34.  The writ which is called praecipe, for the future, shall not be made out to any one, of any tenement, whereby a freeman may lose his court.

35.  There shall be one measure of wine and one of ale through our whole realm; and one measure of corn, that is to say, the London quarter; and one breadth of dyed cloth, and russets, and haberjeets, that is to say, two ells within the lists; and it shall be of weights as it is of measures.

36. Nothing from henceforth shall be given or taken for a writ of inquisition of life or limb, but it shall be granted freely, and not denied.[36]

[Footnote 36:  This important writ, or “writ concerning hatred and malice,” may have been the prototype of the writ of habeas corpus, and was granted for a similar purpose.]

37.  If any do hold of us by fee-farm, or by socage, or by burgage, and he hold also lands of any other by knight’s service, we will not have the custody of the heir or land, which is holden of another man’s fee by reason of that fee-farm, socage,[37] or burgage; neither will we have the custody of the fee-farm, or socage, or burgage, unless knight’s service was due to us out of the same fee-farm.  We will not have the custody of an heir, nor of any land which he holds of another by knight’s service, by reason of any petty serjeanty[38] by which he holds of us, by the service of paying a knife, an arrow, or the like.

[Footnote 37:  “Socage” signifies lands held by tenure of performing certain inferior offices in husbandry, probably from the old French word soc, a plough-share.]

[Footnote 38:  The tenure of giving the king some small weapon of war in acknowledgment of lands held.]

38.  No bailiff from henceforth shall pat any man to his law[39] upon his own bare saying, without credible witnesses to prove it.

[Footnote 39:  Equivalent to putting him to his oath.  This alludes to the Wager of Law, by which a defendant and his eleven supporters or “compurgators” could swear to his non-liability, and this amounted to a verdict in his favour.]

39. No freeman shall be taken or imprisoned, or disseised, or outlawed, or banished, or any ways destroyed, nor will we pass upon him, nor will we send upon him, unless by the lawful judgment of his peers, or by the law of the land.

40. We will sell to no man, we will not deny to any man, either justice or right.

41.  All merchants shall have safe and secure conduct, to go out of, and to come into England, and to stay there and to pass as well by land as by water, for buying and selling by the ancient and allowed customs, without any unjust tolls; except in time of war, or when they are of any nation at war with us.  And if there be found any such in our land, in the beginning of the war, they shall be attached, without damage to their bodies or goods, until it be known unto us, or our chief justiciary, how our merchants be treated in the nation at war with us; and if ours be safe there, the others shall be safe in our dominions.