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
In London there were 4 royal princes, 6 great earls, 17 barons,
26 knights, and 11 female representatives of the peerage (counted in
1319). There was a wall with four towers surrounding the White Tower,
and this castle was known as the Tower of London. Another wall and a
moat were built around it and it has reached its final form. Hovels,
shops, and waste patches alternated with high walls and imposing
gateways protecting mansions. The mansions had orchards, gardens,
stables, brewhouses, bakeries, guardrooms, and chapels. London streets
were paved with cobbles and sand. Each citizen was to keep the street
in front of his tenement in good repair. Later, each alderman appointed
four reputable men to repair and clean the streets for wages. The
repair of Bishopsgate was the responsibility of the Bishop because he
received one stick from every cart of firewood passing through it.
Rules as to tiled roofs were enforced. A 1297 ordinance required all
taverns to close at curfew, an hour that fluctuated. Prostitutes were
expelled from the city because the street with their bawdy houses had
become very noisy. Women huckster-retailers, nurses, servants, and
loose women were limited to wearing hoods furred with lambskin or
rabbitskin and forbidden to wear hoods furred with vair or miniver
[grey or white squirrel] in the guise of good ladies. An infirmary for
the blind was founded by a mercer, who became its first prior.
The London mayoral elections were hotly fought over until in
1285, when the aldermen began to act with the aid of an elected council
in each of the twenty-four wards, which decentralized the government of
the city. Each ward chose certain of its inhabitants to be councilors
to the aldermen. This council was to be consulted by him and its advice
to be followed. In 1291, the aldermen for the first time included a
fishmonger. The Fishmongers were the only guild at this time, besides
the Weavers, which had acquired independent jurisdiction by the
transfer of control of their weekly hallmote from a public official to
themselves. Craftsmen began to take other public offices too. By the
reign of Edward II, all the citizens were obliged to be enrolled among
the trade guilds. A great quarrel between the weaver's guild and the
magistracy began the control of the city by the craft guilds or city
companies. Admission to freedom of the city [citizenship] was
controlled by the citizens, who decided that no man of English birth,
and especially no English merchant, who followed any specific mistery
[French word for a calling or trade] or craft, was to be admitted to
the freedom of the city except on the security of six reputable men of
that mistery or craft. No longer could one simply purchase citizenship.
Apprentices had to finish their terms before such admission, and often
could not afford the citizenship fee imposed on them. Only freemen
could sell wares in the city, a custom of at least two hundred years.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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