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 the realm, are
wrongfully withdrawn, and the chief lord do lose the escheats of