| By Author | [ A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z | Other Symbols ] |
| By Title | [ A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z | Other Symbols ] |
| By Language |
|
Download this book: [ ASCII ] Look for this book on Amazon Tweet |
Title: Our Legal Heritage - June 2011 (Sixth) Edition
Author: Reilly, S. A.
Language: English
As this book started as an ASCII text book there are no pictures available.
*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Our Legal Heritage - June 2011 (Sixth) Edition" ***
Note: This is an updated edition of PG#13376.
Copyright (C) 2004 S. A. Reilly
OUR LEGAL HERITAGE
King AEthelbert - King George III, 1776
600 A.D. - 1776
By
S. A. Reilly, Attorney
175 E. Delaware Place
Chicago, Illinois 60611-7715
S-Reilly@att.net
Copyright (C) 2004
Preface
This book was written to appreciate what laws have been in existence
for a long time and therefore have proven their success in maintaining a
stable society. Its purpose is also to see the historical context in
which our legal doctrines developed. It includes the inception of the
common law system, which was praised because it made law which was not
handed down by an absolutist king; the origin of the jury system; the
meaning of the Magna Carta provisions in their historical context; and
the emergence of attorneys.
This book is a primer. One may read it without prior knowledge of
history or law, although it will be more meaningful to attorneys than to
others. It can serve as an introduction on which to base further reading
in English legal history. It defines terms unique to English legal
history. However, the meaning of some terms in King Aethelbert's code in
Chapter 1 are unknown or inexact.
In the Table of Contents, the title of each chapter denotes an
important legal development in the given time period for that chapter.
Each chapter is divided into three sections: The Times, The Law, and
Judicial Procedure.
The Times section sets a background and context in which to better
understand the law of that period. The usual subject matter of history
such as battles, wars, royal intrigues, periods of corruption, and
international relations are omitted as not helping to understand the
process of civilization and development of the law. Standard practices
are described, but there are often variations with locality. Also,
change did not come abruptly, but with vacillations, e.g. the change
from pagan to Christian belief and the change to allowance of loans for
interest. The scientific revolution was accepted only slowly. There were
often many attempts made for change before it actually occurred, e.g.
gaining Parliamentary power over the king's privileges, such as
taxation.
The Law section describes the law governing the behavior and conduct of
the populace. It includes law of that time which is the same, similar,
or a building block to the law of today. In earlier times this is both
statutory law and the common law of the courts. The Magna Carta, which
is quoted in Chapter 7, is the first statute of England and is listed
first in the "Statutes of the Realm" and the "Statutes at Large". The
law sections of Chapters 7 - 18 mainly quote or paraphrase almost all of
these statutes. Excluded are statutes which do not help us understand
the development of our law, such as statutes governing Wales after its
conquest and statutes on succession rights to the throne.
The Judicial Procedure section describes the process of applying the
law and trying cases, and jurisdictions. It also contains some examples
of cases.
For easy comparison, amounts of money expressed in pounds or marks
[Danish denomination] have often been converted to the smaller
denominations of shillings and pence. There are twenty shillings in a
pound. A mark in silver is two-thirds of a pound. Shillings are
abbreviated: "s." There are twelve pennies or pence in a Norman
shilling. Pence are abbreviated "d." Six shillings and two pence is
denoted 6s.2d. A scaett was a coin of silver and copper of lesser
denomination than a shilling. There were no coins of the denomination of
shilling during Anglo-Saxon times.
The sources and reference books from which information was obtained are
listed in a bibliography instead of being contained in tedious
footnotes. There is no index to pages because the electronic text will
print out its pages differently on different computers with different
computer settings. Instead, a word search may be done on the electronic
text.
Dedication and Acknowledgements
A Vassar College faculty member once dedicated her book to her
students, but for whom it would have been written much earlier. This
book "Our Legal Heritage" is dedicated to the faculty of Vassar College,
without whom it would never have been written. Much appreciation goes to
Professor James Curtin of Loyola Law School for his review and comments
on this book's medieval period: Chapters 4-10, and especially his
comment that "I learned quite a bit about life in those days from your
work." Thanks go to Loyola University Law School Professor George
Anastaplo for introducing me to Professor Curtin. Much appreciation goes
to Professor Lacey Baldwin Smith of Northwestern University's History
Department for his review and comments on this book's Tudor and Stuart
periods: Chapters 11-17, especially his comment that he learned a lot.
Thanks go to Northwestern University Law School Professor Steven Presser
for introducing me to Professor Smith. Finally, many thanks go to fellow
Mensan William Wedgeworth for proof-reading the entire book.
Table of Contents
Chapters:
1. Tort law as the first written law: to 600
2. Oaths and perjury: 600-900
3. Marriage law: 900-1066
4. Martial "law": 1066-1100
5. Criminal law and prosecution: 1100-1154
6. Common Law for all freemen: 1154-1215
7. Magna Carta: the first statute: 1215-1272
8. Land law: 1272-1348
9. Legislating the economy: 1348-1399
10. Equity from Chancery Court: 1399-1485
11. Use-trust of land: 1485-1509
12. Wills and testaments of lands and goods: 1509-1558
13. Consideration and contract Law: 1558-1601
14. Welfare for the poor: 1601-1625
15. Independence of the courts: 1625-1642
16. Freedom of religion: 1642-1660
17. Habeas Corpus: 1660-1702
18. Service of Process instead of arrest: 1702-1776
19. Epilogue: 1776-2000
Appendix: Sovereigns of England
Bibliography
- - - Chapter 1 - - -
- The Times: before 600 A.D. -
The settlement of England goes back thousands of years. At first,
people hunted and gathered their food. They wore animal skins over their
bodies for warmth and around their feet for protection when walking.
These skins were sewn together with bone needles and threads made from
animal sinews. They carried small items by hooking them onto their
belts. They used bone and stone tools, e.g. for preparing skins. Their
uncombed hair was held by thistlethorns, animal spines, or straight bone
hair pins. They wore conical hats of bound rush and lived in rush
shelters.
Early clans, headed by kings, lived in huts on top of hills or other
high places and fortified by circular or contour earth ditches and banks
behind which they could gather for protection. They were probably dug
with antler picks and wood spades. The people lived in rectangular huts
with four wood posts supporting a roof. The walls were made of saplings,
and a mixture of mud and straw. Cooking was in a clay oven inside or
over an open fire on the outside. Water was carried in animal skins or
leather pouches from springs lower on the hill up to the settlement.
Forests abounded with wolves, bears, deer, wild boars, and wild cattle.
They could more easily be seen from the hill tops. Pathways extended
through this camp of huts and for many miles beyond.
For wives, men married women of their clan or bought or captured other
women, perhaps with the help of a best man. They carried their unwilling
wives over the thresholds of their huts, which were sometimes in places
kept secret from her family. The first month of marriage was called the
honeymoon because the couple was given mead, a drink with fermented
honey and herbs, for the first month of their marriage. A wife wore a
gold wedding band on the ring finger of her left hand to show that she
was married.
Women usually stayed at home caring for children, preparing meals, and
making baskets. They also made wool felt and spun and wove wool into a
coarse cloth. Flax was grown and woven into a coarse linen cloth.
Spinning the strands into one continuous thread was done on a stick,
which the woman could carry about and spin at anytime when her hands
were free. The weaving was done on an upright or warp-weighted loom.
People of means draped the cloth around their bodies and fastened it
with a metal brooch inlayed with gold, gems, and shell, which were glued
on with glue that was obtained from melting animal hooves. People drank
from hollowed- out animal horns, which they could carry from belts. They
could tie things with rawhide strips or rope braids they made. Kings
drank from animal horns decorated with gold or from cups of amber,
shale, or pure gold. Men and women wore pendants and necklaces of
colorful stones, shells, amber beads, bones, and deer teeth. They
skinned and cut animals with hand-axes and knives made of flint dug up
from pits and formed by hitting flakes off. The speared fish with barbed
bone prongs or wrapped bait around a flint, bone, or shell fish hook. On
the coast, they made bone harpoons for deep-sea fish. The flint ax was
used to shape wood and bone and was just strong enough to fell a tree,
although the process was very slow.
The king, who was tall and strong, led his men in hunting groups to
kill deer and other wild animals in the forests and to fish in the
streams. Some men brought their hunting dogs on leashes to follow scent
trails to the animal. The men threw stones and spears with flint points
at the animals. They used wood clubs to beat them, at the same time
using wood shields to protect their bodies. They watched the phases of
the moon and learned to predict when it would be full and give the most
light for night hunting. This began the concept of a month. Circles of
stone like Stonehenge were built with alignments to paths of the moon.
If hunting groups from two clans tried to follow the same deer, there
might be a fight between the clans or a blood feud. After the battle,
the clan would bring back its dead and wounded. A priest officiated over
a funeral for a dead man. His wife would often also go on the funeral
pyre with him.
The priest also officiated over sacrifices of humans, who were usually
offenders found guilty of transgressions. Sacrifices were usually made
in time of war or pestilence, and usually before the winter made food
scarce.
The clan ate deer that had been cooked on a spit over a fire, and
fruits and vegetables which had been gathered by the women. They drank
water from springs. In the spring, food was plentiful. There were eggs
of different colors in nests and many hare to eat. The goddess Easter
was celebrated at this time.
Later, there was farming and domestication of animals such as horses,
pigs, sheep, goats, chicken, and cattle. Of these, the pig was the most
important meat supply, being killed and salted for winter use. Next in
importance were the cattle. Sheep were kept primarily for their wool.
Flocks and herds were taken to pastures. The male cattle, with wood
yokes, pulled ploughs in the fields of barley and wheat. The female goat
and cow provided milk, butter, and cheese. The chickens provided eggs.
The hoe, spade, and grinding stone were used. Thread was spun with a
hand-held spindle which one hand held while the other hand alternately
formed the thread from a mass and then wound it around the spindle. A
coarse cloth was woven and worn as a tunic which had been cut from the
cloth. Kings wore tunics decorated with sheet gold. Decorated pottery
was made from clay and used to hold liquids and for food preparation and
consumption. During the period of "lent" [from the word "lencten", which
means spring], it was forbidden to eat any meat or fish. This was the
season in which many animals were born and grew to maturity. Wood carts
with four wheels were used to transport produce and manure. Horses were
used for transportation of people or goods. Wood dug-out boats and
paddles were used to fish on rivers or on the seacoast.
Clans had settlements near rivers. Each settlement had a meadow, for
the mowing of hay, and a simple mill, with round timber huts, covered
with branches or thatch or turf supported by a ring of posts. Inside was
a hearth with smoke going up through a hole in the roof, and a cauldron
for cooking food. There was an upright loom in the darkness. The floor
was swept clean. At the door were spears or bags of slingstones ready
for immediate use. The King lived in the largest hut. Gullies outside
carried off excess water. Each hut had a garden for fruit and
vegetables. A goat or cow might be tied out of reach of the garden.
There was a fence or hedge surrounding and protecting the garden area
and dwelling. Buckets and cauldrons which had originated from the
Mediterranean were used. Querns with the top circular stone turned by
hand over the bottom stone were used for grinding grain. There were
ovens to dry and roast grain. Grain was first eaten as a porridge or
cereal. There were square wood granaries on stilts and wood racks on
which to dry hay. Grain was stored in concealed pits in the earth which
were lined with drystone or basket work or clay and made airtight by
sealing with clay or dung. Old pits were converted into waste dumps,
burials, or latrines. Outside the fence were an acre or two of fields of
wheat and barley, and sometimes oats and rye. Wheat and rye were sown in
the fall, and oats and barley in the spring. Sowing was by men or two
oxen drawing a simple scratch plough. The crops were all harvested in
the summer. In this two-field system, land was held by peasants in units
designed to support a single extended family. These fields were usually
enclosed with a hedge to keep animals from eating the crop and to define
the territory of the settlement from that of its neighbors. Flax was
grown and made into linen cloth. Beyond the fields were pastures for
cattle and sheep grazing. There was often an area for beehives. This was
subsistence level farming.
Pottery was given symmetry when formed with use of a wheel and heated
in increasingly hot kilns. From kilns used for pottery, it was noticed
that lumps of gold or copper ore within would melt and assume the shape
of what they had been resting on. These were the first metals, and could
be beaten into various shapes, such as ornaments. Then the liquid ore
was poured into moulds carved out of stones to make axes [small pointed
tool for piercing holes in leather, wood, or other soft materials] and
daggers, which were reheated and hammered to become strong.
Copper-tipped drills, chisels, punches and awls were also made.
The bodies of deceased were buried far away from any village in wood
coffins, except for kings, who were placed in large stone coffins after
being wrapped in linen. Buried with them were a few personal items, such
as copper daggers, flat copper axes, and awls. The deceased was buried
in a coffin with a stone on top deep in the earth to keep the spirit of
the dead from coming out to haunt the living.
It was learned that tin added to the copper made a stronger metal:
bronze. Stone hammers, and bronze and iron tools, were used to make
cooking pots, weapons, breast plates, and horse bits, which were formed
from moulds and/or forged by bronze smiths and blacksmiths from iron
extracted from iron ore heated in bowl- shaped hearths. Typically one
man operated the bellows to keep the fire hot while another did the
hammering. Bronze was made into sickles for harvesting, razors for
shaving, tweezers, straight hair pins, safety pins for clothes, armlets,
neck-rings, and mirrors. Weapons included bows and arrows, flint and
copper daggers, bronze swords and spears, stone axes, and shields of
wood with bronze mountings. The bows and arrows probably evolved from
spear throwing rods. Kings in body armor fought with chariots drawn by
two horses. The horse harnesses had bronze fittings. The chariots had
wood wheels, later with iron rims. When bronze came into use, there was
a demand for its constituent parts: copper and tin, which were traded by
rafts on waterways and the sea. When iron came into use, there were
wrought iron axes, saws, adzes [ax with curved blade used to dress
wood], files, ploughshares, harrows [set of spikes to break clods of
earth on ploughed land and also to cover seed when sewn], scythes,
billhooks [thick knife with hooked point used to prune shrubs], and
spits for hearths. Lead was mined. There was some glassmaking of beads.
Wrought iron bars were used as currency.
Hillforts now had wooden palisades on top of their banks to protect the
enclosed farmsteads and villages from stock wandering off or being taken
by rustlers, and from attacks by wild animals or other people. Later a
rampart was added from which sentries could patrol. These were supported
by timber and/or stone structures. Timbers were probably transported by
carts or dragged by oxen. At the entrances were several openings only
one of which really allowed entry. The others went between banks into
dead ends and served as traps in which to kill the enemy from above.
Gates were of wood, some hung from hinges on posts which could be
locked. Later guard chambers were added, some with space for hearths and
beds. Sometimes further concentric circles of banks and ditches, and
perhaps a second rampart, were added around these forts. They could
reach to 14 acres. The ramparts are sufficiently widely spaced to make
sling-shotting out from them highly effective, but to minimize the
dangers from sling-shotting from without. The additional banks and
ditches could be used to create cattle corridors or to protect against
spear-thrown firebrands. However, few forts had springs of water within
them, indicating that attacks on them were probably expected to be
short. Attacks usually began with warriors bristling with weapons and
blowing war trumpets shouting insults to the foe, while their kings
dashed about in chariots. Sometimes champions from each side fought in
single combat. They took the heads of those they killed to hang from
their belts or place on wood spikes at the gates. Prisoners, including
women and children, might become slaves. Kings sometimes lived in
separate palisades where they kept their horses and chariots.
Circles of big stones like Stonehenge were rebuilt so that the sun's
position with respect to the stones would indicate the day of longest
sunlight and the day of shortest sunlight. Between these days there was
an optimum time to harvest the crops before fall, when plants dried up
and leaves fell from the trees. The winter solstice, when the days began
to get longer was cause for celebration. In the next season, there was
an optimum time to plant seeds so they could spring up from the ground
as new growth. So farming gave rise to the concept of a year. Certain
changes of the year were celebrated, such as Easter, named for the
Goddess of the Dawn, which occurred in the east (after lent); May Day
celebrating the revival of life; Lammas around July, when the wheat crop
was ready for harvesting; and on October 31 the Celtic eve of Samhain,
when the spirits of the dead came back to visit homes and demand food or
else cast an evil spell on the refusing homes; and at which masked and
costumed inhabitants representing the souls of the dead paraded to the
outskirts of the settlements to lead the ghosts away from their homes;
and at which animals and humans, who might be deemed to be possessed by
spirits, were sacrificed or killed perhaps as examples, in huge bonfires
[bonefires] as those assembled looked out for spirits and evil beings.
There was an agricultural revolution from the two-field system in which
one field was fallow to the three-field system, in which there were
three large fields for the heavy and fertile land. Each field was
divided into long and narrow strips. Each strip represented a day's work
with the plough. One field had wheat, or perhaps rye, another had
barley, oats, beans, or peas, and the third was fallow. It had been
observed that legumes such as peas and beans restored the soil. These
were rotated yearly. There was a newly invented plough that was heavy
and made of wood and later had an attached iron blade. The plough had a
mould-board which caught the soil stirred by the plough blade and threw
it into a ridge alongside the furrow dug by the plough blade. This
plough was too heavy for two oxen and was pulled by a team of about
eight to ten oxen. Each ox was owned by a different man as was the
plough, because no one peasant could afford the complete set. Each
freeman was allotted certain strips in each field to bear crops. His
strips were far from each other, which insured some very fertile and
some only fair soil, and some land near his village dwelling and some
far away. These strips he cultivated, sowed with seed, and harvested for
himself and his family. After the harvest, they reverted to common
ownership for grazing by pigs, sheep, and geese. As soon as haymaking
was over, the meadows became common grazing land for horses, cows, and
oxen. Not just any inhabitant, but usually only those who owned a piece
of land in the parish were entitled to graze their animals on the common
land, and each owner had this right of pasture for a definite number of
animals. The faster horse replaced the ox as the primary work animal.
Other farm implements were: coulters, which gave free passage to the
plough by cutting weeds and turf, picks, spades and shovels, reaping
hooks and scythes, and sledge hammers and anvils. Strips of land for
agriculture were added from waste land as the community grew. Waste
lands were moors bristling with brushwood, or gorse, heather and wanton
weeds, reed-coated marshes, quaking peat-bogs, or woods grown haphazard
on sand or rock. With iron axes, forests could be cleared to provide
more arable land.
Some villages had a smith, a wheelwright, and a cooper. There were
villages which had one or two market days in each week. Cattle, sheep,
pigs, poultry, calves, and hare were sold there. London was a town on
the Thames River under the protection of the Celtic river god Lud: Lud's
town. It's huts were probably built over the water, as was Celtic
custom. It was a port for foreign trade. Near the town was Ludhill. Each
Celtic tribe in England made its own coinage. Silver and bronze were
first used, and then gold. The metal was put into a round form and then
placed between two engraved dies, which were hit.
Flint workers mined with deer antler picks and ox shoulder blade
shovels for flint to grind into axes, spearheads, and arrowheads. Mine
shafts were up to thirty feet deep and necessitated the use of chalk
lamps fueled by animal fat with wicks of moss. The flint was hauled up
in baskets.
Common men and women were now buried in tombs within memorial burial
mounds of earth with stone entrances and interior chambers. A man's
weapons and shield were buried with him and a woman's spindle and
weaving baton, and perhaps beads or pottery with her. At times, mounds
of earth would simply be covered over piles of corpses and ashes in
urns. In these mass graves, some corpses had spear holes or sword cuts,
indicating death by violence. The Druid priests, the learned class of
the Celts, taught the Celts to believe in reincarnation of the soul
after death of one body into another body. They also threw prized
possessions into lakes and rivers as sacrifices to water gods. They
placed images of gods and goddesses in shrines, which were sometimes
large enough to be temples. They thought of their gods as supernatural
magicians.
With the ability to grow food and the acquisition of land by conquest
by invading groups, the population grew. There were different classes of
men. The freemen were eorls [noble freemen] or ceorls [ordinary free
farmers]. Slaves were not free. Freemen had long hair and beards.
Slaves' hair was shorn from their heads so that they were bald. Slaves
were chained and often traded. Prisoners taken in battle, especially
native Britons taken by invading groups, became slaves. A slave who was
captured or purchased was a "theow". An "esne" was a slave who worked
for hire. A "weallas" was a Welsh slave. Criminals became slaves of the
person wronged or of the king. Sometimes a father pressed by need sold
his children or his wife into bondage. Debtors, who increased in number
during famine, which occurred regularly, became slaves by giving up the
freeman's sword and spear, picking up a slave's mattock [pick ax for the
soils], and placing their head within a lord's or lady's hands. They
were called wite- theows. The original meaning of the word lord was
"loaf-giver". Children with a slave parent were slaves. The slaves lived
in huts around the homes of big landholders, which were made of logs and
consisted on one large room or hall. An open hearth was in the middle of
the earthen floor of the hall, which was strewn with rushes. There was a
hole in the roof to let out the smoke. Here the landholder and his men
would eat meat, bread, salt, hot spiced ale, and mead while listening to
minstrels sing about the heroic deeds of their ancestors. Richer men
drank wine. There were festivals which lasted several days, in which
warriors feasted, drank, gambled, boasted, and slept where they fell.
Physical strength and endurance in adversity were admired traits.
Slaves often were used as grain grinders, ploughmen, sowers, haywards,
woodwards, shepherds, goatherds, swineherds, oxherds, cowherds,
dairymaids, and barnmen. Slaves had no legal rights. A lord could kill
his slave at will. A wrong done to a slave was regarded as done to his
owner. If a person killed another man's slave, he had to compensate him
with the slave's purchase price. The slave owner had to answer for the
offenses of his slaves against others, as for the mischief done by his
cattle. Since a slave had no property, he could not be fined for crimes,
but was whipped, mutilated, or killed.
During famine, acorns, beans, peas, and even bark were ground down to
supplement flour when grain stocks grew low. People scoured the
hedgerows for herbs, roots, nettles, and wild grasses, which were
usually left for the pigs. Sometimes people were driven to infanticide
or group suicide by jumping together off a cliff or into the water.
Several large kingdoms came to replace the many small ones. The people
were worshipping pagan gods when St. Augustine came to England in 596
A.D. to Christianize them. King AEthelbert of Kent [much later a county]
and his wife, who had been raised Christian on the continent, met him
when he arrived. The King gave him land where there were ruins of an old
city. Augustine used stones from the ruins to build a church which was
later called Canterbury. He also built the first St. Paul's church in
London. Aethelbert and his men who fought with him and ate and lived in
his household [gesiths] became Christian. A succession of princesses
went out from Kent to marry other Saxon kings and convert them to
Christianity.
Augustine knew how to write, but King AEthelbert did not. The King
announced his laws at meetings of his people and his eorls would decide
the punishments. There was a fine of 120s. for disregarding a command of
the King. He and Augustine decided to write down some of these laws,
which now included the King's new law concerning the church.
These laws concern personal injury, killing, theft, burglary, marriage,
adultery, and inheritance. The blood feud's private revenge for killing
had been replaced by payment of compensation to the dead man's kindred.
One paid a man's "wergeld" [worth] to his kindred for causing his
wrongful death. The wergeld [wer] of a king was an unpayable amount of
about 7000s., of an aetheling [a king-worthy man of the extended royal
family] was 1500s., of an eorl, 300s., of a ceorl, 100s., of a laet
[agricultural worker in Kent, which class was between free and slave],
40-80s., and of a slave nothing. At this time a shilling could buy a cow
in Kent or a sheep elsewhere. If a ceorl killed an eorl, he paid three
times as much as an eorl would have paid as murderer. The penalty for
slander was tearing out of the tongue. If an aetheling was guilty of
this offense, his tongue was worth five times that of a coerl, so he had
to pay proportionately more to ransom it. The crimes of murder,
treachery to one's own lord, arson, house breaking, and open theft, were
punishable by death and forfeiture of all property.
- The Law -
"THESE ARE THE DOOMS [DECREES] WHICH KING AETHELBERHT ESTABLISHED IN
THE DAYS OF AUGUSTINE
1. [Theft of] the property of God and of the church [shall be
compensated], twelve fold; a bishop's property, eleven fold; a priest's
property, nine fold; a deacon's property, six fold; a cleric's property,
three fold; church frith [breach of the peace of the church; right of
sanctuary and protection given to those within its precincts], two fold
[that of ordinary breach of the public peace]; m......frith [breach of
the peace of a meeting place], two fold.
2. If the King calls his leod [his people] to him, and any one there do
them evil, [let him compensate with] a twofold bot [damages for the
injury], and 50 shillings to the King.
3. If the King drink at any one's home, and any one there do any lyswe
[evil deed], let him make twofold bot.
4. If a freeman steal from the King, let him repay nine fold.
5. If a man slay another in the King's tun [enclosed dwelling premises],
let him make bot with 50 shillings.
6. If any one slay a freeman, 50 shillings to the King, as drihtin beah
[payment to a lord in compensation for killing his freeman].
7. If the King's ambiht smith [smith or carpenter] or laad rine [man who
walks before the King or guide or escort], slay a man, let him pay a
half leod geld.
8. [Offenses against anyone or anyplace under] the King's mund byrd
[protection or patronage], 50 shillings
9. If a freeman steal from a freeman, let him make threefold bot; and
let the King have the wite [fine] and all the chattels [necessary to pay
the fine]. (Chattels was a variant of "cattle".)
10. If a man lie with the King's maiden [female servant], let him pay a
bot of 50 shillings.
11. If she be a grinding slave, let him pay a bot of 25 shillings.The
third [class of servant] 12 shillings.
12. Let the King's fed esl [woman who serves him food or nurse] be paid
for with 20 shillings.
13. If a man slay another in an eorl's tun [premises], let [him] make
bot with 12 shillings.
14. If a man lie with an eorl's birele [female cupbearer], let him make
bot with 12 shillings.
15. [Offenses against a person or place under] a ceorl's mund byrd
[protection], 6 shillings.
16. If a man lie with a ceorl's birele [female cupbearer], let him make
bot with 6 shillings; with a slave of the second [class], 50 scaetts;
with one of the third, 30 scaetts.
17. If any one be the first to invade a man's tun [premises], let him
make bot with 6 shillings; let him who follows, with 3 shillings; after,
each, a shilling.
18. If a man furnish weapons to another where there is a quarrel, though
no injury results, let him make bot with 6 shillings.
19. If a weg reaf [highway robbery] be done [with weapons furnished by
another], let him [the man who provided the weapons] make bot with 6
shillings.
20. If the man be slain, let him [the man who provided the weapons] make
bot with 20 shillings.
21. If a [free] man slay another, let him make bot with a half leod
geld [wergeld for manslaughter] of 100 shillings.
22. If a man slay another, at the open grave let him pay 20 shillings,
and pay the whole leod within 40 days.
23. If the slayer departs from the land, let his kindred pay a half
leod.
24. If any one bind a freeman, let him make bot with 20 shillings.
25. If any one slay a ceorl's hlaf aeta [loaf or bread eater; domestic
or menial servant], let him make bot with 6 shillings.
26. If [anyone] slay a laet of the highest class, let him pay 80
shillings; of the second class, let him pay 60 shillings; of the third
class, let him pay 40 shillings.
27. If a freeman commit edor breach [breaking through the fenced
enclosure and forcibly entering a ceorl's dwelling], let him make bot
with 6 shillings.
28. If any one take property from a dwelling, let him pay a three- fold
bot.
29. If a freeman goes with hostile intent through an edor [the fence
enclosing a dwelling], let him make bot with 4 shillings.
30. If [in so doing] a man slay another, let him pay with his own money,
and with any sound property whatever.
31. If a freeman lie with a freeman's wife, let him pay for it with his
wer geld, and obtain another wife with his own money, and bring her to
the other [man's dwelling].
32. If any one thrusts through the riht ham scyld [legal means of
protecting one's home], let him adequately compensate.
33. If there be feax fang [seizing someone by the hair], let there be 50
sceatts for bot.
34. If there be an exposure of the bone, let bot be made with 3
shillings.
35. If there be an injury to the bone, let bot be made with 4 shillings.
36. If the outer hion [outer membrane covering the brain] be broken, let
bot be made with 10 shillings.
37. If it be both [outer and inner membranes covering the brain], let
bot be made with 20 shillings.
38. If a shoulder be lamed, let bot be made with 30 shillings.
39. If an ear be struck off, let bot be made with 12 shillings.
40. If the other ear hear not, let bot be made with 25 shillings.
41. If an ear be pierced, let bot be made with 3 shillings.
42. If an ear be mutilated, let bot be made with 6 shillings.
43. If an eye be [struck] out, let bot be made with 50 shillings.
44. If the mouth or an eye be injured, let bot be made with 12
shillings.
45. If the nose be pierced, let bot be made with 9 shillings.
46. If it be one ala, let bot be made with 3 shillings.
47. If both be pierced, let bot be made with 6 shillings.
48. If the nose be otherwise mutilated, for each [cut, let] bot be made
with 6 shillings.
49. If it be pierced, let bot be made with 6 shillings.
50. Let him who breaks the jaw bone pay for it with 20 shillings.
51. For each of the four front teeth, 6 shillings; for the tooth which
stands next to them 4 shillings; for that which stands next to that, 3
shillings; and then afterwards, for each a shilling.
52. If the speech be injured, 12 shillings. If the collar bone be
broken, let bot be made with 6 shillings.
53. Let him who stabs [another] through an arm, make bot with 6
shillings. If an arm be broken, let him make bot with 6 shillings.
54. If a thumb be struck off, 20 shillings. If a thumb nail be off, let
bot be made with 3 shillings. If the shooting [fore] finger be struck
off, let bot be made with 8 shillings. If the middle finger be
struck off, let bot be made with 4 shillings. If the gold [ring] finger
be struck off, let bot be made with 6 shillings. If the little finger be
struck off, let bot be made with 11 shillings.
55. For every nail, a shilling.
56. For the smallest disfigurement of the face, 3 shillings; and for the
greater, 6 shillings.
57. If any one strike another with his fist on the nose, 3 shillings.
58. If there be a bruise [on the nose], a shilling; if he receive a
right hand bruise [from protecting his face with his arm], let him [the
striker] pay a shilling.
59. If the bruise [on the arm] be black in a part not covered by the
clothes, let bot be made with 30 scaetts.
60. If it be covered by the clothes, let bot for each be made with 20
scaetts.
61. If the belly be wounded, let bot be made with 12 shillings; if it be
pierced through, let bot be made with 20 shillings.
62. If any one be gegemed [pregnant], let bot be made with 30 shillings.
63. If any one be cear wund [badly wounded], let bot be made with 3
shillings.
64. If any one destroy [another's] organ of generation [penis], let him
pay him with 3 leod gelds: if he pierce it through, let him make bot
with 6 shillings; if it be pierced within, let him make bot with 6
shillings.
65. If a thigh be broken, let bot be made with 12 shillings; if the man
become halt [lame], then friends must arbitrate.
66. If a rib be broken, let bot be made with 3 shillings.
67. If [the skin of] a thigh be pierced through, for each stab 6
shillings; if [the wound be] above an inch [deep], a shilling; for two
inches, 2; above three, 3 shillings.
68. If a sinew be wounded, let bot be made with 3 shillings.
69. If a foot be cut off, let 50 shillings be paid.
70. If a great toe be cut off, let 10 shillings be paid.
71. For each of the other toes, let one half that for the corresponding
finger be paid.
72. If the nail of a great toe be cut off, 30 scaetts for bot; for each
of the others, make bot with 10 scaetts.
73. If a freewoman loc bore [with long hair] commit any leswe [evil
deed], let her make a bot of 30 shillings.
74. Let maiden bot [compensation for injury to an unmarried woman] be as
that of a freeman.
