OUR LEGAL HERITAGE

S >> S. A. Reilly, Attorney >> OUR LEGAL HERITAGE

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Communities were taxed for the upkeep and relief of the prisoners
in the jails in their communities.

Church services included a sermon and were in accordance with a
reformed prayer book and in English, as was the Bible. Communion
of participants replaced mass by priests. Elizabeth was not
doctrinaire in religious matters, but pragmatic. She always
looked for ways to accommodate all views on what religious
aspects to adopt or decline. Attendance at state church services
on Sunday mornings and evenings and Holydays was enforced by a
fine of 12d. imposed by the church wardens. People could hold
what religious beliefs they would, even atheism, as long as they
maintained an outward conformity. For instance, babies were to be
baptized before they were one month old or the parents would be
punished.

There was difficulty persuading educated and moral men to be
ministers. The Bible was read at home and familiar to everyone.
This led to the growth of the Puritan movement. The Puritans
complained that the church exerted insufficient control over the
morals of the congregation. They thought that ministers and lay
elders of each parish should regulate religious affairs and that
the bishops should be reduced to an equality with the rest of
the clergy. The office of archbishop should be eliminated and
the head of state should not necessarily be governor of the
church. Their ideas of morality were very strict and even plays
were though to be immoral. The puritan movement included William
Brewster, an assistant to a court official who was disciplined
for delivering, upon pressure from the council, the Queen's
signed execution order for Mary of Scotland after the Queen had
told him to hold it until she directed otherwise.

The debased coinage was replaced by a recoinage of newly minted
coins with a true silver weight.

Goldsmiths, who also worked silver, often acted as guardians of
clients' wealth. They began to borrow at interest at one rate in
order to lend out to traders at a higher rate. This began
banking.

Patents were begun to encourage the new merchant lords to develop
local manufactures or to expand import and export trade. Patents
were for a new manufacture or an improved older one and
determined the wages of its trades. There was chartering of
merchant companies and granting of exclusive rights to new
industries as monopolies. Some monopolies or licenses were
patents or copyrights. Others established trading companies for
trade to certain foreign lands and supporting consular
services. But there were two detrimental effects: monopoly was a
severe burden to the middle and poorer classes, and the power of
patent holder to arrest and imprison persons charged with
infringing upon their rights was extended to any disliked
person.

There was sharing of stock of companies, usually by merchants of
the same type of goods. There were many stockholders of the East
India Company, chartered in 1600 to trade there. New
incorporated companies were associations of employers and often
included a number of trades, instead of the old guilds which were
associations of actual workers. Town government was often
controlled by a few merchant wholesalers. The entire trade of a
town might be controlled by its drapers or by a company of the
Merchant Adventurers. The charter of the latter as of 1564
allowed a common seal, perpetual existence, liberty to purchase
lands, and liberty to exercise their government in any part of
the nation. There were policies of insurance given by groups of
people for losses of ships and their goods.

There were monopolies on cloth, tin, starch, fish, oil, vinegar,
and salt. New companies were incorporated for many trades, the
ostensible reason being the supervision of the quality of the
wares produced in that trade. (Shoemakers, haberdashers,
saddlers, and curriers exercised close supervision over these
wares.) They paid heavily for their patents or charters.

There was no sharp line between craftsman and shopkeeper or
between shopkeeper and wholesale merchant. In London, an
enterprising citizen could pass freely from one occupation to
another. Borrowing money for a new enterprise was common.
Industrial suburbs grew up around London and some towns became
known as specialists in certain industries. The building crafts
in the towns often joined together into one company, e.g.
wrights, carpenters, slaters, and sawyers, or joiners, turners,
carvers, bricklayers, tilers, wallers, plasterers, and paviors.
These companies included small contractors, independent masters,
and journeymen. The master craftsman often was a tradesman as
well, who supplied timber, bricks, or lime for the building
being constructed. The company of painters was chartered with a
provision prohibiting painting by persons not apprenticed for
seven years.

The prosperous merchants began to form a capitalistic class as
capitalism grew. Competition for renting farm land, previously
unknown, caused these rents to rise. The price of wheat rose to
an average of 14s. per quarter, thereby encouraging tillage once
more. There was steady inflation.

