ll
writs and plaints of wrongs done by the king, the queen, or their
children."

These views found expression in the coronation oath. Edward II. was
forced to swear:

"Will you grant and keep, and by your oath confirm to the people of
England the laws and customs to them, granted by the ancient kings of
England, your righteous and godly predecessors; and especially to the
clergy and people, by the glorious King St. Edward, your predecessor?"

The king's answer--"I do them grant and promise."

"Do you grant to hold and keep the laws and rightful customs which the
commonalty of your realm shall have chosen, and to maintain and enforce
them to the honor of God after your power?"

The king's answer--"I this do grant and promise."

I shall not dwell upon the event most frequently quoted with reference
to the era of the Plantagenets--I mean King John's "Magna Charta." It
was more social than territorial, and tended to limit the power of the
Crown, and to increase that of the barons. The Plantagenets had not
begun to call Commons to the House of Lords. The issue of writs was
confined to those who were barons-by-tenure, the PATRICIANS of the
Norman period. The creation of NOBLES was the invention of a later age.
The baron feasted in his hall, while the slave grovelled in his cabin.
Bracton, the famous lawyer of the time of Henry III., says: "All the
goods a slave acquired belonged to his master, who could take them from
him whenever he pleased," therefore a man could not purchase his own
freedom. "In the same year, 1283," says the Annals of Dunstable, "we
sold our slave by birth, William Fyke, and all his family, and received
one mark from the buyer." The only hope for the slave was, to try and
get into one of the walled towns, when he became free. Until the Wars of
the Roses, these serfs were greatly harassed by their owners.

In the reign of Edward I., efforts were made to prevent the alienation
of land by those who received it from the Norman sovereigns. The statute
of mortmain was passed to restrain the giving of lands to the Church,
the statute DE DONIS to prevent alienation to laymen. The former
declares:

"That whereas religious men had entered into the fees of other men,
without license and will of the chief lord, and sometimes appropriating
and buying, and sometimes receiving them of gift of others, whereby the
services that are due of such fee, and which, in the beginning, were
provided for the defence of th