75. For [breach of] the mund [protection] of a widow of the best class,
of an eorl's degree, let the bot be 50 shillings; of the second, 20
shillings; of the third, 12 shillings; of the fourth, 6 shillings.
76. If a man carry off a widow not under his own protection by right,
let the mund be twofold.
77. If a man buy a maiden with cattle, let the bargain stand, if it be
without fraud; but if there be fraud, let him bring her home again, and
let his property be restored to him.
78. If she bear a live child, she shall have half the property, if the
husband die first.
79. If she wish to go away with her children, she shall have half the
property.
80. If the husband wish to keep them [the children], [she shall have the
same portion] as one child.
81. If she bear no child, her paternal kindred shall have the fioh [her
money and chattels] and the morgen gyfe [morning gift: a gift made to
the bride by her husband on the morning following the consummation of
the marriage].
82. If a man carry off a maiden by force, let him pay 50 shillings to
the owner, and afterwards buy [the object of] his will from the owner.
83. If she be betrothed to another man in money [at a bride price], let
him [who carried her off] make bot with 20 shillings.
84. If she become gaengang [pregnant], 35 shillings; and 15 shillings to
the King.
85. If a man lie with an esne's wife, her husband still living, let him
make twofold bot.
86. If one esne slay another unoffending, let him pay for him at his
full worth.
87. If an esne's eye and foot be struck out or off, let him be paid for
at his full worth.
88. If any one bind another man's esne, let him make bot with 6
shillings.
89. Let [compensation for] weg reaf [highway robbery] of a theow [slave]
be 3 shillings.
90. If a theow steal, let him make twofold bot [twice the value of the
stolen goods]."
- Judicial Procedure -
The King and his freemen would hear and decide cases of wrongful
behavior such as breach of the peace. Punishment would be given to the
offender by the community.
There were occasional meetings of "hundreds", which were 100
households, to settle widespread disputes. The chief officer was
"hundreder" or "constable". He was responsible for keeping the peace of
the hundred.
The Druid priests decided all disputes of the Celts.
- - - Chapter 2 - - -
- The Times: 600-900 -
The country was inhabited by Anglo-Saxons. The French called it
"Angleterre", which means the angle or end of the earth. It was called
"Angle land", which later became "England".
A community was usually an extended family. Its members lived a village
in which a stone church was the most prominent building. They lived in
one-room huts with walls and roofs made of wood, mud, and straw.
Hangings covered the cracks in the walls to keep the wind out. Smoke
from a fire in the middle of the room filtered out of cracks in the
roof. Grain was ground at home by rotating by hand one stone disk on
another stone disk. Some villages had a mill powered by the flow of
water or by horses. All freeholders had the duty of watch [at night] and
ward [during the day], of following the hue and cry to chase an
offender, and of taking the oath of peace. These three duties were
constant until 1195.
Farmland surrounded the villages and was farmed by the community as a
whole under the direction of a lord. There was silver, copper, iron,
tin, gold, and various types of stones from remote lead mines and
quarries in the nation. Silver pennies replaced the smaller scaetts.
Freemen paid "scot" and bore "lot" according to their means for local
purposes.
Offa, the strongest of the Saxon kings, minted high-quality silver
pennies. He traded woolen coats for lava grindstones with Emperor
Charlemagne, who used a silver denarius coin. There were 12 denarii to
the solidus and 20 soldi to the pound of silver. These denominations
were taken by England as 12 pennies to the shilling and 20 shillings to
the pound. The pound sign, an "L" with a hash mark derived from the word
Libra, which meant weighing scales.
Everyone in the village went to church on Sunday and brought gifts such
as grain to the priest. Later, contributions in the form of money became
customary, and then expected. They were called "tithes" and were spent
for church repair, the clergy, and poor and needy laborers. Local custom
determined the amount. There was also church-scot: a payment to the
clergy in lieu of the first fruits of the land. The priest was the
chaplain of a landlord and his parish was coextensive with that
landlord's holding and could include one to several villages. The priest
and other men who helped him, lived in the church building. Some
churches had lead roofs and iron hinges, latches, and locks on their
doors. The land underneath had been given to the church by former kings
and persons who wanted the church to say prayers to help their souls go
from purgatory to heaven and who also selected the first priest. The
priest conducted Christianized Easter ceremonies in the spring and
(Christ's mass) ceremonies in winter in place of the pagan Yuletide
festivities. Burning incense took the place of pagan burnt animal
offerings, which were accompanied by incense to disguise the odor of
burning flesh. Holy water replaced haunted wells and streams. Christian
incantations replaced sorcerer's spells. Nuns assisted priests in
celebrating mass and administering the sacraments. They alone
consecrated new nuns. Vestry meetings were community meetings held for
church purposes. The people said their prayers in English, and the
priest conducted the services in English. A person joined his hands in
prayer as if to offer them for binding together in submission.
The church baptized babies and officiated or gave blessings at marriage
ceremonies. It also said prayers for the dying, gave them funerals, and
buried them. There were burial service fees, candle dues, and plough
alms. A piece of stone with the dead person's name marked his grave. It
was thought that putting the name on the grave would assist
identification of that person for being taken to heaven. The church
heard the last wish or will of the person dying concerning who he wanted
to have his property. The church taught that it was not necessary to
bury possessions with the deceased. The church taught boys and girls.
man carried a horn slung on his shoulder as he went about his work so
that he could at once send out a warning to his fellow villagers or call
them in chasing a thief or other offender. The forests were full of
outlaws, so strangers who did not blow a horn to announce themselves
were presumed to be fugitive offenders who could be shot on sight. An
eorl could call upon the ceorl farmers for about forty days to fight off
an invading group.
There were several kingdoms, whose boundaries kept changing due to
warfare, which was a sin according to the church. They were each
governed by a king and witan of wise men who met at a witanegemot, which
was usually held three times a year, mostly on great church festivals
and at the end of the harvest. The king and witan chose the witan's
members of bishops, eorldormen, and thegns [landholding farmers]. The
king and hereditary claims played a major part in the selection of the
eorldormen, who were the highest military leaders and often of the royal
family. They were also chief magistrates of large jurisdictional areas
of land. The witan included officers of the king's household and perhaps
other of his retinue. There was little distinction then between his
gesith, fighting men, guards, household companions, dependents, and
servants. The king was sometimes accompanied by his wife and sons at the
witanagemot. A king was selected by the witan according to his
worthiness, usually from among the royal family, and could be deposed by
it. The witan and king decided on laws, taxes, and transfers of land.
They made determinations of war and peace and directed the army and the
fleet. The king wore a crown or royal helmet. He extended certain
protections by the king's peace. He could erect castles and bridges and
could provide a special protection to strangers.
A king had not only a wergeld to be paid to his family if he were
killed, but a "cynebot" of equal amount that would be paid to his
kingdom's people. A king's household had a chamberlain for the royal
bedchamber, a marshall to oversee the horses and military equipment, a
steward as head of household, and a cupbearer. The king had income from
fines for breach of his peace; fines and forfeitures from courts dealing
with criminal and civil cases; salvage from ship wrecks; treasure trove
[assets hidden or buried in times of war]; treasures of the earth such
as gold and silver; mines; saltworks; tolls and other dues of markets,
ports, and the routes by land and by river generally; heriot from heirs
of his special dependents for possession of land (usually in kind,
principally in horses and weapons). He also had rights of purveyance
[hospitality and maintenance when traveling]. The king had private
lands, which he could dispose of by his will. He also had crown lands,
which belonged to his office and could not be alienated without consent
of the witan. Crown lands often included palaces and their appendant
farms, and burhs. It was a queen's duty to run the royal estate. Also, a
queen could possess, manage, and dispose of lands in her name. Violent
queens waged wars. Kingdoms were often allied by marriage between their
royal families. There were also royal marriages to royalty on the
continent.
The houses of the wealthy had ornamented silk hangings on the walls.
Some had fine white ox horn shaved so thin they were transparent for
windows. Brightly colored drapery, often purple, and fly nets surrounded
their beds, which were covered with the fur of animals. They slept in
bed clothes on pillows stuffed with straw. Tables plated with silver and
gems held silver candlesticks, gold and silver goblets and cups, and
lamps of gold, silver, or glass. They used silver mirrors and silver
writing pens. There were covered seats, benches, and footstools with the
head and feet of animals at their extremities. They ate from a table
covered with a cloth. Servants brought in food on spits, from which they
ate. Food was boiled, broiled, or baked. The wealthy ate wheat bread and
others ate barley bread. Ale made from barley was passed around in a
cup. Mead made from honey was also drunk.
Men wore long-sleeved wool and linen garments reaching almost to the
knee, around which they wore a belt tied in a knot. Men often wore a
gold ring on the fourth finger of the right hand. Leather shoes were
fastened with leather thongs around the ankle. Their hair was parted in
the middle and combed down each side in waving ringlets. The beard was
parted in the middle of the chin, so that it ended in two points. The
clergy did not wear beards. Great men wore gold-embroidered clothes,
gilt buckles and brooches, and drank from drinking horns mounted in
silver gilt or in gold. Well- to-do women wore brightly colored robes
with waist bands, headbands, necklaces, gem bracelets, and rings. Their
long hair was in ringlets and they put rouge on their cheeks. They had
beads, pins, needles, tweezers of bronze, and workboxes of bronze, some
highly ornamented. They were often doing needlework. Silk was affordable
only by the wealthy.
Most families kept a pig and pork was the primary meat. There were also
sheep, goats, cows, deer, hare, and fowl. Fowl was obtained by fowlers
who trapped them. The inland waters yielded eels, salmon, and trout. In
the fall, meat was salted to preserve it for winter meals. There were
orchards growing figs, nuts, grapes, almonds, pears, and apples. Also
produced were beans, lentils, onions, eggs, cheese, and butter. Pepper
and cinnamon were imported.
Fishing from the sea yielded herrings, sturgeon, porpoise, oysters,
crabs, and other fish. Sometimes a whale was driven into an inlet by a
group of boats. Whale skins were used to make ropes.
The roads were not much more than trails. They were often so narrow
that two pack horses could hardly pass each other. The pack horses each
carried two bales or two baskets slung over their backs, which balanced
each other. The soft soil was compacted into a deep ditch which rains,
floods, and tides, if near the sea, soon turned into a river. Traveling
a far distance was unsafe as there were robbers on the roads. Traveling
strangers were distrusted. It was usual to wash one's feet in a hot tub
after traveling and to dry them with a rough wool cloth.
There were superstitions about the content of dreams, the events of the
moon, and the flights and voices of birds were often seen as signs or
omens of future events. Herbal mixtures were drunk for sickness and
maladies. From the witch hazel plant was made a mild alcoholic
astringent, which was probably used to clean cuts and sooth abrasions.
In the peaceful latter part of the 600s, Theodore, who had been a monk
in Rome, was appointed archbishop and visited all the island speaking
about the right rule of life and ordaining bishops to oversee the
priests. Each kingdom was split up into dioceses each with one bishop.
Thereafter, bishops were selected by the king and his witan, usually
after consulting the clergy and even the people of the diocese. The
bishops came to be the most permanent element of society. They had their
sees in villages or rural monasteries. The bishops came to have the same
wergeld as an eorldorman: 1200s., which was the price of about 500 oxen.
A priest had the wergeld as a landholding farmer [thegn], or 300s. The
bishops spoke Latin, but the priests of the local parishes spoke
English. Theodore was the first archbishop whom all the English church
obeyed. He taught sacred and secular literature, the books of holy writ,
ecclesiastical poetry, astronomy, arithmetic, and sacred music. Theodore
discouraged slavery by denying Christian burial to the kidnapper and
forbidding the sale of children over the age of seven. A slave became
entitled to two loaves a day and to his holydays. A slave was allowed to
buy his or his children's freedom. In 673, Theodore started annual
national ecclesiastical assemblies, for instance for the witnessing of
important actions. The bishops, some abbots, the king, and the
eorldormen were usually present. From them the people learned the
benefit of common national action. There were two archbishops: one of
Canterbury in the south and one of York in the north. They governed the
bishops and could meet with them to issue canons that would be equally
valid all over the land. A bishop's house contained some clerks,
priests, monks, and nun and was a retreat for the weary missionary and a
school for the young. The bishop had a deacon who acted as a secretary
and companion in travel, and sometimes as an interpreter. Ink was made
from the outer husks of walnuts steeped in vinegar.
The learned ecclesiastical life flourished in monastic communities, in
which both monks and nuns lived. Hilda, a noble's daughter, became the
first nun in Northumbria and abbess of one of its monasteries. There she
taught justice, piety, chastity, peace, and charity. Several monks
taught there later became bishops. Kings and princes often asked her
advice. Many abbesses came to run monastic communities; they were from
royal families. Women, especially from royal families, fled to
monasteries to obtain shelter from unwanted marriage or to avoid their
husbands. Kings and eorldormen retired to them.
Danish Vikings made several invasions in the 800s for which a danegeld
tax on land was assessed on everyone every ten to twenty years. The
amount was determined by the witan and was typically 2s. per hide of
land. (A hide was probably the amount of land which could support a
family or household for a year or as much land as could be tilled
annually by a single plough.) It was stored in a strong box under the
King's bed. King Alfred the Great, who had lived for awhile in Rome,
unified the country to defeat the invaders. He established
fortifications called "burhs", usually on hill tops or other strategic
locations on the borders to control the main road and river routes into
his realm. The burhs were seminal towns. They were typically walled
enclosures with towers and an outer ditch and mound, instead of the
hedge or fence enclosure of a tun. Inside were several wooden thatched
huts and a couple of churches, which were lit by earthen oil lamps. The
populace met at burhgemotes. The land area protected by each burh became
known as a "shire", which means a share of a larger whole. The shire or
local landowners were responsible for repairing the burh fortifications.
There were about thirty shires.
Alfred gathered together fighting men who were at his disposal, which
included eorldormen with their hearthbands (retinues of men each of whom
had chosen to swear to fight to the death for their eorldorman, and some
of whom were of high rank), the King's thegns, shire thegns (local
landholding farmers, who were required to bring fighting equipment such
as swords, helmets, chain mail, and horses), and ordinary freemen, i.e.
ceorls (who carried food, dug fortifications, and sometimes fought).
Since the King was compelled to call out the whole population to arms,
the distinction between the king's thegns from other landholders
disappeared. Some great lords organized men under them, whom they
provisioned. These vassals took a personal oath to their lord "on
condition that he keep me as I am willing to deserve, and fulfill all
that was agreed on when I became his man, and chose his will as mine."
Alfred had a small navy of longships with 60 oars to fight the Viking
longships.
Alfred divided his army into two parts so that one half of the men were
fighting while the other half was at home sowing and harvesting for
those fighting. Thus, any small-scale independent farming was supplanted
by the open-field system, cultivation of common land, more large private
estates headed by a lord, and a more stratified society in which the
king and important families more powerful and the peasants more
curtailed. The witan became mere witnesses. Many free coerls of the
older days became bonded. The village community tended to become a large
private estate headed by a lord. But the lord does not have the power to
encroach upon the rights of common that exist within the community.
In 886, a treaty between Alfred and the Vikings divided the country
along the war front and made the wergeld of every free farmer, whether
English or Viking, 200s. Men of higher rank were given a wergeld of 4
1/2 marks of pure gold. A mark was probably a Viking denomination and a
mark of gold was equal to nine marks of silver in later times and
probably in this time. The word "earl" replaced the word "eorldormen"
and the word "thegn" replaced the word "aetheling" after the Danish
settlement. The ironed pleats of Viking clothing indicated a high status
of the wearer. The Vikings brought combs and the practice of regular
hair-combing to England.
King Alfred gave land with jurisdictional powers within its boundaries
such as the following: "This is the bequest which King Alfred make
unequivocally to Shaftesbury, to the praise of God and St. Mary and all
the saints of God, for the benefit of my soul, namely a hundred hides as
they stand with their produce and their men, and my daughter AEthelgifu
to the convent along with the inheritance, since she took the veil on
account of bad health; and the jurisdiction to the convent, which I
myself possessed, namely obstruction and attacks on a man's house and
breach of protection. And the estates which I have granted to the
foundation are 40 hides at Donhead and Compton, 20 hides at Handley and
Gussage 10 hides at Tarrant, 15 hides at Iwerve and 15 hides at
Fontmell.
The witnesses of this are Edward my son and Archbishop AEthelred and
Bishop Ealhferth and Bishop AEthelhead and Earl Wulfhere and Earl
Eadwulf and Earl Cuthred and Abbot Tunberht and Milred my thegn and
AEthelwulf and Osric and Brihtulf and Cyma. If anyone alters this, he
shall have the curse of God and St. Mary and all the saints of God
forever to all eternity. Amen."
Sons usually succeeded their fathers on the same land as shown by this
lifetime lease: "Bishop Denewulf and the community at Winchester lease
to Alfred for his lifetime 40 hides of land at Alresford, in accordance
with the lease which Bishop Tunbriht had granted to his parents and
which had run out, on condition that he renders every year at the
autumnal equinox three pounds as rent, and church dues, and the work
connected with church dues; and when the need arises, his men shall be
ready both for harvesting and hunting; and after his death the property
shall pass undisputed to St. Peter's.
These are the signatures of the councilors and of the members of the
community who gave their consent, namely ..."
Alfred invented a graduated candle with spaces indicating one hour of
burning, which could be used as a clock. He used a ventilated cow's horn
to put around the top of the candle to prevent its blowing out, and then
devised a wooden lantern with a horn window. He described the world as
like a yolk in the middle of an egg whose shell moves around it. This
agreed with the position of Ptolemy Claudius of Alexandria, who showed
the curvature of the earth from north to south by observing that the
Polar Star was higher in the north and lower in the south. That it was
curved from east to west followed from the observation that two clocks
placed one west and one east would record a different time for the same
eclipse of the moon.
Alfred wrote poems on the worthiness of wisdom and knowledge in
preference to material pleasures, pride, and fame, in dealing with
life's sorrow and strife. His observations on human nature and his
proverbs include:
1. As one sows, so will he mow.
2. Every man's doom [judgment] returns to his door.
3. He who will not learn while young, will repent of it when old.
4. Weal [prosperity] without wisdom is worthless.
5. Though a man had 70 acres sown with red gold, and the gold grew like
grass, yet he is not a whit the worthier unless he gain friends for
himself.
6. Gold is but a stone unless a wise man has it.
7. It's hard to row against the sea flood; so it is against misfortune.
8. He who toils in his youth to win wealth, so that he may enjoy ease
in his old age, has well bestowed his toil.
9. Many a man loses his soul through silver.
10. Wealth may pass away, but wisdom will remain, and no man may perish
who has it for his comrade.
11. Don't choose a wife for her beauty nor for wealth, but study her
disposition.
12. Many an apple is bright without and bitter within.
13. Don't believe the man of many words.
14. With a few words a wise man can compass much.
15. Make friends at market, and at church, with poor and with rich.
16. Though one man wielded all the world, and all the joy that dwells
therein, he could not therewith keep his life.
17. Don't chide with a fool.
18. A fool's bolt is soon shot.
19. If you have a child, teach it men's manners while it is little. If
you let him have his own will, he will cause you much sorrow when he
comes of age.
20. He who spares the rod and lets a young child rule, shall rue it when
the child grows old.
21. Either drinking or not drinking is, with wisdom, good.
22. Relatives often quarrel together.
23. The barkless dog bites ill.
24. Be wise of word and wary of speech, then all shall love you.
25. We may outride, but not outwit, the old man.
26. Be not so mad as to tell your friend all your thoughts.
27. If you and your friend fall out, then your enemy will know what your
friend knew before.
28. Don't choose a deceitful man as a friend, for he will do you harm.
29. The false one will betray you when you least expect it.
30. Don't choose a scornful false friend, for he will steal your goods
and deny the theft.
31. Take to yourself a steadfast man who is wise in word and deed; he
will prove a true friend in need.
To restore education and religion, Alfred disseminated the Anglo- Saxon
Chronicles; the Venerable Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English
Nation; the "Consolidation of Philosophy" by Roman philosopher Boethius,
which related the use of adversity to develop the soul, and described
the goodness of God and how the highest happiness comes from spiritual
values and the soul, which are eternal, rather than from material or
earthly pursuits, which are temporal; and Pope Gregory's Pastoral Care,
which he had translated into English and was the fundamental book on the
duty of a bishop, which included a duty to teach laymen; and Orosius'
History of the World, which he had translated into English. Alfred's
advice to pastors was to live as they had been taught from books and to
teach this manner of life to others. To be avoided was pride, the mind's
deception of seeking glory in the name of doing good works, and the
corruption of high office. Bede was England's first scholar, first
theologian, and first historian. He wrote poetry, theological books,
homilies, and textbooks on grammar, rhetoric [public speaking and
debating], arithmetic, and astronomy. He adhered to the doctrine that
death entered the world by the sin of Adam, the first man. He began the
practice of dating years from the birth of Christ and believed that the
earth was round. Over the earth was a fiery spherical firmament. Above
this were the waters of the heavens. Above this were the upper heavens,
which contained the angels and was tempered with ice. He declared that
comets portend downfalls of kingdoms, pestilence, war, winds, or heat.
This reflected the church's view that a comet was a ball of fire flung
from the right hand of an angry God as a warning to mankind, usually for
disbelief. Storms were begun by the devil.
A famous poem, the oral legend of Beowulf, a hero who led his men into
adventures and performed great feats and fought monsters and dragons,
was put into writing with a Christian theme. In it, loyalty to one's
lord is a paramount virtue. Also available in writing was the story of
King Arthur's twelve victorious battles against the pagan Saxons,
authored by Nennius.
There were professional story tellers attached to great men. Others
wandered from court to court, receiving gifts for their story telling.
Men usually told oral legends of their own feats and those of their
ancestors after supper.
Alfred had monasteries rebuilt with learned and moral men heading them.
He built a nunnery which was headed by his daughter as prioress. He
built a strong wall with four gates around London, which he had taken
into his control. He appointed his son-in-law, who was one of his
eorldormen, to be alderman [older man] to govern London and to be the
shire's earl. A later king built a palace in London, although Winchester
was still the royal capital town. When the king traveled, he and his
retinue were fed by the local people at their expense.
After Alfred's death, his daughter Aethelflared ruled the country for
seven years. She had more fortified burhs built and led soldiers to
victories.
Under the royalty were the nobles. An earl headed each shire as
representative of the King. The term "earl" came to denote an office
instead of a nobleman. He led the array of his shire to do battle if the
shire was attacked. He executed all royal commands. An earl received
grants of land and could claim hospitality and maintenance for himself,
his officers, and his servants. He presided over the shire court. He
received one-third of the fines from the profits of justice and
collected as well a third of the revenues derived from tolls and duties
levied in the boroughs of his shire. The office tended to be hereditary.
Royal representatives called "reeves" started to assist them. The reeve
took security from every person for the maintenance of the public peace.
He also tracked cattle thieves, brought suspects to court, gave
judgments according to the doom books, and delivered offenders to
punishment.
Under the earls were the thegns. By service to the King, it was
possible for a coerl to rise to become a thegn and to be given land by
the King. Other thegns performed functions of magistrates. A thegn was
later identified as a person with five hides of land, a kitchen, a
church, a bell house, a judicial place at the burhgemote [a right of
magistracy], and an appointment in the King's hall. He was bound to
service in war by virtue of his landholding instead of by his
relationship to the king. Nobility was now a territorial attribute,
rather than one of birth. The wergeld of a thegn was 1200s. when that of
a ceorl or ordinary freeman was 200s. The wergeld of an earl or bishop
was four times that of a thegn: 5800s. The wergeld of a king or
archbishop was six times that of a thegn: 7200s. The higher a man's
wergeld, the higher was his legal status in the scale of punishment,
giving credible evidence, and participation in legal proceedings. The
sokemen were freemen who had inherited their own land, chose their own
lord, and attended and were subject to their lord's court. That is,
their lord has soke [soc] jurisdiction over them. A ceorl typically had
a single hide of land. A smallholder rented land of about 30 acres from
a landlord, which he paid by doing work on the lord's demesne [household
or messuage] land, paying money rent, or paying a food rent such as in
eggs or chickens. Smallholders made up about two fifths of the
population. A cottager had one to five acres of land and depended on
others for his living. Among these were shepherds, ploughmen,
swineherds, and blacksmiths. They also participated in the agricultural
work, especially at harvest time.
It was possible for a thegn to become an earl, probably by the
possession of forty hides. He might even acquire enough land to qualify
him for the witan. Women could be present at the witanagemot and
shiregemote [meeting of the people of the shire]. They could sue and be
sued in the courts. They could independently inherit, possess, and
dispose of property. A wife's inheritance was her own and under no
control of her husband.
Marriage required the consent of the lady and her friends. The man also
had to arrange for the foster lean, that is, remuneration for rearing
and support of expected children. He also declared the amount of money
or land he would give the lady for her consent, that is, the morgengift,
and what he would bequeath her in case of his death. It was given to her
on the morning after the wedding night. The family of the bride was paid
a "mund" for transferring the rightful protection they possessed over
her to the family of the husband. If the husband died and his kindred
did not accept the terms sanctioned by law, her kindred could repurchase
the rightful protection. If she remarried within a year of his death,
she had to forfeit the morgengift and his nearest kin received the lands
and possessions she had. The word for man was "waepnedmenn" or weaponed
person. A woman was "wifmenn" or wife person, with "wif" being derived
from the word for weaving.
Great men and monasteries had millers, smiths, carpenters, architects,
agriculturists, fishermen, weavers, embroiders, dyers, and illuminators.
For entertainment, minstrels sang ballads about heroes or Bible
stories, harpers played, jesters joked, and tumblers threw and caught
balls and knives. There was gambling, dice games, and chasing deer with
hounds.
Fraternal guilds were established for mutual advantage and protection.
A guild imposed fines for any injury of one member by another member. It
assisted in paying any murder fine imposed on a member. It avenged the
murder of a member and abided by the consequences. It buried its members
and purchased masses for his soul.
Mercantile guilds in seaports carried out commercial speculations not
possible by the capital of only one person.
There were some ale houses, probably part of certain dwellings.
The danegeld tax of 1s. and later 2s. upon every hide of land came to
be imposed for maintaining forces sufficient to clear the British seas
of Danish pirates or to buy off the ravages of Danish invaders.
- The Law -
Alfred issued a set of laws to cover the whole country, which were
drawn from the best laws of each region. There was no real distinction
between the concepts of law, morals, and religion.
The importance of telling the truth and keeping one's word are
expressed by this law: "1. At the first we teach that it is most needful
that every man warily keep his oath and his wed. If any one be
constrained to either of these wrongfully, either to treason against his
lord, or to any unlawful aid; then it is juster to belie than to
fulfill. But if he pledge himself to that which is lawful to fulfill,
and in that belie himself, let him submissively deliver up his weapon
and his goods to the keeping of his friends, and be in prison forty days
in a King's tun: let him there suffer whatever the bishop may prescribe
to him..." Let his kinsmen feed him, if he has no food. If he escapes,
let him be held a fugitive and be excommunicate of the church.
The word of a bishop and of the king were incontrovertible without an
oath.
The Ten Commandments were written down as this law:
"The Lord spake these words to Moses, and thus said: I am the Lord thy
God. I led thee out of the land of the Egyptians, and of their bondage.
1. Love thou not other strange gods above me.
2. Utter thou not my name idly, for thou shalt not be guiltless towards
me if thou utter my name idly.
3. Remember that thou hallow the rest day. Work for yourselves six
days, and on the seventh rest. For in six days, Christ wrought the
heavens and the earth, the seas, and all creatures that are in them, and
rested on the seventh day: and therefore the Lord hallowed it.
4. Honor thy father and thy mother whom the Lord hath given thee,that
thou mayst be the longer living on earth.
5. Slay thou not.
6. Commit thou not adultery.
7. Steal thou not.
8. Say thou not false witness.
9. Covet thou not thy neighbor's goods unjustly.
10. Make thou not to thyself golden or silver gods."
If any one fights in the king's hall, or draws his weapon, and he be
taken; be it in the king's doom, either death, or life, as he may be
willing to grant him. If he escape, and be taken again, let him pay for
himself according to his wergeld, and make bot for the offense, as well
wer as wite, according as he may have wrought.
If a man fights before a king's ealdorman in the gemot, let him make
bot with wer and wite as it may be right; and before this 120s. to the
ealdorman as wite. If he disturbs the folkmote by drawing his weapon,
120s. to the ealdorman as wite. If any of this happens before a king's
ealdorman's junior, or a king's priest, 30s. as wite.
If any one fights in a ceorlish man's dwelling, let him make bot of 6s.
to the ceorl. If he draws his weapon but doesn't fight, let it be half
of that. If, however, either of these happens to a man with a wergeld of
600s., let it increase threefold of the ceorlish bot; and if to a man
with a wergeld of 1200s., let it increase twofold of the bot of the man
with a wergeld of 600s. Breach of the king's dwelling [breaking and
entering] shall be 120s.; an archbishop's, 90s.; any other bishop's, and
an ealdorman's, 60s.;. a 1200s. wergeld man's, 30s.; a 600s. wergeld
man's, 15s.; and a ceorl's 5s.
If any one plot against the king's life, of himself, or by harboring of
exiles, or of his men; let him be liable with his life and in all that
he has; or let him prove himself according to his lord's wer.
If any one with a band or gang of men slays an unoffending man, let him
who acknowledges the deathblow pay wer and wite. If the slain man had a
wergeld of 200s, let every one who was of the gang pay 30s. as gangbot.
If he had a wergeld of 600s., let every one pay 60s. as gangbot. If he
had a wergeld of 1200s., let every one pay 120s. If a gang does this,
and afterwards denies it on oath, let them all be accused, and let them
then all pay the wer in common; and all, one wite, such as shall belong
to the wer.
If any one lends his weapon to another so he may kill some one with it,
they may join together if they will in the wer. If they will not join
together, let him who lent the weapon pay of the wer a third part, and
of the wite a third part.
With his lord a man may fight free of liability for homicide, if any
one attack the lord: thus may the lord fight for his man. Likewise, a
man may fight with his born kinsman, if a man attack him wrongfully,
except against his lord. And a man may fight free of liability for
homicide, if he finds another with his lawful wife, within closed doors,
or under one covering, or with his lawfully born daughter, or with his
lawfully born sister, or with his mother, who was given to his father as
his lawful wife. If a man knows his foe is sitting at his home, he may
not fight with him before he demands justice of him. If he has such
power that he can beset his foe, and besiege him within, let him keep
him within for seven days, and not attack him if he will remains within.
And, then, after seven days, if he surrenders, and gives up his weapons,
let him be kept safe for thirty days, and let notice of him be given to
his kinsmen and his friends. But if he does not have sufficient power to
besiege him within, let him ride to the ealdorman, and beg aid of him.
If he will not aid him, let him ride to the king before he fights. In
like manner also, if a man come upon his foe, and he did not know
beforehand that he was staying at his home; if he is willing to give up
his weapons, let him be kept for thirty days, and let notice of him be
given to his friends; if he will not give up his weapons, then he may
attack him. If he is willing to surrender, and to give up his weapons,
and any one after that attack him, let him pay as well wer as wound, as
he may do, and wite, and let him have forfeited his compensation to his
kin. Every church shall have this peace: if a fugitive flee to one for
sanctuary, no one may drag him out for seven days. If he is willing to
give up his weapons to his foes, let him stay thirty days, and then let
notice of him be given to his kinsmen. If any man confess in church any
offenses which had not been before revealed, let him be half forgiven.
