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
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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