Our Legal Heritage: King AEthelbert - King George III, 600 A.D. - 1776: June 2011 (Sixth) EditionReilly, S. A.
History
Our Legal Heritage: King AEthelbert - King George III, 600 A.D. - 1776: June 2011 (Sixth) Edition
Reilly, S. A.
Law -- England -- History
Bachelors at Oxford studied the arts of grammar, rhetoric, and logic,
and then music, arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy, until they mastered
their discipline and therefore were authorized to teach it. Teaching
would then provide an income sufficient to support a wife. The master of
arts was analogous to the master craftsman of a guild. From 1190, the
civil law was studied, and shortly thereafter, canon law. Later came the
study of medicine. The use of paper supplemented the use of parchment
for writing. Irregular edged paper was made from linen, cotton, straw,
and/or wood beaten to a pulp and then spread out over a wire mesh to
dry.
Theologicians taught that the universe was made for the sake and
service of man, so man was placed at the center of the universe. Man was
made for the sake and service of God.
Every freeman holding land of a lord gave homage and fealty to him,
swearing to bear him faith of the tenement held and to preserve his
earthly honor in all things, saving the faith owed to the king. Homage
was done for lands, for free tenements, for services, and for rents
precisely fixed in money or in kind. Homage could be done to any free
person, male or female, adult or minor, cleric or layman. A man could do
several homages to different lords for different fees, but there had to
be a chief homage to that lord of whom he held his chief tenement.
Homage was not due for dower, from the husband of a woman to whom a
tenement was given as a marriage portion, for a fee given in free alms,
or until the third heir, either for free maritagium [a marriage portion
which is given with a daughter in marriage, that is not bound to
service] or for the fee of younger sisters holding of the eldest. All
fiefs to be inherited by the eldest son had to be intact. Every lord
could exact fealty from his servants.
In this era, the English national race and character was formed. Only a
few barons still had lands in Normandy. Stories of good King Arthur were
popular and set ideals for behavior and justice in an otherwise barbaric
age where force was supreme. His last battle in which he lay wounded and
told a kinsman to rule in his place and uphold his laws was written in
poem ("Layamon's Brut"). Romantic stories were written and read in
English. The custom of "bundling" was started by ladies with their
knights, who would lie together in bed without undressing and with one
in a sack the top of which was tied around his neck, as part of a
romantic courtship. Wealthy men often gave their daughters dowries in
case they were widowed. This might be matched by a marriage settlement
by a prospective husband.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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