to the king and his judges, and to demand either a new trial, or an
acquittal, if the trial or conviction had been against law. So much,
therefore, of the legem terrae of Magna Carta, we know with
reasonable certainty.

We also know that Magna Carta provides that "No bailiff (balivus)
shall hereafter put any man to his law, (put him on trial,) on his
single testimony, without credible witnesses brought to support it."
Coke thinks "that under this word balivus, in this act, is
comprehended every justice, minister of the king, steward of the
king, steward and bailiff." (2 Inst. 44.) And in support of this idea
he quotes from a very ancient law book, called the Mirror of
Justices, written in the time of Edward I., within a century after
Magna Carta. But whether this were really a common law
principle, or whether the provision grew out of that jealousy of the
government which, at the time of Magna Carta, had reached its
height, cannot perhaps now be determined.

We also know that, by Magna Carta, amercements, or fines, could
not be imposed to the ruin of the criminal; that, in the case of a
freeman, his contenement, or means of subsisting in the condition
of a freeman, must be saved to him; that, in the case of a merchant,
his merchandise must be spared; and in the case of a villein, his
waynage, or plough-tackle and carts. This also is likely to have
been a principle of the common law, inasmuch as, in that rude age,
when the means of gettin employment as laborers were not what
they are now, the man and his family would probably have been
liable to starvation, if these means of subsistence had been taken
from him.