If a man from one holdgetael wishes to seek a lord in another
holdgetael, let him do it with the knowledge of the ealdorman whom he
before followed in his shire. If he does it without his knowledge, let
him who treats him as his man pay 120s. as wite, one-half to the king in
the shire where he before followed and one-half in that into which he
comes. If he has done anything wrong where he was before, let him make
bot for it who has there received him as his man; and to the king 120s.
as wite.
"If any one steals so that his wife and children don't know it, he
shall pay 60 shillings as wite. But if he steals with the knowledge of
all his household, they shall all go into slavery. A boy of ten years
may be privy to a theft."
"If one who takes a thief, or holds him for the person who took him,
lets the thief go, or conceals the theft, he shall pay for the thief
according to his wer. If he is an eorldormen, he shall forfeit his
shire, unless the king is willing to be merciful to him."
If any one steal in a church, let him pay the lawful penalty and the
wite, and let the hand be struck off with which he did it. If he will
redeem the hand, and that be allowed him, let him pay as may belong to
his wer.
If a man slanders another, the penalty is no lighter thing than that
his tongue be cut out; which must not be redeemed at any cheaper rate
than it is estimated at according to his wer.
If one deceives an unbetrothed woman and sleep with her, he must pay
for her and have her afterwards to wife. But if her father not approve,
he should pay money according to her dowry.
"If a man seize hold of the breast of a ceorlish woman, let him make
bot to her with 5 shillings. If he throw her down and do not lie with
her, let him make bot with 10 shillings. If he lie with her, let him
make bot with 60 shillings. If another man had before lain with her,
then let the bot be half that. If this befall a woman more nobly born,
let the bot increase according to the wer."
"If any one, with libidinous intent, seize a nun either by her raiment
or by her breast without her leave, let the bot be twofold, as we have
before ordained concerning a laywoman."
"If a man commit a rape upon a ceorl's female slave, he must pay bot to
the ceorl of 5 shillings and a wite [fine to the King] of 60 shillings.
If a male theow rape a female theow, let him make bot with his
testicles."
For the first dog bite, the owner pays 6 shillings, for the second, 12
shillings, for the third, 30 shillings.
An ox which gores someone to death shall be stoned.
If one steals or slays another's ox, he must give two oxen for it.
The man who has land left to him by his kindred must not give it away
from his kindred, if there is a writing or witness that such was
forbidden by those men who at first acquired it, and by those who gave
it to him; and then let that be declared in the presence of the king and
of the bishop, before his kinsmen.
- Judicial Procedure -
Cases were held at monthly meetings of the hundred court. The king or
one of his reeves, conducted the trial by compurgation.
In compurgation, the one complaining, called the "plaintiff", and the
one defending, called the "defendant", each told their story and put his
hand on the Bible and swore "By God this oath is clean and true". A slip
or a stammer would mean he lost the case. Otherwise, community members
would stand up to swear on behalf of the plaintiff or the defendant as
to their reputation for veracity. The value of a man's oath was
commensurate with his value or wergeld. A man's brothers were usually
his compurgators. If these "compurgators" were too few, usually twelve
in number, or recited poorly, their party lost. If this process was
inconclusive, the parties could bring witnesses to declare such
knowledge as they had as neighbors. These witnesses, male and female,
swore to particular points determined by the court.
If the witnesses failed, the defendant was told to go to church and to
take the sacrament only if he or she were innocent. If he or she took
the sacrament, he or she was tried by the process of "ordeal", which was
administered by the church. In the ordeal by cold water, he was given a
drink of holy water and then bound hand and foot and thrown into water.
If he floated, he was guilty. If he sank, he was innocent. It was not
necessary to drown to be deemed innocent. In the ordeal by hot water, he
had to pick up a stone from inside a boiling cauldron. If his hand was
healing in three days, he was innocent. If it was festering, he was
guilty. A similar ordeal was that of hot iron, in which one had to carry
in his hands a hot iron for a certain distance. The results of the
ordeal were taken to indicate the will of God. Presumably a person
convicted of murder, i.e. killing by stealth, or robbery [taking from a
person's robe, that is, his person or breaking into his home to steal]
would be hung and his possessions confiscated. A bishop's oath was
incontrovertible. Accused archbishops and bishops could clear themselves
with an oath that they were guiltless. Lesser ranks could clear
themselves with the oaths of three compurgators of their rank or, for
more serious offenses, undergo the ordeal of the consecrated morsel. For
this, one would swallow a morsel; if he choked on it, he was guilty.
Any inanimate or animate object or personal chattel which was found by
a court to be the immediate cause of death was forfeited as "deodand",
for instance, a tree from which a man fell to his death, a beast which
killed a man, a sword of a third party not the slayer that was used to
kill a man. The deodand was to go to the dead man's kin so they could
wreak their vengeance on it, which in turn would cause the dead man to
lie in peace.
This is a lawsuit regarding rights to feed pigs in a certain woodland:
"In the year 825 which had passed since the birth of Christ, and in the
course of the second Indiction, and during the reign of Beornwulf, King
of Mercia, a council meeting was held in the famous place called
Clofesho, and there the said King Beornwulf and his bishops and his
earls and all the councilors of this nation were assembled. Then there
was a very noteworthy suit about wood pasture at Sinton, towards the
west in Scirhylte. The reeves in charge of the pigherds wished to extend
the pasture farther, and take in more of the wood than the ancient
rights permitted. Then the bishop and the advisors of the community said
that they would not admit liability for more than had been appointed in
AEthelbald's day, namely mast for 300 swine, and that the bishop and the
community should have two thirds of the wood and of the mast. The
Archbishop Wulfred and all the councilors determined that the bishop and
the community might declare on oath that it was so appointed in
AEthelbald's time and that they were not trying to obtain more, and the
bishop immediately gave security to Earl Eadwulf to furnish the oath
before all the councilors, and it was produced in 30 days at the
bishop's see at Worcester. At that time Hama was the reeve in charge of
the pigherds at Sinton, and he rode until he reached Worcester, and
watched and observed the oath, as Earl Eadwulf bade him, but did not
challenge it. Here are the names and designations of those who were
assembled at the council meeting ..."
- - - Chapter 3 - - -
- The Times: 900-1066 -
There were many large landholders such as the King, earls, and bishops.
Earls were noblemen by birth, and often relatives of the King. They were
his army commanders and the highest civil officials, each responsible
for a shire. A breach of the public peace of an earl would occasion a
fine. Lower in social status were freemen: sokemen, and then, in
decreasing order, villani [villeins], bordarii, and cottarii. The servi
were the slaves. Probably all who were not slaves were freemen.
Kings typically granted land in exchange for services of military
duties, maintaining fortresses, and repairing bridges. Less common
services required by landlords include equipping a guard ship and
guarding the coast, guarding the lord, military watch, maintaining the
deer fence at the King's residence, alms giving, and church dues. Since
this land was granted in return for service, there were limitations on
its heritability and often an heir had to pay a heriot to the landlord
to obtain the land. A heriot was originally the armor of a man killed,
which went to the King. The heriot of a thegn who had soken [or
jurisdiction over their own lands] came to be about 80s.; of a kings'
thegn about four lances, two coats of mail, two swords, and 125s.; of an
earl about eight horses, four saddled and four unsaddled, eight lances,
four coats of mail, four swords, and 500s.
There were several thousand thegns, rich and poor, who held land
directly of the King. Some thegns had soken and others did not. Free
farmers who had sought protection from thegns in time of war now took
them as their lords. A freeman could chose his lord, following him in
war and working his land in peace. All able-bodied freemen were liable
to military service in the fyrd [national militia], but not in a lord's
private wars. In return, the lord would protect him against encroaching
neighbors, back him in the courts of law, and feed him in times of
famine. But often, lords raided each other's farmers, who fled into the
hills or woods for safety. Often a lord's fighting men stayed with him
at his large house, but later were given land with inhabitants on it,
who became his tenants. The lords were the ruling class and the greatest
of them sat in the King's council along with bishops, abbots, and
officers of the King's household. The lesser lords were local magnates,
who officiated at the shire and hundred courts.
Staghunting, foxhunting, and hawking were reserved for lords who did
not work with their hands. Every free born person had the right to hunt
other game.
There was a great expansion of arable land. Some land had been
specifically allocated to certain individuals. Some was common land,
held by communities. If a family came to pay the dues and fines on
certain common land, it could become personal to that family and was
then known as heirland. Most land came to be privately held from
community-witnessed allotments or inheritance. Bookland was those
holdings written down in books. This land was usually land that had been
given to the church or monasteries because church clerics could write.
So many thegns gave land to the church, usually a hide, that the church
held 1/3 of the land of the realm. Folkland was that land that was left
over after allotments had been made to the freemen and which was not
common land. It was public land and a national asset and could be
converted to heirland or bookland only by action of the king and witan.
It could also be rented by services to the state via charter. A holder
of folkland might express a wish, e.g. by testamentary action, for a
certain disposition of it, such as an estate for life or lives for a
certain individual. But a distinct act by the king and witan was
necessary for this wish to take effect. Small private transactions of
land could be done by "livery of seisin" in the presence of neighbors.
All estates in land could be let, lent, or leased by its holders, and
was then known as "loenland".
Ploughs and wagons could be drawn by four or more oxen or horses in
sets of two behind each other. Oxenshoes and horseshoes prevented
lameness due to cracked hooves. Horse collars especially fitted for
horses, replaced oxen yoke that had been used on horses. The horse
collar did not restrict breathing and enabled horses to use the same
strength of oxen. Also, horses had better endurance and faster speed.
A free holder's house was wood, perhaps with a stone foundation, and
roofed with thatch or tiles. There was a main room or hall, with bed
chambers around it. Beyond was the kitchen, perhaps outside under a
lean-to. These buildings were surrounded by a bank or stiff hedge.
Simple people lived in huts made from wood and mud, with one door and
no windows. They slept around a wood-burning fire in the middle of the
earthen floor. They wore shapeless clothes of goat hair and unprocessed
wool from their sheep. They ate rough brown bread, vegetable and grain
broth, ale from barley, bacon, beans, milk, cabbage, onion, apples,
plums, cherries, and honey for sweetening or mead. Vegetables grown in
the country included onions, leeks, celery, lettuce, radish, carrots,
garlic, shallots, parsnip, dill, chervil, marigold, coriander, and
poppy. In the summer, they ate boiled or raw veal and wild fowl such as
ducks, geese, or pigeons, and game snared in the forest. Poultry was a
luxury food, but recognized as therapeutic for invalids, especially in
broth form [chicken soup]. Venison was highly prized. There were still
some wild boar, which were hunted with long spears, a greyhound dog, and
hunting horns. They sometimes mated with the domestic pigs which roamed
the woodlands. In September, the old and infirm pigs were slaughtered
and their sides of bacon smoked in the rafters for about a month. Their
intestines provided skin for sausages. In the fall, cattle were
slaughtered and salted for food during the winter because there was no
more pasture for them. However, some cows and breed animals were kept
through the winter.
For their meals, people used wooden platters, sometimes earthenware
plates, drinking horns, drinking cups from ash or alderwood turned on a
foot-peddled pole lathe, and bottles made of leather. Their bowls, pans,
and pitchers were made by the potter's wheel. Water could be boiled in
pots made of iron, brass, lead, or clay. Water could be carried in
leather bags because leather working preservative techniques improved so
that tanning prevented stretching or decaying. At the back of each hut
was a hole in the ground used as a latrine, which flies frequented. Moss
was used for toilet paper. Parasitical worms in the stool were
ubiquitous.
Most of the simple people lived in villages of about 20 homes circling
a village green or lining a single winding lane. There were only first
names, and these were usually passed down family lines. To grind their
grain, the villagers used hand mills with crank and gear, or a communal
mill, usually built of oak, driven by power transmitted through a solid
oak shaft, banded with iron as reinforcement, to internal gear wheels of
elm. Almost every village had a watermill. It might be run by water
shooting over or flowing under the wheel.
Clothing for men and women was made from coarse wool, silk, and linen
and was usually brown in color. Only the wealthy could afford to wear
linen or silk. Men also wore leather clothing, such as neckpieces,
breeches, ankle leathers, shoes, and boots. Boots were worn when
fighting. They carried knives or axes under metal belts. They could
carry items by tying leather pouches onto their belts with their
drawstrings. They wore leather gloves for warmth and for heavy working
with their hands.
People were as tall, strong and healthy as in the late 1900s, not
having yet endured the later malnourishment and overcrowding that was
its worst in the 1700s and 1800s. Their teeth were very healthy. Most
adults died in their 40s, after becoming arthritic from hard labor.
People in their 50s were deemed venerable. Boys of twelve were
considered old enough to swear an oath of allegiance to the king. Girls
married in their early teens, often to men significantly older.
The lands of the large landholding lords were administered by freemen.
They had wheat, barley, oats, and rye fields, orchards, vineyards for
wine, and beekeeping areas for honey. On this land lived not only farm
laborers, cattle herders, shepherds, goatherds, and pigherds, but
craftsmen such as goldsmiths, hawkkeepers, dogkeepers, horsekeepers,
huntsmen, foresters, builders, weaponsmiths, embroiders, bronze smiths,
blacksmiths, watermill wrights, wheelwrights, wagon wrights, iron nail
makers, potters, soap makers (made from wood ashes reacting chemically
with fats or oils), tailors, shoemakers, salters (made salt at the
"wyches", which later became towns ending with '-wich'), bakers, cooks,
and gardeners. Most men did carpentry work. Master carpenters worked
with ax, hammer, and saw to make houses, doors, bridges, milk buckets,
washtubs, and trunks. Blacksmiths made gates, huge door hinges, locks,
latches, bolts, and horseshoes. The lord loaned these people land on
which to live for their life, called a "life estate", in return for
their services. The loan could continue to their widows or children who
took up the craft. Mills were usually powered by water. Candles were
made from beeswax, which exuded a bright and steady light and pleasant
smell, or from mutton fat, which had an unpleasant odor. The wheeled
plough and iron-bladed plough made the furrows. One man held the plough
and another walked with the oxen, coaxing them forward with a stick and
shouts. Seeds were held in an apron for seeding. Farm implements
included spades, shovels, rakes, hoes, buckets, barrels, flails, and
sieves. Plants were pruned to direct their growth and to increase their
yield. Everyone got together for feasts at key stages of the farming,
such as the harvest. Easter was the biggest feast. When the lord was in
the field, his lady held their estate. There were common lands of these
estates as well as of communities. Any proposed new settler had to be
admitted at the court of this estate.
The land of some lords included fishing villages along the coasts. From
the sea were caught herrings, salmon, porpoises, sturgeon, oysters,
crabs, mussels, cockles, winkles, plaice, flounder, and lobsters.
Sometimes whales were driven into an inlet by many boats. River fish
included eels, pike, minnows, burbot, trout, and lampreys. They were
caught by brushwood weirs, net, bait, hooks, and baskets. Oysters were
so numerous that they were eaten by the poor. The king's peace extended
over the waterways. If mills, fisheries, weirs, or other structures were
set up to block them, they were to be destroyed and a penalty paid to
the king.
Other lords had land with iron mining industries. Ore was dug from the
ground and combined with wood charcoal in a shaft furnace to be smelted
into liquid form. Wood charcoal was derived from controlled charring of
the wood at high temperatures without using oxygen. This burned
impurities from it and left a purer carbon, which burned better than
wood. The pure iron was extracted from this liquid and formed into bars.
To keep the fire hot, the furnaces were frequently placed at windswept
crossings of valleys or on the tops of hills.
Some lords had markets on their land, for which they charged a toll for
participation. There were about fifty markets in the nation. Cattle and
slaves (from the word "slav") were the usual medium of exchange. An ox
was still worth about 30d. Shaking hands was symbolic of an agreement
for a sale, which had to be carried out in front of witnesses at the
market for any property worth over 20d. The higher the value of the
property, the more witnesses were required. Witnesses were also required
for the exchange of property and to vouch for cattle having being born
on the property of a person claiming them. People traveled to markets on
deep, sunken roads and narrow bridges kept in repair by certain men who
did this work as their service to the King. The king's peace extended to
a couple of high roads, i.e. highways, running the length of the country
and a couple running its width.
Salt was used throughout the nation to preserve meat over the winter.
Inland saltworks had an elaborate and specialized organization. The
chief one used saltpans and furnaces to extract salt from natural brine
springs. They formed little manufacturing enclaves in the midst of
agricultural land, and they were considered to be neither large private
estates headed by a lord nor appurtenant to such. They belonged jointly
to the king and the local earl, who shared, at a proportion of two to
one, the proceeds of the tolls upon the sale of salt and methods of
carriage on the ancient salt ways according to cartload, horse load, or
man load. Sometimes there were investors in a portion of the works who
lived quite at distance away. The sales of salt were mostly retail, but
some bought to resell. Peddlers carried salt to sell from village to
village.
Some smiths traveled for their work, for instance, stonewrights
building arches and windows in churches, and lead workers putting lead
roofs on churches.
An example of a grant of hides of land is: "[God has endowed King Edred
with England], wherefore he enriches and honors men, both ecclesiastic
and lay, who can justly deserve it. The truth of this can be
acknowledged by the thegn AElfsige Hunlafing through his acquisition of
the estate of 5 hides at Alwalton for himself and his heirs, free from
every burden except the repair of fortifications, the building of
bridges and military service; a prudent landowner church dues, burial
fees and tithes. [This land] is to be held for all time and granted
along with the things both great and small belonging to it."
A Bishop gave land to a faithful attendant for his life and two other
lives as follows: "In 904 A.D., I, Bishop Werfrith, with the permission
and leave of my honorable community in Worcester, grant to Wulfsige, my
reeve, for his loyal efficiency and humble obedience, one hide of land
at Aston as Herred held it, that is, surrounded by a dyke, for three
lives and then after three lives the estate shall be given back without
any controversy to Worcester."
At seaports on the coast, goods were loaded onto vessels owned by
English merchants to be transported to other English seaports. London
was a market town on the north side of the Thames River and the primary
port and trading center for foreign merchants. Streets that probably
date from this time include Milk, Bread, and Wood Streets, and Honey
Lane. There were open air markets such as Billingsgate. There were
wooden quays over much of the river front. Houses were made of wood,
with one sunken floor, or a ground floor with a cellar beneath. Some had
central stone hearths and earth latrines. There were crude pottery
cooking pots, beakers and lamps, wool cloth, a little silk, simple
leather shoes, pewter jewelry, looms, and quernstones (for grinding
flour). Wool, skins, hides, wheat, meal, beer, lead, cheese, salt, and
honey were exported. Wine (mostly for the church), fish, timber, pitch,
pepper, garlic, spices, copper, gems, gold, silk, dyes, oil, brass,
sulphur, glass, slaves, and elephant and walrus ivory were imported.
Goods from the continent were sold at open stalls in certain streets.
Furs and slaves were traded. There was a royal levy on exports by
foreigners merchants. Southwark, across the Thames River from London,was
reachable by a bridge. Southwark contained sleazy docks, prisons, gaming
houses, and brothels.
Guilds in London were first associations of neighbors for the purposes
of mutual assistance. They were fraternities of persons by voluntary
compact to assist each other in poverty, including their widows or
orphans and the portioning of poor maids, and to protect each other from
injury. Their essential features are and continue to be in the future:
1) oath of initiation, 2) entrance fee in money or in kind and a common
fund, 3) annual feast and mass, 4) meetings at least three times yearly
for guild business, 5) obligation to attend all funerals of members, to
bear the body if need be from a distance, and to provide masses for the
dead, 6) the duty of friendly help in cases of sickness, imprisonment,
house burning, shipwreck, or robbery, 7) rules for decent behavior at
meetings, and 8) provisions for settling disputes without recourse to
the law. Both the masses and the feast were attended by the women.
Frequently the guilds also had a religious ceremonial to affirm their
bonds of fidelity. They readily became connected with the exercise of
trades and with the training of apprentices. They promoted and took on
public purposes such as the repairing of roads and bridges, the relief
of pilgrims, the maintenance of schools and almshouses, and the periodic
performance of pageants and miracle plays telling scriptural history,
which could last for several days. The devil often was prominent in
miracle plays.
Many of these London guilds were known by the name of their founding
member. There were also Frith Guilds (peace guilds) and a Knights'
Guild. The Frith Guild's main object was to enforce the King's laws,
especially the prevalent problem of theft. They were especially
established by bishops and reeves. Members met monthly and contributed
about 4d. to a common fund, which paid a compensation for items stolen.
They each paid 1s. towards the pursuit of the thief. The members were
grouped in tens. Members with horses were to track the thief. Members
without horses worked in the place of the absent horse owners until
their return. When caught, the thief was tried and executed.
Overwhelming force was used if his kindred tried to protect him. His
property was used to compensate the victim for his loss and then divided
between the thief's wife, if she was innocent, the King, and the guild.
Owners of slaves paid into a fund to give one half compensation to those
who lost slaves by theft or escape, and recaptured slaves were to be
stoned to death or hanged. The members of the peace guild also feasted
and drank together. When one died, the others each sang a song or paid
for the singing of fifty psalms for his soul and gave a loaf.
The Knights' Guild was composed of thirteen military persons to whom
King Edgar granted certain waste land in the east of London, toward
Aldgate, and also Portsoken, which ran outside the eastern wall of the
city to the Thames, for prescribed services performed, probably defense
of the vulnerable east side of the city. This concession was confirmed
by King Edward the Confessor in a charter at the suit of certain
citizens of London, the successors of these knights. Edward granted them
sac and soke [cause and suit] jurisdiction over their men.
Edward the Confessor made these rules for London:
1. Be it known that within the space of three miles from all parts
outside of the city a man ought not to hold or hinder another, and also
should not do business with him if he wish to come to the city under its
peace. But when he arrives in the city, then let the market be the same
to the rich man as to the poor.
2. Be it also known that a man who is from the court of the king or the
barons ought not to lodge in the house of any citizen of London for
three nights, either by privilege or by custom, except by consent of the
host. For if he force the host to lodge him in his house and there be
killed by the host, let the host choose six from his relatives and let
him as the seventh swear that he killed him for the said cause. And thus
he will remain quit of the murder of the deceased towards the king
and relatives and lords of the deceased.
3. And after he has entered the city, let a foreign merchant be lodged
wherever it please him. But if he bring dyed cloth, let him see to it
that he does not sell his merchandise at retail, but that he sell not
less than a dozen pieces at a time. And if he bring pepper, or cumin, or
ginger, or alum, or brasil wood, or resin, or incense, let him sell not
less than fifteen pounds at a time. But if he bring belts, let him sell
not less than a thousand at a time. And if he bring cloths of silk,
or wool or linen, let him see that he cut them not, but sell them whole.
But if he bring wax, let him sell not less than one quartanum. Also a
foreign merchant may not buy dyed cloth, nor make the dye in the city,
nor do any work which belongs by right to the citizens.
4. Also no foreign merchant with his partner may set up any market
within the city for reselling goods in the city, nor may he approach a
citizen for making a bargain, nor may he stop longer in the City.
Every week in London there was a folkmote at St. Paul's churchyard,
where majority decision was a tradition. By 1032, it had lost much of
its power to the husting [household assembly in Danish] court. The
folkmote then had responsibility for order and was the sole authority
for proclaiming outlaws. It met three times a year at St. Paul's
churchyard and there acclaimed the sheriff and justiciar, or if the king
had chosen his officer, heard who was chosen and listened to his charge.
It also yearly arranged the watch and dealt with risks of fire. It was
divided into wards, each governed by an alderman who presided over the
wardmote, and represented his ward at the folkmote. Each guild became a
ward. The chief alderman was the portreeve. London paid one-eighth of
all the taxes of England.
Later in the towns, merchant guilds grew out of charity associations
whose members were bound by oath to each other and got together for a
guild feast every month. Some traders of these merchant guilds became so
prosperous that they became landholders. Many market places were
dominated by a merchant guild, which had a monopoly of the local trade.
In the great mercantile towns all the land and houses would be held by
merchants and their dependents, all freeholders were connected with a
trade, and everyone who had a claim on public office or magistry would
be a member of the guild. The merchant guild could admit into their
guild country villeins, who became freemen if unclaimed by their lords
for a year and a day. Every merchant who had made three long voyages on
his own behalf and at his own cost ranked as a thegn. There were also
some craft guilds composed of handicraftsmen or artisans. Escaped bonded
agricultural workers, poor people, and traders without land migrated to
towns to live, but were not citizens.
Towns were largely self-sufficient, but salt and iron came from a
distance. The King's established in every shire at least one town with a
market place where purchases would be witnessed, and a mint where
reliable money was coined by a moneyer, who put his name on his coins.
There were eight moneyers in London. Coins were issued to be of value
for only a couple of years. Then one had to exchange them for newly
issued ones at a rate of about 10 old for 8 or 9 new. The difference
constituted a tax. Roughly 10% of the people lived in towns. Some took
surnames such as Tanner, Weaver, or Carpenter. Some had affectionate or
derisive nicknames such as clear-hand, fresh friend, soft bread, foul
beard, money taker, or penny purse. Craftsmen in the 1000s included
goldsmiths, embroiderers, illuminators of manuscripts, and armorers.
Edward the Confessor, named such for his piety, was a king of 24 years
who was widely respected for his intelligence, resourcefulness, good
judgment, and wisdom. His educated Queen Edith, whom he relied on for
advice and cheerful courage, was a stabilizing influence on him. They
were served by a number of thegns, who had duties in the household,
which was composed of the hall, the courtyard, and the bedchamber. They
were important men - thegns by rank. They were landholders, often in
several areas, and held leading positions in the shires. They were also
priests and clerics, who maintained the religious services and performed
tasks for which literacy was necessary. Edward was the first king to
have a "Chancellor". He kept a royal seal and was the chief royal
chaplain. He did all the secretarial work of the household and court,
drew up and sealed the royal writs, conducted the king's correspondence,
and kept all the royal accounts. The word "chancellor" signified a
screen behind which the secretarial work of the household was done. He
had the special duty of securing and administering the royal revenue
from vacant benefices. The most important royal officers were the
chamberlains, who took care of the royal bedchamber and adjoining
wardrobe used for dressing and storage of valuables, and the priests.
These royal officers had at first been responsible only for domestic
duties, but gradually came to assume public administrative tasks.
Edward wanted to avoid the pressures and dangers of living in the rich
and powerful City of London. So he rebuilt a monastic church, an abbey,
and a palace at Westminster about two miles upstream. He started the
growth of Westminster as a center of royal and political power; kings'
councils met there. Royal coronations took place at the abbey. Since
Edward traveled a lot, he established a storehouse-treasury at
Winchester to supplement his traveling wardrobe. At this time, Spanish
stallions were imported to improve English horses. London came to have
the largest and best trained army in England.
The court invited many of the greatest magnates and prelates [highest
ecclesiastical officials, such as bishops] of the land to the great
ecclesiastical festivals, when the king held more solemn courts and
feasted with his vassals for several days. These included all the great
earls, the majority of bishops, some abbots, and a number of thegns and
clerics. Edward had a witan of wise men to advise him, but sometimes the
King would speak in the hall after dinner and listen to what comments
were made from the mead-benches. As the court moved about the country,
many men came to pay their respects and attend to local business. Edward
started the practice of King's touching people to cure them of scrofula,
a disease which affected the glands, especially in the head and neck. It
was done in the context of a religious ceremony.
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. He was so greatly revered that a comet was
thought to accompany his death.
The king established the office of the Chancery to draft documents and
keep records. It created the writ, which was a small piece of parchment
[sheep skin] 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
which hung from the bottom of the document. Writing was done with a
sharpened goose-wing quill. Ink was obtained from mixing fluid from the
galls made by wasps for their eggs on oak trees, rainwater or vinegar,
gum arabic, and iron salts for color.
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 [possession of jurisdiction of a
private court of a noble or institution to execute the laws and
administer justice over inhabitants and tenants of the estate], toll
[right to have a market and to collect a payment on the sale of cattle
and other property on the estate] and team [probably the right to hold a
court to determine the honesty of a man accused of illegal possession of
cattle or of buying stolen cattle by inquiring of the alleged seller or
a warrantor, even if an outsider], and infangenetheof [the authority to
hang and take the chattels of a thief caught on the estate].
The town of Coventry consisted of a large monastery estate and a large
private estate headed by a lord. 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], bloodwite
[the authority to impose a forfeiture for assault involving bloodshed],
fightwite [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].
Every man was expected to have a lord to whom he gave fealty. He swore
by this fealty oath: "By the Lord, before whom this relic is holy, I
will be to faithful and true, and love all that he loves, and shun all
that he shuns, according to God's law, and according to the world's
principle, and never, by will nor by force, by word nor by work, do
ought of what is loathful to him; on condition that he keep me as I am
willing to deserve, and all that fulfill that our agreement was, when I
to him submitted and chose his will." If a man was homeless or lordless,
his brothers were expected to find him such, e.g. in the folkmote.
Otherwise, he was to be treated as a fugitive and could be slain, and
anyone who had harbored him would pay a penalty. Brothers were also
expected to protect their minor kinsmen.
Marriages were determined by men asking women to marry them. If a woman
said yes, he paid a sum to her kin for her "mund" [jurisdiction or
protection over her] and gave his oath to them to maintain and support
the woman and any children born. As security for this oath, he gave a
valuable object or "wed". The couple were then betrothed. Marriage
ceremonies were performed by priests in churches. The groom had to bring
friends to his wedding as sureties to guarantee his oath to maintain and
support his wife and children. Those who swore to take care of the
children were called their "godfathers". The marriage was written into
church records. After witnessing the wedding, friends ate the great
loaf, or first bread made by the bride. This was the forerunner of the
wedding cake. They drank special ale, the "bride ale" (from hence the
work "bridal"), to the health of the couple.
Women could own land, houses, and furniture and other property. They
could even make wills that disinherited their sons. This marriage
agreement with an Archbishop's sister provides her with land, money, and
horsemen:
"Here in this document is stated the agreement which Wulfric and the
archbishop made when he obtained the archbishop's sister as his wife,
namely he promised her the estates at Orleton and Ribbesford for her
lifetime, and promised her that he would obtain the estate at Knightwick
for her for three lives from the community at Winchcombe, and gave her
the estate at Alton to grant and bestow upon whomsoever she pleased
during her lifetime or at her death, as she preferred, and promised her
50 mancuses of gold and 30 men and 30 horses.
The witnesses that this agreement was made as stated were Archbishop
Wulfstan and Earl Leofwine and Bishop AEthelstan and Abbot AElfweard and
the monk Brihtheah and many good men in addition to them, both
ecclesiastics and laymen. There are two copies of this agreement, one in
the possession of the archbishop at Worcester and the other in the
possession of Bishop AEthelstan at Hereford."
This marriage agreement provided the wife with money, land, farm
animals and farm laborers; it also names sureties, the survivor of whom
would receive all this property:
"Here is declared in this document the agreement which Godwine made with
Brihtric when he wooed his daughter. In the first place he gave her a
pound's weight of gold, to induce her to accept his suit, and he granted
her the estate at Street with all that belongs to it, and 150 acres at
Burmarsh and in addition 30 oxen and 20 cows and 10 horses and 10
slaves.
This agreement was made at Kingston before King Cnut, with the
cognizance of Archbishop Lyfing and the community at Christchurch, and
Abbot AElfmaer and the community at St. Augustine's, and the sheriff
AEthelwine and Sired the old and Godwine, Wulfheah's son, and AElfsige
cild and Eadmaer of Burham and Godwine, Wulfstan's son, and Carl, the
King's cniht. And when the maiden was brought from Brightling AElfgar,
Sired's son, and Frerth, the priest of Forlstone, and the priests
Leofwine and Wulfsige from Dover, and Edred, Eadhelm's son, and
Leofwine, Waerhelm's son, and Cenwold rust and Leofwine, son of Godwine
of Horton, and Leofwine the Red and Godwine, Eadgifu's son, and Leofsunu
his brother acted as security for all this. And whichever of them lives
the longer shall succeed to all the property both in land and everything
else which I have given them. Every trustworthy man in Kent and Sussex,
whether thegn or commoner, is cognizant of these terms.
