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
Crown officials such as treasurers, receivers, accountants, and
revenue collectors shall not embezzle Crown funds and shall be
personally liable for arrears.
Churchwardens of every parish shall oversee the poor in their
parish. They shall, with consent of the Justices of the Peace,
set to work children whose parents cannot maintain them and also
set to work married or unmarried persons who have no trade and
no means to maintain themselves. Churchwardens shall tax every
inhabitant, including parson and vicar and every occupier of land
and houses as they shall think fit. There will be a convenient
stock of flax, hemp, wool, thread, iron and other necessary ware
and stuff to set the poor on work. There will be competent sums
of money for the relief of the lame, impotent, old, blind, and
others not able to work, and also for the putting out of children
to be apprentices. Child apprentices may be bound until 21 years
of age or until time of marriage. They shall account to the
Justices of the Peace for all money received and paid. The
penalty for absence or neglect is 20s. If any parish cannot
raise sufficient funds, the Justices of the Peace may tax other
nearby parishes to pay, and then the hundred, and then the
county. Grandparents, parents, and children of every poor, old,
blind, lame, or impotent person not able to work, being of
sufficient ability, shall at their own charge, relieve and
maintain every such poor person in that manner and according to
that rate as Justices of the Peace of that county determine, or
forfeit 20s. per month. Two Justices of the Peace may commit to
jail or house of correction persons refusing to work and
disobedient churchwardens and overseers. The overseers may, with
the consent of the lord of the manor, build houses on common or
waste land for the poor at the expense of the parish, in which
they may place more than one family in each houses.
Every parish shall pay weekly 2-10d. toward the relief of sick,
hurt, and maimed soldiers and mariners. Counties with more than
fifty parishes need pay only 2- 6d. The county treasurer shall
keep registers and accounts. Soldiers begging shall lose their
pension and shall be adjudged a common rogue or vagabond subject
to imprisonment and punishment.
Defendants may not petition to remove a case to the Westminster
courts after a jury is selected because such has resulted in
unnecessary expense to plaintiffs and delay for defendants in
which they suborn perjury by obtaining witnesses to perjure
themselves.
Sheriffs summoning defendants without a writ shall pay 200s. and
damages to the defendant, and 400s. to the King.
Persons stealing crops from lands or fruit from trees shall be
whipped.
Since administrators of goods of people dying intestate who fail
to pay the creditors of the deceased often can't pay the debts
from their own money, the people (who are not creditors)
receiving the goods shall pay the creditors.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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