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
Villeins who were released from the manorial organization by
commutation of their service for a money payment took the name of their
craft as part of their name, such as, for the manufacture of textiles,
Weaver, Draper, Comber, Fuller, Napper, Cissor, Tailor, Textor; for
metalwork, Faber, Ironmonger; for leatherwork, Tanner; for woodwork,
building and carpentry, Carpenter, Cooper, Mason, Pictor; for food
production, Baker, Pistor. Iron, tin, lead, salt, and even coal were
providing increasing numbers of people with a livelihood.
Many new boroughs were founded as grants of market rights by
the king grew in number. These grants implied the advantage of the
King's protection. In fact, one flooded town was replaced with a new
town planned with square blocks. It was the charter which distinguished
the borough community from the other communities existing in the
country. It invested each borough with a distinct character. The
privileges which the charter conferred were different in different
places. It might give trading privileges: freedom from toll, a guild
merchant, a right to hold a fair. It might give jurisdictional
privileges: a right to hold court with greater or less franchises. It
might give governmental privileges: freedom from the burden of
attending the hundred and county courts, the return of writs, which
meant the right to exclude the royal officials, the right to take the
profits of the borough, paying for them a fixed sum to the Crown or
other lord of the borough, the right to elect their own officials
rather than them being appointed by the king or a lord, and the right
to provide for the government of the borough. It might give tenurial
privileges: the power to make a will of lands, or freedom from the
right of a lord to control his tenants' marriages. It might give
procedural privileges: trial by combat is excluded, and trial by
compurgation is secured and regulated. These medieval borough charters
are very varied, and represent all stages of development and all grades
of franchise. Boroughs bought increasing rights and freedoms from their
lord, who was usually the King.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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