There are three of these documents; one is at Christchurch, another at
St. Augustine's, and Brihtric himself has the third."
Nuns and monks lived in segregated nunneries and monasteries on church
land and grew their own food. The local bishop usually was also an abbot
of a monastery. The priests and nuns wore long robes with loose belts
and did not carry weapons. Their life was ordered by the ringing of the
bell to start certain activities, such as prayer; meals; meetings; work
in the fields, gardens, or workshops; and copying and illuminating
books. They chanted to pay homage and to communicate with God or his
saints. They taught justice, piety, chastity, peace, and charity; and
cared for the sick. Caring for the sick entailed mostly praying to God
as it was thought that only God could cure. They bathed a few times a
year. They got their drinking water from upstream of where they had
located their latrines over running water. The large monasteries had
libraries, dormitories, guesthouses, kitchens, butteries to store wine,
bakehouses, breweries, dairies, granaries, barns, fishponds, orchards,
vineyards, gardens, workshops, laundries, lavatories with long stone or
marble washing troughs, and towels. Slavery was diminished by the church
by excommunication for the sale of a child over seven. The clergy taught
that manumission of slaves was good for the soul of the dead, so it
became frequent in wills. The clergy were to abstain from red meat and
wine and were to be celibate. But there were periods of laxity.
Punishment was by the cane or scourge.
The Archbishop of Canterbury began anointing new kings at the time of
coronation to emphasize that the king was ruler by the grace of God. As
God's minister, the king could only do right. From 973, the new king
swore to protect the Christian church, to prevent inequities to all
subjects, and to render good justice, which became a standard oath.
It was believed that there was a celestial hierarchy, with heavenly
hosts in specific places. The heavenly bodies revolved in circles around
the earthly world on crystal spheres of their own, which were serene,
harmonious, and eternal. This contrasted with the change, death, and
decay that occurred in the earthly world. Also in this world,
Aristotle's four elements of earth, air, fire, and water sought their
natural places, e.g. bubbles of air rising through water. The planets
were called wanderers because their motion did not fit the circular
scheme.
God intervened in daily life, especially if worshipped. Saints such as
Bede and Hilda performed miracles, especially ones of curing. Their
spirits could be contacted through their relics, which rested at the
altars of churches. When someone was said to have the devil in him,
people took it quite literally. A real Jack Frost nipped noses and
fingers and made the ground too hard to work. Little people, elves,
trolls, and fairies inhabited the fears and imaginings of people. The
forest was the mysterious home of spirits. People prayed to God to help
them in their troubles and from the work of the devil. Since natural
causes of events were unknown, people attributed events to wills like
their own. Illness was thought to be caused by demons. People hung
charms around their neck for cure and treatments of magic and herbs were
given. Some had hallucinogenic effects, which were probably useful for
pain. For instance, the remedy for "mental vacancy and folly" was a
drink of "fennel, agrimony, cockle, and marche". Blood- letting by
leeches and cautery were used for most maladies, which were thought to
be caused by imbalance of the four bodily humors: sanguine, phlegmatic,
choleric, and melancholic. These four humors reflected the four basic
elements air, water, fire, and earth. Blood was hot and moist like air;
phlegm was cold and moist like water; choler or yellow bile was hot and
dry like fire; and melancholy or black bile was cold and dry like earth.
Bede had explained that when blood predominates, it makes people joyful,
glad, sociable, laughing, and talking a great deal. Phlegm renders them
slow, sleepy, and forgetful. Red cholic makes them thin, though eating
much, swift, bold, wrathful, and agile. Black cholic makes them serious
of settled disposition, even sad. To relieve brain pressure and/or maybe
to exorcise evil spirits, holes were made in skulls by a drill with a
metal tip that was caused to turn back and forth by a strap wrapped
around a wooden handle. A king's daughter Edith inspired a cult of holy
wells, whose waters were thought to alleviate eye conditions. Warmth and
rest were also used for illness. Agrimony boiled in milk was thought to
relieve impotence in men.
It was known that the liver casted out impurities in the blood. The
stages of fetal growth were known. The soul was not thought to enter a
fetus until after the third month, so presumably abortions within three
months were allowable.
The days of the week were Sun day, Moon day, Tiw's day (Viking god of
war), Woden's day (Viking god of victory, master magician, calmer of
storms, and raiser of the dead), Thor's day (Viking god of thunder),
Frig's day (Viking goddess of fertility and growing things), and
Saturn's day (Roman god). Special days of the year were celebrated:
Christmas, the birthday of Jesus Christ; the twelve days of Yuletide (a
Viking tradition) when candles were lit and houses decorated with
evergreen and there were festivities around the burning of the biggest
log available; Plough Monday for resumption of work after Yuletide;
February 14th with a feast celebrating Saint Valentinus, a Roman bishop
martyr who had married young lovers in secret when marriage was
forbidden to encourage men to fight in war; New Year's Day on March 25th
when seed was sown and people banged on drums and blew horns to banish
spirits who destroy crops with disease; Easter, the day of the
resurrection of Jesus Christ; Whitsunday, celebrating the descent of the
Holy Spirit on the apostles of Jesus and named for the white worn by
baptismal candidates; May Day when flowers and greenery was gathered
from the woods to decorate houses and churches, Morris dancers leapt
through their villages with bells, hobby horses, and waving scarves, and
people danced around a May pole holding colorful ribbons tied at the top
so they became entwined around the pole; Lammas on August 1st, when the
first bread baked from the wheat harvest was consecrated; Harvest Home
when the last harvest load was brought home while an effigy of a goddess
was carried with reapers singing and piping behind, and October 31st,
the eve of the Christian designated All Hallow Day, which then became
known as All Hallow Even, or Halloween. People dressed as demons,
hobgoblins, and witches to keep spirits away from possessing them. Trick
or treating began with Christian beggars asking for "soul cake" biscuits
in return for praying for dead relatives. Ticktacktoe and backgammon
were played.
There were riddles such as:
I am a strange creature, for I satisfy women ... I grow very
tall, erect in a bed. I'm hairy underneath. From time to time A
beautiful girl, the brave daughter Of some fellow dares to hold me
Grips my reddish skin, robs me of my head And puts me in the
pantry. At once that girl With plaited hair who has confined me
Remembers our meeting. Her eye moistens. What am I? An onion.
A man came walking where he knew She stood in a corner, stepped
forwards; The bold fellow plucked up his own Skirt by hand,
stuck something stiff Beneath her belt as she stood, Worked his
will. They both wiggled. The man hurried; his trusty helper
Plied a handy task, but tired At length, less strong than she,
Weary of the work. Thick beneath Her belt swelled the thing good men
Praise with their hearts and purses. What am I? A milk
churn.
The languages of invaders had produced a hybrid language that was
roughly understood throughout the country. The existence of Europe,
Africa, Asia, and India were known. Jerusalem was thought to be at the
center of the world. There was an annual tax of a penny on every hearth,
Peter's pence, to be collected and sent to the pope in Rome.
Ecclesiastical benefices were to pay church- scot, a payment in lieu of
first fruits of the land, to the pope.
- The Law -
The king and witan deliberated on the making of new laws, both secular
and spiritual, at the regularly held witanagemot. There was a standard
legal requirement of holding every man accountable, though expressed in
different ways, such as the following three:
Every freeman who does not hold land must find a lord to answer for
him. The act of homage was symbolized by holding his hands together
between those of his lord. Every lord shall be personally responsible as
surety for the men of his household. [This included female lords.] (King
Athelstan)
"And every man shall see that he has a surety, and this surety shall
bring and keep him to [the performance of] every lawful duty.
1. And if anyone does wrong and escapes, his surety shall incur what
the other should have incurred.
2. If the case be that of a thief and his surety can lay hold of him
within twelve months, he shall deliver him up to justice, and what he
has paid shall be returned to him." (King Edgar)
Every freeman who holds land, except lords with considerable landed
property, must be in a local tithing, usually ten to twelve men, in
which they serve as personal sureties for each other's peaceful
behavior. If one of the ten landholders in a tithing is accused of an
offense, the others have to produce him in court or pay a fine plus pay
the injured party for the offense, unless they could prove that they had
no complicity in it. If the man is found guilty but can not pay, his
tithing must pay his fine. The chief officer is the "tithing man" or
"capital pledge". There were probably ten tithings in a hundred. (King
Edward the Confessor).
Everyone was to take an oath not to steal, which one's surety would
compel one to keep.
No one may receive another lord's man without the permission of this
lord and only if the man is blameless towards every hand. The penalty is
the bot for disobedience. No lord was to dismiss any of his men who had
been accused, until he had made compensation and done right.
"No woman or maiden shall be forced to marry a man she dislikes or
given for money."
"Violence to a widow or maiden is punishable by payment of one's
wergeld."
No man may have more wives than one.
No man may marry among his own kin within six degrees of relationship
or with the widow of a man as nearly related to him as that, or with a
near relative of his first wife's, or his god- mother, or a divorced
woman. Incest is punishable by payment of one's wergeld or a fine or
forfeiture of all his possessions.
Grounds for divorce were mutual consent or adultery or desertion.
Adultery was prohibited for men as well as for women. The penalty was
payment of a bot or denial of burial in consecrated ground. A law of
Canute provided that if a wife was guilty of adultery, she forfeited all
her property to her husband and her nose and ears, but this law did not
survive him.
Laymen may marry a second time, and a young widow may again take a
husband, but they will not receive a blessing and must do penance for
their incontinence.
Prostitutes were to be driven out of the land or destroyed in the land,
unless they cease from their wickedness and make amends to the utmost of
their ability.
Neither husband nor wife could sell family property without the other's
consent.
If there was a marriage agreement, it determined the wife's "dower",
which would be hers upon his death. Otherwise, if a man who held his
land in socage [owned it freely and not subject to a larger landholder]
died before his wife, she got half this property. If there were minor
children, she received all this property.
Inheritance of land to adult children was by the custom of the land
held. In some places, the custom was for the oldest son to take it and
in other places, the custom was for the youngest son to take it.
Usually, the sons each took an equal portion by partition, but the
eldest son had the right to buy out the others as to the chief messuage
[manor; dwelling and supporting land and buildings] as long as he
compensated them with property of equal value. If there were no
legitimate sons, then each daughter took an equal share when she
married.
In London, one-third of the personal property of a decedent went to his
wife, one-third went to his children in equal shares, and one-third he
could bequeath as he wished.
"If a man dies intestate [without a will], his lord shall have heriot
[horses, weapons, shields, and helmets] of his property according to the
deceased's rank and [the rest of] the property shall be divided among
his wife, children, and near kinsmen."
A man could justifiably kill an adulterer in the act with the man's
wife, daughter, sister, or mother. In Kent, a lord could fine any
bondswoman of his who had become pregnant without his permission
[childwyte].
A man could kill in defense of his own life, the life of his kinsmen,
his lord, or a man whose lord he was. The offender was "caught
red-handed" if the blood of his victim was still on him. Self-help was
available for hamsocne [breaking into a man's house to assault him].
Murder is punished by death as follows: "If any man break the King's
peace given by hand or seal, so that he slay the man to whom the peace
was given, both his life and lands shall be in the King's power if he be
taken, and if he cannot be taken he shall be held an outlaw by all, and
if anyone shall be able to slay him he shall have his spoils by law."
The king's peace usually extended to important designated individuals,
churches, assemblies, those traveling to courts or assemblies, and
particular times and places. Often a king would extend his peace to
fugitives from violent feuds if they asked the king, earls, and bishops
for time to pay compensation for their misdeeds. From this came the
practice of giving a portion of the "profits of justice" to such men who
tried the fugitive. The king's peace came to be extended to those most
vulnerable to violence: foreigners, strangers, and kinless persons.
"If anyone by force break or enter any man's court or house to slay or
wound or assault a man, he shall pay 100s. to the King as fine."
"If anyone slay a man within his court or his house, himself and all
his substance are at the King's will, save the dower of his wife if he
have endowed her."
If a person fights and wounds anyone, he is liable for his wer. If he
fells a man to death, he is then an outlaw and is to be seized by
raising the hue and cry. And if anyone kills him for resisting God's law
or the king's, there will be no compensation for his death.
A man could kill a thief over twelve years in the act of carrying off
his property over 8d., e.g. the thief hand-habbende [a thief found with
the stolen goods in his hand] or the thief back-berend [a thief found
carrying stolen goods on his back].
Cattle theft could be dealt with only by speedy pursuit. A person who
had involuntarily lost possession of cattle is to at once raise the hue
and cry. He was to inform the hundredman, who then called the
tithingmen. All these neighbors had to then follow the trail of the cow
to its taker, or pay 30d. to the hundred for the first offense; and 60d.
for the second offense, half to the hundred and half to the lord; and
half a pound [10s.] for the third offense; and forfeiture of all his
property and declared outlaw for the fourth offense. If the hundred
pursued a track into another hundred, notice was to be given to that
hundredman. If he did not go with them, he had to pay 30s. to the king.
If a thief was brought into prison, he was to be released after 40 days
if he paid his fine of 120s. His kindred could become his sureties, to
pay according to his wer if he stole again. If a thief forfeited his
freedom and gave himself up, but his kindred forsook him, and he does
not know of anyone who will make bot for him; let him then do
theow-work, and let the wer abate for the kindred.
Measures and weights of goods for sale shall be correct.
Every man shall have a warrantor to his market transactions and no one
shall buy and sell except in a market town; but he shall have the
witness of the portreeve or of other men of credit, who can be trusted.
Moneyers accused of minting money outside a designated market were to
go to the ordeal of the hot iron with the hand that was accused of doing
the fraud. If he was found guilty, his hand that did the offense was to
be struck off and be set up on the money- smithy.
No marketing, business, or hunting may be done on Sundays.
No one may bind a freeman, shave his head in derision, or shave off his
beard. Shaving was a sign of enslavement, which could be incurred by not
paying one's fines for offenses committed.
No clergy may gamble or participate in games of chance.
The Laws for London were:
"1. The gates called Aldersgate and Cripplegate were in charge of
guards.
2. If a small ship came to Billingsgate, one halfpenny was paid as
toll; if a larger ship with sails, one penny was paid.
1) If a hulk or merchantman arrives and lies there, four pence is
paid as toll.
2) From a ship with a cargo of planks, one plank is given as toll.
3) On three days of the week toll for cloth [is paid] on Sunday and
Tuesday and Thursday.
4) A merchant who came to the bridge with a boat containing fish
paid one halfpenny as toll, and for a larger ship one penny."
5 - 8) Foreigners with wine or blubber fish or other goods and
their tolls. (Foreigners were allowed to buy wool, melted sheep fat
[tallow], and three live pigs for their ships.)
"3. If the town reeve or the village reeve or any other official accuses
anyone of having withheld toll, and the man replies that he has kept
back no toll which it was his legal duty to pay, he shall swear to this
with six others and shall be quit of the charge.
1) If he declares that he has paid toll, he shall produce the man
to whom he paid it, and shall be quit of the charge.
2) If, however, he cannot produce the man to whom he paid it, he
shall pay the actual toll and as much again and five pounds to the King.
3) If he vouches the taxgatherer to warranty [asserting] that he
paid toll to him, and the latter denies it, he shall clear himself by
the ordeal and by no other means of proof.
4. And we [the king and his counselors] have decreed that a man who,
within the town, makes forcible entry into another man's house without
permission and commits a breach of the peace of the worst kind and he
who assaults an innocent person on the King's highway, if he is slain,
shall lie in an unhonored grave.
1) If, before demanding justice, he has recourse to violence, but
does not lose his life thereby, he shall pay five pounds for breach of
the King's peace.
2) If he values the goodwill of the town itself, he shall pay us
thirty shillings as compensation, if the King will grant us this
concession."
5. No base coin or coin defective in quality or weight, foreign or
English, may be used by a foreigner or an Englishman. (In 956, a person
found guilty of illicit coining was punished by loss of a hand.)
- Judicial Procedure -
There were courts for different geographical communities. The
arrangement of the whole kingdom into shires was completed by 975 after
being united under King Edgar.
A shire was a larger area of land, headed by an earl. A shire reeve or
"sheriff" represented the royal interests in the shires and in the shire
courts. This officer came to be selected by the king and earl of the
shire to be a judicial and financial deputy of the earl and to execute
the law. The office of sheriff, which was not hereditary, was also
responsible for the administration of royal lands and royal accounts.
The sheriff summoned the freemen holding land in the shire, four men
selected by each community or township, and all public officers to meet
twice a year at their "shiremote". Actually only the great lords - the
bishops, earls, and thegns - attended. The shire court was primarily
concerned with issues of the larger landholders. Here the freemen
interpreted the customary law of the locality. The earl declared the
secular law and the bishop declared the spiritual law. They also
declared the sentence of the judges. The earl usually took a third of
the profits, such as fines and forfeits, of the shire court, and the
bishop took a share. In time, the earls each came to supervise several
shires and the sheriff became head of the shire and assumed the earl's
duties there, such as heading the county fyrd. The shire court also
heard cases which had been refused justice at the hundredmote and cases
of keeping the peace of the shire.
The hundred was a division of the shire, having come to refer to a
geographical area rather than a number of households. The monthly
hundredmote could be attended by any freeman holding land (or a lord's
steward), but was usually attended only by reeve, thegns, parish priest,
and four representatives selected by each agrarian community or village
- usually villeins. Here transfers of land were witnessed. A reeve,
sometimes the sheriff, presided over local criminal and peace and order
issues ["leet jurisdiction", which derived from sac and soc
jurisdiction] and civil cases at the hundred court. All residents were
expected to attend the leet court. The sheriff usually held each hundred
court in turn. The suitors to these courts were the same as those of the
shire courts. They were the judges who declared the law and ordered the
form of proof, such as compurgatory oath and ordeal. They were
customarily thegns, often twelve in number. They, as well as the king
and the earl, received part of the profits of justice. Summary procedure
was followed when a criminal was caught in the act or seized after a hue
and cry. Every freeman over age twelve had to be in a hundred and had to
follow the hue and cry.
"No one shall make distraint [seizure of personal property out of the
possession of an alleged wrongdoer into the custody of the party
injured, to procure a satisfaction for a wrong committed] of property
until he has appealed for justice in the hundred court and shire court".
In 997, King Ethelred in a law code ordered the sheriff and twelve
leading magnates of each shire to swear to accuse no innocent man, nor
conceal any guilty one. This was the germ of the later assize, and later
still the jury.
The integrity of the judicial system was protected by certain
penalties: for swearing a false oath, bot as determined by a cleric who
has heard his confession, or, if he has not confessed, denial of burial
in consecrated ground. Also a perjurer lost his oath-worthiness.
Swearing a false oath or perjury was also punishable by loss of one's
hand or half one's wergeld. A lord denying justice, as by upholding an
evildoing thegn of his, had to pay 120s. to the king for his
disobedience. Furthermore, if a lord protected a theow of his who had
stolen, he had to forfeit the theow and pay his wer, for the first
offense, and he was liable for all he property, for subsequent offenses.
There was a bot for anyone harboring a convicted offender. If anyone
failed to attend the gemot thrice after being summoned, he was to pay
the king a fine for his disobedience. If he did not pay this fine or do
right, the chief men of the burh were to ride to him, and take all his
property to put into surety. If he did not know of a person who would be
his surety, he was to be imprisoned. Failing that, he was to be killed.
But if he escaped, anyone who harbored him, knowing him to be a
fugitive, would be liable pay his wer. Anyone who avenged a thief
without wounding anyone, had to pay the king 120s. as wite for the
assault.
"And if anyone is so rich or belongs to so powerful a kindred, that he
cannot be restrained from crime or from protecting and harboring
criminals, he shall be led out of his native district with his wife and
children, and all his goods, to any part of the kingdom which the King
chooses, be he noble or commoner, whoever he may be - with the provision
that he shall never return to his native district. And henceforth, let
him never be encountered by anyone in that district; otherwise he shall
be treated as a thief caught in the act."
This lawsuit between a son and his mother over land was heard at a
shire meeting: "Here it is declared in this document that a shire
meeting sat at Aylton in King Cnut's time. There were present Bishop
AEthelstan and Earl Ranig and Edwin, the Earl's son, and Leofwine,
Wulfsige's son, and Thurkil the White; and Tofi the Proud came there on
the King's business, and Bryning the sheriff was present, and
AEthelweard of Frome and Leofwine of Frome and Godric of Stoke and all
the thegns of Herefordshire. Then Edwin, Enneawnes son, came traveling
to the meeting and sued his own mother for a certain piece of land,
namely Wellington and Cradley. Then the bishop asked whose business it
was to answer for his mother, and Thurkil the White replied that it was
his business to do so, if he knew the claim. As he did not know the
claim, three thegns were chosen from the meeting [to ride] to the place
where she was, namely at Fawley, and these were Leofwine of Frome and
AEthelsige the Red and Winsige the seaman, and when they came to her
they asked her what claim she had to the lands for which her son was
suing her. Then she said that she had no land that in any way belonged
to him, and was strongly incensed against her son, and summoned to her
kinswoman, Leofflaed, Thurkil's wife, and in front of them said to her
as follows: 'Here sits Leofflaed, my kinswoman, to whom, after my death,
I grant my land and my gold, my clothing and my raiment and all that I
possess.' And then she said to the thegns: 'Act like thegns, and duly
announce my message to the meeting before all the worthy men, and tell
them to whom I have granted my land and all my property, and not a thing
to my own son, and ask them to be witnesses of this.' And they did so;
they rode to the meeting and informed all the worthy men of the charge
that she had laid upon them. Then Thurkil the White stood up in the
meeting and asked all the thegns to give his wife the lands unreservedly
which her kinswoman had granted her, and they did so. Then Thurkil rode
to St. AEthelbert's minister, with the consent and cognizance of the
whole assembly, and had it recorded in a gospel book."
Courts controlled by lords of large private estates had various kinds
of jurisdiction recognized by the King: sac and soke [possession of
legal powers of execution and profits of justice held by a noble or
institution over inhabitants and tenants of the estate, exercised
through a private court], toll [right to collect a payment on the sale
of cattle and property] and team [right to hold a court to determine the
honesty of a man accused of illegal possession of cattle],
infangenetheof [the authority to judge and to hang and take the chattels
of a thief caught on the property], and utfangenetheof [the authority to
judge and to hand and take the chattels of a thief dwelling out of his
liberty, and committing theft without the same, if he were caught within
the lord's property]. Some lords were even given jurisdiction over
breach of the royal peace, ambush and treacherous manslaughter,
harboring of outlaws, forced entry into a residence, and failure to
answer a military summons. Often this court's jurisdiction overlapped
that of the hundred court and sometimes a whole hundred had passed under
the jurisdiction of an abbot, bishop, or earl.
A lord and his noble lady, or his steward, presided at this court. The
law was administered here on the same principles as at the hundred
court. Judges of the leet of the court of a large private estate were
chosen from the constables and four representatives selected from each
community, village, or town.
The vill [similar to village] was the smallest community for judicial
purposes. There were several vills in a hundred.
Before a dispute went to the hundred court, it might be taken care of
by the head tithing man, e.g. cases between vills, between neighbors,
and some compensations and settlements, namely concerning pastures,
meadows, harvests, and contests between neighbors.
In London, the Hustings Court met weekly and decided such issues as
wills and bequests and commerce matters. The folkmote of all citizens
met three times a year. Each ward had a leet court [for minor criminal
matters].
The king and his witan decided the complaints and issues of the
nobility and those cases which had not received justice in the hundred
or shire court. The witan had a criminal jurisdiction and could imprison
or outlaw a person. The witan could even compel the king to return any
land he might have unjustly taken. Specially punishable by the king was
"oferhyrnesse": contempt of the king's law. It covered refusal of
justice, neglect of summons to gemot or pursuit of thieves, disobedience
to the king's officers, sounding the king's coin, accepting another
man's dependent without his leave, buying outside markets, and refusing
to pay Peter's pence.
The forests were peculiarly subject to the absolute will of the king.
They were outside the common law. Their unique customs and laws
protected the peace of the animals rather than the king's subjects. Only
special officials on special commissions heard their cases.
The form of oaths for compurgation were specified for theft of cattle,
unsoundness of property bought, and money owed for a sale. The defendant
denied the accusation by sweating that "By the Lord, I am guiltless,
both in deed and counsel, and of the charge of which ... accuses me." A
compurgator swore that "By the Lord, the oath is clean and unperjured
which ... has sworn.". A witness swore that "In the name of Almighty
God, as I here for ... in true witness stand, unbidden and unbought, so
I with my eyes oversaw, and with my ears overheard, that which I with
him say."
If a theow man was guilty at the ordeal, he was not only to give
compensation, but was to be scourged thrice, or a second geld be given;
and be the wite of half value for theows.
- - - Chapter 4 - - -
- The Times: 1066-1100 -
William came from Normandy to conquer England. He claimed that the
former King, Edward, the Confessor, had promised the throne to him when
they were growing up together in Normandy, if Edward became King of
England and had no children. The Conquerer's men and horses came in
boats powered by oars and sails. The conquest did not take long because
of the superiority of his military expertise to that of the English. He
organized his army into three groups: archers with bows and arrows,
horsemen with swords and stirrups, and footmen with hand weapons. Each
group played a specific role in a strategy planned in advance. The
English army was only composed of footmen with hand weapons such as
spears and shields. They fought in a line holding up their shields to
overlap each other and form a shieldwall. The defeat of the English was
thought to have been presaged by a comet.
At Westminster, he made an oath to defend God's holy churches and their
rulers, to rule the whole people subject to him with righteousness and
royal providence, to enact and hold fast right law, and to utterly
forbid rapine and unrighteous judgments. This was in keeping with the
traditional oath of a new king.
Declaring the English who fought against him to be traitors, the
Conquerer declared their land confiscated. But he allowed those who were
willing to acknowledge him to redeem their land by a payment of money.
As William conquered the land of the realm, he parceled it out among the
barons who fought with him so that each baron was given the holdings of
an Anglo-Saxon predecessor, scattered though they were. The barons again
made oaths of personal loyalty to him [fealty]. They agreed to hold the
land as his vassals with future military services to him and receipt of
his protection. They gave him homage by placing their hands within his
and saying "I become your man for the tenement I hold of you, and I will
bear you faith in life and member [limb] and earthly honor against all
men". They held their land "of their lord", the King, by knight's
service. The king had "enfeoffed" them [given them a fief: a source of
income] with land. The theory that by right all land was the King's and
that land was held by others only at his gift and in return for
specified service was new to English thought. The original duration of a
knight's fee until about 1100 was for his life; thereafter it was
heritable. The word "knight" came to replace the word "thegn" as a
person who received his position and land by fighting for the King. The
exact obligation of knight's service was to furnish a fully armed
horseman to serve at his own expense for forty days in the year. This
service was not limited to defense of the country, but included fighting
abroad. The baron led his own knights under his banner. The foot
soldiers were from the fyrd or were mercenaries. Every free man was
sworn to join in the defense of the king, his lands and his honor,
within England and without.
The Saxon governing class was destroyed. The independent power of
earls, who had been drawn from three great family houses, was curtailed.
Most died or fled the country. Some men were allowed to redeem their
land by money payment if they showed loyalty to the Conquerer. Well-born
women crowded into nunneries to escape Norman violence. The people were
deprived of their most popular leaders, who were excluded from all
positions of trust and profit, especially all the clergy. The earldoms
became fiefs instead of magistracies.
The Conquerer was a stern and fierce man and ruled as an autocrat by
terror. Whenever the people revolted or resisted his mandates, he seized
their lands or destroyed the crops and laid waste the countryside and so
that they starved to death. This example pacified others. His rule was
strong, resolute, wise, and wary. He was not arbitrary or oppressive.
The Conquerer had a strict system of policing the nation. Instead of the
Anglo-Saxon self-government throughout the districts and hundreds of
resident authorities in local courts, he aimed at substituting for it
the absolute rule of the barons under military rule so favorable to the
centralizing power of the Crown. He used secret police and spies and the
terrorism this system involved. This especially curbed the minor barons
and preserved the public peace.
The English people, who outnumbered the Normans by 300 to 1, were
disarmed. Curfew bells were rung at 7:00 PM when everyone had to remain
in their own dwellings on pain of death and all fires and candles were
to be put out. This prevented any nightly gatherings, assassinations, or
seditions. Order was brought to the kingdom so that no man dare kill
another, no matter how great the injury he had received. The Conquerer
extended the King's peace on the highways, i.e. roads on high ground, to
include the whole nation. Any individual of any rank could travel from
end to end of the land unharmed. Before, prudent travelers would travel
only in groups of twenty.
The barons subjugated the English who were on their newly acquired
land. There began a hierarchy of seisin [rightful occupation] of land so
that there could be no land without its lord. Also, every lord had a
superior lord with the king as the overlord or supreme landlord. One
piece of land may be held by several tenures. For instance, A, holding
by barons' service of the King, may enfeoff B, a church, to hold of him
on the terms of praying for the souls of his ancestors, and B may
enfeoff a freeman C to hold of the church by giving it a certain
percentage of his crops every year. There were about 200 barons who held
land directly of the King. Other fighting men were the knights, who were
tenants or subtenants of a baron. Knighthood began as a reward for valor
on the field of battle by the king or a noble. The value of a knight's
fee was 400s. [20 pounds] per year. Altogether there were about 5000
fighting men holding land.
The essence of Norman feudalism was that the land remained under the
lord, whatever the vassal might do. The lord had the duty to defend the
vassals on his land. The vassal owed military service to the lord and
also the service of attending the courts of the hundred and the county
[formerly "shire"], which were courts of the King, administering old
customary law. They were the King's courts on the principle that a crime
anywhere was a breach of the King's peace. The King's peace that had
covered his residence and household had extended to places where he
might travel, such as highways, rivers, bridges, churches, monasteries,
markets, and towns, and then encompassed every place, replacing the
general public peace. Infraction of the King's peace incurred fines to
the King.
This feudal bond based on occupancy of land rather than on personal
ties was uniform throughout the realm. No longer could a man choose his
lord and transfer his land with him to a new lord. He held his land at
the will of his lord, to be terminated anytime the lord decided to do
so. A tenant could not alienate his land without permission of his lord.
In later eras, tenancies would be held for the life of the tenant, and
even later, for his life and those of his heirs.
This uniformity of land organization plus the new requirement that
every freeman take an oath of loyalty directly to the king to assist him
in preserving his lands and honor and defending him against his enemies,
which oath would supersede any oath to any other man, gave the nation a
new unity. The king could call men directly to the fyrd, summon them to
his court, and tax them without intervention of their lords. And the
people learned to look to the king for protection from abuse by their
lords.
English villani, bordarii, cottarii, and servi on the land of the
barons were subjugated into a condition of "villeinage" servitude and
became "tied to the land" so that they could not leave the land without
their lord's permission, except to go on a pilgrimage. The villeins
formed a new bottom class as the population's percentage of slaves
declined dramatically. They held their land of their lord, the baron. To
guard against uprisings of the conquered people, the barons used villein
labor to build about a hundred great stone castles, with moats and walls
with towers around them, at easily defensible positions such as hilltops
all over the nation.
A castle could be built only with permission of the King. A typical
castle had a stone building of about four floors [a keep] on a small,
steep hill. Later it also had an open area surrounded by a stone
curtain-wall with towers at the corners. Around the outside of the wall
were ditches and banks and perhaps a moat. One traveled over these via a
drawbridge let down at the gatehouse of the enclosing wall. On either
side of the gatehouse were chambers for the guards. Arrows could be shot
through slits in the enclosing walls. Inside the enclosed area might be
stables, a granary, barracks for the soldiers, and workshops. The only
winter feed was hay, for which the horses, breeding animals, milkcow,
and workoxen had a priority over other animals. The bulk of the cattle
were usually slaughtered and salted.
