The term "freemen" in the Magna Carta includes women.
The election of a knight from a county to go to Parliament shall be proclaimed by the sheriff in the full county so all may attend and none shall be commanded to do something else at that time. Election is to be by majority of the votes and its results will be sealed and sent to Parliament.
Electors and electees to Parliament must reside in the county or be citizens or burgesses of a borough. To be an elector to Parliament, a knight must reside in the county and have a freehold of land or tenements there of the value of at least 40s. per year, because participation in elections of too many people of little substance or worth had led to homicides, assaults, and feuds. (These "yeomen" were about one sixth of the population. Most former electors and every leaseholder and every copyholder were now excluded. Those elected for Parliament were still gentry chosen by substantial freeholders.)
London ordinances forbade placing rubbish or dung in the Thames River or any town ditch or casting water or anything else out of a window. The roads were maintained with tolls on carts and horses bringing victuals or grains into the city and on merchandise unloaded from ships at the port. No carter shall drive his cart more quickly when it is unloaded than when it is loaded. No pie bakers shall sell beef pies as venison pies, or make any meat pie with entrails. To assist the poor, bread and ale shall be sold by the farthing.
Desertion by a soldier is penalized by forfeiture of all land
and property.
The common law held that a bailee is entitled to possession
against all persons except the owner of the bailed property.
Former justice Sir Thomas Littleton wrote a legal textbook describing tenancies in dower; the tenures of socage, knight's service, serjeanty, and burgage; estates in fee simple, fee tail, and fee conditional; inheritance and alienation of land. For instance, "Also, if feoffment be made upon such condition, that if the feoffor pay to the feofee at a certain day, etc., 800s. forty pounds of money, that then the feoffor may reenter, etc., in this case the feoffee is called tenant in mortgage, … and if he doth not pay, then the land which he puts in pledge upon condition for the payment of the money is gone from him for ever, and so dead as to the tenant, etc."
Joint tenants are distinguished from tenants in common by Littleton thus: "Joint-tenants are, as if a man be seised of certain lands or tenements, etc., and thereof enfeoffeth two, or three, or four, or more, to have and to hold to them (and to their heirs, or letteth to them) for term of their lives, or for term of another's life; by force of which feoffment or lease they are seised, such are joint-tenants. … And it is to be understood, that the nature of joint-tenancy is, that he that surviveth shall have solely the entire tenancy, according to such estate as he hath, …" "Tenants in common are they that have lands or tenements in fee-simple, fee-tail, or for term of life, etc., the which have such lands and tenements by several title, and not by joint title, and neither of them knoweth thereof his severalty, but they ought by the law to occupy such lands or tenements in common pro indiviso [undivided], to take the profits in common. …As if a man enfeoff two joint-tenants in fee, and the one of them alien that which to him belongeth to another in fee, now the other joint-tenant and the alienee are tenants in common, because they are in such tenements by several titles, …"
There are legal maxims and customs of ancient origin which have become well established and known though not written down as statutes. Some delineated by Christopher St. Germain in "Doctor and Student" in 1518 are:
1. -The spouse of a deceased person takes all personal and real chattels of the deceased.