When any person shall be taken on mesne or final process in any civil suit and, from inability to pay the demand, debt or damages or find bail, be committed to the jail and such person has no lands, tenements, goods, chattels or choses in action whereby his maintenance in jail can be defrayed, the plaintiff or person at whose instance such party shall be imprisoned shall pay and satisfy his maintenance. If such person or his attorney shall refuse or neglect, after ten days’ previous notice, to pay or give security to pay the prisoner’s maintenance when demanded, the sheriff or jailer in whose custody such prisoner is may discharge him from such confinement. But such prisoner shall, before he is discharged, render on oath a schedule of all his estate and assign it.