barons holding free lands in the county (not villeins or base or poor
persons), and that a person ‘so advanced in personal freedom’ that he
could speak for himself in a law-suit must be informed of the day
appointed for his case.^116 Magna Carta, though not extracted from John
till sixteen years after his coronation, can be viewed as an enormously
extended version of Henry I’s original ‘charter of liberties’, beginning as
it does with a confirmation that the church shall be free and have all its
rights and liberties and continuing with a concession of ‘all the follow-
ing liberties’ to the laity of the kingdom, this time not just to ‘my barons
and other tenants’ as in Henry I’s charter, nor to ‘my barons and men’
as in Stephen’s and Henry II’s, but to ‘all free men of our realm... to
be held by them and their heirs’ in perpetuity.^117
The ecclesiastical immunity had given to the sense of liberty the
element of freedom from official interference within a defined territory.
Now more generally lands were granted to be held bene et in pace et
libere et quiete et honorificeand to some degree ‘free and immune from
exaction, custom and service’. ‘Free’ was a word most commonly used
of tenure—in free alms, or in free barony with sake and soke, or in
frankmarriage (that is exempt from all services for three generations
after the grant to the conjugal pair).^118 ‘Franchise’ was originally a
matter of tenure, but among the French-speaking aristocracy in England
it naturally tended to displace libertasover its whole range of meanings,
including the barons’ jurisdictional powers. It was title to all franchises
in this sense that Henry III and, more systematically, Edward I began to
question, demanding that the royal charters which should have granted
them be shown to his justices in eyre.^119 In 1329, Chief Justice Scrope
would assert that the king sent out eyres precisely to see how the barons
governed his people, since ‘franchise is to have jurisdiction and rule over
the people of the king’ (fraunchise est pur aver jurisdiction, et rule del
people le roy).^120 A franchise (or libertasin a cleric’s Latin) was a bundle
of powers attached to a person’s land, and as such could be attributed
to the king himself: in February 1259 the barons promised to observe
214 Legal Ordering of ‘the State of the Realm’
(^116) Leges Henrici Primi, ed. Downer, 8, 128 (§27), 130 (§29), 184 (§59.8).
(^117) EHDii. 402, 407; Holt, Magna Carta, 132–3, 316–17.
(^118) For the formulae of grants to hold ‘freely’, see (e.g.) Harmer, Anglo-Saxon Writs, 257
(no. 56), 260–1; RRANii. 312 (xxxi), 313 (xxxvii), 315 (xliii), 316 (xlvii), 369 (ccxxxviii),
374 (cclvi), 369 (ccxxxviii), and iii. 14 (no. 40) etc.; for a grant to a church in frankalmoign,
ibid. 308 (xv); Recueil des actes de Henri II, Introduction, 152; for frankmarriage, Pollock and
Maitland, History of English Law, ii. 15–17; for tenure ‘in free barony’, Formulary E, Scottish
Letters and Brieves, 1286–1424, ed. A. A. M. Duncan (U. of Glasgow Scottish History
Department, 1976), no. 41.
(^119) SRi. 45; by the Statute of Gloucester of 1278, sheriffs were to summon before the king
or his justices tuz ceus, qi aucunes fraunchises cleiment aver, par les chartres les predecessurs
le Rei.
(^120) G. D. G. Hall, ‘The Frequency of General Eyres’, EHR74 (1959), 91.