e 31: "That by which a person subsists and which is essential
to his rank in life."]

21. Earls and barons shall not be amerced but by their peers, and
after the degree of the offence.

22. No ecclesiastical person shall be amerced for his lay tenement,
but according to the proportion of the others aforesaid, and not
according to the value of his ecclesiastical benefice.

23. Neither a town nor any tenant shall be distrained to make bridges
or embankments, unless that anciently and of right they are bound to
do it.

24. No sheriff, constable, coroner, or other our bailiffs, shall hold
"Pleas of the Crown." [32]

[Footnote 32: These are suits conducted in the name of the Crown
against criminal offenders.]

25. All counties, hundreds, wapentakes, and trethings, shall stand at
the old rents, without any increase, except in our demesne manors.

26. If any one holding of us a lay fee die, and the sheriff, or our
bailiffs, show our letters patent of summons for debt which the dead
man did owe to us, it shall be lawful for the sheriff or our bailiff
to attach and register the chattels of the dead, found upon his lay
fee, to the amount of the debt, by the view of lawful men, so as
nothing be removed until our whole clear debt be paid; and the rest
shall be left to the executors to fulfil the testament of the dead;
and if there be nothing due from him to us, all the chattels shall
go to the use of the dead, saving to his wife and children their
reasonable shares.[33]

[Footnote 33: A person's goods were divided into three parts, of which
one went to his wife, another to his heirs, and a third he was at
liberty to dispose of. If he had no child, his widow had half; and if he
had children, but no wife, half was divided amongst them. These several
sums were called "reasonable shares." Through the testamentary
jurisdiction they gradually acquired, the clergy often contrived to get
into their own hands all the residue of the estate without paying the
debts of the estate.]

27. If any freeman shall die intestate, his chattels shall be
distributed by the hands of his nearest relations and friends, by view
of the Church, saving to every one his debts which the deceased owed
to him.

28. No constable or bailiff of ours shall take corn or other chattels
of any man unless he presently give him money for it, or hath respite
of payment by the goodwill of the seller.

29. No constable shall distrain any knight to give money for