The breed of horses and cattle was improved. There were
specializations such as the hunting horse and the coach horse.
Dogs had been bred into various types of hounds for hunting,
water and land spaniels for falconry, and other dogs as house
dogs or toy dogs. There were no longer any wild boar or wild
cattle. The turkey joined the cocks, hens, geese, ducks,
pigeons, and peacocks in the farmyard. Manure and dressings were
used to better effect on the soil.

There are locks and canals as well as rivers. At London Bridge,
water-wheels and pumps are installed. There are now four royal
postal routes from London to various corners of the nation.
Horses are posted along the way for the mail- deliverer's use.
However, private mail still goes by packman or common carrier.
There were compasses with a bearing dial on a circular plate with
degrees up to 360 noted. The nation's inland trade developed a
lot. There were many more wayfaring traders operating from town
inns. There were new industries such as glassware, iron,
brasswares, alum and coppers, gunpowder, paper, coal, and sugar.
Coal was used for fuel as well as wood, which was becoming
scarce. Small metal goods, especially cutlery, was made, as well
as nails, bolts, hinges, locks, ploughing and harrowing
equipment, rakes, pitch forks, shovels, spades, and sickles.
Lead was used for windows and roofs. Copper and brass were used
to make pots and pans. Pewter was used for plates drinking
vessels, and candlesticks. Iron was used for fire-backs, pots,
and boilers. Also in use was canvas, lead, and rice. Competition
was the mainspring of trade and therefore of town life.

Parliament enacted laws and voted taxes. The Queen, Lords, and
Commons cooperated together. There was little dissension or
debating. There were many bills concerning personal, local, or
sectional interests, but priority for consideration was given to
public measures. The knights in the commons were almost
invariably from the county's leading families and chosen by
consensus in the county court. The commons gradually won for its
members freedom from arrest without its permission and the
right of punishing and expelling members for crimes committed.
Tax on land remained at 10% of its estimated yearly income. The
Queen deferred to the church convocation to define Christian
faith and religion, thus separating church and state functions.

The Treasury sought to keep a balanced budget by selling royal
land and keeping Crown expenditures down. The Crown carried a
slight debt incurred before the Queen's accession.

After exhausting every other alternative, the Queen agreed on the
execution of Mary, Queen of Scots, for being involved in a plot
to assassinate her and claim the throne of England.

Francis Drake sailed around the world from 1577 to 1580. Walter
Ralegh made an expedition to North America in 1584 and named
Virginia in honor of the Queen, who was a virgin. Drake and
Ralegh plundered Spanish ships for American gold and silver,
much of which was used to pay for the war with Spain, which
planned to invade England, even after the unsuccessful attempt
by the Spanish Armada in 1588. The two hundred English ships
were built to sink other ships rather than to board and capture
them. The English guns outranged the Spanish guns. So the
smaller English ships had been able to get close enough to the
big Spanish troop-transport galleons to shoot them up without
being fired upon. The direction of the wind forced the Spanish
galleons northward, where most of them were destroyed by storms.
The English seamen had been arbitrarily pressed into this
service.

- The Law -

Although estate tails (estates descendible only to the heirs of
the body of the original feofee) by law could not be sold or
given away, this was circumvented by use of a straw man. In
collaboration with the possessor of the property, this straw man
sued the possessor asserting that the property had been
wrongfully taken from the straw man. The possessor pleaded that
the crier of the court who had warranted it should be called to
defend the action. He failed to appear until after judgment had
been given to the straw man. Then the straw man conveyed it to
the possessor or his nominee in fee simple.

Wearing of velvet or embroidery is restricted to those with an
income over 40,000s. The wearing of satin or silk is restricted
to those with an income over 20,000s.

No one shall make false linen by stretching it and adding little
pieces of wood, which is so weak that it comes apart after five
washings.

Timber shall not be felled to make logs for fires for the making
of iron.

No one may take small fish to feed to dogs and pigs. Only nets
with mesh leaving three inches spaces may be used to catch fish.

No attainder shall result in the forfeiture of dower by the
offender's wife nor disinheritance of his heirs.

