Page:William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England (3rd ed, 1768, vol II).djvu/88

 76 country, the whole of this ytem of tenures now tended to nothing ele, but a wretched means of raiing money to pay an army of occaional mercenaries. In the mean time the families of all our nobility and gentry groaned under the intolerable burthens, which (in conequence of the fiction adopted after the conquet) were introduced and laid upon them by the ubtlety and finee of the Norman lawyers. For, beides the cutages they were liable to in defect of peronal attendance, which however were aeed by themelves in parliament, they might be called upon by the king or lord paramount for aids, whenever his eldet on was to be knighted, or his eldet daughter married; not to forget the ranom of his own peron. The heir, on the death of his ancetor, if of full age, was plundered of the firt emoluments ariing from his inheritance, by way of relief and primer eiin; and, if under age, of the whole of his etate during infancy. And then, as ir Thomas Smith very feelingly complains, "when he came to his own, after he was out of wardhip, his woods decayed, houes fallen down, tock wated and gone, lands let forth and ploughed to be barren," to make amends he was yet to pay half a year's profits as a fine for uing out his livery; and alo the price or value of his marriage, if he refued uch wife as his lord and guardian had bartered for, and impoed upon him; or twice that value, if he married another woman. Add to this, the untimely and expenive honour of knighthood, to make his poverty more completely plendid. And when by thee deductions his fortune was o hattered and ruined, that perhaps he was obliged to fell his patrimony, he had not even that poor privilege allowed him, without paying an exorbitant fine for a licence of alienation.

o complicated, and o extenive as this, called aloud for a remedy in a nation that boated of her freedom. Palliatives were from time to time applied by ucceive acts of parliament, which awaged ome temporary grievances. Till at length the humanity of king James I conented for a proper Rh