Westminster the First, Statute of (3 Edw. 1, AD 1275). This statute, which deserves the name of a Code rather than an Act, is divided into fifty-one chapters. Without extending the exemption of churchmen from civil jurisdiction, it protects the property of the Church from the violence and spoliation of the king and the nobles, and provides for freedom of popular elections, because sheriffs, coroners, and conservators of the peace were still chosen by the freeholders in the county Court, and attempts had been made to influence the election of knights of the shire, from the time when they were instituted. It contains a declaration to enforce the enactment of Magna Charta against excessive fines, which might operate as perpetual imprisonment; enumerates and corrects the abuses of tenures, particularly as to marriage of wards; regulates the levying of tolls, which were imposed arbitrarily by the barons, and by cities and boroughs; corrects and retrains the power of the king's escheator and other officers; amends the criminal law, putting the crime of rape on the footing to which it has been lately restored, as a most grievous but not capital offence, and embraces the subject of procedure, civil and criminal matters, introducing many regulations to render it cheap, simple, and expeditious, Lord Compbell's Lives of the Chancellors v. 1, p. 167; 2 Reeves, c. 9, p. 107. Certain parts of this Act are repealed by the Statute Law Revision Act, 1863, and other statutes.
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