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
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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