“It fixed,” he says, “the forfeiture of lands for felony in the same manner as it still remains, and prohibited for the future the grants of exclusive fisheries, and the erection of new bridges so as to oppress the neighbourhood. With respect to private rights, it established the testamentary power of the subject over part of his personal estate, the rest being distributed among his wife and children; it laid down the law of dower as it has continued ever since; and it prohibited the appeals of women, unless for the death of their husbands. In matters of public police and national concern, it enjoined a uniformity of weights and measures, gave new encouragements to commerce by the protection of merchant strangers, and forbade the alienation of lands in mortmain. With regard to the administration of justice, besides prohibiting all denials or delays of it, it fixed the court of common pleas at Westminster, that the suitors might no longer be harassed with following the king’s person in all his progresses; and at the same time brought the trial of issues hc>me to the very doors of the freeholders, by directing assizes to be taken in the proper counties, and establishing annual circuits. It also corrected some abuses then incident to the trials by wager of law and of battle, directed the regular awarding of inquests for life or member, prohibited the king’s inferior ministers from holding pleas of the Crown, or trying any criminal charge, whereby many forfeitures might otherwise have unjustly accrued to the exchequer, and regulated the time and place of holding the inferior tribunals of justice, the county court, sheriff’s turn, and court-leet. It confirmed and established the liberties of the city of London, and all other cities, boroughs, towns, and ports of the kingdom. And, lastly, it protected every individual of the nation in the free enjoyment of his life, his liberty, and his property, unless declared to be forfeited by the judgment of his peers or the law of the land.”

The material feature of the document is that, so slightly referred to in the above extract, which says, “No freeman shall be taken or imprisoned, or be disseised of his freehold or liberties, or free customs, or be outlawed or exiled, or any otherwise damaged, nor will we pass upon him, nor send upon him, but by lawful judgment of his peers, or by the law of the land.” In this stipulation there is inferred that supremacy of the fixed principles of the law over the will and power of the monarch, which has rendered the fanatical devotion of the English lawyers to their common law so justifiable; and as a farther security, the right of trial by peers or jurymen appointed a perpetual popular tribunal to check the official judges, should they be tempted to sell the liberties and privileges of the subject. Hallam, a ,7 ery competent judge, says, “The institutions of positive law, the far more important changes which time has wrought in the order of society during 600 years subsequent to the Great Charter, have undoubtedly lessened its direct application to our present circumstances. But it is still the keystone of English liberty. All that has since been obtained is little more than a confirmation or commentary; and if every subsequent law were to be swept wpy, there would still remain the bold features that distinguish a free from a despotic monarchy.”— (Middle Ages, chap, viii.)

Exemplars of the Great Charter were preserved among the muniments of cathedrals, and in other places calculated to preserve public archives. The Record Commission, when they published their edition of the statutes of the realm, were desirous to print the best authenticated version of the charter of King John; and they state, that “in Lincoln Cathedral, an original of the Great Charter of Liberties, granted by King John in the seventh year of his reign, is preserved in a perfect state. This charter appears to be of superior authority to either of the two charters of the same date preserved in the British Museum. From the contemporary indorsement of the word Lincolina on two folds of the charter, this may be presumed to be the charter transmitted by the hands of Hugh, the then bishop of Lincoln, who is one of the bishops named in the introductory clause.”— (Introduction, xxix.)

Among the other concessions of a less comprehensive nature, the Charter of the Forest was deemed next in importance to Magna Charta. In nothing was the selfish rapacity of the Norman monarchs more conspicuous than in their relentless clearings of great districts of country for the establishment of forests or chases, where the sanctity of their field-sports was protected with a strict legal severity not conceded to the protection of ordinary property and personal freedom. The Charter of the Forest imposed wholesome limits on such inroads, and hence, along with the Great Charter, it has been printed at the commencement of the English statutes. The position of these documents in a series of Acts of Parliament is not so anomalous as it might seem; for it would be very difficult to distinguish the charters from the earliest statutes, which were concessions or admissions granted by the monarch on the requisition of the principal persons of the realm assembled together. Our statutes, indeed, still bear in their phraseology a testimony to this origin.

The early use of the word “charter,” as a foundation of constitutional liberties, led to its being applied on various occasions to fundamental constitutional codes or rules of government adopted by various nations. The most memorable instance is the French Charte, containing the constitution of the French Government, as adjusted at the restoration in 1815, and amended at the revolution of 1830, which had its origin in an attempt of Charles X. to stretch one of its dubious clauses.