The following statute of artificers regulated labor for the next
two centuries:

No master or mistress may employ a servant for a term less than
one year in the crafts of clothiers, woolen cloth weavers,
tuckers, fullers, clothworkers, sheermen, dyers, hosiers,
tailors, shoemakers, tanners pewterers, bakers, brewers,
glove-makers, cutlers, smith, farriers, curriers, saddlers,
spurriers, turners, cappers, hatmakers, feltmakers, bow-makers,
arrow-makers, arrow-head- makers, butchers, cooks, or millers, so
that agriculture will be advanced and idleness diminished.
Also, every craftsman unmarried or under age 30 who is not
working must accept employment by any person needing the craft
work. Also, any common person between 12 and 60 who is not
working must accept employment in agriculture. And, unmarried
women between 12 and 40 may be required by town officials to
work by the year, the week, or day for wages they determine.

All artificers and laborers hired by the day or week shall work
from 5 am to 7 PM. All artificers must labor at agriculture at
haytime and harvest to avoid the loss of grain or hay. Every
householder who raises crops may receive as an apprentice a
child between 10 and 18 to serve in agriculture until he is age
21. A householder in a town may receive a child as an apprentice
for 7 years, but merchants may only take as apprentices children
of parents with 40s. freehold. (This was designed to inhibit
migration to the towns.)

No one may be a craftsman until he has served seven years as an
apprentice. These artificers may have children as apprentices:
smith, wheelmaker, ploughmaker, millmaker, miller, carpenter,
rough mason, plasterer, a timber sawer, an ore burner, a lime
burner, brickmaker, bricklayer, tilemaker, tiler, layer of slate
roofs, layer of wood shingle roofs, layer of straw roofs, cooper,
earthen potter, linen weaver, housewife who weaves wool for sale
or for household use.

Fish, but no meat, may be eaten on Wednesdays so that there will
be more fishermen and mariners and repair of ports. (This was
done because fishing had declined since the dissolution of the
monasteries. Eating fish instead of meat in Lent in the
springtime remained a tradition.)

For repairing of highways, the supervisors may take the rubbish
or smallest stones of any quarry along the road in their
precinct.

Embezzlement or theft by a servant of his master's goods of 40s.
or more is a felony.

No one shall forge a deed of land, charter, sealed writing, court
roll or will.

No one shall libel or slander so as to cause a rebellion.

Cut-purses and pick-purses shall not have benefit of clergy.

A debtor may not engage in a fraudulent collusion to sell his
land and goods in order to avoid his creditors.

A person robbing a house of 5s. by day when no one is there shall
not have benefit of clergy, because too many poor persons who
cannot hire a servant to look after their house when they go to
work have been robbed.

The price of barrels shall be set by mayors of the towns where
they are sold.

No man under the degree of knight may wear a hat or cap of
velvet. Caps may not be made of felt, but only knit wool. Only
hats may be made of felt. This is to assist the craft of making
wool caps.

Every person over 6 years of age shall wear a wool knitted cap
made by the cappers on Sundays, except maidens, ladies,
gentlewomen, noble persons, and every lord, knight, and
gentlemen with 2,667s. of land, since the practice of not
wearing caps has damaged the capping industry. This employed
cappers and poor people they had employed and the decrepit and
lame as carders, spinners, knitters, parters, forses, thickers,
dressers, dyers, battelers, shearers, pressers, edgers, liners,
and bandmakers.

Rugs shall weigh 44 pounds at least and be 35 yards at least in
length and at most 3/4 yard wide.

The incorporated company of ship masters may erect beacons and
marks on the seashores and hills above, because certain steeples
and other marks used for navigation have fallen down and ships
therefore have been lost in the sea.

There shall be one sheriff per county, because now there are
enough able men to supply one per county.

Trials of noblemen for treason shall be by their peers.

A native or denizen merchant in wholesale or retail goods who
leaves the nation to defraud his creditors shall be declared a
bankrupt. The Chancellor may conduct an investigation to
ascertain his land, house, and goods, no matter who may hold
them. They shall be appraised and sold to satisfy his debts.

Loan contracts for money lent may not be for more than 200s. for
each 2000s. yearly. All loans of money or forbearing of money in
sales of goods for less than this shall be punishable by forfeit
of the interest only.

No cattle may be put in any enclosed woods that have been
growing less than five years. At the end of five years growth,
calves may be put in. At the end of six years growth, cattle may
be put in.

The mother and reputed father of any bastard who has been left to
be kept at the parish where born must pay weekly for the upkeep
and relief of such child, so that the true aged and disabled of
the parish get their relief and to punish the lewd life.

No master at a university may lease any land unless 1/3 of it is
retained for crop-raising to supply the colleges and halls for
food for their scholars.