The castle building typically was entered by an outer wood staircase to
the guard room on the second floor. The first [ground] floor had a well
and was used as a storehouse and/or dungeons for prisoners. The second
floor had a two-storied great hall, with small rooms and aisles around
it within the thick walls. There was also a chapel area on the second
floor. There were small areas of the third floor which could be used for
sleeping. The floors were wood and were reached by a spiral stone
staircase in one corner of the building. Sometimes there was a reservoir
of water on an upper level with pipes carrying the water to floors
below. Each floor had a fireplace with a slanted flue going through the
wall to the outside. There were latrines in the corner walls with a pit
or shaft down the exterior of the wall, sometimes to the moat. Furs and
wool clothes were hung on the walls there in the summer to deter the
moths. The first floor had only arrow slits in the walls, but the higher
floors had small windows.
Some curtain-wall castles did not have a central building. In these,
the hall was built along the inside of the walls, as were other
continuous buildings. The kitchens and chapels were in the towers.
Lodgings were in buildings along the curtain-walls, or on several floors
of the towers.
The great hall was the main room of the castle. The hall was used for
meals and meetings at which the lord received homages, recovered fees,
and held the view of frankpledge [free pledge in Latin], in which
freemen agreed to be sureties for each other. At the main table, the
lord and his lady sat on benches with backs or chairs. The table was
covered first with a wool cloth that reached to the floor, and then by a
smaller white linen cloth. Everyone else sat on benches at trestle
tables, which consisted of planks on trestles and could be dismantled,
e.g. at night. Over the main door were the family arms. On the walls
were swords ready for instant use. On the upper parts of the walls could
be fox skins and perhaps a polecat skin, and keepers' and huntsmen's
poles. There were often hawk perches overhead. At the midday dinner,
courses were ceremonially brought in to music, and ritual bows were made
to the lord. The food at the head table was often tasted first by a
servant as a precaution against poison. Hounds, spaniels, and terriers
lay near the hearth and cats, often with litters, nestled nearby. They
might share in dinner, but the lord may keep a short stick near him to
defend morsels he meant for himself. Hunting, dove cotes, and carp pools
provided fresh meat. Fish was compulsory eating on Fridays, on fast
days, and during Lent. Cooking was done outside on an open fire,
roasting on spits and boiling in pots. Some spits were mechanized with a
cogged wheel and a weight at the end of a string. Other spits were
turned by a long handle, or a small boy shielded from the heat by a wet
blanket, or by dogs on a treadmill. Underneath the spit was a dripping
pan to hold the falling juices and fat. Mutton fat was used for candles.
Bread, pies, and pastry dishes were baked in an oven: a hole in a
fireproof stone wall fitted with an iron door, in which wood was first
burnt to heat the oven walls. It could also be used for drying fruit or
melting tallow. Fruits were also preserved in honey. Salt was stored in
a niche in the wall near the hearth and put on the table in a salt
cellar which became more elaborate over the years. Salt was very
valuable and gave rise to the praise of a man as the salt of the earth.
Costly imported spices such as cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, ginger, pepper,
and a small quantity of sugar were kept in chests. Pepper was always on
the table to disguise the taste of tainted meat. Spices were tried for
medicinal use. Drinks included wine, ale, cider from apples, perry from
pears, and mead. People carried and used their own knives. There were no
forks. Spoons were of silver or wood. People also ate with their fingers
and washed their hands before and after meals. It was impolite to dig
into the salt bowl with a knife not previously wiped on bread or napkin,
which was linen. It was unmannerly to wipe one's knife or one's greasy
fingers on the tablecloth or, to use the tablecloth to blow one's nose.
Feasts were stately occasions with costly tables and splendid apparel.
There were practical jokes, innocent frolics, and witty verbal debating
with repartee. They played chess, checkers, and various games with cards
and dice. Most people could sing and some could play the lute.
Lighting of the hall at night was by oil lamps or candles on stands or
on wall fixtures. For outside activities, a lantern [a candle shielded
by a metal cage with panels of finely shaved horn: lant horn] was used.
The residence of the lord's family and guests was at a screened off area
at the extreme end of the hall or on a higher floor. Chests stored
garments and jewels. Iron keys and locks were used for chests and doors.
The great bed had a wooden frame and springs made of interlaced rope or
strips of leather. It was covered with a feather mattress, sheets,
quilts, fur covers, and pillows. Drapery around the bed kept out cold
drafts and provided privacy. There was a water bowl for washing in the
morning. A chamber pot was kept under the bed for nighttime use. Hay was
used as toilet paper. The lord's personal servants slept nearby on
benches or trundle beds. Most of the gentlemen servants slept communally
in a "knight's chamber". The floor of the hall was strewn with straw, on
which common folk could sleep at night. There were stools on which to
sit. Cup boards (boards on which to store cups) and chests stored spices
and plate. One-piece iron shears were available to cut cloth. Handheld
spindles were used for weaving; one hand held the spindle [a small stick
weighted at one end] while the other hand alternately formed the thread
and wound it around the spindle. On the roofs there were rampart walks
for sentry patrols and parapets from which to shoot arrows or throw
things at besiegers. Each tenant of the demesne of the king where he had
a castle had to perform a certain amount of castle guard duty for its
continuing defense. These knights performing castle-guard duty slept at
their posts. Bathing was done in a wooden tub located in the garden in
the summer and indoors near the fire in winter. The great bed and tub
for bathing were taken on trips with the lord. The entire household was
of men, except for the lord's lady with a few lady companions. The
ladies rode pillion [on a cushion behind the saddle] or in litters
suspended between two horses.
Markets grew up outside castle walls. Any trade on a lord's land was
subject to "passage", a payment on goods passing through, "stallage", a
payment for setting up a stall or booth in a market, and "pontage", a
payment for taking goods across a bridge.
The Norman man was clean shaven on his face and around his ears and at
the nape of the neck. His hair was short. He wore a long- sleeved
under-tunic of linen or wool that reached to his ankles. Over this the
Norman noble wore a tunic without sleeves, open at the sides, and
fastened with a belt. Over one shoulder was his cloak, which was
fastened on the opposite shoulder by being drawn through a ring brooch
and knotted. He wore tight thick cloth stockings to protect him from the
mud and leather shoes. Common men wore durable, but drab, wool tunics to
the knee so as not to impede them in their work. They could roll up
their stockings when working in the fields. A lady wore a high-necked,
long- sleeved linen or wool tunic fitted at the waist and laced at the
side, but full in the skirt, which reached to her toes. She wore a
jeweled belt, passed twice around her waist and knotted in front. Her
hair was often in two long braids, and her head and ears covered with a
white round cloth held in place by a metal circlet like a small crown.
Its ends were wound around her neck. In winter, she wore over her tunic
a cloak edged or lined with fur and fastened at the front with a cord.
Clothes of both men and ladies were brightly colored by dyes or
embroidery. The Norman knight wore an over-tunic of leather or heavy
linen on which were sewn flat rings of iron and a conical iron helmet
with nose cover. He wore a sword at his waist and a metal shield on his
back, or he wore his sword and his accompanying retainers carried spear
and shield.
Norman customs were adopted by the nation. As a whole, Anglo-Saxon men
shaved their beards and whiskers from their faces, but they kept their
custom of long hair flowing from their heads. But a few kept their
whiskers and beards in protest of the Normans. Everyone had a permanent
surname indicating parentage, place of birth, or residence, such as
Field, Pitt, Lane, Bridge, Ford, Stone, Burn, Church, Hill, Brook,
Green. Other names came from occupations such as Shepherd, Carter,
Parker, Fowler, Hunter, Forester, Smith. Still other came from personal
characteristics such as Black, Brown, and White, Short, Round, and Long.
Some took their names from animals such as Wolf, Fox, Lamb, Bull, Hogg,
Sparrow, Crow, and Swan. Others were called after the men they served,
such as King, Bishop, Abbot, Prior, Knight. A man's surname was passed
on to his son.
Those few coerls whose land was not taken by a baron remained free and
held their land "in socage" and became known as sokemen. They were not
fighting men, and did not give homage, but might give fealty, i.e.
fidelity. Many free sokemen were caught up in the subjugation by baron
landlords and were reduced almost to the condition of the unfree
villein. The services they performed for their lords were often
indistinguishable. They might also hold their land by villein tenure,
although free as a person with the legal rights of a freeman. The
freeman still had a place in court proceedings which the unfree villein
did not.
Great stone cathedrals were built in fortified towns for the
Conquerer's Norman bishops, who replaced the English bishops. Most of
the existing and new monasteries functioned as training grounds for
scholars, bishops, and statesmen rather than as retreats from the
world's problems to the security of religious observance. The number of
monks grew as the best minds were recruited into the monasteries.
The Conquerer made the church subordinate to him. Bishops were elected
only subject to the King's consent. The bishops had to accept the status
of barons. Homage was exacted from them before they were consecrated,
and fealty and an oath afterward. The Conquerer imposed knight's service
on bishoprics, abbeys, and monasteries, which was usually commuted to a
monetary amount. Bishops had to attend the King's court. Bishops could
not leave the realm without the King's consent. No royal tenant or royal
servant could be excommunicated, nor his lands be placed under
interdict, without the King's consent. Interdict could demand, for
instance, that the church be closed and the dead buried in unconsecrated
ground. No church rules could be made without his agreement to their
terms. No letters from the pope could be received without the King's
permission. The Archbishop of Canterbury was still recognized as a
primary advisor to the king. Over the years, the selection for this
office frequently became a source of contention among king, pope, and
clergy.
Men continued to give land to the church for their souls, such as this
grant which started the town of Sandwich: "William, King of the English,
to Lanfranc the Archbishop and Hugoni de Montfort and Richard son of
Earl Gilbert and Haimo the sheriff and all the thegns of Kent, French
and English, greeting. Know ye that the Bishop of Bayeux my brother for
the love of God and for the salvation of my soul and his own, has given
to St. Trinity all houses with their appurtenances which he has at
Sandwich and that he has given what he has given by my license." Many
private owners of churches gave them to cathedrals or monastic
communities, partly to ensure their long term survival, and partly
because of church pressure.
When the land was all divided out, the barons had about 3/7 of it and
the church about 2/7. Most of the barons had been royal servants. The
king retained about 2/7, including forests for hunting, for himself and
his family and household, on which he built many royal castles and
hundreds of manor [large private estate headed by a lord] houses
throughout the nation. He built the massive White Tower in London. It
was tall with four turrets on top, and commanded a view of the river and
bridge, the city and the surrounding countryside. The only windows were
slits from which arrows could be shot. On the fourth and top floor was
the council chamber and the gallery of the chapel. On the third floor
was the banqueting hall, the sword room, and the chapel. The king and
his household slept in apartments on these upper floors. Stairs went up
to the gateway entrance on the second floor, which were hidden by a
wall. The garrison's barracks were on the first floor (ground floor).
Any prisoners were kept in cells at a level below the first floor. The
other castles were often built at the old fortification burhs of Alfred.
Each had a constable in charge, who was a baron. Barons and earls had
castle-guard duty in the king's castles. The Conquerer was constantly
moving about the land among his and his barons' castles, where he met
with his magnates and conducted public business, such as deciding
disputes about holding of land. Near his own castles and other of his
property, he designated many areas as royal hunting forests. Anyone who
killed a deer in these forests was mutilated, for instance by blinding.
People living within the boundaries of the designated forestland could
no longer go into nearby woods to get meat or honey, dead wood for
firing, or live wood for building. Swineherds could no longer drive pigs
into these woods to eat acorns they beat down from oak trees. Making
clearings and grazing livestock in the designated forestland were
prohibited. Most of the nation was either wooded or bog at this time.
London was a walled town of one and two story houses made of mud,
twigs, and straw, with thatched roofs. It included a bundle of
communities, townships, parishes, and lordships. There were churches, a
goods market, a fish market, quays on the river, and a bridge over the
river. Streets probably named by this time include Bread Street, Milk
Street, Honey Lane, Wood Street, and Ironmonger Lane. Fairs and games
were held outside the town walls in a field called "Smithfield". The
great citizens had the land qualifications of knights and ranked as
barons on the Conquerer's council. The freemen were a small percentage
of London's population. There was a butchers' guild, a pepperers' guild,
a goldsmiths' guild, the guild of St. Lazarus, which was probably a
leper charity (of which there were many in the 1000s and 1100s), the
Pilgrims' guild, which helped people going on pilgrimages, and four
bridge guilds, probably for keeping the wooden London Bridge in repair.
Men told the time by sundials, some of which were portable and could be
carried in one's pocket. London could defend itself, and a ringing of
the bell of St. Paul's Church could shut every shop and fill the streets
with armed horsemen and soldiers led by a soldier portreeve. Across the
Thames from London on its south side was Southwark, a small trading and
fishing settlement.
The Conquerer did not interfere with landholding in London, but
recognized its independence as a borough in this writ: "William the King
greets William, Bishop of London, and Gosfrith the portreeve, and all
the burgesses [citizens] of London friendly. Know that I will that you
be worthy of all the laws you were worthy of in the time of King Edward.
And I will that every child shall be his father's heir after his
father's day. And I will not suffer any man to do you wrong. God
preserve you." The Norman word "mayor" replaced "portreeve".
So London was not subjected to the Norman feudal system. It had neither
villeins nor slaves. Whenever Kings asserted authority over it, the
citizens reacted until the king "granted" a charter reaffirming the
freedoms of the city and its independence.
Under pressure from the ecclesiastical judges, the Conquerer replaced
the death penalty by that of the mutilation of blinding, chopping off
hands, and castrating offenders. Castration was the punishment for rape.
But these mutilations usually led to a slow death by gangrene.
The Normans used the Anglo-Saxon concepts of jurisdictional powers.
Thus when the Conquerer confirmed "customs" to the abbot of Ely, these
were understood to include the following: 1) sac and soke - the right to
hold a court of private jurisdiction and enjoy its profits, 2) toll - a
payment in towns, markets, and fairs for goods and chattel bought and
sold, 3) team - persons might be vouched to warranty in the court, the
grant of which made a court capable of hearing suits arising from the
transfer of land, 4) infangenthef - right of trying and executing
thieves on one's land, 4) hamsocne [jurisdiction over breach of the
right of security and privacy in a mans house, e.g. by forcible
entry],, 5) grithbrice - violation of the grantees' special peace, for
instance that of the sheriff, 6) fightwite - fine for a general breach
of the peace, 7) fyrdwite - fine for failure to appear in the fyrd.
Every shire, now called "county", had at least one burh, or defensible
town. Kings had appointed a royal moneyer in each burh to mint silver
coins such as pennies for local use. On one side was the King's head in
profile and on the other side was the name of the moneyer. When a new
coinage was issued, all moneyers had to go to London to get the new
dies. The Conquerer's head faced frontally on his dies, instead of the
usual profile used by former Kings.
The Conquerer held and presided over his council three times a year, as
was the custom, at Easter, Christmas, and Whitsuntide, which coincided
with the great Christian festivals. This was an advisory council and
consisted of the Conquerer's wife and sons, earls, barons, knights,
officers of the King's household, archbishops, and bishops. It replaced
the witan of wise men. It dealt with fundamental matters of law, state,
war, and church. Earldoms and knighthoods were conferred and homages to
the king were witnessed. Bishops were nominated. Attendance at the
council, like attendance at courts, was regarded as a burden rather than
a privilege. The Conquerer's will was the motive force which under lay
all the council's action. When it was administering royal justice, it
was called the Royal Court.
The Justiciar was the head of all legal matters and he or the
Conquerer's wife represented the King at the Royal Court in his absence
from the realm. The chamberlain was a financial officer of the
household; his work was rather that of auditor or accountant. The
Chancellor headed the Chancery and the chapel. Other household offices
were steward, butler, constable, and marshall. The Treasurer was
responsible for the collection and distribution of revenue and was the
keeper of the royal treasure at the palace at Winchester. He was also an
important member of the household and sat in the Exchequer at
Westminster, where he received the accounts of the sheriffs. The
Exchequer was composed of the justiciar as head, the chancellor, the
constable, two chamberlains, the marshall and other experienced
councilors. The word "Exchequer" came from the chequered cloth on the
table used to calculate in Roman numerals the amount due and the amount
paid. The word "calculate" derives from the word "calculi", meaning
pebbles. It was a kind of abacus. The Exchequer received yearly from the
sheriffs of the counties taxes, fines, treasure trove, goods from
wrecks, deodands, and movable property of felons, of persons executed,
of fugitives, and of outlaws due to the Crown. The Conqueror presided
yearly over feasts involving several thousand guests at Westminster
Hall, which was 250 feet by 70 feet with a high ceiling, the largest
hall in England.
The Conquerer's reign was a time of tentative expedients and simple
solutions. He administered by issuing writs with commands or
prohibitions. These were read aloud by the sheriffs in the county courts
and other locations. Administration was by the personal servants of his
royal household, such as the chancellor, chamberlain, constable,
marshals, steward, and butler. The language of government changed to
Latin. The chancellor was from the clergy and supervised the writers and
clerks, who were literate, and appended the great seal before witnesses
to documents. He also headed the staff of the royal chapel. The
chamberlain was a financial officer who audited and accounted. The
constable was responsible for supplies for the knights of the royal
household. He also supervised the care of horses, hounds, hawks, and
huntsmen, houndsmen, and foresters. The marshals came from less
important families than the constable and they preserved order in the
king's hall and recorded expenditures of the household officers on
tallies. The steward was a great baron whose duties were chiefly
ceremonial, such as placing the dishes before the king at banquets.
Sheriffs became powerful figures as the primary agents for enforcing
royal edicts. There was no longer supervision of them by earls nor
influence on them by bishops. They were customarily prominent barons.
They collected the royal taxes, executed royal justice, and presided
over and controlled the hundred and county courts. They were responsible
for remitting a certain sum annually. If a sheriff received more than
necessary, he retained the difference as his lawful profit of office. If
he received less than necessary, he had to make up the difference from
his own pocket. Before rendering this account, he paid the royal
benefactions to religious houses, provided for the maintenance of stock
on crown lands, paid for the costs of provisions supplied to the court,
and paid for traveling expenses of the king and his visitors. The
payments were initially paid in kind: e.g. grain, cattle, horses,
hounds, and hawks. Sheriffs also took part in the keeping of castles and
often managed the estates of the King. Most royal writs were addressed
to the sheriff and county courts. They also led the county militia in
time of war or rebellion. At times, a sheriff usurped royal rights, used
royal estates for his own purposes, encroached on private land and
rights, extorted money, and collected revenues only for his own pockets.
Over the centuries, there was much competition for the authority to
select the sheriff, e.g. by the king, the county court, the barons, and
the Exchequer. There was also much pressure to limit his term to one
year. Over time, the powers of the sheriffs slowly declined.
Royal income came from customary dues, profits of coinage and of
justice, and revenues from the King's own estates. For war, there was no
change in the custom that a man with five hides of land was required to
furnish one heavy armed horseman for forty days service in a year. The
fyrd was retained. A threat of a Viking invasion caused the Conquerer to
reinstate the danegeld tax at 6s. per hide, which was three times its
old rate. (The price of an ox was still about 30d.) To impose this tax
uniformly, he sent commissioners to conduct surveys by sworn verdicts of
appointed groups of local men. A detailed survey of land holdings and
the productive worth of each was made in 1086. The English called it the
"Doomsday Book" because there was no appeal from it.
The survey revealed, for instance, that one estate had "on the home
farm five plough teams: there are also 25 villeins and 6 cotters with 14
teams among them. There is a mill worth 2s. a year and one fishery, a
church and four acres of meadow, wood for 150 pigs and two stone
quarries, each worth 2s. a year, and two nests of hawks in the wood and
10 slaves." This estate was deemed to be worth 480s. a year.
Laxton "had 2 carucates of land [assessed] to the geld. [There is] land
for 6 ploughs. There Walter, a man of [the lord] Geoffrey Alselin's has
1 plough and 22 villeins and 7 bordars [a bordar had a cottage and a
small amount land in return for supplying small provisions to his lord]
having 5 ploughs and 5 serfs and 1 female serf and 40 acres of meadow.
Wood [land] for pannage [foraging by pigs] 1 league in length and half a
league in breadth. In King Edward's time it was worth 9 pounds; now [it
is worth] 6 pounds."
Ilbert de Laci has now this land, where he has twelve ploughs in the
demesne; and forty-eight villani, and twelve bordars with fifteen
ploughs, and three churches and three priests, and three mills of ten
shillings. Wood pastures two miles long, and one broad. The whole manor
five miles long and two broad. Value in King Edward's time sixteen
pounds, the same now.
That manor of the town of Coventry which was individually held was that
of the Countess of Coventry, who was the wife of the earl of Mercia.
"The Countess held in Coventry. There are 5 hides. The arable land
employs 20 ploughs. In the demesne lands there are 3 ploughs and 7
bondmen. There are 50 villeins and 12 bordars with 20 ploughs. The mill
there pay[s] 3 shillings. The woodlands are 2 miles long and the same
broad. In King Edward's time and afterwards, it was worth 22 pounds [440
s.], now only 11 pounds by weight. These lands of the Countess Godiva
Nicholas holds to farm of the King."
The survey shows a few manors and monasteries owned a salthouse or
saltpit in the local saltworks, from which they were entitled to obtain
salt.
In total there were about 110,000 villani [former coerls regarded as
customary, irremovable cultivator tenants]; 82,000 bordarii; 7,000
cotarii and cotseti [held land by service of labor or rent paid in
produce], and 25,000 servi [landless laborers]. There are no more
theows. This survey resulted in the first national tax system of about
6s. per hide of land.
The survey also provided the Conquerer with a summary of customs of
areas. For instance, in Oxfordshire, "Anyone breaking the King's peace
given under his hand and seal to the extent of committing homicide shall
be at the King's mercy in respect of his life and members. That is if he
be captured. And if he cannot be captured, he shall be considered as an
outlaw, and anyone who kills him shall have all his possessions. The
king shall take the possessions of any stranger who has elected to live
in Oxford and who dies in possession of a house in that town, and
without any kinfolk. The king shall be entitled to the body and the
possessions of any man who kills another within his own court or house
excepting always the dower of his wife, if he has a wife who has
received dower.
The courts of the king and barons became schools of chivalry wherein
seven year old noble boys became pages or valets, wore a dagger and
waited upon the ladies of the household. At age fourteen, they were
advanced to squires and admitted into more familiar association with the
knights and ladies of the court. They perfected their skills in dancing,
riding, fencing, hawking, hunting, jousting, and engaged in team sports
in which the goal was to put the other side to rout. They learned the
knightly art of war. Enemy fighters were to be taken and held for ransom
rather than killed. Those engaging in rebellion were to be pardoned and
restored to some or all of their lands and titles. Lords' sons could be
mutually exchanged with an enemy's as security for peace. After
achieving knighthood, a man usually selected a wife from the court at
which he grew up. Parents tried to send their daughters to a household
superior in social status not only to learn manners, but to make a good
marriage. A girl who did not marry was often sent to a nunnery; a dowry
was necessary before her acceptance.
The following incidents of land tenure began (but were not firmly
established until the reign of Henry II). Each tenant, whether baron or
subtenant, was to pay an "aid" in money for ransom if his lord was
captured in war, for the knighthood of his lord's eldest son, and for
the marriage of his lord's eldest daughter. The aid was theoretically
voluntary. Land could be held by an heir only if he could fight. The
eldest son began to succeed to the whole of the lands in all military
tenures. Younger sons of great houses became bishops. An heir of a
tenant had to pay a heavy "relief" on succession to his estate. The
relief replaced the heriot. If there was a delay in proving heirship or
paying relief, the lord would hold the land and receive its income in
the meantime, often a year. If an heir was still a minor or female, he
or she passed into his lord's wardship, in which the lord had
guardianship of the heir and possession of the estate, with all its
profits. The mother was not made a minor's guardian. No longer was the
estate protected by the minor's kin as his birthright. A female heir was
expected to marry a man acceptable to the lord. The estate of an heiress
and her land was generally sold to the highest bidder. If there were no
heirs, the land escheated to the lord. If a tenant committed felony, his
land escheated to his lord. The word "felony" came from the Latin word
meaning "to deceive" and referred to the feudal crime of betraying or
committing treachery against one's lord.
Astrologers resided with the families of the barons. People went to
fortune tellers' shops. There was horse racing, steeple races, and chess
for recreation. Girls had dolls; boys had toy soldiers, spinning tops,
toy horses, ships, and wooden models.
The state of medicine is indicated by this medical advice brought to
the nation by William's son after treatment on the continent:
"If thou would have health and vigor Shun cares and avoid anger. Be
temperate in eating And in the use of wine. After a heavy meal Rise and
take the air Sleep not with an overloaded stomach And above all thou
must Respond to Nature when she calls."
The Conquerer allowed Jewish traders to follow him from Normandy and
settle in separate sections of the main towns. Then engaged in long
distance trade, money changing, and money lending. They loaned money for
interest for the building of castles and cathedrals. Christians were not
allowed by the church to engage in this usury. The Jews could not become
citizens nor could they have standing in the local courts. Instead, a
royal justiciar secured justice for them. They could practice their own
religion.
William the Conquerer was succeeded as king by his son William II
(Rufus), who transgressed many of the customs of the nation to get more
money for himself. He was killed by an arrow of a fellow hunter while
they and William's younger brother Henry were hunting together in a
crown forest. Henry then became king.
- The Law -
The Norman conquerors brought no written law, but affirmed the laws of
the nation. Two they especially enforced were:
1. Anyone caught in the act of digging up the King's road, felling a
tree across it, or attacking someone so that his blood spilled on it
shall pay a fine to the King.
2. All freemen shall have a surety who would hand him over to justice
for his offenses or pay the damages or fines due. If an accused man
fled, his surety would have a year to find him to obtain reimbursement.
The Conquerer proclaimed that:
No cattle shall be sold except in towns and before three witnesses.
For the sale of ancient chattels, there must be a surety and a
warrantor.
No man shall be sold over the sea. (This ended the slave trade at the
port of Bristol.)
The death penalty for persons tried by court is abolished.
- Judicial Procedure -
"Ecclesiastical" courts were created for bishops to preside over cases
concerning the cure of souls and criminal cases, in which the ordeal was
used. When the Conquerer did not preside over this court, an appeal
could be made to him.
The hundred and county courts now sat without clergy and handled only
"civil" cases. They were conducted by the King's own appointed sheriff.
Only freemen and not bound villeins had standing in this court. They
continued to transact their business in the English language.
The local jurisdictions of thegns who had grants of sac and soke or who
exercised judicial functions among their free neighbors were now called
"manors" under their new owners, who conducted a manor court.
The Conquerer's Royal Court was called the "Curia Regis". When the
Conquerer wished to determine the national laws, he summoned twelve
elected representatives of each county to declare on oath the ancient
lawful customs and law as they existed in the time of the popular King
Edward the Confessor. The recording of this law was begun. A person
could spend months trying to catch up with the Royal Court to present a
case. Sometimes the Conquerer sent the justiciar or commissioners to
hold his Royal Court in the various districts. The commissioner
appointed groups of local men to give a collective verdict upon oath for
each trial he conducted. The Conquerer allowed, on an ad hoc basis,
certain high-level people such as bishops and abbots and those who made
a large payment, to have land disputes decided by an inquiry of
recognitors. Besides royal issues, the Curia Regis heard appeals from
lower court decisions. It used English, Norman, feudal, Roman, and canon
law legal principles to reach a decision, and was flexible and
expeditious.
A dispute between a Norman and an English man over land or a criminal
act could be decided by trial by combat [battle]. Each combatant first
swore to the truth of his cause and undertook to prove by his body the
truth of his cause by making the other surrender by crying "craven"
[craving forgiveness]. The combatants used weapons like pickaxes and
shields. Presumably the man in the wrong would not fight as well because
he was burdened with a guilty conscience. Although this trial was
thought to reflect God's will, it favored the physically fit and adept
person. After losing the trial by combat, the guilty person would be
punished appropriately.
London had its own traditions. All London citizens met at its folkmote,
which was held three times a year to determine its public officers, to
raise matters of public concern, and to make ordinances. Its criminal
court had the power of outlawry as did the county courts. Trade, land,
and other civil issues were dealt with by the Hustings Court, which met
every Monday in the Guildhall. The city was divided into wards, each of
which was under the charge of an elected alderman [elder man]. (The
election was by a small governing body and the most wealthy and
reputable men and not a popular election.) The aldermen had special
knowledge of the law and a duty to declare it at the Hustings Court.
Each alderman also conducted wardmotes in his ward and decided criminal
and civil issues between its residents. Within the wards were the guilds
of the city.
The Normans, as foreigners, were protected by the king's peace. The
entire hundred was the ultimate surety for murder and would have to pay
a "murdrum" fine of 31 pounds [46 marks] for the murder of any Norman,
if the murderer was not apprehended by his lord within a few days. The
reaction to this was that the murderer mutilated the corpse to make
identification of ethnicity impossible. So the Conquerer ordered that
every murder victim was assumed to be Norman unless proven English. This
began a court custom in murder cases of first proving the victim to be
English.
The Royal Court decided this case: "At length both parties were
summoned before the King's court, in which there sat many of the nobles
of the land of whom Geoffrey, bishop of Coutances, was delegated by the
King's authority as judge of the dispute, with Ranulf the Vicomte, Neel,
son of Neel, Robert de Usepont, and many other capable judges who
diligently and fully examined the origin of the dispute, and delivered
judgment that the mill ought to belong to St. Michael and his monks
forever. The most victorious King William approved and confirmed this
decision."
- - - Chapter 5 - - -
- The Times: 1100-1154 -
King Henry I, son of William the Conquerer, furthered peace between the
Normans and native English by his marriage to a niece of King Edward the
Confessor called Matilda. She married him on condition that he grant a
charter of rights undoing some practices of the past reigns of William I
and William II. Peace was also furthered by the fact that Henry I had
been born in England and English was his native tongue. The private wars
of lords were now replaced by less serious mock battles.
Henry was a shrewd judge of character and of the course of events,
cautious before taking action, but decisive in carrying out his plans.
He was faithful and generous to his friends. He showed a strong
practical element of calculation and foresight. Although illiterate, he
was intelligent and a good administrator. He had an efficient
intelligence gathering network and an uncanny knack of detecting hidden
plans before they became conspiratorial action. He made many able men of
inferior social position nobles, thus creating a class of career judges
and administrators in opposition to the extant hereditary aristocracy.
He loved books and built a palace at Oxford to which he invited scholars
for lively discussion. Euclid's "Elements" ", which deduced from axioms
the properties of lines, circles, and spheres, was introduced into
England.
Queen Matilda served as regent of the kingdom in Henry's absence, as
William's queen had for him. Both queens received special coronation
apart from their husbands; they held considerable estates which they
administered through their own officers, and were frequently composed of
escheated honors. Matilda was learned and a literary patron. She founded
an important literary and scholastic center. Her compassion was great
and her charities extensive. In London she founded several almshouses
and a caregiving infirmary for lepers. These were next to small monastic
communities. She also had new roads and bridges built.
Henry issued charters restoring customs which had been subordinated to
royal impositions by previous Kings, which set a precedent for later
Kings. His coronation charter describes certain property rights he
restored after the oppressive reign of his brother, William II.
"Henry, King of the English, to Samson the bishop, and Urse of Abbetot,
and to all his barons and faithful vassals, both French and English, in
Worcestershire, greeting.
