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
No one may export silver, whether bullion or coinage, or wine
except foreign merchants may carry back the portion of their
money not used to buy English commodities. The penalty for
bringing false or counterfeit money into the nation is loss of
life and member. An assigned searcher [inspector] for coinage of
the nation on the sea passing out of the nation or bad money in
the nation shall have one third of it. No foreign money may be
used in the nation.
Each goldsmith shall have an identifying mark, which shall be
placed on his vessel or work only after inspection by the King's
surveyor.
No one shall give anything to a beggar who is capable of working.
Vagrants begging in London were banned by this 1359 ordinance:
"Forasmuch as many men and women, and others, of divers
counties, who might work, to the help of the common people, have
betaken themselves from out of their own country to the city of
London and do go about begging there so as to have their own ease
and repose, not wishing to labor or work for their sustenance, to
the great damage of the common people; and also do waste divers
alms which would otherwise be given to many poor folks, such as
lepers, blind, halt, and persons oppressed with old age and
divers other maladies, to the destruction of the support of the
same - we do command on behalf of our lord the King, whom may God
preserve and bless, that all those who go about begging in the
said city and who are able to labor and work for the profit of
the common people shall quit the said city between now and
Monday next ensuing. And if any such shall be found begging
after the day aforesaid, the same shall be taken and put in the
stocks on Cornhill for half a day the first time, and the second
time he shall remain in the stocks one whole day, and the third
time he shall be taken and shall remain in prison for forty days
and shall then forswear the said city forever. And every
constable and the beadle of every ward of the said city shall be
empowered to arrest such manner of folks and to put them in the
stocks in manner aforesaid."
The hundred year cry to "let the King live on his own" found
fruition in a 1352 statute requiring consent of the Parliament
before any commission of array for militia could be taken and a
1362 statute requiring purchases of goods and means of
conveyance for the King and his household to be made only by
agreement with the seller and with payment to him before the
King traveled on, instead of at the low prices determined
unilaterally by the King's purveyer.
Every man who has wood within the forest may take houseboot and
heyboot in his wood without being arrested so long as it take
such within the view of the foresters.
English was made the official language of the courts, replacing
French and Latin, and schools in 1362 and of Parliament,
replacing Anglo-Norman, in 1363.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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