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Magna Carta laid down the law about “fish weirs” on English rivers, “assizes of darrein presentment,” people being “distrained to make bridges,” and other “liberties . . . to hold in our realm of England in perpetuity.”

When his goods were seized, he retaliated by taking out the two front windows and placing therein two effigies—one of a bishop, and the other of a distraining officer.

Bray was ancient demesne and the king's tenants complained that they were distrained to do other services than they were used to do.

When this happened, their furniture was distrained without mercy, for the tax was farmed, and a farmer of taxes, is, of all creditors, proverbially, the most rapacious.”

I gave him a minute account of the ancient process of distraining and impounding and of the action of replevin,—considerably to my own amusement and his astonishment.”