoly, this privilege?

About this time is another statute forbidding usury, and permitting
Christian debtors to retain half of all debts they may owe to the
Jews, who are required to wear the mark of two cables joined on their
coats; and there is the