OUR LEGAL HERITAGE
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S. A. Reilly, Attorney >> OUR LEGAL HERITAGE
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No land used for crop-raising may be converted to pasture.
No woods may be converted to agriculture or pasture.
No one shall cut down or break up dikes holding salt water and
fresh water from flooding houses and pastures.
No one shall dump tin-mining debris, dung, or rubbish into rivers
flowing into ports or take any wood from the walls of the port,
so that ships may always enter at low tide.
A person may lay out a new highway on his land where the old one
has been so damaged by waterways that horses with carriages
cannot pass, with the consent of local officials.
Only poor, aged, and disabled persons may beg. Begging without a
license is punishable by whipping or setting in the stocks 3
days with only bread and water.
Alien palm readers shall no longer be allowed into the nation,
because they have been committing felonies and robberies.
Butchers may not sell beef, pork, mutton, or veal from carcasses
for more than 1/2 penny and 1/2 farthing [1/4 penny] per pound.
French wines may not sell at retail for more than 8d. per gallon.
A barrel maker or cooper may sell a beer barrel for 10d.
No longer may aliens bring books into the nation to sell because
now there are sufficient printers and book-binders in the
nation.
No one may buy fresh fish other than sturgeon, porpoise, or seal
from an alien to put to sale in the nation.
Every person with an enclosed park where there are deer, shall
keep two tall and strong mares in such park and shall not allow
them to be mounted by any short horse, because the breeding of
good, swift, and strong horses has diminished.
A man may have only as many trotting horses for the saddle as are
appropriate to his degree.
No one may maintain for a living a house for unlawful games such
as bowling, tennis, dice, or cards. No artificer, craftsman,
husbandman, apprentice, laborer, journeyman, mariner, fisherman
may play these games except at Christmas under his master's
supervision. Noblemen and others with a yearly income of at
least 2,000s. may allow his servants to play these games at his
house.
Hemp of flax may not be watered in any river or stream where
animals are watered.
No one shall sell merchandise to another and then buy back the
same merchandise within three months at a lower price. No one
shall sell merchandise to be paid for in a year above the sum of
200s. per 2000s. worth of merchandise. No one shall sell or
mortgage any land upon condition of payment of a sum of money
before a certain date above the sum of 200s. per 2000s. per year.
No one shall commit forgery by counterfeiting a letter made in
another person's name to steal any money, goods, or jewels.
No one shall libel by accusing another of treason in writing and
leaving it in an open place without subscribing his own name to
it.
If any servant converts to his own use more than 40s. worth of
jewels, money, or goods from caskets entrusted to him for
safekeeping by a nobleman or other master or mistress, it shall
be a felony.
If a person breaks into a dwelling house by night to commit
burglary or murder, is killed by anyone in that house, or a
person is killed in self-defense, the killer shall not forfeit
any lands or goods for the killing.
Killing by poisoning shall be deemed murder and is punishable by
death.
A person who has committed a murder, robbery, or other felony he
has committed shall be imprisoned for his natural life and be
burned on the hand, because those who have been exiled have
disclosed their knowledge of the commodities and secrets of this
nation and gathered together to practice archery for the benefit
of the foreign realm. If he escapes such imprisonment, he shall
forfeit his life.
A person convicted or outlawed shall be penalized by loss of
life, but not loss of lands or goods, which shall go to his wife
as dower and his heirs.
Buggery may not be committed on any person or beast.
No one shall slander or libel the King by speeches or writing or
printing or painting.
No one shall steal fish from a pond on another's land by using
nets or hooks with bait or by drying up the pond.
The mayor of London shall appoint householders to supervise
watermen rowing people across the Thames River because so many
people have been robbed and drowned by these rowers. All such
boats must be at least 23 feet long and 5 feet wide.
No man shall take away or marry any maiden under 16 years of age
with an inheritance against the will of her father.
Any marriage solemnized in church and consummated shall be valid
regardless of any prior contract for marriage.
Sheriffs shall not lose their office because they have not
collected enough money for the Exchequer, but shall have
allowances sufficient to perform their duties.
Butchers, brewers, and bakers shall not conspire together to sell
their victuals only at certain prices. Artificers, workmen and
laborers shall not conspire to work only at a certain rate or
only at certain hours of the day.
No one shall sell any woolen cloth that shrinks when it is wet.
Only artificers using the cutting of leather, may buy and sell
tanned leather and only for the purpose of converting it into
made wares.
