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
8) They may lawfully have their lands and tenures and mortgages
and debts throughout my whole land, [from] whoever owes them
[anything].
9) With regard to debts which have been lent in Bristol, and
mortgages theremade, pleas shall be held in the town according
to the custom of the town.
10) If any one in any other place in my land shall take toll of
the men of Bristol, if he does not restore it after he is
required to, the Prepositor of Bristol may take from him a
distress at Bristol, and force him to restore it.
11) No stranger-tradesman may buy within the town from a man who
is a stranger, leather, grain, or wool, but only from a burgess.
12) No stranger may have a shop, including one for selling wine,
unless in a ship, nor shall sell cloth for cutting except at the
fair.
13) No stranger may remain in the town with his goods for the
purpose of selling his goods, but for forty days.
14) No burgess may be confined or distrained any where else
within my land or power for any debt, unless he is a debtor or
surety (to avoid a person owed a debt from distraining another
person of the town of the debtor).
15) They shall be able to marry themselves, their sons, their
daughters and their widows, without the license of their lords.
(Lords had the right of preventing their tenants and mesne lords
and their families from marrying without his consent.)
16) No one of their lords shall have the wardship or the disposal
of their sons or daughters on account of their lands out of the
town, but only the wardship of their tenements which belong to
their own fee, until they become of age.
17) There shall be no recognition [acknowledgement that something
done by another person in one's name had one's authority] in the
town.
18) No one shall take tyne [wooden barrel with a certain quantity
of ale, payable by the townsmen to the constable for the use of
the castle] unless for the use of the lord Earl, and that
according to the custom of the town.
19) They may grind their grain wherever they may choose.
20) They may have their reasonable guilds, as well or better than
they had themin the time of Robert and his son William [John's
wife's grandfather and father, who were earls of Gloucester when
the town and castle of Bristol were part of the honor of
Gloucester].
21) No burgess may be compelled to bail any man, unless he
himself chooses it, although he may be dwelling on his land.
We have also granted to them all their tenures, messuages, in
copses, in buildings on the water or elsewhere to be held in
free burgage [tenant to pay only certain fixed services or
payments to his lord, but not military service (like free
socage)]. We have granted also that any of them may make
improvements as much as he can in erecting buildings anywhere on
the bank and elsewhere, as long as the borough and town are not
damaged thereby. Also, they shall have and possess all waste
land and void grounds and places, to be built on at their
pleasure.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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