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
Many London houses were being made from stone and timber and even
brick and timber, instead of just timber and mud. However,
chimneys were still a luxury of the rich. There were windows of
glass and a guild of glaziers was chartered by the King. Many
single-roomed houses added a second-floor room for sleeping,
which was approached by a wooden or stone staircase from the
outside. Goods were displayed on a booth outside the door of the
house or hung in the windows. They were stored at night in the
cellar. Over the booths swung huge signs, which had to be nine
feet above street level to allow a man on horseback to ride
underneath. There were no sidewalks. Street repair work for
wages was supervised by a stone master. The streets sloped down
from the middle so that the filth of the streets would run down
the sides of the road. People sometimes threw the rubbish from
their houses onto the street although they were supposed to cart
it outside the city walls and to clean the frontage of their
houses once a week. Dustmen scavenged through the rubbish on the
streets. Pigs and geese were not allowed to run at large in the
streets, but had to be fed at home. There were other city rules
on building, public order, the use of fountains, precautions
against fire, trading rights in various districts, closing time
of taverns, and when refuse could be thrown into the streets,
e.g. nighttime.
Aldermen were constantly making rounds to test measures and
weights, wine cups, the height of tavern signs, and the mesh of
the fishing nets, which had to be at least two inches wide. They
saw that the taverns were shut when curfew was rung and arrested
anyone on the street after curfew who had a weapon, for no one
with a sword was allowed on the streets unless he was some great
lord or other substantial person of good reputation. Wards
provided citizens to guard the gates in their respective
neighborhood and keep its key.
The city was so dense that nuisance was a common action brought
in court, for instance, vegetable vendors near a church
obstructing passageway on the street or plumbers melting their
solder with a lower than usual shalt of the furnace so smoke was
inhaled by people nearby.
Crime in London was rare. Murder, burglary, highway robbery, and
gross theft were punishable by hanging. Forgery, fraud, was
punishable by the placement in the pillory or stocks or by
imprisonment. Perjury was punished by confession from a high
stool for the first offense, and the pillory for the second.
Slander and telling lies was punished by the pillory and wearing
a whetstone around one's neck.
Prominent Londoners sought to elevate their social position by
having their family marry into rural landholders of position.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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