over the persons and estates of the tenants.  The fines on the succession to an estate, called in the feudal language reliefs, were not fixed to any certainty, and were therefore frequently made so excessive that they might rather be considered as redemptions or new purchases than acknowledgments of superiority and tenure.  With respect to that most important article of marriage, there was, in the very nature of the feudal holding, a great restraint laid upon it.  It was of importance to the lord that the person who received the feud should be submissive to him; he had, therefore, a right to interfere in the marriage of the heiress who inherited the feud.  This right was carried further than the necessity required:  the male heir himself was obliged to marry according to the choice of his lord; and even widows, who had made one sacrifice to the feudal tyranny, were neither suffered to continue in the widowed state nor to choose for themselves the partners of their second bed.  In fact, marriage was publicly set up to sale.  The ancient records of the Exchequer afford many instances where some women purchased by heavy fines the privilege of a single life, some the free choice of an husband, others the liberty of rejecting some person particularly disagreeable.  And what may appear extraordinary, there are not wanting examples where a woman has fined in a considerable sum, that she might not be compelled to marry a certain man; the suitor, on the other hand, has outbid her, and solely by offering more for the marriage than the heiress could to prevent it, he carried his point directly and avowedly against her inclinations.  Now, as the king claimed no right over his immediate tenants that they did not exercise in the same or in a more oppressive manner over their vassals, it is hard to conceive a more general and cruel grievance than this shameful market, which so universally outraged the most sacred relations among mankind.  But the tyranny over women was not over with the marriage.  As the king seized into his hands the estate of every deceased tenant in order to secure his relief, the widow was driven often by an heavy composition to purchase the admission to her dower, into which it should seem she could not enter without the king’s consent.

All these were marks of a real and grievous servitude.  The Great Charter was made, not to destroy the root, but to cut short the overgrown branches of the feudal service:  first, in moderating and in reducing to a certainty the reliefs which the king’s tenants paid on succeeding to their estate according to their rank; and, secondly, in taking off some of the burdens which had been laid on marriage, whether compulsory or restrictive, and thereby preventing that shameful market which had been made in the persons of heirs, and the most sacred things amongst mankind.