Persons with 100s. in goods or 40s. in lands shall find two able
men in their parish community to repair the highways yearly.

Landowners of Oxford shall be taxed for the repair of the highway
and bridge there.

Woods around London shall not be felled to be converted to coals
for iron-works because London needs the wood to make buildings
and for fire-places.

Every melter and maker of wax from honeycombs shall put his mark
on every piece of his wax to be sold. Wrought wax such as in
lights, staff-torches, red wax or sealing wax, book candles, or
searing candles shall bear its maker's mark. All barrels of
honey shall bear the mark of the honeymaker.

Wool cloth, cotton cloth, flannel cloth, hose-yarn, hats, and
caps shall be dyed black only with dye from the woad plant and
not with any false black dye.

No one shall take or kill any pheasants with nets or devices at
nighttime because such have become scarce.

Lands, tenements, goods and chattels of accountants teller, or
receiver who are in debt may be obtained by court order to
satisfy the debt by garnishing the heir of the debtor after the
heir has reached 21 and for the 8 years next ensuing.

Fraudulent and secret conveyances made to retain the use of one's
land when one sells the land to a bona fide purchaser for value
in fee simple, fee tail, for life, for lives, or for years are
void.

No new iron mills or furnaces for making or working of any iron
or iron metal shall be established in the country around London
and the owners of carriages of coals, mines and iron which have
impaired or destroyed the highways shall also carry coal ashes,
gravel, or stone to repair these highways or else make a payment
of 2s.6d. for each cart load not carried.

No one shall bribe an elector to vote for a certain person for
fellow, scholar, or officer of a college, school, or hall or
hospital so that the fittest persons will be elected, though
lacking in money or friends, and learning will therefore be
advanced.

Cottage and dwelling houses for workmen or laborers in mineral
works, coal mines, or quarries of stone or slate for the making
of brick, tile, lime, or coals shall be built only within a mile
from such works. Dwelling houses beyond this must be supported
by four acres of land to be continually occupied and manured as
long as the dwelling house is inhabited or forfeit 40s. per month
to the Queen. Cottages and dwelling houses for sailors or
laborers working on ships for the sea shall be built only within
a mile of the sea. A cottage may be built in a forest or park
for a game-keeper of the deer. A cottage may be built for a
herd-man or shepherd for the keeping of cattle or sheep of the
town. A cottage may be built for a poor, lame, sick, aged, or
disabled person on waste or common land. More families than one
may not be placed in one cottage or dwelling house.

A vagabond or mighty strong beggar [able to work] shall be
whipped.

Any person with land in fee-simple may establish a hospital,
abiding place, or house of correction to have continuance
forever as a corporation for the sustenance and relief of the
maimed, poor, or disabled people as to set the poor to work. The
net income shall not exceed 40,000s. yearly.

Troops of vagabonds with weapons in the highways who pretend to
be soldiers or mariners have committed robberies and murders. So
all vagabonds shall settle down in some service or labor or
trade.

Pontage [toll for upkeep and repair of bridges] shall be taken at
certain bridges: carts 2d., horse and pack 1d., a flock of sheep
2d.

Crown officials such as treasurers, receivers, accountants, and
revenue collectors shall not embezzle Crown funds and shall be
personally liable for arrears.

Churchwardens of every parish shall oversee the poor in their
parish. They shall, with consent of the Justices of the Peace,
set to work children whose parents cannot maintain them and also
set to work married or unmarried persons who have no trade and
no means to maintain themselves. Churchwardens shall tax every
inhabitant, including parson and vicar and every occupier of land
and houses as they shall think fit. There will be a convenient
stock of flax, hemp, wool, thread, iron and other necessary ware
and stuff to set the poor on work. There will be competent sums
of money for the relief of the lame, impotent, old, blind, and
others not able to work, and also for the putting out of children
to be apprentices. Child apprentices may be bound until 21 years
of age or until time of marriage. They shall account to the
Justices of the Peace for all money received and paid. The
penalty for absence or neglect is 20s. If any parish cannot
raise sufficient funds, the Justices of the Peace may tax other
nearby parishes to pay, and then the hundred, and then the
county. Grandparents, parents, and children of every poor, old,
blind, lame, or impotent person not able to work, being of
sufficient ability, shall at their own charge, relieve and
maintain every such poor person in that manner and according to
that rate as Justices of the Peace of that county determine, or
forfeit 20s. per month. Two Justices of the Peace may commit to
jail or house of correction persons refusing to work and
disobedient churchwardens and overseers. The overseers may, with
the consent of the lord of the manor, build houses on common or
waste land for the poor at the expense of the parish, in which
they may place more than one family in each houses.

