Carta Solis

A dark, slight, and dignified lady of middle years, her long and simple white wool dress made festive by a green tabard, approaches the front of the room in which the Lords are assembled; under one arm she has tucked a silver trumpet, polished to brilliance, that depends on a red silken cord from around her neck, and under the other she carries a large scroll tied loosely with similar cords. Taking her place behind the speaker's podium (discreetly stepping onto a short stool, perhaps, for suddenly she seems to gain a bit in height), she bows to the right and left, then straightens and unrolls the scroll ceremoniously. Her dark eyes are brilliant in the light of candles and torches that illuminate the chamber.

"My Lords", she cries in a clear and faintly musical voice, "I give you the Reading of the Carta Solis", and then continues at a steady pace to carefully pronounce the contents of the document...

Preface:

The Carta Solis is the constitution for the Kingdom of the Isles; it establishes the structure, procedures, powers and duties of the royal government, and of the Kingdom and the government of the states therein. It furthermore guarantees certain rights to the people, establishing a "Common Law".

Introduction:

The Most Reverend and Right Honourable Malachi Drake, Archbishop of the Southern Isles, by the grace of Soldeus the Lord Protector of the Kingdom, to his bishops, dukes, barons, foresters, sheriffs, stewards, yeomen, servants, and to all his officials and loyal subjects, sends greeting.

Know that before the Radiant Lord, for the health of our soul and that of our predecessors and successors, to the honour of the Gods, to the exaltation of the holy Church, and for the improvement and better ordering of our new kingdom over others which have come before, at the advice of the lords Manus Dei, Duke of Wessex, Brandoreus de Medici, Doge of Aquileia, and Verthel Ironfire, Baron of Silentium, and of Sir Rhygar ap Gwynn, Chancellor of Wessex, and other loyal subjects:

We have granted to all free men of our realm, for us and our successors for ever, all the liberties written out below, to have and to keep for themselves and their heirs, of us and our successors:

On the Operation of Royal Government:

1. First, that we have granted to Soldeus, and by this present charter have confirmed for us and our successors in perpetuity, that the Church of Soldeus shall be free, and shall have its rights undiminished, and its liberties unimpaired, so long as its bishops whose dioceses fall within our realm follow our Crown to the exclusion of all other secular nations.

2. Second, that we, exercising our royal prerogative, and when necessary for the successful oversight of the Kingdom, shall appoint executive officials to a Royal Cabinet, the which shall be selected from among peers, gentry, and freemen of the realm, and which shall, together with us, constitute a body henceforth called "The Crown". The executors of the Crown shall bear the power to administrate in their assigned capacities with royal authority.

3. Third, that we have established a legislature to be comprised of all landholders of magnate rank who shall hold land directly of the king as well as all prelates and archprelates of the Church of Soldeus whose diocese falls within our realm. This legislative body shall be termed the House of Lords and shall meet in the royal capitol. Power to sponsor, certify, and legislate any act or law shall reside in this House of Lords, and articles so ratified by this body shall have the backing and potency of the Royal Seal, congruent to any decree or edict declared by the Crown.

4. Fourth, in the future freeman and minor landholder classes may be given representation in a lower house of the national legislature. This house shall meet in the royal capitol and shall be termed the House of Communes. Those permitted attendance shall include two members of the gentry, elected from among the general populace of every shire, as well as three burgesses elected from within each shire. This legislature shall have the power to sponsor legislation which it may pass to the House of Lords to certify, thereupon to gain the backing of the Royal Seal and induction into the common law.

5. The Crown shall maintain the power to overrule any act or law passed by the Houses of Lords and Communes through the power of royal veto. Inasmuch as the house lords or the knights and burgesses of the shire should be relentless in their support of vetoed legislation and desirous of seeing it upheld, a royal veto may be overridden by a three-fourths approval by the House of Lords and a three-fourths approval by the House of Communes.

6. All legislation to be sponsored and brought to a vote in the Houses shall be submitted to a presiding officer who shall regulate the introduction of bills and acts in a measured and orderly manner. All bills brought to the house floor for approval shall have an expiring time limit imposed by the presiding officer during which all votes must be cast or else forfeited. These presiding officers shall be either the king or his Lord Chancellor (if one is appointed) in the House of Lords, or the Speaker of the House in the House of Communes.

On the Expansion and Definition of Feudal Law:

7. Feudal law shall exist as a standard throughout the realm of the Brood Isles, with variations on this standard being specified clearly in the charters, writs, and letters patent issued to new vassals, and thereafter upheld upon review by the College of Arms and law courts, such as the Chancery.

