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 main governmental activities were: war, collection of
revenue, religious education, and administration of justice. For
war, the shires had to provide a certain number of men and the
ports quotas of ships with crews. The King was the patron of the
English church. He gave the church peace and protection. He
presided over church councils and appointed bishops. As for the
administration of justice, the public courts were almost all
under members of Edward's court, bishops, earls, and reeves.
Edward's mind was often troubled and disturbed by the threat
that law and justice would be overthrown, by the pervasiveness of
disputes and discord, by the raging of wicked presumption, by
money interfering with right and justice, and by avarice
kindling all of these. He saw it as his duty to courageously
oppose the wicked by taking good men as models, by enriching the
churches of God, by relieving those oppressed by wicked judges,
and by judging equitably between the powerful and the humble.
A King's grant of land entailed two documents: a charter giving
boundaries and conditions and a writ, usually addressed to the
shire court, listing the judicial and financial privileges
conveyed with the land. These were usually sac and soke [petty
jurisdiction over inhabitants of the estate], toll and team [a
share in the profits from trade conducted within the estate], and
infangenetheof [the authority to hang and take the chattels of a
thief caught on the property]. The writ was created by the
Chancery, which had been established by the King to draft
documents and keep records. The writ was a small piece of
parchment addressed to a royal official or dependent commanding
him to perform some task for the King. By the 1000s A.D., the
writ contained a seal: a lump of wax with the impress of the
Great Seal of England.
The town of Coventry consisted of a monastery manor and a private
manor. The monastery was granted by Edward the Confessor full
freedom and these jurisdictions: sac and soke, toll and team,
hamsocne [the authority to fine a person for breaking into and
making entry by force into the dwelling of another], forestall
[the authority to fine a person for robbing others on the road],
blodwite [the authority to impose a forfeiture for assault
involving bloodshed], fihtwite [the authority to fine for
fighting], weordwite [the authority to fine for manslaughter,
but not for willful murder], and mundbryce [the authority to
fine for any breach of the peace, such as trespass on lands].
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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