A beggar's child above five years may be taken into service by
anyone that will.
Cattle may be bought only in the open fair or market and only by
a butcher or for a household, team, or dairy, but not for resale
live.
Butter and cheese shall not be bought to be sold again except at
retail in open shop, fair, or market.
No man may enter a craft of cloth-making until he has been an
apprentice for seven years or has married a clothiers' wife and
practicing the trade for years with her and her servants sorting
the wool.
No country person shall sell wares such as linen drapery, wool
drapery, hats, or groceries by retail in any incorporated town,
but only in open fairs.
For every 60 sheep there shall be kept one milk cow because of
the scarcity of cattle.
No clothier may keep more than one wool loom in his house,
because many weavers do not have enough work to support their
families. No weaver may have more than two wool looms.
No cloth-maker, fuller, shearman, weaver, tailor, or shoemaker
shall retain a journeyman to work by the piece for less than a
three month period. Every craftsman who has three apprentices
shall have one journeyman. Servants in agriculture and bargemen
shall serve by the whole year and not by day wages.
There shall be a sales tax of 12d. per pound of wool cloth goods
for the Crown.
All people shall attend church on Sundays to remember God's
benefits and goodness to all and to give thanks for these with
prayers and to pray to be given daily necessities.
Anyone fighting in church shall be excluded from the fellowship
of the parish community.
No one shall use a rope or device to stretch cloth for sale so to
make it appear as more in quantity than it is.
No one may sell cloth at retail unless the town where it was
dressed, dyed, and pressed has placed its seal on the cloth.
Cloth may not be pressed with a hot press, but only with a cold
press.
Offices may not be bought and sold, but only granted by justices
of the royal courts.
No one going from house to house to repair metal goods or sell
small goods he is carrying may do this trade outside the town
where he lives.
No one may sell ale or beer without a license, because there have
been too many disorders in common alehouses. Offenders may be
put in the town or county jail for three days.
French wine may not be sold for more than 8d. per gallon.
Only persons with yearly incomes of 1,333s. or owning goods worth
13,333s. may store wine in his house and only for the use of his
household.
No one may sell forged iron, calling it steel, because the edged
tools and weapons made from it are useless.
Parish communities shall repair the highways for four days each
year using oxen, cart, plough, shovels, and spades.
The children of priests are declared legitimate so they may
inherit their ancestor's lands. The priests may be tenants by
courtesy after the death of their wives of such land and
tenements that their wives happened to be seized of in fee
simple or in fee tail, during the spousals.
Judicial Procedure
Doctors of the civil law may practice in the church or Chancery
courts.
Justices shall tax inhabitants of the county for building jails
throughout the nation, for imprisonment of felons, to be kept by
the sheriffs and repaired out of the Exchequer.
Piracy at sea or in river or creek or port are adjudicated in
shires because of the difficulty of obtaining witnesses from the
ship, who might be murdered or who are on other voyages on the
sea, for adjudication by the admiral.
Piracy and murder on ships is punishable by death only after
confession or proof by disinterested witnesses.
Land held by tenants in common may be partitioned by court order,
because some of these tenants have cut down all the trees to
take the wood and pulled down the houses to convert the material
to their own use.
Persons worth 800s. a year in goods shall be admitted in trials
of felons in corporate towns although they have no freehold of
land.
Each justice of the high courts may employ one chaplain.
The Privy Council took the authority of the star court, which
organized itself as a specialty court. Also, a specific group of
full-time councilors heard pleas of private suitors.
The bishops, nobility, and Justices of the Peace were commanded
to imprison clergy who taught papal authority. Justices of the
Peace and sheriffs were to watch over the bishops. The Justices
of Assize were to assess the effectiveness of the Justices of
the Peace as well as enforce the treason act on circuit.
The criminal court had no jury and went outside the common law to
prosecute political enemies.
Since the nation was now peaceful, expediency was no longer
needed, so judicial procedures again became lengthy and formal
with records.
All pleadings and usually testimony was put into writing in
Chancery court.
Witnesses could be sworn in to state pertinent facts necessary
for full understanding and adjudication of cases, because they
are reliable now that there is no livery and maintenance and
because jurors no longer necessarily know all the relevant
facts.