From such public acts as Magna Charta, the concession of privileges by charter from the Crown descended through various grades. Both in England and Scotland the privileges of municipal corporations either were conferred of old by charter, or were presumed to have been so conferred. The power of the Crown has in this form long virtually departed, but it is still competent to incorporate collective bodies with certain limited powers by royal charter; though, in general, it is deemed necessary when the powers might affect personal or public interests to secure them by Act of Parliament. Insidious privileges were sometimes granted by charter, and were among the objects of the attacks on the Crown’s power to grant monopolies in the 17th century.

By the practice of mimicking the usages of the sovereign through all grades of feudality, it became the custom for every feudal lord or superior, high or low, when conceding any privilege as to his fief or landed property, to do so by a charter. Thus, throughout the British empire, and in Scotland especially, one of the most ordinary deeds connected with the commerce in land assumes to this day the shape of a concession of privileges by a sovereign or other high feudal lord to his vassal. One of the essential features which the student of Scottish law has to master in the practice of conveyancing is the constitution of the charter. Although modern practice has ingrafted on it other classes of deeds, to suit the exigencies of the commerce in land, such as the disposition, the assignation, &c., yet “the charter” is the original source from which the spirit and tenor of the whole system of conveyancing are to be acquired.

The charterer, on his part, is bound to furnish the cargo at the port of loading, and to take delivery of the same at the port of discharge within specified periods, which are usually called “laydays.” He may detain the vessel for a certain fixed time beyond the stipulated laydays on payment of a specified sum as “demurrage” for each day the ship is so detained. The laydays commence on the ship being ready to load or to discharge, even although it may happen from the port being crowded, or from similar causes, that she cannot at the time be placed in a berth where it would be convenient or practicable for the merchant to begin these operations.

The vessel is not bound to proceed nearer to her port of loading and discharging than “she may safely get;” and this generally means that she is not bound to go nearer to a loading port than to the point from which she can safely get away again with her cargo on board. The charterer, therefore, must pay the expense of necessary lighterage in loading or discharging, unless there be a specific agreement to the contrary.

It is usual to insert in charter-parties a clause by which the parties bind themselves to fulfil their contract under a specified sum as penalty for non-performance; but the amount of this penalty is not the absolute limit of the damages which either party may be entitled to recover under any of the other conditions which may have been violated. See Carrier.

There is some analogy between the fate of Alain Chartier and that of Ronsard. Both enjoyed an extraordinary reputation during their lives, and after death both were neglected and forgotten. Alain Chartier’s lot was cast in troublous times—he felt the agony of Agincourt, and witnessed the rise of the Maid—but this would seem to have increased his renown. The story of the famous kiss bestowed by Margaret of Scotland, wife of that Louis the Dauphin who was afterwards to be known as Louis XL, on “la preciev.se bouche de laquelle sont issus et sortis tant de bons mots et vertueuses sentences,” authentic or not, is interesting, if only as a proof of the high degree of estimation in which the ugliest man of his day was held. Jean de Masles, who annotated a portion of his verse, has recorded how the pages and young gentlemen of that epoch were required daily to learn by heart passages of his Bréviaire des Nobles ; Lydgate, the English rhymester, studied him ardently and affectionately; and Clément Marot and Octavien de Saint-Gélais, writing fifty years after his death, find many fair words for the old poet, their master and predecessor. For the last three centuries, however, Alain Chartier has been remembered rather on account of the kiss aforesaid than for the sake of any of the Ions mots and vertueuses sentences that induced it. The Renaissance of 1830, even, that has made so many glories to blossom anew, has not justified again his old renown in the eyes of men. As a poet his fame has yielded to that of his contemporary, Charles of Orleans; and even his eloquent prose, which is said to be the best part of his work, has awakened no interest whatever. In spite of this, however, Alain Chartier deserves notice as one of the most remarkable and influential men of his time. His writings, both in prose and verse, breathe an ardent spirit of patriotism, and are notable, in some instances, for a boldness of thought and freedom of idea that seem to foreshadow the great utterances of the 16 th century.

Alain Chartier, who is credited with the invention of the rondeau déclinatif, used all the forms of verse current at that period-roundel, lay, ballad, and complaint. His best books are said to be Le livre des Quatre Barnes, which was called forth by the battle of Agincourt, and Le Quadriloque-Invectif, a fine patriotic dialogue, bearing date-1422. See Mancel, Alain Chartier, étude bibliographique et littéraire, 8vo., Paris, 1849.