Every parish shall pay weekly 2-10d. toward the relief of sick,
hurt, and maimed soldiers and mariners. Counties with more than
fifty parishes need pay only 2- 6d. The county treasurer shall
keep registers and accounts. Soldiers begging shall lose their
pension and shall be adjudged a common rogue or vagabond subject
to imprisonment and punishment.

Defendants may not petition to remove a case to the Westminster
courts after a jury is selected because such has resulted in
unnecessary expense to plaintiffs and delay for defendants in
which they suborn perjury by obtaining witnesses to perjure
themselves.

Sheriffs summoning defendants without a writ shall pay 200s. and
damages to the defendant, and 400s. to the King.

Persons stealing crops from lands or fruit from trees shall be
whipped.

Since administrators of goods of people dying intestate who fail
to pay the creditors of the deceased often can't pay the debts
from their own money, the people (who are not creditors)
receiving the goods shall pay the creditors.

Persons forcibly taking others across county lines to hold them
for ransom and those taking or giving blackmail money and those
who burn barns or stacks of grain shall be declared felons and
shall suffer death, without any benefit of clergy or sanctuary.

A proclamation in 1601 reformed the hated monopolies.

No bishop may lease land for more than twenty-one years in or
three lives.

No bishop may alienate any possession of their sees to the crown.
Such are void.

Stewards of leet and baron courts may no longer receive, in their
own names, profits of the court over 12d. since they have vexed
subjects with grievous fines and amercements so that profits of
justice have grown much.

Incorrigible and dangerous rogues shall be branded with an "R"
mark on the left shoulder and be put to labor, because
banishment did not work as they came back undetected. If one is
caught again begging, he shall be deemed a felon.

Benefit of clergy may not be had for stabbing a person who has no
weapon drawn, if he dies within six months.

Any innkeeper, victualler, or alehouse keeper who allows drinking
by persons other than those invited by a traveler who
accompanies him during his necessary abode there and other than
laborers and handicraftsmen in towns upon the usual working days
for one hour at dinner time to take their diet in an alehouse and
other than laborers and workmen following their work to any given
town to sojourn, lodge, or victual in any inn, alehouse or
victuallinge house shall forfeit 10s. for each offense. This is
because the use of inns, alehouses, and victuallinge houses was
intended for relief and lodgings of travelling people and people
not able to provide their own victuals, but not for entertainment
and harboring of lewd and idle people who become drunk.

If a person marries a second time while the first spouse is still
living, it shall be a felony and thus punishable by death.

Watermen transporting people on the Thames River shall have
served as apprentice to a waterman for five years or have been
the son of a waterman. This is to prevent the loss of lives and
goods by inexperienced watermen.

No one may make any hat unless he has served as apprentice for at
least seven years. This is to prevent false and deceitful
hat-making by unskillful persons.

Spices and drugs, including pepper, cloves, mace, nutmeg,
cinnamon, ginger, almonds, and dates, which have usually been
garbled shall be garbled, cleaned, sorted, and sealed by the
Garbler before sale. This is to prevent mingled, corrupt, and
unclean spices and drugs from being sold.

Plasterers shall cease painting because it has intruded upon the
livelihoods of painters who have been apprenticed as such.

Pawn brokers accepting stolen goods shall forfeit twice their
value to the owner from whom stolen.

No butcher may cut any hide or any ox, bull, steer, or cow so
that it is impaired or may kill any calf under five weeks old.
No butcher may be a tanner. No one may be a tanner unless
apprenticed as such for seven years or the son or wife of a
tanner who has tanned for four years or a son or daughter of a
tanner who inherits his tanhouse. Tanners may not be shoemakers,
curriers, butchers, or leatherworkers. Only tanners may buy raw
hides. Only leatherworkers may buy leather. Only sufficiently
strong and substantial leather may be used for sole- leather.
Curriers may not be tanners. Curriers may not refuse to curry
leather. London searchers shall inspect leather, seal and mark
that which is sufficient, and seize any that is insufficiently
tanned, curried, wrought, or used.

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