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
Paved roads in towns were usually gravel and sometimes cobble. They
were frequently muddy because of rain and spillage of water being
carried. Iron-shod wheels and overloaded carts made them very uneven.
London was the first town with paviors. They cleaned and repaired the
streets, filling up potholes with wood chips and compacting them with
hand rams. The paviors were organized as a city company in 1479. About
1482, towns besides London began appointing salaried road paviors to
repair roads and collect their expenses from the householders because
the policy of placing the burden on individual householders didn't work
well. London streets were lighted at night by public lanterns, under the
direction of the mayor. The residents were to light these candle
lanterns in winter from dusk to the 9 p.m. curfew. There were
fire-engines composed of a circular cistern with a pump and six feet of
inflexible hose on wheels pulled by two men on one end and pushed by two
men on the other end. In 1480 the city walls were rebuilt with a weekly
tax of 5d. per head.
In schools, there was a renaissance of learning from original sources
of knowledge written in Greek and rebirth of the Greek pursuit of the
truth and scientific spirit of inquiry. There was a striking increase in
the number of schools founded by wealthy merchants or town guilds. Every
cathedral, monastery, and college had a grammar school. Merchants tended
to send their sons to private boarding schools, instead of having them
tutored at home as did the nobility. Well-to-do parents still sent sons
to live in the house of some noble to serve them as pages in return for
being educated with the noble's son by the household priest. They often
wore their master's coat of arms and became their squires as part of
their knightly education. Sometimes girls were sent to live in another
house to receive education from a tutor there under the supervision of
the lady of the house. Every man, free or villein, could send his sons
and daughters to school. In every village, there were some who could
read and write.
In 1428, Lincoln's Inn required barristers normally resident in London
and the county of Middlesex to remain in residence and pay commons
during the periods between sessions of court and during vacations, so
that the formal education of students would be continuous. In 1442, a
similar requirement was extended to all members.
The book "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" was written about an
incident in the court of King Arthur and Queen Guenevere in which a
green knight challenges Arthur's knights to live up to their reputation
for valor and awesome deeds. The knight Gawain answers the challenge,
but is shown that he could be false and cowardly when death seemed to be
imminent. Thereafter, he wears a green girdle around his waist to remind
him not to be proud.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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