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
Preachers drawing crowds by ingenious sermons and inciting them
to riot shall be arrested by sheriffs and tried by the
ecclesiastical court.
Any stranger passing at night of whom any have suspicion shall be
arrested and taken to the Sheriff.
No man shall ride with a spear, upon pain of forfeiting it.
No servant of agriculture or laborer shall carry any sword or
dagger, or forfeit it, except in time of war in defense of the
nation. He may carry bow and arrow [for practice] on Sundays and
holy days, when he should not play games such as tennis.
football, or dice.
No one may enter another's land and tenements by strong hand nor
with a mob, upon pain of imprisonment and ransom at the King's
will.
Charters, releases, obligations, [quit-claim deeds] and other
deeds burnt or destroyed in uprisings shall be reissued without
fee, after trial by the King and his council. Manumissions,
obligations, releases and other bonds and feoffments in land
made by force, coercion or duress during mob uprisings are void.
Men who rape and women consenting after a rape shall lose their
inheritance and dower and joint feoffments. The husbands, or
father or next of kin of such women may sue the rapist by
inquisition, but not by battle. The penalty is loss of life and
member.
The Statute of Laborers of 1351 required all workers, from
tailors to ploughmen, to work only at pre-plague wage rates and
forced the vagrant peasant to work for anyone who claimed him or
her. It also encouraged longer terms of employment as in the
past rather than for a day at a time. Statutory price controls on
food limited profits to reasonable ones according to the
distance of the supply. Later, wages were determined in each
county by Justices of the Peace according to the dearth of
victuals while allowing a victualler a reasonable profit and a
penalty was specified as paying the value of the excess wages
given or received for the first offense, double this for the
second offense, and treble this or forty days imprisonment for
the third offense.
A fugitive laborer will be outlawed, and when found, shall be
burnt in the forehead with the letter "F" for falsity.
Children who labored at the plough and cart or other agriculture
shall continue in that labor and may not go into a craft.
A statute of 1363 designed to stop hoarding various types of
merchandise until a type became scarce so to sell it at high
prices, required merchants to deal in only one type of
merchandise. It also required craftsmen to work in only one
craft as before (except women who traditionally did several
types of handiwork). This was repealed a year later.
Where scarcity has made the price of poultry high, it shall be
lowered to 8d. for a young capon, 7d. for an old capon or a
goose, 9d. for a hen, and 10d. for a pullet.
The fares for passage on boats on fresh waters and from Dover to
the continent shall remain at their old rate.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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