Our Legal Heritage: The First Thousand Years: 600 - 1600: King Aethelbert - Queen ElizabethReilly, S. A.
History
Our Legal Heritage: The First Thousand Years: 600 - 1600: King Aethelbert - Queen Elizabeth
Reilly, S. A.
Law -- England -- History
Each borough has its own civil and criminal ordinances and police
jurisdiction. Borough courts tended to deal with more laws than
other local courts because of the borough's denser populations,
which were composed of merchants, manufacturers, and traders, as
well as those engaged in agriculture. Only borough courts have
jurisdiction over fairs. In some boroughs the villein who
resides for a year and a day becomes free. There are special
ordinances relating to apprentices. There are sometimes
ordinances against enticing away servants bound by agreement to
serve another. The wife who is a trader is regarded in many
places as a femme sole. There may be special ordinances as to the
liability of masters for the acts of their apprentices and
agents, or as to brokers, debt, or earnest money binding a
bargain. The criminal and police jurisdiction in the borough was
organized upon the same model as in the country at large, and was
controlled by the King's courts upon similar principles, though
there are some survivals of old rules, such as mention of the
bot and the wer. The crimes committed are similar to those of
the country, such as violence, breaches of the assize of bread
and beer, stirring up suits before the ecclesiastical courts,
digging up or obstructing the highway, not being enrolled in a
tithing, encroachments upon or obstructions of rights of common.
The most striking difference with the country at large are the
ordinances on the repair or demolition of buildings,
encroachments on another's building, fires, and nuisances.
Specimens of other characteristic urban disputes are: selling bad
food, using bad materials, unskillful or careless workmanship,
fraudulent weights and measures, fraud in buying and selling,
forestalling or regrating, acting in a way likely to endanger
the liberties of the borough, usury, trading without being a
citizen, assisting other unlicensed persons to trade, unlawfully
forming a guild, complaints against various guilds in which trade
might be organized. Since the ordinances were always liable to
be called in question before the King's courts, they tended to
become uniform and in harmony with the principles of the common
law. Also, trading between boroughs kept them knowledgeable
about each other's customs and conditions for trade, which then
tended to standardize. Boroughs often had seals to prove communal
consent and tended to act as a corporate body.
Borough ordinances often include arson such as this one: "And if
a street be set on fire by any one, his body shall be attached
and cast into the midst of the fire." Robbery by the miller was
specially treated by an ordinance that "And if the miller be
attainted of robbery of the grain or of the flour to the amount
of 4d., he shall be hanged from the beam in his mill."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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