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
Kinsmen of a minor heir who have custody of his land held in socage
shall make no waste, sale, nor destruction of the inheritance and shall
answer to the heir when he comes of age for the issues of the land,
except for the reasonable costs of these guardians.
No lord may distrain any of his tenants. No one may drive animals taken
by distraint out of the county where they have been taken.
"Farmers during their terms, shall not make waste, sale, nor exile of
house, woods, and men, nor of any thing else belonging to the tenements
which they have to farm".
Church law required that planned marriages be publicly announced by the
priest so that any impediment could be made known. If a marriage was
clandestine or both parties knew of an impediment, or it was within the
prohibited degrees of consanguinity, the children would be illegitimate.
According to church rules, a man could bequeath his personal property
subject to certain family rights. These were that if only the wife
survived, she received half the property. Similarly, if children
survived, but no wife, they received half the property. When the wife
and children survived, each party received one third. The church hoped
that the remaining fraction would go to the church as a reward for
praying for the deceased's soul. It taught that dying without a will was
sinful. Adults were to confess their sins at least yearly to their
parish priest, which confession would be confidential.
Henry de Bracton, a royal justice and the last great ecclesiastical
attorney, wrote an unfinished treatise: A Tract on the Laws and Customs
of England, systematizing and organizing the law of the court rolls with
definitions and general concepts and describing court practice and
procedure. It was influenced by his knowledge of Roman legal concepts,
such as res judicata, and by his own opinions, such as that the law
should go from precedent to precedent. He also argued that the will and
intent to injure was the essence of murder, so that neither an infant
nor a madman should be held liable for such and that degrees of
punishment should vary with the level of moral guilt in a killing. He
thought the deodand to be unreasonable.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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