Chapter 13
The Times: 1558-1604
Queen Elizabeth I was intelligent, educated, and wise about human
nature. When young, she was a brilliant student. Then, she
studied much history, philosophy, and oratory. She wrote in
English, Latin, French, and Italian. She read Greek, including
the Greek Testament, Greek orators, and Greek dramatists at age
seven, when the first professorship of Greek was founded at
Cambridge University. Book- learning was one of her highest
values throughout her life. She had good judgment in selecting
her ministers and advisors for her Privy Council. Like her
father and grandfather, she dominated Parliament.
She was so influenced by her reading of Cicero that she acquired
his style of writing. Her Chief Secretary William Cecil was so
guided by Cicero's "Offices" that he carried a copy in his
pocket. Cicero opined that government officials' duty was to
make the safety and interest of citizens its greatest aim and to
design all their thoughts and endeavors without ever considering
personal advantage. Government was not to serve the interest of
any one group to the prejudice or neglect of the rest, for then
discord and sedition would occur. Furthermore, a governor should
try to become loved and not feared, because men hated those whom
they feared, and wished dead those whom they hated. Therefore
obedience proceeding from fear could not last, whereas that which
was the effect of love would last forever. An oppressor ruling
by terror will be resented by the citizens, who in secret will
choose a worthier person. Then liberty, having been chained up,
would be unleashed more fiercely than otherwise. To obtain the
peoples' love, a governor should be kind and bountiful. To
obtain the peoples' trust, a governor should be just, wise, and
faithful. To demonstrate this, a governor should be eloquent in
showing the people an understanding better than theirs, the
wisdom to anticipate events, and the ability to deal with adverse
events. And this demonstration should be done with modesty. One
cannot get the peoples' trust by vain shows, hypocritical
pretenses, composed countenances, and studied forms of words.
The first goal of a governor is to take care that each
individual is secured in the quiet enjoyment of his own property.
The second goal is to impose taxes that are not burdensome. The
third goal is to furnish the people with necessaries. The law
should be enforced keeping in mind that its fundamental purpose
is to keep up agreement and union among citizens.
Elizabeth cared deeply for the welfare of all citizens of
whatever class. She was sensitive to public opinion and wanted
to be loved by her people, which she was. She was frugal and
diplomatically avoided unnecessary wars, saying that her purse
was the pockets of her people. England was a small Protestant
nation threatened by the larger Catholic nations of France and
Spain. Elizabeth flirted with foreign princes to make them waste
their time trying to get England by marrying her instead of by
war. Her promotion of commercial speculations diffused a vast
increase of wealth among her people. Her good spirits and
gayness created a happy mood in the nation. She loved dancing and
madrigal music was popular. The Elizabethan era was one of
general prosperity.
Elizabeth came to dress elaborately and fancifully. Her dresses
were fitted at the waist with a long and pointed bodice
stiffened with wood, steel, or whalebone. Her skirt was held out
with a petticoat with progressively larger hoops. There were two
layers of skirt with the top one parted to show the bottom one.
The materials used were silks, satins, velvets, and brocades. On
her dress were quiltings, slashings, and embroidery. They were
covered with gold ornaments, pearls, and gems from America. She
wore decorated gloves. So ladies copied her and discarded their
simple over-tunics for elaborate dresses. The under-tunic was
now becoming a petticoat and the over-tunic a dress. Their
under-tunics became petticoats. Often they also wore a fan with a
mirror, a ball of scent, a miniature portrait of someone dear to
them, and sometimes a watch. Single ladies did not wear hats,
but had long, flowing hair and low cut dresses showing their
bosoms. Married ladies curled their hair and wore it in high
masses on their heads with jewels interwoven into it. Both
gentlemen and ladies wore hats both indoors and outside and
large, pleated collars around their necks (with the newly
discovered starch), perfume, and high-heeled shoes. Gentlemen's'
tight sleeves, stiffened and fitted doublet with short skirt, and
short cloak were ornamented and their silk or velvet hats
flamboyant, with feathers. At their leather belts they hung
pouches and perhaps a watch. They wore both rapiers [swords with
cutting edges] and daggers daily as there were many quarrels.
There were various artistic beard cuts and various lengths of
hair, which was often curled and worn in ringlets. They now wore
breeches and stockings instead of long hosen. Both gentlemen and
ladies wore silk stockings and socks over them and then boots.
Coats dipped in boiled linseed oil with resin served as
raincoats. They wore nightgowns to bed. Fashions changed every
year. When Elizabeth became old, she had a wig made to match her
youthful long red hair. Other ladies began wearing wigs.