[1.] Know that by the mercy of God and by the common counsel of the
barons of the whole kingdom of England I have been crowned king of this
realm. And because the kingdom has been oppressed by unjust
exactions, I now, being moved by reverence towards God and by the love I
bear you all, make free the Church of God; so that I will neither sell
nor lease its property; nor on the death of an archbishop or a bishop or
an abbot will I take anything from the demesne of the Church or from its
vassals during the period which elapses before a successor is installed.
I abolish all the evil customs by which the kingdom of England has
beunjustly oppressed. Some of those evil customs are here set forth.
[2.] If any of my barons or of my earls or of any other of my tenants
shall die his heir shall not redeem his land as he was wont to do in the
time of my brother, but he shall henceforth redeem it by means of a
just and lawful 'relief`. Similarly the men of my barons shall redeem
their lands from their lords by means of a just and lawful 'relief`.
[3.] If any of my barons or of my tenants shall wish to give in
marriage his daughter or his sister or his niece or his cousin, he shall
consult me about the matter; but I will neither seek payment for my
consent, nor will I refuse my permission, unless he wishes to give her
in marriage to one of my enemies. And if, on the death of one of my
barons or of one of my tenants, a daughter should be his heir, I will
dispose of her in marriage and of her lands according to the counsel
given me by my barons. And if the wife of one of my tenants shall
survive her husband and be without children, she shall have her dower
and her marriage portion [that given to her by her parents], and I will
not give her in marriage unless she herself consents.
[4.] If a widow survives with children under age, she shall have her
dower and her marriage portion, so long as she keeps her body chaste;
and I will not give her in marriage except with her consent. And the
guardian of the land, and of the children, shall be either the widow or
another of their relations, as may seem more proper. And I order that
my barons shall act likewise towards the sons and daughters and widows
of their men.
[5.] I utterly forbid that the common mintage [a forced levy to prevent
loss to the King from depreciation of the coinage], which has been
taken from the towns and counties, shall henceforth be levied, since it
was not so levied in the time of King Edward [the Confessor]. If any
moneyer or other person be taken with false money in his possession, let
true justice be visited upon him.
[6.] I forgive all pleas and all debts which were owing to my brother,
except my own proper dues, and except those things which were agreed to
belong to the inheritance of others, or to concern the property which
justly belonged to others. And if anyone had promised anything for his
heritage, I remit it, and I also remit all 'reliefs' which were promised
for direct inheritance.
[7.] If any of my barons or of my men, being ill, shall give away or
bequeath his movable property, I will allow that it shall be bestowed
according to his desires. But if, prevented either by violence or
through sickness, he shall die intestate as far as concerns his movable
property, his widow or his children, or his relatives or one his true
men shall make such division for the sake of his soul, as may seem best
to them.
[8.] If any of my barons or of my men shall incur a forfeit, he shall
not be compelled to pledge his movable property to an unlimited amount,
as was done in the time of my father [William I] and my brother; but he
shall only make payment according to the extent of his legal
forfeiture, as was done before the time of my father and in the time of
my earlier predecessors. Nevertheless, if he be convicted of breach of
faith or of crime, he shall suffer such penalty as is just.
[9.] I remit all murder fines which were incurred before the day on
which I was crowned King; and such murder fines as shall now be incurred
shall be paid justly according to the law of King Edward [by
sureties].
[10.] By the common counsel of my barons I have retained the forests in
my own hands as my father did before me.
[11.] The knights, who in return for their estates perform military
service equipped with a hauberk [long coat] of mail, shall hold their
demesne lands quit of all gelds [money payments] and all work; I make
this concession as my own free gift in order that, being thus relieved
of so great a burden, they may furnish themselves so well with horses
and arms that they may be properly equipped to discharge my service and
to defend my kingdom.
[12.] I establish a firm peace in all my kingdom, and I order that this
peace shall henceforth be kept.
[13.] I restore to you the law of King Edward together with such
emendations to it as my father [William I] made with the counsel of his
barons.
[14.] If since the death of my brother, King William [II], anyone shall
have seized any of my property, or the property of any other man, let
him speedily return the whole of it. If he does this no penalty will be
exacted, but if he retains any part of it he shall, when discovered, pay
a heavy penalty to me.
Witness: Maurice, bishop of London; William, bishop-elect of
Winchester; Gerard, bishop of Herefore; Henry the earl; Simon the earl;
Walter Giffard; Robert of Montfort-sur-Risle; Roger Bigot; Eudo the
steward; Robert, son of Haimo; and Robert Malet.
At London when I was crowned. Farewell."
Henry took these promises seriously, which resulted in peace and
justice. Royal justice became a force to be reckoned with by the
multiplication of justices. Henry had a great respect for legality and
the forms of judicial action. He became known as the "Lion of Justice".
The payment of queen's gold, that is of a mark of gold to the queen out
of every hundred marks of silver paid, in the way of fine or other
feudal incident, to the king, probably dates from Henry I's reign.
A woman could inherit a fief if she married. The primary way for a man
to acquire control of land was to marry an heiress. If a man were in a
lower station than she was, he had to pay for his new social status as
well as have royal permission. A man could also be awarded land which
had escheated to the King. If a noble woman wanted to hold land in her
own right, she had to make a payment to the King. Many widows bought
their freedom from guardianship or remarriage from the King. Women whose
husbands were at war also ran the land of their husbands.
Barons were lords of large holdings of farmland called "manors". Many
of the lesser barons left their dark castles to live in semi- fortified
stone houses, which usually were of two rooms with rug hangings for
drafts, as well as the sparse furniture that had been common to the
castle. There were shuttered windows to allow in light, but which also
let in the wind and rain when open. The roof was of thatch or narrow
overlapping wood shingles. The stone floor was strewn with hay and there
was a hearth near the center of the floor, with a louvered smoke hole in
the timber roof for escape of smoke. There were barns for grain and
animals. Beyond this area was a garden, orchard, and sometimes a
vineyard. The area was circumscribed by a moat over which there was a
drawbridge to a gatehouse.
The smaller room was the lord and lady's bedroom. It had a canopied
bed, chests for clothing, and wood frames on which clothes could be
hung. Life on the manor revolved around the larger room, or hall, where
the public life of the household was passed. There, meals were served.
The daily diet typically consisted of milk, soup, porridge, fish,
vegetables, and bread. Open hospitality accompanied this communal
living. There was little privacy. Manor household villeins carried the
lord's sheaves of grain to the manor barn, shore his sheep, malted his
grain, and chopped wood for his fire. At night some slept on the floor
of the hall. Others, who were cottars and bordars, had their own
dwellings nearby.
The manor house of lesser lords or knights was still built of wood,
although it often had a stone foundation.
About 35% of the land was arable land, about 25% was common pasture
land (for grazing only) or meadow land (near a stream or river and used
for hay or grazing), and about 15% was woodland. There were these types
of land and wasteland on each manor. The arable land was allotted to the
villeins in strips to equalize the best and worst land and their
distance from the village where the villeins lived. There was three-way
rotation of wheat or rye, oats or barley, and fallow land. Cows, pigs,
sheep, and fowl were kept. The meadow was allocated for hay for the
lord's household and each villein's. The villeins held land of their
lord for various services such as agricultural labor or raising domestic
animals. The villeins worked about half of their time on their lord's
fields [his demesne land], which was about a third of the farmland. This
work was primarily to gather the harvest and to plough with oxen, using
a yoke over their shoulders, and to sow in autumn and Lent. They
threshed grain on barn floors with flails cut from holly or thorn, and
removed the kernels from the shafts by hand. Work lasted from sunrise to
sunset and included women and children. The older children could herd
geese and pigs, and set snares for rabbits. The young children could
gather nuts and berries in season and other wild edibles, and could pick
up little tufts of wool shed by sheep. The old could stay in the hut and
mind the children, keep the fire going and the black pot boiling, sew,
spin, patch clothes, and cobble shoes. The old often suffered from
rheumatism. Many people had bronchitis. Many children died of croup
[inflammation of the respiratory passages]. Life expectancy was probably
below thirty-five.
The villein retained his customary rights, his house and land and
rights of wood and hay, and his right in the common land of his
township. Customary ways were maintained. The villeins of a manor
elected a reeve to communicate their interests to their lord, usually
through a bailiff, who directed the labor. Sometimes there was a steward
in charge of several of a lord's manors, who also held the manorial
court for the lord. The steward held his land of the lord by serjeanty,
which was a specific service to the lord. Other serjeanty services were
carrying the lord's shield and arms, finding attendants and esquires for
knights, helping in the lord's hunting expeditions, looking after his
hounds, bringing fuel, doing carpentry, and forging irons for ploughs.
The Woodward preserved the timber. The Messer supervised the harvesting.
The Hayward removed any fences from the fields after harvest to allow
grazing by cattle and sheep. The Coward, Bullard, and Calvert tended the
cows, bulls, and calves; the Shepherd, the sheep; and the Swineherds the
pigs. The Ponder impounded stray stock. There were varieties of horses:
war horses, riding horses, courier horses, pack horses, and plough
horses.
The majority of manors were coextensive with a single village. The
villeins lived in the village in one-room huts enclosed by a wood fence,
hedge, or stone wall. In this yard was a garden of onions, leeks,
mustard, peas, beans, parsley, garlic, herbs, and cabbage and apple,
pear, cherry, quince, and plum trees, and beehives. The hut had a
high-pitched roof thatched with reeds or straw and low eaves reaching
almost to the ground. The walls are built of wood-framing overlaid with
mud or plaster. Narrow slits in the walls serve as windows, which have
shutters and are sometimes covered with coarse cloth. The floor is dirt
and may be covered with straw or rushes for warmth, but usually no
hearth. In the middle is a wood fire burning on a hearthstone, which was
lit by making a spark by striking flint and iron together. The smoke
rose through a hole in the roof. At one end of the hut was the family
living area, where the family ate on a collapsible trestle table with
stools or benches. Their usual food was beans and peas, oatmeal gruel,
butter, cheese, vegetables, honey, rough bread made from a mixture of
wheat, barley, and rye flour, herrings or other salt fish, and some
salted or smoked bacon. Butter had first been used for cooking and as a
medicine to cure constipation. For puny children it could be salted down
for the winter. The bread had been roasted on the stones of the fire;
later there were communal ovens set up in villages. Cooking was done
over the fire by boiling in iron pots hung from an iron tripod, or
sitting on the hot stones of the fire. They ate from wood bowls using a
wood spoon. When they had fresh meat, it could be roasted on a spit.
Liquids were heated in a kettle. With drinking horns, they drank water,
milk, buttermilk, apple cider, mead, ale made from barley malt, and bean
and vegetable broth. They used jars and other earthenware, e.g. for
storage of salt. They slept on straw mattresses or sacks on the floor or
on benches. The villein regarded his bed area as the safest place in the
house, as did people of all ranks, and kept his treasures there, which
included his farm implements, as well as hens on the beams, roaming
pigs, and stalled oxen, cattle, and horses, which were at the other end
of the hut. Fires were put out at night to guard against fire burning
down the huts. The warmth of the animals then helped make the hut warm.
Around the room are a couple of chests to store salt, meal, flour, a
broom made of birch twigs, some woven baskets, the distaff and spindle
for spinning, and a simple loom for weaving. All clothes were homemade.
They were often coarse, greasy wool and leather made from their own
animals. The man wore a tunic of coarse linen embroidered on the sleeves
and breast, around with he wore a girdle of rope, leather, or folded
cloth. Sometimes he also wore breeches reaching below the knee. The
woman wore a loose short-sleeved gown, under which was a tight fitting
garment with long loose sleeves, and which was short enough to be clear
of the mud. If they wore shoes, they were clumsy and patched. Some wore
a hood-like cap. For really bad weather, a man wore on his head a hood
with a very elongated point which could be wrapped around his neck.
Sometimes a short cape over the shoulders was attached. Linen was too
expensive for commoners.
The absence of fresh food during the winter made scurvy prevalent; in
the spring, people eagerly sought "scurvy grass" to eat. Occasionally
there would be an outbreak of a nervous disorder due to the ergot fungus
growing in the rye used for bread. This manifested itself in apparent
madness, frightening hallucinations, incoherent shouting, hysterical
laughing, and constant scratching of itching and burning sensations.
The villein and his wife and children worked from daybreak to dusk in
the fields, except for Sundays and holydays. He had certain land to farm
for his own family, but had to have his grain milled at his lord's mill
at the lord's price. He had to retrieve his wandering cattle from his
lord's pound at the lord's price. He was expected to give a certain
portion of his own produce, whether grain or livestock, to his lord.
However, if he fell short, he was not put off his land. The villein, who
worked the farm land as his ancestor ceorl had, now was so bound to the
land that he could not leave or marry or sell an ox without his lord's
consent. If the manor was sold, the villein was sold as a part of the
manor. When his daughter or son married, he had to pay a "merchet" to
his lord. He could not have a son educated without the lord's
permission, and this usually involved a fee to the lord. His best beast
at his death, or "heriot", went to his lord. If he wanted permission to
live outside the manor, he paid "chevage" yearly. Woodpenny was a yearly
payment for gathering dead wood. Sometimes a "tallage" payment was taken
at the lord's will. The villein's oldest son usually took his place on
his land and followed the same customs with respect to the lord. For an
heir to take his dead ancestor's land, the lord demanded payment of a
"relief", which was usually the amount of a year's income but sometimes
as much as the heir was willing to pay to have the land. The usual aids
were also expected to be paid.
A large village also had a smith, a wheelwright, a millwright, a tiler
and thatcher, a shoemaker and tanner, a carpenter wainwright and carter.
Markets were about twenty miles apart because a farmer from the
outlying area could then carry his produce to the nearest town and walk
back again in the daylight hours of one day. In this local market he
could buy foodstuffs, livestock, household goods, fuels, skins, and
certain varieties of cloth.
The cloth was crafted by local weavers, dyers, and fullers. The weaver
lived in a cottage with few and narrow windows and little furniture. He
worked in the main, and sometimes the only, room. First the raw wool was
washed with water at the front door to remove the grease. Then its
fibers were disentangled and made fine with hand cards with thistle
teeth, usually by the children. Then it was spun by a spinning wheel
into thread, usually by the wife. On a double frame loom, a set of
parallel threads was strung lengthwise. A device worked by a pedal
lifted half of these threads --every other thread--while the other half
remained in place. Between the lifted threads and the stationary threads
a shuttle was thrown by the weaver from one hand to another. Then the
threads which had remained stationary were raised by a second pedal and
the shuttle thrown back. The shuttle carried a spool so that, as it
moved, it left a thread behind it running crosswise or at right angles
to the lengthwise threads and in and out between them. The lengthwise
threads were called the "warp"; the shuttle thread was the "woof" or the
"weft".In making cloth, it was the warp which, as the loom moved, took
the worst beating. With the constant raising and lowering, these treads
would wear and break, whereas the weft on which there was little strain
remained intact. None of the cotton yarn which the old-fashioned wheels
had spun was strong enough for warp. So it was necessary to use linen
thread for the warp.
Since one loom could provide work for about six spinners, the weaver
had his wool spun by other spinners in their cottages. Sometimes the
master weaver had an apprentice or workman working and living with him,
who had free board and lodging and an annual wage. Then a fuller made
the cloth thick and dense by washing, soaping, beating, and agitating
it, with the use of a community watermill which could be used by anyone
for a fixed payment. The cloth dried through the night on a rack outside
the cottage. The weaver then took his cloth, usually only one piece, to
the weekly market to sell. The weavers stood at the market holding up
their cloth. The cloth merchant who bought the cloth then had it dyed or
dressed according to his requirements. Its surface could be raised with
teazleheads and cropped or sheared to make a nap. Some cloth was sold to
tailors to make into clothes. Often a weaver had a horse for travel, a
cow for milk, chickens for eggs, perhaps a few cattle, and some grazing
land. Butchers bought, slaughtered, and cut up animals to sell as meat.
Some was sold to cooks, who sold prepared foods. The hide was bought by
the tanner to make into leather. The leather was sold to shoemakers and
glovemakers. Millers bought harvested grain to make into flour. Flour
was sold to bakers to make into breads. Wood was bought by carpenters
and by coopers, who made barrels, buckets, tubs, and pails. Tilers,
oilmakers and rope makers also bought raw material to make into finished
goods for sale. Wheelwrights made ploughs, harrows, carts, and later
wagons. Smiths and locksmiths worked over their hot fires.
Games with dice were sometimes played. In winter, youths ice- skated
with bones fastened to their shoes. They propelled themselves by
striking the ice with staves shod with iron. On summer holydays, they
exercised in leaping, shooting with the bow, wrestling, throwing stones,
and darting a thrown spear. The maidens danced with timbrels. Since at
least 1133, children's toys included dolls, drums, hobby horses, pop
guns, trumpets, and kites.
The cold, indoors as well as outdoors, necessitated that people wear
ample and warm garments. Men and women of position dressed in long full
cloaks reaching to their feet, sometimes having short full sleeves. The
cloak generally had a hood and was fastened at the neck with a brooch.
Underneath the cloak was a simple gown with sleeves tight at the wrist
but full at the armhole, as if cut from the same piece of cloth. A
girdle or belt was worn at the waist. When the men were hunting or
working, they wore gown and cloak of knee length. Men wore stockings to
the knee and shoes. The fashion of long hair on men returned.
The nation grew with the increase of population, the development of
towns, and the growing mechanization of craft industries. There were
watermills for crafts and for supplying and draining water in all parts
of the nation. In flat areas, slow rivers could be supplemented by
creating artificial waterfalls, for which water was raised to the level
of reservoirs. There were also some iron- smelting furnaces. Coal mining
underground began as a family enterprise. Stone bridges over rivers
could accommodate one person traveling by foot or by horseback and were
steep and narrow. The wheelbarrow came into use to cart materials for
building castles and cathedrals.
Merchants, who had come from the low end of the knightly class or high
end of the villein class, settled around the open market areas, where
main roads joined. They had plots narrow in frontage along the road and
deep. Their shops faced the road, with living space behind or above
their stores. Town buildings were typically part stone and part timber
as a compromise between fire precautions and expense.
Towns, as distinct from villages, had permanent markets. As towns grew,
they paid a fee to obtain a charter for self-government from the king
giving the town judicial and commercial freedom. They were literate
enough to do accounts. So they did their own valuation of the sum due to
the crown so as not to pay the sheriff any more than that. These various
rights were typically expanded in future times, and the towns received
authority to collect the sum due to the crown rather than the sheriff.
This they did by obtaining a charter renting the town to the burghers at
a fee farm rent equal to the sum thus deducted from the amount due from
the county. Such a town was called a "borough" and its citizens or
landholding freemen "burgesses". The freemen were free of the
borough, which meant hey had exclusive rights and privileges with
respect to it. Selling wholesale could take place only in a borough.
Burgesses were free to marry. They were not subject to defense except of
the borough. They were exempt from attendance at county and hundred
courts. The king assessed a tallage [ad hoc tax] usually at ten per cent
of property or income. In the boroughs, merchant and manufacturing
guilds controlled prices and assured quality. The head officer of the
guild usually controlled the borough, which excluded rival merchant
guilds. A man might belong to more than one guild, e.g. one for his
trade and another for religion.
Craft guilds grew up in the towns, such as the tanners at Oxford, which
later merged with the shoemakers into a cordwainers' guild. There were
weavers' guilds in several towns, including London, which were given
royal sanction and protection for annual payments (twelve pounds of
silver for London). They paid an annual tribute and were given a
monopoly of weaving cloth within a radius of several miles. Guild rules
covered attendance of the members at church services, the promotion of
pilgrimages, celebration of masses for the dead, common meals, relief of
poor brethren and sisters, the hours of labor, the process of
manufacture, the wages of workmen, and technical education. King Henry
standardized the yard as the length of his own arm.
Trades and crafts, each of which had to be licensed, grouped together
by specialty in the town. Cloth makers, dyers, tanners, and fullers were
near an accessible supply of running water, upon which their trade
depended. Streets were often named by the trade located there, such as
Butcher Row, Pot Row, Cordwainer Row, Ironmonger Row, Wheeler Row, and
Fish Row. Hirers of labor and sellers of wheat, hay, livestock, dairy
products, apples and wine, meat, poultry, fish and pies, timber and
cloth all had a distinct location. Some young men were apprenticed to
craftsmen to assist them and learn their craft.
London had at least twenty wards, each governed by its own alderman.
Most of them were named after people. London was ruled by sixteen
families linked by business and marriage ties. These businesses supplied
luxury goods to the rich and included the goldsmiths [sold cups, dishes,
girdles, mirrors, purses knives, and metal wine containers with handle
and spout], vintners [wine merchants], mercers [sold textiles,
haberdashery, combs, mirrors, knives, toys, spices, ointments, and
potions], drapers, and pepperers, which later merged with the spicers to
become the "grocers", skinners, tanners, shoemakers, woolmen, weavers,
fishmongers, armorers, and swordsmiths. There were bakehouses at which
one could leave raw joints of meat to be cooked and picked up later.
These businesses had in common four fears: royal interference, foreign
competition, displacement by new crafts, and violence by the poor and
escaped villeins who found their way to the city. When a non-freeholder
stayed in London he had to find for frankpledge, three sureties for good
behavior. Failure to do so was a felony and the ward would eject him to
avoid the charge of harboring him with its heavy fine. The arrival of
ships with cargoes from continental ports and their departure with
English exports was the regular waterside life below London Bridge. Many
foreign merchants lived in London. Imports included timber, hemp, fish,
and furs. There was a fraternal organization of citizens who had
possessed their own lands with sac and soke and other customs in the
days of King Edward. There were public bathhouses, but they were
disreputable. A lady would take an occasional bath in a half cask in her
home. The church warned of evils of exposing the flesh, even to bathe.
Middlesex County was London's territory for hunting and farming. All
London craft work was suspended for one month at harvest time. London
received this charter for self-government and freedom from the financial
and judicial organization of the county:
"Henry, by the grace of God, King of England, to the Archbishop of
Canterbury and the bishops, abbots, earls, barons, justiciars, sheriffs
and all his loyal subjects, both French and English, throughout the
whole of England - greeting.
1. Be it known to you that I have granted Middlesex to my citizens of
London to be held on lease by them and their heirs of me and my heirs
for 300 pounds paid by tale [yearly], upon these terms: that the
citizens themselves [may] appoint a sheriff, such as they desire, from
among themselves, and a justiciar, such as they desire, from among
themselves, to safeguard the pleas of my Crown [criminal cases] and to
conduct such pleas. And there shall be no other justiciar over the men
of London.
2. And the citizens shall not take part in any [civil] case whatsoever
outside the City walls.
1) And they shall be exempt from the payment of scot and danegeld
and the murder fine.
2) And none of them shall take part in trial by combat.
3) And if any of the citizens has become involved in a plea of the
Crown, he shall clear himself, as a citizen of London, by an oath which
has been decreed in the city.
4) And no one shall be billeted [lodged in a person's house by order
of the King] within the walls of the city nor shall hospitality be
forcibly exacted for anyone belonging to my household or to any other.
5) And all the citizens of London and all their effect [goods] shall
be exempt and free, both throughout England and in the seaports, from
toll and fees for transit and market fees and all other dues.
6) And the churches and barons and citizens shall have and hold in
peace and security their rights of jurisdiction [in civil and criminal
matters] along with all their dues, in such a way that lessees who
occupy property in districts under private jurisdiction shall pay dues
to no one except the man to whom the jurisdiction belongs, or to the
official whom he has placed there.
7) And a citizen of London shall not be amerced [fined by a court
when the penalty for an offense is not designated by statute] to
forfeiture of a sum greater than his wergeld, [hereby assessed as] 100
shillings, in a case involving money.
8) And further there shall be no miskenning [false plea causing a
person to be summoned to court] in a husting [weekly court] or in a
folkmote [meeting of the community], or in any other court within the
City.
9) And the Hustings [court] shall sit once a week on Monday.
10) And I assure to my citizens their lands and the property
mortgaged to them and the debts due to them both within the City and
without.
11) And with regard to lands about which they have pled in suit
before me, I shall maintain justice on their behalf, according to the
law of the City.
12) And if anyone has exacted toll or tax from citizens of London,
the citizens of London within the city shall [have the right to] seize
[by process of law] from the town or village where the toll or tax was
exacted a sum equivalent to that which the citizen of London gave as
toll and hence sustained as loss.
13) And all those who owe debts to citizens shall pay them or shall
clear themselves in London from the charge of being in debt to them.
14) But if they have refused to pay or to come to clear themselves,
then the citizens to whom they are in debt shall [have the right to]
seize [by process of law] their goods [including those in the hands of a
third party, and bring them] into the city from the [town, village or]
county in which the debtor lives [as pledges to compel appearance in
court].
15) And the citizens shall enjoy as good and full hunting rights as
their ancestors ever did, namely, in the Chilterns, in Middlesex, and in
Surrey.
Witnessed at Westminster."
The above right not to take part in any case outside the city relieved
London citizens from the burden of traveling to wherever the King's
court happened to be, the disadvantage of not knowing local customs, and
the difficulty of speaking in the language of the King's court rather
than in English. The right of redress for tolls exacted was new because
the state of the law was that the property of the inhabitants was liable
to the king or superior lord for the common debt.
Newcastle-on-Tyne was recognized by the king as having certain customs,
so the following was not called a grant:
"These are the laws and customs which the burgesses of Newcastle upon
Tyne had in the time of Henry King of England and ought to have.
[1] Burgesses can distrain [take property of another until the other
performs his obligation] upon foreigners within, or without their own
market, within or without their own houses, and within or without their
own borough without the leave of the reeve, unless the county court is
being held in the borough, and unless [the foreigners are] on military
service or guarding the castle.
[2] A burgess cannot distrain upon a burgess without the leave of the
reeve.
[3] If a burgess have lent anything of his to a foreigner, let the
debtor restore it in the borough if he admits the debt, if he denies it,
let him justify himself in the borough.
[4] Pleas which arise in the borough shall be held and concluded
there, except pleas of the Crown.
[5] If any burgess be appealed [sued] of any plaint, he shall not plead
without the borough, unless for default of [the borough] court.
[6] Nor ought he to answer without day and term, unless he have fallen
into 'miskenning' [error in pleading], except in matters which pertain
to the Crown.
[7] If a ship have put in at Tynemouth and wishes to depart, the
burgesses may buy what they will [from it].
[8] If a plea arise between a burgess and a merchant, it shall be
concluded before the third ebb of the tide.
[9] Whatever merchandise a ship has brought by sea must be landed,
except salt; and herring ought to be sold in the ship.
[10] If any man have held land in burgage for a year and a day, lawfully
and without claim, he shall not answer a claimant, unless the claimant
have been without the realm of England, or a child not of age to
plead.
[11] If a burgess have a son, he shall be included in his father's
freedom if he be with his father.
[12] If a villein come to dwell in the borough, and dwell there a year
and a day as a burgess, he shall abide altogether, unless notice has
been given by him or by his master that he is dwelling for a term.
[13] If any man appeal [sue] a burgess of any thing, he cannot do [trial
by] battle with the burgess, but the burgess shall defend himself by his
law, unless it be of treason, whereof he is bound to defend himself by
[trial by] battle.
[14] Neither can a burgess do [trial by] battle against a foreigner,
unless he first go out of the borough.
[15] No merchant, unless he be a burgess, may buy [outside] the town
either wool or leather or other merchandise, nor within the borough
except [from] burgesses.
[16] If a burgess incur forfeit, he shall give six ounces [10s.] to the
reeve.
[17] In the borough there is no merchet [payment for marrying off a
daughter] nor heriot nor bloodwite [fine for drawing blood] nor
stengesdint [fine for striking with a stick].
[18] Every burgess may have his own oven and handmill if he will, saving
the right of the King's oven.
[19] If a woman be in forfeit for bread or beer, no one ought to
interfere but the reeve. If she forfeit twice, she shall be chastised by
her forfeit. If three times, let justice be done on her.
[20] No one but a burgess may buy webs [woven fabrics just taken off the
loom] to dye, nor make nor cut them.
[21] A burgess may give and sell his land and go whither he will freely
and quietly unless there be a claim against him."
The nation produced sufficient iron, but a primitive steel [iron with
carbon added] was imported. It was scarce and expensive. Steel was used
for tools, instruments, weapons and armor. Ships could carry about 300
people. Navigation was by simple charts that included wind direction for
different seasons and the direction of north. The direction of the ship
could be generally determined when the sky was clear by the position of
the sun during the day or the north star during the night.
Plays about miracles wrought by holy men or saints or the sufferings
and fortitude of martyrs were performed, usually at the great church
festivals. Most nobles could read, though writing was still a
specialized craft. There were books on animals, plants, and stones. The
lives of the saints as told in the book "The Golden Legend" were
popular. The story of the early King Arthur was told in the book "The
History of the Kings of England". The story at this time stressed Arthur
as a hero and went as follows: Arthur became king at age 15. He had an
inborn goodness and generosity as well as courage. He and his knights
won battles against foreign settlers and neighboring clans. Once, he and
his men surrounded a camp of foreigners until they gave up their gold
and silver rather than starve. Arthur married Guenevere and established
a court and retinue. Leaving Britain in the charge of his nephew Modred,
he fought battles on the continent for land to give to his noblemen who
did him service in his household and fought with him. When Arthur
returned to Britain, he made battle with his nephew Modred who had
crowned himself King. Arthur's knight Gawain, the son of his sister, and
the enemy Modred were killed and Arthur was severely wounded. Arthur
told his kinsman Constantine to rule Britain as king in his place.
The intellectual world included art, secular literature, law, and
medicine. There were about 90 physicians.
The center of government was a collection of tenants-in-chief, whose
feudal duty included attendance when summoned, and certain selected
household servants of the King. The Exchequer became a separate body.
The payments in kind, such as grain or manual services, from the royal
demesnes had been turned into money payments. The great barons made
their payments directly to the Exchequer. The income from royal estates
was received by the Exchequer and then commingled with the other funds.
Each payment was indicated by notches on a stick, which was then split
so that the payer and the receiver each had a half showing the notches.
The Exchequer was the great school for training statesmen, justices, and
bishops. The Chancellor managed the domestic matters of the Crown's
castles and lands. The great offices of state were sold for thousands of
pounds, which caused their holders to be on their best behavior for fear
of losing their money by being discharged from office. One chancellor
paid Henry about 3000 pounds for the office. Henry brought sheriffs
under his strict control, free from influence by the barons. He
maintained order with a strong hand, but was no more severe than his
security demanded.
Forests were still retained by Kings for their hunting of boars and
stags. A master forester maintained them. The boundaries of the Royal
Forests were enlarged. They comprised almost one-third of the kingdom.
Certain inhabitants thereof supplied the royal foresters with meat and
drink and received certain easements and rights of common therein. The
forest law reached the extreme of severity and cruelty under Henry I.
Punishments given included blinding, emasculation, and execution.
Offenders were rarely allowed to substitute a money payment. When fines
were imposed they were heavy.
A substantial number of barons and monasteries were heavily in debt to
the Jews. The interest rate was 43% (2d. per pound per week). The king
taxed the Jews at will.
- The Law -
Henry restored the death penalty (by hanging) for theft and robbery,
but maintained William I's punishment of mutilation by blinding and
severing of limbs for other offenses, for example, bad money. He decreed
in 1108 that false and bad money should be amended, so that he who was
caught passing bad denarii should not escape by redeeming himself but
should lose his eyes and members. And since denarii were often picked
out, bent, broken, and refused, he decreed that no denarius or obol,
which he said were to be round, or even a quadrans, if it were whole,
should be refused. (Money then reached a higher level of perfection,
which was maintained for the next century.)
