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
Forests were still retained by Kings for their hunting of boars and
stags. A master forester maintained them. The boundaries of the Royal
Forests were enlarged. They comprised almost one-third of the kingdom.
Certain inhabitants thereof supplied the royal foresters with meat and
drink and received certain easements and rights of common therein. The
forest law reached the extreme of severity and cruelty under Henry I.
Punishments given included blinding, emasculation, and execution.
Offenders were rarely allowed to substitute a money payment. When fines
were imposed they were heavy.
A substantial number of barons and monasteries were heavily in debt to
the Jews. The interest rate was 43% (2d. per pound per week). The king
taxed the Jews at will.
- The Law -
Henry restored the death penalty (by hanging) for theft and robbery,
but maintained William I's punishment of mutilation by blinding and
severing of limbs for other offenses, for example, bad money. He decreed
in 1108 that false and bad money should be amended, so that he who was
caught passing bad denarii should not escape by redeeming himself but
should lose his eyes and members. And since denarii were often picked
out, bent, broken, and refused, he decreed that no denarius or obol,
which he said were to be round, or even a quadrans, if it were whole,
should be refused. (Money then reached a higher level of perfection,
which was maintained for the next century.)
Counterfeiting law required that "If any one be caught carrying false
coin, the reeve shall give the bad money to the King however much there
is, and it shall be charged in the render of his farm [payment] as good,
and the body of the offender shall be handed over to the King for
judgment, and the serjeants who took him shall have his clothes."
The forest law stated that: "he that doth hunt a wild beast and doth
make him pant, shall pay 10 shillings: If he be a freeman, then he shall
pay double. If he be a bound man, he shall lose his skin." A "verderer"
was responsible for enforcing this law, which also stated that: "If
anyone does offer force to a Verderer, if he be a freeman, he shall lose
his freedom, and all that he hath. And if he be a villein, he shall lose
his right hand." Further, "If such an offender does offend so again, he
shall lose his life."
A wife's dower is one-third of all her husband's freehold land, unless
his endowment of her at their marriage was less than one- third.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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