8. If any magnate holding directly of our Crown shall disappear and leave his land unmanned without a will or an approved declaration of a successor, and we shall not find a suitable successor from among the said lord's vassals, the land shall revert to the Crown in escheat at the end of seven days of the said magnate's disappearance, and we shall appoint a royal sheriff as bailiff over the said escheat. Similarly, if any knight shall vanish from his manor in the same manner, the mesne lord shall appoint a reeve or similar as bailiff over the knight's fee.

9. If we have given the guardianship of any dispossessed or unmanned land to a sheriff, or to any person answerable to us for the revenues, and he commits destruction or damage or mismanagement through incompetency, we will exact compensation from him, and the land shall be entrusted to two worthy and prudent men of the same `fee', who shall be answerable to us for the revenues, or to the person to whom we have assigned them. If we have given or sold to anyone the guardianship of such land, and he causes destruction or damage, he shall lose the guardianship of it, and it shall be handed over to two worthy and prudent men of the same `fee', who shall be similarly answerable to us.

10. For so long as a guardian has guardianship of such land, he shall maintain the houses, clanstones, farms, ponds, mills, mines and everything else pertaining to it from the revenues of the land itself. When a new lord is raised to the fief, this guardian shall restore the whole land to him, stocked with all the necessities required to draw maximum yield from the land.

11. Neither we nor our officials will seize any land from a feudal vassal, so long as he fulfills his feudal duty. If a vassal fails to fulfill his duty or is in breach of his feudal contract, and no compensation has been made or reparations given, the Crown reserves the right to attaint and seize feudal benefices by escheat, enforcing the disseisen through force of arms, if necessary.

12. To obtain the general consent of the realm for the assessment of a conscripted military levy or an extra monetary aid or a `scutage', which shall be a request beyond that outlined in individual fealty charters, we will cause the archbishop, bishops, abbots, dukes, counts, and greater barons to be consulted in the House of Lords.

13. No man shall be forced to perform more service for a knight's fee, or other free holding of land, than is due from it as detailed in his letters patent, charter of creation, or fief grant.

14. It shall be commonly outlined in most feudal charters that failure to appear for prescribed feudal military duties can be settled with a payment of a monetary sum called scutage, and that this scutage shall be owed and collected in a reasonable amount for every time a vassal does not supply the sworn military aid when requested. However, no constable of any county, duchy or barony shall force any knight to pay money for castleward or muster if he be willing to perform that ward in person with the specified men in service. And if we shall have led or sent him and his men on a military expedition, he shall be quit of ward according to the amount of time during which, through us, he shall have been in military service.

15. Lands taken and attainted by those convicted of high crimes shall be held by us, and then returned or distributed to other lords at our pleasure.

On the Expanded Rights of Freemen under our Royal Government:

16. The city of Sol Invictus shall be the seat of the new royal court. This city and all other cities, boroughs, towns, and ports shall enjoy all their liberties and free customs. Subjects residing in all counties, duchies and baronies shall enjoy the rights of freemen and burgesses so long as they have been granted a freehold deed in title to a structure or a ship, as opposed to a villein who is only granted the right of use of land within his lord’s demesnes.

17. In future we will allow no one to levy a monetary aid directly from a burgess who resides within a town that has been granted a charter and is recognised as a borough.

On the Administration of Law and Order:

18. If appointed the royal sheriffs, the Lord Constable, the Lord Chancellor and other bailiffs of ours shall have the power to hold the pleas of our Crown.

19. Ordinary lawsuits shall be held by mesne lords in their respective shires, according to the procedures they recognize for their magistracy. Rulings of the shires court shall be binding on any subject in any shire, save those which lie outside of secular jurisdiction, as ecclesiastics. Rulings of shire magistrate courts may also be appealed to the royal courts.

20. Any serf, vagabond or freeman may be judged by a duly appointed sheriff of the shire or the lord of the demesnes. For a trivial offence, a man shall be fined only in proportion to the degree of his offence, and for a serious offence correspondingly, but not so heavily as to deprive him of his livelihood. In the same way, a merchant shall be spared his merchandise, and a serf the implements of his serfdom, if they fall upon the mercy of a royal court. For a serious offence the lord or his court may take summary action against any serf, vagabond or freemen.

21. No gentleman or freeman who is an officer of his lord’s court shall be executed, or disseized, or outlawed, or exiled, or in any way harmed-- nor will we go upon or send upon him, save by the lawful judgment of his lord or his chancellor.