Counterfeiting law required that "If any one be caught carrying false
coin, the reeve shall give the bad money to the King however much there
is, and it shall be charged in the render of his farm [payment] as good,
and the body of the offender shall be handed over to the King for
judgment, and the serjeants who took him shall have his clothes."
The forest law stated that: "he that doth hunt a wild beast and doth
make him pant, shall pay 10 shillings: If he be a freeman, then he shall
pay double. If he be a bound man, he shall lose his skin." A "verderer"
was responsible for enforcing this law, which also stated that: "If
anyone does offer force to a Verderer, if he be a freeman, he shall lose
his freedom, and all that he hath. And if he be a villein, he shall lose
his right hand." Further, "If such an offender does offend so again, he
shall lose his life."
A wife's dower is one-third of all her husband's freehold land, unless
his endowment of her at their marriage was less than one- third.
Debts to townsmen were recoverable by this law: "If a burgess has a
gage [a valuable object held as security for carrying out an agreement]
for money lent and holds this for a whole year and a day, and the debtor
will not deny the debt or deliver the gage, and this is proved, the
burgess may sell the gage before good witnesses for as much as he can,
and deduct his money from the sum. If any money is over he shall return
it to the debtor. But if there is not enough to pay him, he shall take
distress again for the amount that is lacking."
Past due rent in a borough was punishable by payment of 10s. as fine.
Judicial activity encouraged the recording of royal legislation in
writing which both looked to the past and attempted to set down law
current in Henry's own day. The "Liberi Quadripartitus" aimed to include
all English law of the time. This showed an awareness of the ideal of
written law as a statement of judicial principles as well as of the
practice of kingship. In this way, concepts of Roman law used by the
Normans found their way into English law.
Church law provided that only consent between a man and woman was
necessary for marriage. There needn't be witnesses, ceremony, nor
consummation. Consent could not be coerced. Penalties in marriage
agreements for not going through with the marriage were deemed invalid.
Villeins and slaves could marry without their lords' or owners'
permission. A couple living together could be deemed married. Persons
related by blood within certain degrees, which changed over time, of
consanguinity were forbidden to marry. This was the only ground for
annulment of a marriage. A legal separation could be given for adultery,
cruelty, or heresy. Annulment, but not separation, could result in
remarriage. Fathers were usually ordered to provide some sustenance and
support for their illegitimate children. The court punished infanticide
and abortion. Counterfeiters of money, arsonists, and robbers of
pilgrims and merchants were to be excommunicated. Church sanctuary was
to be given to fugitives of violent feuds until they could be given a
fair trial.
- Judicial Procedure -
Courts extant now are the Royal Court, the King's Court of the
Exchequer, county courts, and hundred courts, which were under the
control of the King. His appointed justices administered justice in
these courts on regular circuits. The sheriff now only produced the
proper people and preserved order at the county courts and presided over
the nonroyal pleas and hundred courts. He impaneled recognitors, made
arrests, and enforced the decisions of the royal courts. Also there are
manor courts, borough courts, and ecclesiastical courts. In the manor
courts, the lord's reeve generally presided. The court consisted of the
lord's vassals and declared the customs and law concerning such offenses
as failure to perform services and trespass on manorial woods, meadow,
and pasture.
The King's Royal Court heard issues concerning the Crown and breaches
of the King's peace, which included almost all criminal matters. The
most serious offenses: murder, robbery, rape, abduction, arson, treason,
and breach of fealty, were now called felonies. Other offenses were:
housebreaking, ambush, certain kinds of theft, premeditated assault, and
harboring outlaws or excommunicants. Henry personally presided over
hearings of important legal cases. He punished crime severely. Offenders
were brought to justice not only by the complaint of an individual or
local community action, but by official prosecutors. A prosecutor was
now at trials as well as a justice. Trial is still by compurgation.
Trial by combat was relatively common.
These offenses against the king placed merely personal property and
sometimes land at the king's mercy. Thus the Crown increased the range
of offenses subject to its jurisdiction and arrogated to itself profits
from the penalties imposed. A murderer could be given royal pardon from
the death penalty so that he could pay compensation to the relatives.
The Royal Court also heard these offenses against the king: fighting in
his dwelling, contempt of his writs or commands, encompassing the death
or injury of his servants, contempt or slander of the King, and
violation of his protection or his law. It heard these offenses against
royal authority: complaints of default of justice or unjust judgment,
pleas of shipwrecks, coinage, treasure trove [money buried when danger
approached], forest prerogatives, and control of castle building.
Slander of the king, the government, or high officials was punishable
as treason, felony, misprision of treason, or contempt, depending on the
rank and office of the person slandered and the degree of guilt.
Henry began the use of writs to intervene in civil matters, such as
inquiry by oath and recognition of rights as to land, the obligations of
tenure, the legitimacy of heirs, and the enforcement of local justice.
The Crown used its superior coercive power to enforce the legal
decisions of other courts. These writs allowed people to come to the
Royal Court on certain issues. There was a vigorous interventionism in
the land law subsequent to appeals to the king in landlord-tenant
relations, brought by a lord or by an undertenant. Assizes [those who
sit together] of local people who knew relevant facts were put together
to assist the court. Henry appointed some locally based justices, called
justiciars. Also, he sent justices out on eyres [journeys] to hold
assizes. This was done at special sessions of the county courts, hundred
courts, and manor courts. Records of the verdicts of the Royal Court
were sent with these itinerant justices for use as precedent in these
courts. Thus royal authority was brought into the localities and served
to check baronial power over the common people. These itinerant justices
also transacted the local business of the Exchequer in each county.
Henry created the office of chief justiciar, which carried out judicial
and administrative functions.
The Royal Court retained cases of gaol delivery [arrested person who
had been held in gaol was delivered to the court] and amercements. It
also decided cases in which the powers of the popular courts had been
exhausted or had failed to do justice. The Royal Court also decided land
disputes between barons who were too strong to submit to the county
courts.
The King's Court of the Exchequer reviewed the accounts of sheriffs,
including receipts and expenditures on the Crown's behalf as well as
sums due to the Treasury, located still at Winchester. These sums
included rent from royal estates, the Danegeld land tax, the fines from
local courts, and aid from baronial estates. Its records were the "Pipe
Rolls", so named because sheets of parchment were fastened at the top,
each of which dropped into a roll at the bottom and so assumed the shape
of a pipe.
The county and hundred courts assessed the personal property of
individuals and their taxes due to the King. The county court decided
land disputes between people who had different barons as their
respective lords.
The free landholders were expected to attend county, hundred, and manor
courts. They owed "suit" to it. The suitors found the dooms [laws] by
which the presiding officer pronounced the sentence.
The county courts heard cases of theft, brawling, beating, and
wounding, for which the penalties could be exposure in the pillory or
stocks. The pillory held an offender's head and hands in holes in
boards, and the stocks held one's hands and feet. Here the public could
scorn and hit the offender or throw fruit, mud, and dead cats at him.
For sex offenders and informers, stones were usually thrown. Sometimes a
person was stoned to death. The county courts met twice yearly. If an
accused failed to appear after four successive county courts, he was
declared outlaw at the fifth and forfeited his civil rights and all his
property. He could be slain by anyone at will.
The hundred court met once a month to hear neighborhood disputes, for
instance concerning pastures, meadows and harvests. Usually present was
a priest, the reeve, four representative men, and sometimes the lord or
his steward in his place. Sometimes the chief pledges were present to
represent all the men in their respective frankpledges. The bailiff
presided over all these sessions except two, in which the sheriff
presided over the full hundred court to take the view of frankpledge,
which was required for those who did not have a lord to answer for him.
The barons held court on their manors at a "hallmote" for issues
arising between people living on the manor, such as bad ploughing on the
lord's land or letting a cow get loose on the lord's land, and land
disputes. This court also made the decision of whether a certain person
was a villein or freeman. The manor court took over issues which had
once been heard in the vill or hundred court. The baron charged a fee
for hearing a case and received any fines he imposed, which amounted to
significant "profits of justice".
Boroughs held court on trading and marketing issues in their towns such
as measures and weights, as well as issues between people who lived in
the borough. The borough court was presided over by a reeve who was a
burgess as well as a royal official.
Wealthy men could employ professional pleader-attorneys to advise them
and to speak for them in a court.
The ecclesiastical courts dealt, until the time of Henry VIII, with
family matters such as marriage, annulments, marriage portions,
legitimacy, undue wifebeating, child abuse, orphans, bigamy, adultery,
incest, fornication, personal possessions, defamation, slander which did
not cause material loss (and therefore had no remedy in the temporal
courts), libel, perjury, usury, mortuaries, sacrilege, blasphemy,
heresy, tithe payments, church fees, certain offenses on consecrated
ground, and breaches of promises under oath, e.g. to pay a debt, provide
services, or deliver goods. They decided inheritance and will issues
which did not concern land, but only personal property. This developed
from the practice of a priest usually hearing a dying person's will as
to the disposition of his goods and chattel when he made his last
confession. It provided guardianship of infants during probate of their
personal property. Trial was basically by compurgation, with
oath-helpers swearing to or against the veracity of the alleged
offender's oath. An alleged offender could be required to answer
questions under oath, thus giving evidence against himself. The
ecclesiastical court's penalties were intended to reform and determined
on a case-by-case basis. The canon law of Christendom was followed,
without much change by the English church or nation. Penalties could
include confession and public repentance of the sin before the parish,
making apologies and reparation to persons affected, public
embarrassment such as being dunked in water (e.g. for women scolds),
walking a route barefoot and clad only in one's underwear, whippings,
extra work, fines, and imprisonment in a "penitentiary" to do penance.
The ultimate punishment was excommunication with social ostracism. Then
no one could give the person drink, food, or shelter and he could speak
only to his spouse and servants. Excommunication included denial of the
sacraments of baptism, penance, mass, and extreme unction [prayers for
spiritual healing] at death; which were necessary for salvation of the
soul; and the sacrament of confirmation of one's belief in the tenets of
Christianity. A person could also be denied a Christian burial in
consecrated ground. However, the person could still marry and make a
will. The king's court could order a recalcitrant excommunicant
imprisoned until he satisfied the claims of the church. Excommunication
was usually imposed for failure to obey an order or showing contempt of
the law or of the courts. It required a hearing and a written reason. If
this measure failed, it was possible to turn the offender over to the
state for punishment, e.g. for blasphemy or heresy. Blasphemy [speaking
ill of God] was thought to cause God's wrath expressed in famine,
pestilence, and earthquake and was usually punished by a fine or
corporal punishment, e.g. perforation or amputation of the tongue. It
was tacitly understood that the punishment for heresy was death by
burning. There were no heresy cases up to 1400 and few after that. The
state usually assured itself the sentence was just before imposing it.
The court of the rural dean was the ecclesiastical parallel of the
hundred court of secular jurisdiction and usually had the same land
boundaries. The archdeacons, who had been ministers of the bishop in all
parts of his diocese alike, were now each assigned to one district,
which usually had the same boundaries as the county. Henry acknowledged
occasional appellate authority of the pope, but expected his clergy to
elect bishops of his choice.
There was a separate judicial system for the laws of the forest. There
were itinerant justices of the forests and four verderers of each forest
county, who were elected by the votes of the full county court, twelve
knights appointed to keep vert [everything bearing green leaves] and
venison, and foresters of the king and of the lords who had lands within
the limits of the forests. Every three years, the officers visited the
forests in preparation for the courts of the forest held by the
itinerant justices. The inferior courts were the woodmote, held every
forty days, and the swein [freeman or freeholder within the forest]
mote, held three times yearly before the verderers as justices, in which
all who were obliged to attend as suitors of the county court to serve
on juries and inquests were to be present.
- - - Chapter 6 - - -
- The Times: 1154-1215 -
King Henry II and Queen Eleanor, who was twelve years older, were both
intelligent, educated, energetic, well-traveled, and experienced in
affairs of state. Henry was the first Norman king to be fully literate
and he learned Latin. He had many books and maintained a school. Eleanor
often served as regent during Henry's reign and the reigns of their two
sons: Richard I, the Lion- Hearted, and John. She herself headed armies.
Henry II was a modest, courteous, and patient man with an astonishing
memory and strong personality. He was indifferent to rank and impatient
of pomp to the point of being careless about his appearance. He usually
dressed in riding clothes and was often unkempt. He was thrifty, but
generous to the poor. He was an outstanding legislator and
administrator.
Henry II took the same coronation oath as Edward the Confessor
regarding the church, laws, and justice. Not only did he confirm the
charter of his grandfather Henry I, but he revived and augmented the
laws and institutions of his grandfather and developed them to a new
perfection. Almost all legal and fiscal institutions appear in their
first effective form during his reign. For instance, he
institutionalized the assize for a specific function in judicial
proceedings, whereas before it had been an ad hoc body used for various
purposes. The term "assize" here means the sitting of a court or
council. It came to denote the decisions, enactments, or instructions
made at such.
Henry's government practiced a strict economy and he never exploited
the growing wealth of the nation. He abhorred bloodshed and the
sacrifice of men's lives. So he strove diligently to keep the peace,
when possible by gifts of money, but otherwise with armed force. Robbers
were hanged and any man who raped a woman was castrated. Foreign
merchants with precious goods could journey safely through the land from
fair to fair. These fairs were usually held in the early fall, after
harvesting and sheep shearing. Foreign merchants bought wool cloth and
hides. Frankpledge was revived, now applying to the unfree and villeins.
No stranger could stay overnight (except for one night in a borough),
unless sureties were given for his good behavior. A list of such
strangers was to be given to itinerant justices.
Henry had character and the foresight to build up a centralized system
of government that would survive him. He learned about the counties' and
villages' varying laws and customs. Then, using the model of Roman law,
he gave to English institutions that unity and system which in their
casual patchwork development had been lacking. Henry's government and
courts forged permanent direct links between the king and his subjects
which cut through the feudal structure of lords and vassals.
He developed the methods and structure of government so that there was
a great increase in the scope of administrative activity without a
concurrent increase of personal power of the officials who discharged
it. The government was self-regulating, with methods of accounting and
control which meant that no official, however exalted, could entirely
escape the surveillance of his colleagues and the King. At the same
time, administrative and judicial procedures were perfected so that much
which had previously required the King's personal attention was reduced
to routine.
The royal household translated the royal will into action. In the early
1100s, there had been very little machinery of central government that
was not closely associated with the royal household. There was a Chief
Justiciar for legal matters and a Treasurer. Royal government was
largely built upon what had once been purely domestic offices. Kings had
called upon their chaplains to pen letters for them. By Henry II's
reign, the Chancery was a highly efficient writing office through which
the King's will was expressed in a flow of writs, and the Chancellor an
important and highly rewarded official, but he was still responsible for
organizing the services in the royal chapel. Similarly, the chamberlains
ran the household's financial departments. They arranged to have money
brought in from a convenient castle treasury, collected money from
sheriffs or the King's debtors, arranged loans with the usurers, and
supervised the spending of it. It was spent for daily domestic needs,
the King's almsgiving, and the mounting of a military campaign. But they
were still responsible for personal attendance upon the king in his
privy chamber, taking care of his valuable furs, jewels, and documents,
and changing his bed linens. There were four other departments of the
household. The steward presided over the hall and kitchens and was
responsible for supplying the household and guests with food supplies.
The butler had duties in the hall and cellars and was responsible for
the supply of wine and ale. The marshall arranged lodgings for the
King's court as it moved about from palaces to hunting lodges, arranged
the pay of the household servants, and supervised the work of ushers,
watchmen, fire tenders, messengers and huntsmen. The constable organized
the bodyguard and escorts, arranged for the supply of castles, and
mustered the royal army. The offices of steward, constable, chamberlain,
butler were becoming confined to the household and hereditary. The
Justiciar, Chancellor, and Treasurer are becoming purely state offices.
They were simply sold or rented, until public pressure resulted in a
requirement of ability.
Henry's council included all his tenants-in-chief, which included
archbishops, bishops, abbots, priors, earls, barons, knights and socage
tenants of the crown, whether they made payments directly to him or
through a sheriff. The higher ones were served with a writ addressed to
them personally. Knights and below were summoned by a general writ to
the sheriff.
Henry brought order and unity by making the King's Royal Court the
common court of the land. Its purpose was to guard the King's peace by
protecting all people of free status throughout the nation and correct
the disparity in punishments given by local courts. Heretofore, the
scope of the King's peace had varied to cover as little as the King's
presence, his land, and his highway. The royal demesne had shrunk to
about 5% of the land. The Common Law for all the nation was established
by example of the King's Royal Court. Henry erected a basic, rational
framework for legal processes which drew from tradition but lent itself
to continuous expansion and adaptation.
A system of writs originated well-defined actions in the royal courts.
Each court writ had to satisfy specific conditions for this court to
have jurisdiction over an action or event. This system determined the
Royal Court's jurisdiction over the church, lords, and sheriffs. It
limited the jurisdiction of all other courts and subordinated them to
the Royal Court. Inquests into any misdeeds of sheriffs were held, which
could result in their dismissal.
Henry and Eleanor spoke many languages and liked discussing law,
philosophy, and history. So they gathered wise and learned men about
them, who became known as courtiers, rather than people of social rank.
They lived in the great and strong Tower of London, which had been
extended beyond the original White Tower, as had other castles, so that
the whole castle and grounds were defended instead of just the main
building. The Tower of London was in the custody of one of the two
justiciars. On the west were two strongly fortified castles surrounded
by a high and deeply entrenched wall, which had seven double gates.
Towers were spaced along the north wall and the Thames River flowed
below the south wall. To the west was the city, where royal friends had
residences with adjoining gardens near the royal palace at Westminster.
The court was a center of culture as well as of government. The game of
backgammon was played. People wore belts with buckles, usually brass,
instead of knotting their belts.
London extended about a mile along the Thames and about half a mile
inland. It had narrow twisting lanes, some with a ditch down the middle
for water runoff. Most of its houses were two stories, the ground floor
having booths and workshops, and the upper floor living space. Most of
the houses were wooden structures. The richer merchants' and knights'
houses were built of stone. Walls between houses had to be stone to a
height of 16 feet and thatched roofs were banned because there had been
many fires. There was poor compliance, but some roofs were tiled with
red brick tiles. The population was about 40,000. There were over 126
churches for public worship, thirteen monasteries (including nunneries),
and St. Paul's Cathedral. All were built of stone. The churches gave a
place of worship for every 300 inhabitants and celebrated feast days,
gave alms and hospitality to strangers, confirmed betrothals or
agreements of marriage, celebrated weddings, conducted funerals, and
buried the dead. The synod of Westminster of 1175 prescribed that all
marriages were to be performed by the church. Church law required a
warning prior to suspension or excommunication. Monastic, cathedral, and
parish schools taught young boys grammar so they could sing and read in
church services. Nuns taught girls. Fish but no meat was eaten on
Fridays. There was dark rye bread and expensive white wheat bread.
Vegetables included onions, leeks, and cabbage. Fruits included apples,
pears, plums, cherries, and strawberries. Water was obtained from
streams running through the town to the Thames and from springs. Only
the rich, palaces, and churches could afford beeswax candles; others had
homemade tallow [cow or sheep fat] candles which smelled and gave off
smoke. Most people washed their bodies. Even the poor had beds and bed
clothes. The beds were often shared. Few babies survived childhood. If a
man reached 30, he could expect to live until age 50. Thousands of
Londoners died during a hot summer from fevers, plague and the like.
In London, bells heralded the start and finish of all organized
business. The sellers of merchandise and hirers of labor were
distributed every morning into their several localities according to
their trade. Vendors, craftsmen, and laborers had their customary
places. Some vendors walked the streets announcing their wares for sale.
There were craft guilds of bakers, butchers, cloth workers, and
saddlers, as well as of weavers. Vendors on the Thames River bank sold
cooked fish caught from the river and wine from ships and wine cellars.
Cook shops sold roasted meats covered with hotly spiced sauces.
London Bridge was built of stone for the first time. It was supported
by a series of stone arches standing on small man-made islands. It had
such a width that a row of wood houses and a chapel was built on top of
it. In the spring it was impassable by ships because the flow of water
under it varied in height on either side of the bridge by several feet
at half tide. The bridge had the effect of slowing down the flow
upstream, which invited wherries and rowboats and stately barges of the
nobility. In winters in which it froze over, there was ice skating, ice
boating, and fishing through holes in the ice.
Outside each city gate were clusters of ragged buildings, small
monasteries and hostelries, groups of huntsmen's kennels, and fencing
schools. Outside one of the gates, a horse market was held every week.
Horses wore horseshoes made of iron or of a crude steel. From the
southwest gate of the city along the north river bank toward
Westminster, there was a gradually extending line of rich men's mansions
and bishops' palaces. On the southern bank of the Thames River was
growing the disorderly suburb of Southwark, with fishermen's and
boatmens' hovels, and taverns and brothels that were frequented by
drunkards, rakes, and whores. On the north side of the city was a great
forest with fields and wells where students and other young men from the
city took walks in the fresh evening air. In some fields, country folk
sold pigs, cows, oxen and sheep. Mill wheels turned at various streams.
Near London in the country was a glass factory. At sunset, the gates of
London were closed for the night. All taverns had to be closed, all
lights put out, and all fires banked or covered when the bell of the
church of St. Martin le Grand rang at 9:00 p.m. Anyone found on the
streets after this curfew could be arrested. Gangs of young nobles or
gangs of thieves, cutpurses, and looters roamed the streets after dark
and sometimes rioted. Offenders were often beheaded and their heads
placed on spikes on London Bridge.
Men in London had begun weaving cloth, which formerly had been done by
women. Some of the cloth was exported. The weavers guild of London
received a charter by the King in 1155, the first granted to any London
craft: "Know that I have conceded to the Weavers of London to hold their
guild in London with all the liberties and customs which they had in the
time of King Henry [I], my grandfather; and that none may intermeddle
with the craft within the city, nor in Southwark, nor in other places
pertaining to London except through them and except he be in their
guild, otherwise than was accustomed to be done in the time of King
Henry, my grandfather ...So that each year they render thence to me two
marks [26s.8d.] of gold at the feast of St. Michael. And I forbid that
any shall do injury or contumely to them on this account under penalty
of 10 pounds [200s.]. Witness T[homas], Chancellor, and Warinus, son of
Gerard, Chamberlain, at Winchester." The liberties obtained were: 1) The
weavers may elect bailiffs to supervise the work of the craft, to punish
defaulters, and to collect the ferm [amount owed to the King]. The
bailiffs were chosen from year to year and swore before the mayor of
London to do and keep their office well and truly. 2) The bailiffs may
hold court from week to week on pleas of debt, agreements, covenants
[promises for certain performance], and minor trespasses. 3) If any of
the guild members are sued in any other court on any of the above pleas,
the guild may challenge that plea to bring it to the guild court. 4) If
any member is behind in his share of the payment to the King, the
bailiffs may distrain his loom until he has paid this.
The weavers' guild punished members who used bad thread in their weaving
or did defective weaving by showing the default to the mayor, with
opportunity for the workman to make entreaty, and the mayor and twelve
members of the guild then made a verdict of amercement of 1/2 mark
[6s.8d.] and the workman of the cloth was also punished by the guild
bailiffs according to guild custom.The weavers' guild tradition of
brotherliness among members meant that injury to a fellow weaver
incurred a severe penalty. If a weaver stole or eloigned [removed them
to a distance where they were unreachable] any other weaver's goods
falsely and maliciously, then he was dismissed from the guild and his
loom was taken by the guild to fulfill his portion of the annual payment
to the King. The weavers were allowed to buy and to sell in London
freely and quietly. They had all the rights of other freemen of the
city.
Paying an annual payment freed the weavers from liability to
inconsequent royal fines. Failure to make this payment promptly might
have led to loss of the right, hence the rigorous penalty of distraint
upon the looms of individual weavers who fell into arrears.
Thus from the middle of the 1100s, the weavers enjoyed the monopoly of
their craft, rights of supervision which ensured a high standard of
workmanship, power to punish infractions of their privileges, and full
control of their members. In this they stand as the prototype of English
medieval guilds. These rights represented the standard which all bodies
of craftsmen desired to attain. The right of independent jurisdiction
was exceptional.
In Henry II's charter to London, London did not retain its right to
appoint its own sheriff and justice given by Henry I. London's chief
magistrate was the mayor, who was appointed by the King, until 1191.
Then the mayor was elected yearly by the aldermen of the city wards and
approved by the king. He was typically a rich prince chosen by the
barons and chief merchants of London. The commoners had no voice in his
selection, but they could still approve or disapprove of the actions of
the city government at ward and folk motes. At certain periods, a king
asserted royal power over the selection of mayor and governance of the
city. There were three ways to become a citizen of London: being the son
of a citizen, apprenticeship in a craft for seven years, and purchase of
citizenship. London and Westminster growth led to their replacing
Winchester as the capital.
St. Barthomew infirmary was established in London for the care of sick
pilgrims traveling to the shrine of Becket in Canterbury. It had been
inspired by a monk who saw a vision of St. Barthomew telling him to
build a church and an infirmary.
Trading was facilitated by the stabilization of the amount of silver
metallic content of the English coinage, which was called "sterling"
[strong] silver. The compass, a magnetic lodestone [leading stone]
needle mounted on a cork and floated in a bowl of water, assisted the
navigation of ships. With it, one could tell the general direction of a
ship when the skies were cloudy as well as clear. And one could
generally track one's route by using the direction and speed of travel
to calculate one's new position. London became a major trading center
for foreign goods from many lands.
About 5% of the knights were literate. Wealthy men sent their sons to
school in monasteries to prepare them for a livelihood in a profession
or in trade or to the town of Oxford, whose individual scholars had
migrated from Paris and had attracted disciples for a long time. These
schools grew up around St. Mary's Church, but had not been started by
the church as there was no cathedral school in Oxford. Oxford had
started as a burh and had a royal residence and many tradesmen. It was
given its basic charter in 1155 by the King. This confirmed to it all
the customs, laws and liberties [rights] as those enjoyed by London. It
became a model charter for other towns.
Bachelors at Oxford studied the arts of grammar, rhetoric, and logic,
and then music, arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy, until they mastered
their discipline and therefore were authorized to teach it. Teaching
would then provide an income sufficient to support a wife. The master of
arts was analogous to the master craftsman of a guild. From 1190, the
civil law was studied, and shortly thereafter, canon law. Later came the
study of medicine. The use of paper supplemented the use of parchment
for writing. Irregular edged paper was made from linen, cotton, straw,
and/or wood beaten to a pulp and then spread out over a wire mesh to
dry.
Theologicians taught that the universe was made for the sake and
service of man, so man was placed at the center of the universe. Man was
made for the sake and service of God.
Every freeman holding land of a lord gave homage and fealty to him,
swearing to bear him faith of the tenement held and to preserve his
earthly honor in all things, saving the faith owed to the king. Homage
was done for lands, for free tenements, for services, and for rents
precisely fixed in money or in kind. Homage could be done to any free
person, male or female, adult or minor, cleric or layman. A man could do
several homages to different lords for different fees, but there had to
be a chief homage to that lord of whom he held his chief tenement.
Homage was not due for dower, from the husband of a woman to whom a
tenement was given as a marriage portion, for a fee given in free alms,
or until the third heir, either for free maritagium [a marriage portion
which is given with a daughter in marriage, that is not bound to
service] or for the fee of younger sisters holding of the eldest. All
fiefs to be inherited by the eldest son had to be intact. Every lord
could exact fealty from his servants.
In this era, the English national race and character was formed. Only a
few barons still had lands in Normandy. Stories of good King Arthur were
popular and set ideals for behavior and justice in an otherwise barbaric
age where force was supreme. His last battle in which he lay wounded and
told a kinsman to rule in his place and uphold his laws was written in
poem ("Layamon's Brut"). Romantic stories were written and read in
English. The custom of "bundling" was started by ladies with their
knights, who would lie together in bed without undressing and with one
in a sack the top of which was tied around his neck, as part of a
romantic courtship. Wealthy men often gave their daughters dowries in
case they were widowed. This might be matched by a marriage settlement
by a prospective husband.
Intermarriage had destroyed any distinction of Normans by look or
speech alone, except for the Anglo-Saxon manor villeins, who worked the
farm land and composed about two-thirds of the population. Villeins were
bound to the land and could, on flight, be brought back to it. They
could not give homage, but could give fealty. A villein had the
equipment to farm, fish, make cheese, keep poultry, brew beer, hedge,
and cut wood. Although the villeins could not buy their freedom or be
freed by their lord, they became less numerous because of the preference
of landholders for tenants motivated to perform work by potential loss
of tenure. Also, the Crown's protection of all its subjects in criminal
matters blurred the distinction between free and unfree men.
The boroughs were dominated by lords of local manors, who usually had a
house in the borough. Similarly, burgesses usually had farmland outside
the borough. Many boroughs were granted, by the king or manor lord, the
right to have a common seal for the common business of the town. Some
boroughs were given the authority to confer freedom on the villein by
enrolling him in their guild or allowing him to stay in the borough for
a year and a day. The guilds met frequently in their drinking halls and
drew up regulations for the management of their trade. Each borough was
represented by twelve reputable burgesses. Each vill was represented by
a reeve and four reputable men. Certain towns sponsored great seasonal
fairs for special goods, such as cloth. About 5% of the population lived
in towns.
In the early 1180s, the horizontal-axle windmill was invented, probably
in eastern England, on the analogy of the horizontal-axle watermill. It
was very useful in flat areas where streams were too slow for a
watermill unless a dam were built. But a dam often flooded agricultural
land. Some watermill wheels were moved by tidal currents.
London guilds of craftsmen such as weavers, fullers, bakers, loriners
(makers of bits, spurs, and metal mountings of bridles and saddles),
cordwainers (makers of leather goods such as shoes), pepperers, and
goldsmiths were licensed by the King, for which they paid him a yearly
fee. There were also five Bridge Guilds (probably raising money for the
future construction of London Bridge in stone) and St. Lazarus' Guild.
The wealthy guilds, which included the goldsmiths, the pepperers, and
three bridge guilds had landholding members who had been thegns or
knights and now became a class of royal officials: the King's minters,
his chamberlain, his takers of wines, his collectors of taxes. The
weavers of Oxford paid 27s. [two marks] to have a guild. The shoemakers
paid 67s. [five marks].
In 1212, master carpenters, masons, and tilers made 3d. per day, their
servers (the journeymen of a later time) made 1 1/2 d., free stone
carvers 2 1/2 d., plasterers and daubers, diggers and sievers less. All
received food in addition or 1 1/2 d. in its stead.
Sandwich was confirmed in its port rights by this charter: "Henry II to
his sheriff and bailiffs of Kent, greeting. I will and order that the
monks of the Holy Trinity of Canterbury shall have fully all those
liberties and customs in Sandwich which they had in the time of King
Henry my grandfather, as it was adjudged in pursuance of his command by
the oath of twelve men of Dover and twelve men of Sandwich, to wit, that
the aforesaid monks ought to have the port and the toll and all maritime
customs in the same port, on either side of the water from Eadburge gate
as far as markesfliete and a ferryboat for passage. And no man has there
any right except they and their ministers. Wherefore I will and firmly
command you and the men of Sandwich that ye cause the aforesaid monks to
have all their customs both in the port and in the town of Sandwich, and
I forbid any from vexing them on this account.And they shall have my
firm peace."
Henry gave this charter to the town of Bristol in 1164: "Know ye, that
I have granted to my burgesses of Bristol, that they shall be quit both
of toll [a reasonable sum of money or portion of the thing sold, due to
the owner of the fair or market on the sale of things tollable therein.
