Note 411 — MAGNA CARTA.

See Petition of Barons (Sel. Charters, 383). Gradually the conception of disparagement was expanded, partly from the natural development of legal principles and partly from the increased power the nobility obtained of enforcing their own definitions upon the king. Coke commenting on Littleton (Section 107) mentions four kinds of disparagements: (1) propter vitium animi, e.g. lunatics and others of unsound mind; (2) propter vitium sanguinis, villeins, burgesses, sons of attainted persons, bastards, aliens, or children of aliens; (3) propter vitium corporis, as those who had lost a limb or were diseased or impotent; and (4) propter jacturam privilegii, or such a marriage as would involve loss of “benefit of clergy.” The last clause had no possible connection with the law as it stood in the thirteenth century, but was founded on the fact that marriage with a widow or widower was deemed by the Church in later days an act of bigamy, and therefore involved loss of the benefit of clergy, until this was remedied by the Statute 1 Edward VI. c. 12 (sect. 16).