Our Legal Heritage: King AEthelbert - King George III, 600 A.D. - 1776Reilly, S. A.
History
Our Legal Heritage: King AEthelbert - King George III, 600 A.D. - 1776
Reilly, S. A.
Law -- England -- History
Often one village was divided up among two or more manors, so
different manorial customs made living conditions different among the
villagers. Villages usually had carpenters, smiths, saddlers,
thatchers, carters, fullers, dyers, soapmakers, tanners, needlers, and
brassworkers. Each villein had his own garden in which to grow fruit
and vegetables next to his house, a pig (which fattened more quickly
than other animals), strips in the common field, and sometimes an
assart [a few acres of his own to cultivate as he pleased on originally
rough uncultivated waste land beyond the common fields and the enclosed
common pastures and meadows]. Most villeins did not venture beyond
their village except for about ten miles to a local shrine or great
fair a couple times a year. At the fair might be fish, honey, spices,
salt, garlic, oil, furs, silks, canvas, soap, pans, pots, grindstones,
coal, nails, tar, iron, shovels, brushes, pails, horses, and
packsaddles. Early apothecaries might sell potions there. Men and women
looking for other employment might attend to indicate their
availability.
Under Edward I, villages were required to mount watches to
protect life and property and were called upon to provide one man for
the army and to pay his wages.
People told time by counting the number of rings of the church
bell, which rang on the hour. Every Sunday, the villagers went to
church, which was typically the most elaborate and centrally located
building in the village. The parishioners elected churchwardens, who
might be women. This religion brought comfort and hope of going to
heaven, rather than hell, after judgment by God at death if sin was
avoided or forgiven. On festival days, Bible stories, legends, and
lives of saints were read or performed as miracle dramas. They learned
to avoid the devil, who was influential in lonely places like forests
and high mountains. At death, the corpse was washed, shrouded, and put
into a rectangular coffin with a cross on its lid. Priests sang prayers
amid burning incense for the deliverance of the soul to God while
interring the coffin into the ground. Men who did not make a will
risked the danger of an intestate and unconfessed death. The personal
property of a man dying intestate now went to the church as a trust for
the dead man's imperiled soul instead of to the man's lord.
Unqualified persons entered holy orders thereby obtaining
"benefit of clergy", and then returned to secular employments retaining
this protection.
A villein could be forever set free from servitude by his lord
as in this example:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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