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, an ordinance prescribed for bakers for the first offense of
making false bread a forfeiture of that bread. For the second offense
was prescribed imprisonment, and for the third offense placement in the
pillory. A London ordinance for millers who caused bread to be false
prescribed for them to be carried in a tumbrel cart through certain
streets, exposed to the derision of the people.
By statute, no one may make a gift or alienation of land to the church.
An attempt to do so will cause the land to escheat to the lord, or in
his default, to the King. Religious houses may not alienate land given
to them by the king or other patrons because such gifts were for the
sake of someone's soul. An attempt to do so will cause the land to
revert to the donor or his heir. If the church did not say the prayers
or do the other actions for which land was given to it, the land will
revert to the donor or his heir. Land may not be alienated to religious
bodies in such a way that it would cease to render its due service to
the King. (The church never died, never married, and never had
children.) The church shall send no money out of the nation. (This
statute of mortmain was neutralized by collusive lawsuits in which the
intended grantor would sue the intended grantee claiming superior title
and then would default, surrendering the land to the intended grantee by
court judgment.)
"Concerning wrecks of the sea, where a man, a dog, or a cat escape
alive out of the ship, that such ship nor barge nor anything within them
shall be deemed wreck, but the goods shall be saved and kept by view of
the Sheriff, Coroner, or the King's Bailiff". If anyone proves the goods
were his within a year and a day, they shall be restored to him without
delay. Otherwise, they shall be kept by the King. "And where wreck
belongs to one other than the King, he shall have it in like manner". If
he does otherwise, he shall be imprisoned and pay damages and fine.
Some statutes applied only to Kent County, which had a unique position
between London and the continent. Money flowed between England and the
continent through Kent. So Kent never developed a manorial system of
land holding, but evolved from a system of clans and independent
villages directly into a commercial system.
In Kent, all men are free and may give or sell their lands without
permission of their lords, as before the Conquest.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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