Poor men wore skirted fustian tunics, loose breeches, and coarse
stockings or canvas leggings. Agricultural laborers kept sword
and bow in a corner of their fields in the first part of
Elizabeth's reign.
Women spent much of their time doing needlework and embroidery.
Since so many of the women who spent their days spinning were
single, unmarried women became known as "spinsters".
Children wore the same apparel as their elders. They were given
milk at meals for good growth. It was recognized that sickness
could be influenced by diet and herbs. Sickness was still viewed
as an imperfect balance of the four elements of blood (hot and
moist like air), phlegm (cold and moist like water), choler or
yellow bile (hot and dry like fire), and melancholy or black bile
(cold and dry like earth) in a person.
There were many lifestyle possibilities in the nation:
independently wealthy with 40s. yearly or goods worth 200s.;
gentleman, that is one who owned land or was in a profession
such as an attorney, physician, priest or who was a university
graduate, government official, or a military officer; employment
in agriculture, arts, sciences; employment in households and
offices of noblemen and gentlemen; independent farmers with
their own farm; fisherman or mariner on the sea or apprentice of
such; employment by carriers of grain into cities, by market
towns, for digging, seeking, finding, getting, melting, fining,
working, trying, making of any silver, tin, lead, iron, copper,
stone, coal; glassmaker.
Typical wages in the country were: fieldworkers 2-3d. a day,
ploughmen 1s. a week with board, shepherd 6d. a week and board,
his boy 2 1/2 d., hedgers 6d. a day, threshers 3-7d. depending
on the grain, thatching for five days 2d., master mason or
carpenter or joiner 4d. a day and food or 8d. without food, a
smith 2d. a day with food, a bricklayer 2 1/2 d. a day with
food, a shoemaker 2d. a day with food. These people lived
primarily on food from his own ground.
There was typical work for each month of the year in the country:
January - ditching and hedging after the frost broke, February -
catch moles in the meadows, March - protect the sheep from
prowling dogs, April - put up hop poles, sell bark to the tanner
before the timber is felled, fell elm and ash for carts and
ploughs, fell hazel for forks, fell sallow for rakes, fell horn
for flails, May - weed and hire children to pick up stones from
the fallow land, June - wash and shear the sheep, July - hay
harvest, August - wheat harvest, September and October - gather
the fruit, sell the wool from the summer shearing, stack logs
for winter, buy salt fish for Lent in the town and lay it up to
dry, November - have the chimneys swept before winter, thresh
grain in the barn, December - grind tools, repair yokes, forks,
and farm implements, cover strawberry and flower beds with straw
to protect them from the cold, split kindling wood with beetle
and wedge, tan their leather, make leather jugs, make baskets for
catching fish, and carve wood spoons, plates, and bowls.
There was a wave of building and renovation activity in town and
country. Housing is now, for the first time, purely for dwelling
and not for defense. They were designed symmetrically with
decorative features instead of a haphazard addition of rooms.
Windows were large and put on the outer walls instead of just
inside the courtyard. A scarcity of timber caused proportionally
more stone to be used for dwelling houses and proportionately
more brick to be used for royal palaces and mansions. The rest
of the house was plaster painted white interspersed with
vertical, horizontal, and sloping timber, usually oak, painted
black. They had locks and bolts for protection from intruders.
The floors were stone or wood, and sometimes tile. They were
often covered with rushes or plaited rush mats. Some private
rooms may have carpets on the floor. Walls were smoothly
plastered or had carved wood paneling to control drafts. Painted
cloths replaced tapestries on walls. Candles were hung from the
ceiling and used on tables. Plastered ceilings and a lavish use
of glass made rooms lighter and cozy. Broad and gracious
stairways with carved wood banisters replaced the narrow winding
stone steps of a stairwell. Most houses had several brick
chimneys and clear, but uneven, glass in the windows. There were
fireplaces in living rooms, dining rooms, kitchen, and bedrooms.
Sometimes there was a library, study room, or breakfast room as
well. Rooms were more spacious than before and contained
furniture such as chests of drawers, enclosed cupboards,
cabinets, buffets, tables, chairs and benches with backs and
cushions, sometimes with arms, and occasionally wardrobes,
either hanging or with shelves, for clothes. Carpeting covered
tables, chests, and beds. Family portraits decorated some walls,
usually in the dining room. Bedrooms all led out of each other.