22. Magnates shall not be amerced save through their peers in the House of Lords, and only according to the measure of the offence.

23. No member of the clergy shall be amerced by secular courts royal or noble, but only through the operation of the ecclesiastic courts, unless the ecclesiastic courts shall request it of the secular authorities.

24. No sheriff, on his own simple assertion, shall henceforth submit any one to fine or amercement without producing evidence sufficient enough to be beyond any reasonable doubt.

25. We will not make men executors, constables, sheriffs, yeomen or other bailiffs of the royal court unless they are such as know the law of the realm, and are minded to observe it rightly.

26. To none will we sell, and to none deny or delay right or justice.

On the Protection and Handling of Property:

27. If any tenant or house owner should disappear or fail to pay his rent for a period of two weeks he shall be denied access to his property and any other facility within the Kingdom. If this should continue for a further two weeks, to a total of four weeks, the tenant or house owner will be evicted or may have his property destroyed at the discretion of the shire's lord.

28. No yeoman, sheriff, clerk or other bailiff of ours shall take the goods or other chattels of anyone except he straightaway give money for them, or can be allowed a respite in that regard by the will of the seller. Neither sheriff nor bailiff of ours, nor anyone else, shall take the horses or carts of any freeman for transport, unless by the will of that freeman. Neither shall we nor our bailiffs take another's wood or resources for castles or for other private uses, unless by the will of him to whom the resource belongs.

On the Advocacy of the Free Trade:

29. All subjects may safely and securely go out of the Brood Isles, and come into the Brood Isles, and delay and pass through the Brood Isles, as well by land as by water, for the purpose of buying and selling, subject to the ancient and right customs-- save in time of war, and if they are of the land at war against us. And if such be found in our land at the beginning of the war, they shall be held, without harm to their bodies and goods, until it shall be known to us or our royal court how the merchants of our land are to be treated who shall, at that time, be found in the land at war against us. And if ours shall be safe there, the others shall be safe in our land.

30. Henceforth any person giving fealty to us as a royal subject may go out of our realm and return to it, safely and securely, by land and by water, except perhaps for a brief period in time of war, for the common good of the realm. But exiles and outlaws are excepted, according to the law of the realm; also people of a land at war against us, and the merchants, with regard to whom shall be done as we have said.

31. Any person, not known to be an enemy of us or to be in breach of our trust, shall be granted the right to move peacefully and without opposition throughout our land so long as he respects our laws and does not violate our territory or assets. In times of war this movement may be for the common good of the realm.

On Policies of War and Force:

32. Each shire shall maintain a garrison, or other military body, that shall maintain a patrol in each county whose duty it is to protect the realm against raiders, brigands, outlaws, foreign soldiery, poachers, and thieves and who shall eradicate them entirely.

33. All foreign soldiers, crossbowmen, servants, and hirelings who may have come with horses or arms or both to the harm of the realm, shall be denied entry into the Brood Isles without permission, even for the sake of passage, and all royal subjects are called to take up arms against any such incursions in the future.

34. When the Church shall call a crusade, or when a military levy shall be called, all of those taking part shall enjoy a respite from fines and amercements owed, duties of offices held, and a reasonable respite from feudal military obligations. The Crown may call for an end to both levies and crusades at its pleasure.

35. No landholder of any fee may initiate wars or aggression on realms which have been recognized by the Crown or the College of Arms, save he immediately be called to do so out of self-defence. Landholders shall bear the right to police their holdings and neighbouring badlands or wastelands of barbarians, hillmen, outlaws, renegades, nomads, and all such as hold neither sovereignty nor statehood in the eyes of the Crown.

Conclusion:

Moreover all the subjects of our realm, clergy as well as laity, shall, as far as pertains to them, observe with regard to their vassals all which we have decreed and which shall, as far as pertains to us, be observed in our realm with regard to our own.

Wherefore we will and firmly decree that the subjects of our realm shall have and hold all the aforesaid liberties, rights and concessions, duly and in peace, freely and quietly, fully and entirely, for themselves and their heirs from us and our successors, in all matters and in all places, forever, as has been said.

Moreover it has been sworn, on our part as well as on the part of the lords, that all these above mentioned provisions shall be observed with good faith and without evil intent; the witnesses being the above mentioned and many others.

Given through our hand,

The Most Reverend and Right Honorable Archbishop & Lord Protector of the Realm of the Southern Isles,

Malachi Drake