CHAPTER FIFTEEN.

Nos non concedemus de cetero alicui quod capiat auxilium de liberis hominibus suis, nisi ad corpus suum redimendum, et ad faciendum primogenitum filium suum militem, et ad primogenitam filiam suam semel maritandam, et ad hec non fiat nisi racionabile auxilium.

We will not for the future grant to any one licence to take an aid from his own free tenants, except to ransom his body, to make his eldest son a knight, and once to marry his eldest daughter; and on each of these occasions there shall be levied only a reasonable aid.

This chapter confers on the tenants of mesne lords protection similar to that already conferred on Crown tenants: sums of money are no longer to be extorted from them arbitrarily by their lords.[517] Different machinery, however, had here to be adopted, since the expedient relied on in chapter 12 (“the common consent of the realm”) was clearly inapplicable.

Footnote 517:

The chapter is, therefore, on the one hand a necessary supplement of