But curtains on the four poster beds with tops provided
privacy. Beds had elaborately carved bedsteads, sheets, and a
feather coverlid as well as a feather mattress. Often family
members, servants, and friends shared the same bed for warmth or
convenience. Each bedroom typically had a cabinet with a mirror,
e.g. of burnished metal or crystal, and comb on top. One brushed
his teeth with tooth soap and a linen cloth, as physicians
advised. Each bedroom had a pitcher and water bowl, usually
silver or pewter, for washing in the morning, and a bed-pan for
nighttime use, and also fragrant flowers. Elizabeth had a room
just for her bath. Smoking tobacco and snuff-taking became
popular.
On the table was a fancy salt cellar and pepper. Some gentry used
two-pronged forks for eating. Glass drinking vessels replaced
even gold and silver goblets. Breakfast was substantial, with
meat, and usually eaten in one's bedroom. There was great plenty
and variety of meats to all but the poorer classes: beef,
mutton, veal, lamb, kid, pork, rabbit, capon, red deer, fish and
wild fowl as well as the traditional venison and brawn [boar].
From English orchards and gardens came apricots, almonds,
gooseberries, raspberries, melons, currants, oranges, and lemons
as well as the traditional apples, pears, plums, mulberries,
quinces, pomegranates, figs, cherries, walnuts, chestnuts, hazel
nuts, filberts, strawberries, blackberries, dewberries,
blueberries, and peaches. Also grown were sweet potatoes,
artichokes, cabbages, turnips, broad beans, peas, pumpkins,
cucumbers, radishes, carrots, celery, parsnips, onions, garlic,
leeks, endive, spinach, sorrel, lettuce, parsley, mustard,
cress, sage, tarragon, fennel, thyme, mint, savory, rhubarb, and
medicinal herbs. Sugar was used to make sweet dishes. Grace was
said before meals. Toothpicks were used.
Most dwellings were of brick and stone. Only a few were of wood
or mud and straw. The average house was now four rooms instead
of three. Yeomen might have six rooms. A weaver's house had a
hall, two bedrooms, and a kitchen besides the shop. Farmers
might have two instead of one room. A joiner had a one-room house
with a feather bed and bolster. Even craftsmen, artificers and
farmers had feather beds on bed frames with pillows and hung
loom tapestry and painted cloth to keep out the cold in their
single story homes. They also had pewter spoons and plates,
instead of just wood or earthenware ones. Even the poorer class
had glass drinking vessels, though of a coarse grade. The poor
still used wooden plates and spoons. Laborers had canvas sheets.
Richer farmers would build a chamber above the hall, replacing
the open hearth with a fireplace and chimney. Poorer people
favored ground floor extensions, adding a kitchen or second
bedchamber to their cottages. Kitchens were often separate
buildings to reduce the risk of fire. Roasting was done on a
spit and baking in irons boxes placed in the fire or in a brick
oven at the side of the fireplace.
Mixed farming began. In this, some of the arable land produced
food for man and the rest produced food for sheep, cattle, pigs,
and poultry. This was made possible by the introduction of
clover, artificial grasses, and turnip and other root crops for
the animals. Since the sheep ate these crops in the field, they
provided manure to maintain the fertility of the soil. This meant
that many animals could be maintained throughout the winter
instead of being slaughtered and salted.
More than medieval castles and manor houses, mansions were
designed with privacy in mind. The great hall, often hung around
with bows, pikes, swords, and guns, was not abandoned, but the
family used it as an eating place only on rare occasions.
Instead they withdrew to the parlor and great chamber, while
their servants lived in turrets or attics and continued to eat
in the hall. The distinction between parlor and great chamber
was that the former was for domestic use and the latter for
entertaining. Parlors were situated on the ground floor: the
family lived and relaxed there, and had informal meals in a
dining parlor. The formal or "state" rooms were on the first
floor, usually comprising a great chamber, a withdrawing
chamber, one or more bedchambers, and a long gallery. The idea
of a long gallery was copied from Henry VII and was used for
exercise, recreation such as music and dancing, and private
conversations. Each room had carved chairs and cabinets. A noble
or gentleman's house had not only a garden for the kitchen and
orchards, but formal gardens of flowers and scrubs. Grown were
apples, plums, pears, apricots, peaches, walnuts, filberts,
almonds, figs, capers, oranges, and lemons. Trees were planted
and grafted.
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