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
The book "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" was written about an
incident in the court of King Arthur and Queen Guenevere in
which a green knight challenges Arthur's knights to live up to
their reputation for valor and awesome deeds. The knight Gawain
answers the challenge, but is shown that he could be false and
cowardly when death seemed to be imminent. Thereafter, he wears a
green girdle around his waist to remind him not to be proud.
Other literature read included "London Lickpenny", a satire on
London and its expensive services and products, "Fall of
Princes" by John Lydgate, social history by Thomas Hoccleve,
"The King is Quair"" by King James I of Scotland about how he
fell in love, "The Cuckoo and the Nightengale", and "The Flower
and Leaf" on morality as secular common sense. Chaucer, Cicero,
and Ovid were widely read. Malory's new version of the Arthurian
stories was popular. Margery Kempe wrote the first true
autobiography. She was a woman who had a normal married life
with children, but one day had visions and voices which led her
to leave her husband to take up a life of wandering and praying
in holy possession. The common people developed ballads, e.g.
about their love of the forest, their wish to hunt, and their
hatred of the forest laws.
About 30% of the people could read English. Books were bought in
London in such quantities by 1403 that the organization of
text-letter writers, book-binders, and book sellers was
sanctioned by ordinance. "Unto the honorable lords, and wise,
the mayor and aldermen of the city of London, pray very humbly
all the good folks, freemen of the said city, of the trades of
writers of text-letter, limners [illuminator of books], and
other folks of London who are wont to bind and to sell books,
that it may please your great sagenesses to grant unto them that
they may elect yearly two reputable men, the one a limner, the
other a text-writer, to be wardens of the said trades, and that
the names of the wardens so elected may be presented each year
before the mayor for the time being, and they be there sworn
well and diligently to oversee that good rule and governance is
had and exercised by all folks of the same trades in all works
unto the said trades pertaining, to the praise and good fame of
the loyal good men of the said trades and to the shame and blame
of the bad and disloyal men of the same. And that the same
wardens may call together all the men of the said trades
honorably and peacefully when need shall be, as well for the
good rule and governance of the said city as of the trades
aforesaid. And that the same wardens, in performing their due
office, may present from time to time all the defaults of the
said bad and disloyal men to the chamberlain at the Guildhall for
the time being, to the end that the same may there, according to
the wise and prudent discretion of the governors of the said
city, be corrected, punished, and duly redressed. And that all
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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