It was claimed by the lord of the fee where the fair or market was held,
by virtue of a grant from the Crown either ostensible or presumed] and
passage [money paid for crossing a river or for crossing the sea as
might be due to the Crown] and all custom [customary payments]
throughout my whole land of England, Normandy, and Wales, wherever they
shall come, they and their goods. Wherefore I will and strictly command,
that they shall have all their liberties and acquittances and free
customs fully and honorable, as my free and faithful men, and that they
shall be quit of toll and passage and of every other customs: and I
forbid any one to disturb them on this account contrary to this my
charter, on forfeiture of ten pounds [200s.]."
John, when he was an earl and before he became King, granted these
liberties to Bristol about 1188:
1) No burgess may sue or be sued out of Bristol.
2) The burgesses are excused from the murder fine (imposed by the king
or lord from the hundred or town where the murder was committed when the
murderer had not been apprehended).
3) No burgess may wage duel [trial by combat], unless sued for death of
a stranger.
4) No one may take possession of a lodging house by assignment or by
livery of the Marshall of the Earl of Gloucester against the will of the
burgesses (so that the town would not be responsible for the good
behavior of a stranger lodging in the town without first accepting the
possessor of the lodging house).
5) No one shall be condemned in a matter of money, unless according to
the law of the hundred, that is, forfeiture of 40s.
6) The hundred court shall be held only once a week.
7) No one in any plea may argue his cause in miskenning.
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
there made, 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. (A lord had the
right of preventing his tenants 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 [acknowledgment 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 them in 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 [dwelling
house with adjoining land and adjacent buildings], in copses [thicket
from which wood was cut], 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.
Newcastle-on-Tyne's taxes were simplified in 1175 as follows:
"Know ye that I have granted and by this present charter have confirmed
to my burgesses of Newcastle upon Tyne, and to all their things which
they can assure to be their own, acquittance from toll and passage and
pontage and from the Hanse and from all other customs throughout all my
land. And I prohibit all persons from vexing or disturbing them therein
upon forfeiture to me."
We grant to our upright men on Newcastle-on-Tyne and their heirs our
town of Newcastle-on-Tyne with all its appurtenances at fee farm for 100
pounds to be rendered yearly to us and our heirs at our Exchequer by
their own hand at the two terms, to wit, at Easter 50 pounds and at
Michaelmas 50 pounds, saving to us our rents and prizes and assizes in
the port of the same town.
Ranulph, earl of Chester, made grants to his burgesses of Coventry by
this charter: "That the aforesaid burgesses and their heirs may well and
honorably quietly and in free burgage hold of me and my heirs as ever in
the time of my father and others of my ancestors they have held better
more firmly and freer. In the second place I grant to them all the free
and good laws which the burgesses of Lincoln have better and freer. I
prohibit and forbid my constables to draw them into the castle to plead
for any cause, but they may freely have their portimote [leet court] in
which all pleas belonging to me and them may be justly treated of.
Moreover they may choose from themselves one to act for me whom I
approve, who a justice under me and over them may know the laws and
customs, and keep them to my counsel in all things reasonable, every
excuse put away, and may faithfully perform to me my rights. If any one
happen to fall into my amercement he may be reasonably fined by my
bailiff and the faithful burgesses of the court. Furthermore, whatever
merchants they have brought with them for the improvement of the town, I
command that they have peace, and that none do them injury or unjustly
send them into court. But if any foreign merchant shall have done
anything improper in the town that same may be regulated in the
portimote before the aforesaid justice without a suit at law."
Henry confirmed this charter of the earl's by 1189 as follows: I have
confirmed all the liberties and free customs the earl of Chester granted
to them, namely, that the same burgesses may well and honorably hold in
free burgage, as ever in the time of the father of the beforesaid earl,
or other of his ancestors, they may have better or more firmly held; and
they may have all the laws and customs which the citizens of Lincoln
have better and freer (e.g. their merchant guilds); all men brought to
trade may be subject to the guild customs and assize of the town; those
who lawfully hold land in the town for a year and a day without question
and are able to prove that an accuser has been in the kingdom within the
year without finding fault with them, from thence may hold the land well
and in peace without pleading; those who have remained in the town a
year and a day without question, and have submitted to the customs of
the town and the citizens of the town are able to show through the laws
and customs of the town that the accuser stood forth in the kingdom, and
not a fault is found of them, then they may remain in peace in the town
without question]; and that the constable of the aforesaid earl shall
not bring them into the castle to plead in any case. But they may freely
have their own portmanmote in which all pleas appertaining to the earl
and to them may be justly treated of. Moreover they may choose one from
themselves to act for the earl, whom I approve, who may be a justice
under the earl and over them, and who to the earl may faithfully perform
his rights, and if anyone happen to fall into the earl's forfeiture he
shall be acquit for 12 pence. If by the testimony of his neighbors he
cannot pay 12 pence coins, by their advice it shall be so settled as he
is able to pay, and besides, with other acquittances, that the burgesses
shall not provide anything in corody [allowance in food] or otherwise
whether for the said earl or his men, unless upon condition that their
chattels shall be safe, and so rendered to them. Furthermore, whatever
merchants they have brought with them for the improvement of the town
they may have peace, and none shall do them injury or unjustly send them
into suit at law. But if any foreign merchant has done anything improper
in the town that shall be amended [or tried] in the portmanmote before
the aforesaid justice without a suit. And they who may be newcomers into
the town, from the day on which they began to build in the town for the
space of two years shall be acquit of all charges.
Mercantile privileges were granted to the shoemakers in Oxford thus:
"Know ye that I have granted and confirmed to the corvesars of Oxford
all the liberties and customs which they had in the time of King Henry
my grandfather, and that they have their guild, so that none carry on
their trade in the town of Oxford, except he be of that guild. I grant
also that the cordwainers who afterwards may come into the town of
Oxford shall be of the same guild and shall have the same liberties and
customs which the corvesars have and ought to have. For this grant and
confirmation, however, the corvesars and cordwainers ought to pay me
every year an ounce of gold."
A guild merchant for wool dominated and regulated the wool trade in
many boroughs. In Leicester, only guildsmen were permitted to buy and
sell wool wholesale to whom they pleased or to wash their fells in
borough waters. Certain properties, such as those near running water,
essential to the manufacture of wool were maintained for the use of
guild members. The waterwheel was a technological advance replacing
human labor whereby the cloth was fulled. The waterwheel turned a shaft
which lifted hammers to pound the wet cloth in a trough. Wool packers
and washers could work only for guild members. The guild fixed wages,
for instance to wool wrappers and flock pullers. Strangers who brought
wool to the town for sale could sell only to guild members. A guildsman
could not sell wool retail to strangers nor go into partnership with a
man outside the guild. Each guild member had to swear the guildsman's
oath, pay an entrance fee, and subject himself to the judgment of the
guild in the guild court, which could fine or suspend a man from
practicing his trade for a year. The advantages of guild membership
extended beyond profit in the wool trade. Members were free from the
tolls that strangers paid. They alone were free to sell certain goods
retail. They had the right to share in any bargain made in the presence
of a guildsman, whether the transaction took place in Leicester or in a
distant market. In the general interest, the guild forbade the use of
false weights and measures and the production of shoddy goods. It
maintained a wool beam for weighing wool. It also forbade middlemen from
profiting at the expense of the public. For instance, butchers' wives
were forbidden from buying meat to sell again in the same market unless
they cooked it. The moneys due to the king from the guilds of a town
were collected by the town reeve.
When the king wanted to raise an army, he summoned his major baron
tenants-in-chief, who commanded their own armed dependent vassals, and
he directed the sheriffs to command the minor tenants-in-chief and
supply them with equipment. A baron could assemble an army in a day, but
might use it to resist any perceived misgovernment by a king. Armed
conflict did not interfere much with daily life because the national
wealth was still composed mostly of flocks and herds and simple
buildings. Machinery, furniture, and the stock of shops were still
sparse. Life would be back to normal within a week.
Henry wanted to check this power of the barons. So he took over or
demolished their adulterine castles and restored the fyrd, which was a
military draft of every freeman to serve in defense of the realm. At the
King's call, barons were to appear in mail suit and helmet with sword
and horse, knights and freeholders with 213s.[16 marks] of rent or
chattels in coat of mail with shield and lance, freeholders of 133s.[10
marks] with lance and hauberk [coat of armor] and iron headpiece,
burgesses and poorer freemen with lance and headpiece and wambais, and
such as millers with pike and leather shirt. The spiritual and other
baronies paid a commutation for personal service, called "scutage", at
the rate of 27s. per knight's fee. Barons and knights paid according to
their knight's fee a scutage ranging from 10s. to 27s. As of 1181, the
military obligations of villeins were defined. The master of a household
was responsible for every villein in his household. Others had to form
groups of ten and swear obedience to the chief of the group. The sheriff
was responsible for maintaining lists of men liable for military service
and procuring supplies. This national militia could be used to maintain
the peace. The sheriff could call upon the military array of the county
as a posse comitatus to take a band of thieves into custody or to
quell disorder. For foreign wars, Henry decided to use a mercenary army
and a mercenary fleet.
However, the nobility who were on the borders of the realm had to
maintain their private armies for frequent border clashes. The other
nobility now tended towards tournaments with mock foot battles between
two sides. Although subject to knightly rules, serious injury and death
often resulted. For this reason, the church opposed them, but
unsuccessfully.
New taxes replaced the Danegeld tax. Freeholders of land paid taxes
according to their ploughable land ("hidage", by the hide, and later
"carucage", by the smaller Norman carucate). The smaller measure
curtailed estates and increased taxation. It was assessed from 2-5s. per
carcuate [100 acres] and collected for the king by knights with little
or no remuneration, and later by inquest of neighbors. The towns and
demesne lands of the crown paid a tax based on their produce that was
collected by the itinerant justices. Merchants were taxed on their
personal property, which was determined by an inquest of neighbors.
Clergy were also taxed. This new system of taxation increased the royal
income about threefold. There was a standard for reliefs paid of 100s.
[5 pounds] for a knight's fee and 2,000s. [100 pounds] for a barony. At
the end of Henry's reign, his treasure was over 900,000 pounds. Every
hide of land paid the sheriff 2s. annually for his services in the
administration and defense of the county.
Barons and their tenants and subtenants were offered an alternative of
paying shield money ["scutage"] of 26s.8d. per fee in commutation for
and instead of military service for their fiefs. This enabled Henry to
hire soldiers who would be more directly under his own control and to
organize a more efficient army.
Henry II restored the silver coinage to its standard of purity. The
first great inflation in England occurred between 1180 and 1220. Most
goods and services increased threefold over these forty years.
Great households, whether of baron, prelate, monastery, or college gave
their officers and servants allowances of provisions and clothing called
"liveries". The officer of such departments as the buttery [cellar
storing butts of wine], the kitchen, the napery [for linen cloth], and
the chandlery had his fixed allowances for every day and his livery of
clothing at fixed times of the year or intervals of years.
The administration of a great estate is indicated by the Pipe Roll of
the Bishopric of Winchester, 1208-1209, as follows:
"Downton: William FitzGilbert, and Joselyn the reeve, and Aylward the
cellarer render account of 7 pounds 12s.11d. for arrears of the previous
year. They paid and are quit. And of 3 pounds 2s.2d. for landgafol. And
of 12d. by increment of tax for a park which William of Witherington
held for nothing. And of 2s.6d. by increment of tax for half a virgate
of land which James Oisel held without service. And of 19s. for 19
assize pleas in the new market. And of 10s. by increment of tax for 10
other assize pleas in the market this year. Sum of the whole tax 36
pounds 14s.8d. In quittance of one reeve, 5s. In quittance for repairing
the bridge, 5s.; of one forester, 4s.; of two haywards from Downton and
Wick, 4s.; of one hayward from Witherington, 20d.; of fourteen drivers
from Downton, Wick, and Nunton, for the year, 28s.; of two drivers from
Witherington for the year, 4s.4d.; of two drivers for half the year,
2s.; of one swineherd, of one neaterd, of one cowherd, for the year,
6s.; of three shepherds from Wick, Barford, and Nunton, for the year,
6s.; of one shepherd from Witherington, for the year, 20d.; of four
customary tenants, for the year, 8s. Sum of the quittances, 74s.8d.
Remainder 33 pounds.
Livery: For livery to John the dean, for Christmas tax, 7 pounds 10s. by
one tally. To the same for Easter tax, 8 pounds by one tally. To the
same for St. John's tax, 8 pounds by one tally. To the same for St.
Michael's tax, 8 pounds 10s. by one tally. To the same for corn [grain]
sold in the field 26 pounds by two tallies. To the same for standing
corn [growing crops of grain], purchases, and cheeses, 20 pounds
16s.10d. To the same for wool, 6 pounds 13s.4d. by one tally. To the
same for tallage 39 pounds by one tally. Sum: 134 pounds 10s.2d.
Expenses: For ironwork of 8 carts for year and one cart for half the
year, 32s.10d. For shoeing of 2 plough horses for the year, 2s.8d. For
wheels for carts, 2s.9d. For 6 carts made over, 12d. before the arrival
of the carpenter. For wages of the smith for the year, 8s.6d. For one
cart bound in iron bought new, 5s.7d. For wheels purchased for one cart
to haul dung, 12d. For leather harness and trappings, iron links,
plates, halters, 14d. For purchase of 2 ropes, 3d. For purchase of 2
sacks, 8d. For purchase of 5 locks for the granary, 11d. For making 2
gates for the sheepfold, 2s. For one gate for the farm yard, 12d. For an
ax and tallow purchased and for repairing the spindles of the mill for
the year, 6s.10d. For one millstone purchased for the mill 24s. For
making one gate near the mill, 12d. For meat prepared in the larder, 3s.
For beer bought for cleaning carcasses, 2s.1d. For digging 158 perches
of land around the pasture in the marsh, 32s.11d.; for each perch
2d.1ob. For the dovecote newly made, 22s.11d.1ob. For cutting 100 thick
planks for flooring both dispensary and butlery, 6s.3d. For nails or
pegs bought for planking beyond the cellar, 16d. For enclosing the
garden by making 2 gates, 6s.7d.1ob. For digging in the gardens, 8s.5d.
For the winter work of 55 carts, 9s.2d. For the Lent work of 49 carts,
8s.6d. For spreading 6 acres with dung, 6d. For threshing 24 quarters of
wheat at Mardon for seed, 5s. For winnowing the same, 7d. For winnowing
36 quarters of grain for seed, 3s.9d. For threshing 192 quarters of
grain 32s.; for each quarter 2d. For threshing 20 quarters of mixed corn
[grain], 2s.6d. For threshing 42 quarters of barley, 3s.6d. For
threshing 53 quarters of oats, 2s.2d.1ob. For hauling gravel to the
bridge and causeway, 4d. For cost of dairy, viz., 3 tines of salt,
cloth, and pots, 6s.10d. For purchase of 17 oxen, 5 pounds 13s. For
hoeing 140 acres, 5s.10d. For wages of two carters, one neatherd, for
the year, 9s. For wages of one carpenter for the year, 6s.8d. For wages
of one dairy woman, 2s.6d. For payment of mowers of the meadow at
Nunton, 6d. For 8 sheep purchased, 8s. For wages of one neatherd from
Nunton, 12d. For carrying 2 casks of wine by Walter Locard, in the time
of Martinmas, 8s.2d. For the carrying of 2 casks of wine from
Southampton to Downton by the seneschal, 3s.6d. at the feast of St.
Lawrence. For digging 22 perches in the farmyard, 6s.5d.; for each perch
3d.1ob. For allowance of food of Robert of Lurdon, who was sick for 21
days, with his man, 5s.3d. For allowance of food to Sewal who was caring
for 2 horses of the lord bishop for 3 weeks, 21d. For allowance of food
for Roger Walselin, for the two times he made gifts to the lord king at
Clarendon, 4s.9d. by two tallies. For allowance of food of Master Robert
Basset, for 3 journeys, 9s.3d.1ob. For livery of William FitzGilbert,
60s.10d. For 30 ells of canvas purchased for laying over the wool, and 2
cushions prepared for the court, 5s. For 8 sheep purchased, with lambs,
8s. Sum: 2 pounds.23d. Sum of livery and expenses: 159 pounds 12s.1d.
And there is owing: 5 pounds 9s.4d.1ob.
Produce of Granary: The same render account of 221 and a half quarters
and 1 strike from all the produce of grain; and of 24 quarters brought
from Mardon. Sum: 245 and a half quarters and 1 strike. For sowing 351
acres, 127 quarters. For bread for the lord bishop, 18 and a half
quarters delivered to John de Dispensa by three tallies. For the balance
sold, 110 quarters and 1 strike. The same render account of 38 and a
half quarters from all the produce of small corn [grain]. For the
balance sold, all. The same render account of 29 quarters and 1 strike
from all the produce of mixed corn [grain]. For seeding 156 acres, 53
quarters and 1 strike. For bread for 3 autumnal works, 9 quarters. For
the balance sold, 27 quarters. The same render account of 178 and a half
quarters from all the produce of barley. For sowing 102 and a half
acres, 49 and a half quarters. For payment for carts, 1 quarter. For
payment for hauling dung, 2 quarters. For allowance of food of two
carters, one carpenter, one neatherd, one dairy woman, for the year, 32
and a half quarters. For feeding hogs in the winter, 2 quarters. For the
balance sold, 91 and a half quarters. It is quit.
The same render account of 311 quarters and 2 bushels from all the
produce of oats. In sowing 221 and a half acres, 110 and a half
quarters. For prebends [revenues paid for a clergyman's salary] of the
lord bishop and lord king, on many occasions, 131 and a half quarters
and 2 bushels, by five tallies. For prebends of Roger Wakelin, 2 and a
half quarters and 3 bushels. For prebends of Master Robert Basset, 3 and
a half quarters and 1 bushel. For provender [dry food for livestock] of
2 horses of the lord bishop and 1 horse of Richard Marsh, for 5 weeks, 5
and a half quarters and 2 bushels. For provender of 2 horses of the lord
bishop who stayed 16 nights at Downton, 4 quarters. For that sent to
Knoyle, 18 quarters. For provender of 1 horse of Robert of Lurdon for 3
weeks, 1 and a half quarters. For prebends of two carters 7 quarters and
2 bushels. For the balance sold, 12 quarters. And there remains 14
quarters and 1 strike. The same render account of 6 and a half quarters
from the whole produce of beans. For planting in the garden half a
quarter. For the balance sold, 6 quarters. It is quit.
The same render account of 4 quarters and 1 strike from all the produce
of peas. For sowing 6 acres, 1 and a half quarters. For the balance sold
2 and a half quarters and 1 strike. It is quit. The same render account
of 4 quarters from all the produce of vetches [pea plants used for
animal fodder]. For feeding pigs in the winter, all. It is quit.
Beasts of Burden: The same render account of 104 oxen remaining from the
previous year. And of 2 yoked from useless animals. And of 1 from the
will of Robert Copp. And of 17 purchased. Sum: 124. Of living ones sold,
12. Of dead, 21. Sum: 33. And there remain 91 oxen. The same render
account of 2 goats remaining from the previous year. All remain.
The same render account of 19 cows remaining from the previous year. And
of 7 yoked from useless animals, and of 1 found. Sum: 27. By death, 1.
By killing, brought for the need of the lord bishop at Cranbourne, 2.
Sum: 3. And there remain 24 cows. The same render account of 7 heifers
and 2 steers remaining from the previous year. In yoked cows, 7 heifers.
In yoked oxen, 2 bulls. Sum: 9.
The same render account of 12 yearlings remaining from the previous
year. By death, 1. There remain 11, of which 5 are female, 6 male.
The same render account of 13 calves born this year from cows, because
the rest were sterile. In tithes, 1. There remain 12. The same render
account of 858 sheep remaining from the previous year. And of 47 sheep
for the payment of herbage, after birth, and before clipping. And of 8
bought before birth. And of 137 young ewes mixed with two-year-olds.
Sum: 1050. In live ones sold at the time of Martinmas, 46. In those dead
before birth, 20. In those dead after birth and before shearing, 12.
Sum: 78. And there remain 972 sheep.
The same render account of 584 wethers [castrated rams] remaining from
the previous year. And of 163 wethers mixed with two-year- olds. And of
16 rams from Lindsey, which came by brother Walter before shearing. Sum:
763. In living ones sold at the time of Martinmas, 27 wethers, 10 rams.
Paid to the men of Bishopton before shearing by writ of the seneschal,
20. By death, before shearing, 14. Sum: 71. And there remain 692 sheep.
The same render account of 322 old sheep remaining, with lambs from the
previous year. By death before shearing, 22. And there remain 300;
whence 137 are young ewes, mixed with sheep, and 163 males, mixed with
wethers.
The same render account of 750 lambs born from sheep this year because
20 were sterile, and 30 aborted. In payment of the smith, 2; of
shepherds, 3. In tithes, 73. In those dead before shearing, 105. Sum:
181. And there remain 569 lambs.
The same render account of 1664 large sheepskins whence 16 were from the
rams of Lindsey. In tithes, 164. In payment of three shepherds, 3. In
the balance sold 1497 skins with 16 skins from Lindsey which made 11
pondera.
The same render account of 569 lamb skins. In the balance sold, all,
which made 1 and a half pondera.
The same render account of 138 cheeses from arrears of the previous
year. And of 19 small cheeses. And of 5 larger ones from the arrears of
the previous year. And of 273 cheeses which were begun the 6th of April
and finished on the feast of St. Michael, both days being counted. And
they made cheeses two by two for 96 days, viz. from the 27th April to
the vigil of the feast of St. Peter in Chains, both days being counted.
Sum: 435 cheeses. In tithes 27. In payment of a shepherd, and mowers of
the meadow from Nunton, 2. In duty of a carter, 3. In autumnal work, 10.
In expenses of the bishop in the kitchen, 2 by one tally. In the balance
sold, 133 cheeses, which made 10 heads, from arrears of the previous
year. In the balance sold, 177 cheeses, which made 18 heads in this
year. In expenses of the lord king and lord bishop on the feasts of St.
Leonard and St. Martin, 19 small cheeses, and 5 larger ones from the
arrears of the previous year. And there remain 52 small cheeses which
make one head.
The same render account of 124 hogs remaining from the previous year.
And of 29 that were born of sows. Sum: 153 pigs. In tithes, 2. By death,
9. In those killed for the larder, 83. Sum: 95 pigs. And there remain 58
pigs. Also 19 suckling pigs. Sum of the whole: 77 pigs.
The same render account of 48 chickens from arrears of the previous
year. And of 258 chickens for cheriset. Sum: 306. In expenses of the
lord bishop on the feast of St. Martin, 36 by one tally. In expenses of
the same on the feast of St. Leonard, 106, by one tally. In expenses of
the lord king and bishop on the feast of the Apostles Peter and Paul,
131 chickens, by two tallies. In allowance for food for Roger Wakelin,
8. In allowance of food for Master Robert Basset, 4. By death, 21. Sum:
306 chickens. It is quit.
The same render account of 273 chickens, 27 sticae of eels, 4 suckling
pigs, freed for the expenses of the lord king and bishop. From the
Larder: The same freed for the expenses of the lord bishop meat of 2
cows taken to Cranbourne.
The same render account of 13 sides of bacon, arrears of the previous
year. And of 5 oxen and 1 quarter of old beef from arrears of the
previous year. And of 84 hogs from Downton. And of 71 hogs from Mardon.
And of 10 hogs from Overton. And of 9 hogs from High-Clere. And of 14
hogs from Harwell. And of 7 hogs from Knoyle. Sum: 203 hogs, and meat of
5 oxen and one quarter. In expenses of the lord bishop at the feast of
St. Martin, 8 sides of bacon. In expenses of the same at the feast of
St. Leonard, 17 sides of bacon, the meat of 5 oxen, and 1 quarter of an
ox. In expenses of the same on the morrow of the feast of the Holy
Cross, delivered to Nicolas the cook, 27 sides of bacon. In expenses of
the lord bishop delivered to the same cook at Knoyle on the Saturday
before the feast of St. Michael, 15 sides of bacon. In expenses of the
same and of the lord king on the feast of the Apostles Peter and Paul,
50 sides of bacon. In allowance of food to Master Robert Basset on the
feast of All Saints, half a side of bacon. In allowance of food to the
same on Wednesday and Thursday before Pentecost, 1 side of bacon. In
those sent to Knoyle for autumnal work, 6 sides of bacon. In three
autumnal festivals at Downton, 9 and a half sides of bacon. Sum: 134
sides of bacon. And there remain 74 sides of bacon.
The same render account of skins, sausages, and offal of the said hogs.
In expenses of the lord king and lord bishop at the feast of St.
Leonard, all. Nothing remains."
King Richard the Lion-hearted, unlike his father, was interested in
warfare. He spent most of his term on crusade to recover Jerusalem. For
his expenses, he imposed a tax of one-tenth of rents and income from
moveable goods. He also sold town charters, heiresses and heirs, widows,
sheriffdoms, justiceships, earldoms, and licenses for tournaments. In
1198, the bishop barons had refused to pay for a campaign of Richard's
war in Normandy arguing that military service was only due within the
kingdom of England. When Richard was captured, every person in the realm
was required to pay a part of his ransom of 100,000 pounds, which was
double the whole revenue of the crown. Aids, tallages, and carucage were
imposed. The heaviest impost was one-fourth of revenue or of goods from
every person.The crusaders' contact with Arabs brought to England an
expansion of trade, Arab horses, and arabic numerals, which included
"zero" and greatly facilitated arithmetic, which was very difficult with
Roman numerals. The church decreed that those who went on these crusades
would be remitted of their sins.
At the end of this period was the reign of King John, a short man.
After his mother Eleanor's death in 1204, John ruled without her
influence. He had no conscience and his oaths were no good. He trusted
and was trusted by no one. He had a huge appetite for money. He imposed
2,000 pounds [3,000 marks] on London for confirmation of its charter. He
imposed levies on the capital value of all personal and moveable goods.
It began the occasional subsidies called "tenths and fifteenths" from
all people on incomes from movables: one-tenth from boroughs and royal
demesne land, and one-fifteenth elsewhere. He sold the wardships of
minors and the marriages of heiresses to the highest bidder, no matter
how base. He appointed unprincipled men to be both sheriff and justice,
enabling them to blackmail property holders with vexatious writs and
false accusations. Writs were withheld or sold at exorbitant prices.
Crushing penalties were imposed to increase the profits of justice. He
asserted over fowls of the air the same exclusive right as over beasts
of the forest. The story of Robin Hood portrays John's attempt to gain
the crown prematurely while Richard was on the Crusades to recover
Jerusalem for Christendom.In 1213, strong northern barons refused a
royal demand for service in France or scutage, arguing that the amount
was not within custom or otherwise justified. John had private and
public enemies. No one trusted him and he trusted no one. His heavy
handed and arbitrary rule quickly alienated all sectors of the
population: other barons, bishops, London, and the commons. They joined
the barons to pressure him to sign the Magna Carta correcting his
abuses. For instance, since John had extracted many heavy fines from
barons by personally adjudging them blameworthy in disputes with others,
the barons wanted judgment by their peers under the established law of
the courts. In arms, the barons forced John to sign the Magna Carta
correcting his abuses.
- The Law -
No one, including the lord of a manor, may take land from anyone else,
for instance, by the customary process of distress, without a judgment
from the Royal Court. This did not apply to London, where a landlord
leasing or renting land could take distress in his fee.
No one, including the lord of a manor, shall deprive an heir of the
land possessed by his father, i.e. his birthright.
A tenant may marry off a daughter unless his lord shows some just cause
for refusing to consent to the marriage. A tenant had to pay an "aid" to
his lord when the lord's daughter married, when the lord's son was
knighted, or when the lord's person was ransomed.
A man [or woman] may not will away his land, but he may sell it during
his lifetime.
The land of a knight or other tenant of a military fee is inherited by
his eldest son. The socage land of a free sokeman goes by its ancient
custom before the Norman Conquest.
If a man purchased land after his marriage, his wife's dower is still
one-third of the land he had when they married, or less if he had
endowed her with less. But he could then enlarge her dower to one-third
of all of his lands. The same rule applied if the man had no land, but
endowed his wife with chattel or money instead.
Dower law prevented a woman from selling her dower during the life of
her husband. But he could sell it or give it away. On his death, its
possessor had to give the widow the equivalent worth of the property.
A widower had all his wife's lands by curtesy of the nation for his
lifetime to the exclusion of her heirs.
The Capital Messuage [Chief Manor] could not be given in dower or
divided, but went in its entirety to its heir.
Heirs were firstly sons, then daughters, then grandsons per stirpes,
then granddaughters per stirpes, then brothers, and then sisters of the
decedent. [By taking "per stirpes" instead of "per capita", a person's
share goes to that person's heirs if that person predeceases the
ancestor-decedent.] Male heirs of land held by military service or sons
of knights who were under the age of twenty-one were considered to be in
custody of their lords. The lord had wardship over the heir's land,
excluding the third that was the widow's dower for her life. He had to
maintain the heir in a manner suitable to his dignity and restore to him
when he came of age his inheritance in good condition discharged from
debts. Male heirs of sokemen who were under the age of fifteen were in
the custody of their nearest kindred. The son of a burgess came of age
when he could count money, measure cloth, and manage his father's
concerns.
Female heirs remained in the custody of their lords until they married.
The lord was bound to find a marriage for his ward when she became
fourteen years of age and then deliver her inheritance to her. She could
not marry without her lord's consent, because her husband was expected
to be the lord's ally and to do homage to him. But if a female heir lost
her virginity, her inheritance escheated to her lord. A woman with
property could not do homage because she could not perform military
service, but she generally swore fealty. She could receive homage from
men.
Bastards were not heirs, even if their father married their mother
after birth.
Any adult inheriting land had to pay a "relief" to the lord of the
land. For a knight's fee, this was 100s. For socage land, this was one
year's value. The amount for a barony depended upon the King's pleasure.
Heirs (but not widows) were bound to pay the debts of their fathers and
ancestors. A man who married a woman who had inherited land could not
sell this land without the consent of its heirs.
When a man dies, his wife shall take one-third and his heirs shall take
one-third of his chattels [movables or personal property]. The other
third he may dispose of by will. If he had no heirs and no will
[intestate], all his chattels would escheat to his lord. Any
distribution of chattels would take place after all the decedent's debts
were paid from the property.
A will required two witnesses. The testator could name an executor, but
if he did not, the next of kin was the executor. A will could not be
made by a man on his death bed because he may well have lost his memory
and reason. Also, he could not give to a younger son if in so doing, he
would deprive his lawful heir. But he could give a marriage gift to a
daughter regardless of the lawful heir.
Usury was receiving back more than what was lent, such as interest on a
loan of money. When a usurer died, all his movables went to the King.
A villein may not buy his own freedom (because all that he has is his
lord's), but may be set free by his lord or by someone else who buys his
freedom for him. He shall also be freed if the lord seduced his wife,
drew his blood, or refused to bail him either in a civil or criminal
action in which he was afterwards cleared. But a freed villein did not
have status to plead in court, even if he had been knighted. If his free
status were tried in court, only a freeman who was a witness to his
being set free could avail himself of trial by combat to decide the
issue. However, if the villein remained peacefully in a privileged town
a year and a day and was received into its guild as a citizen, then he
was freed from villeinage in every way.
A freeman who married a villein lost his freedom. If any parent of a
child was a villein, then the child was also a villein.
All shipwrecked persons shall be treated with kindness and none of
their goods or merchandise shall be taken from them.
If one kills another on a vessel, he shall be fastened to the dead body
and thrown with it into the sea.
If one steals from another on a vessel, he shall be shaven, tarred and
feathered, and turned ashore at the first land.
Passage on the Thames River may not be obstructed by damming up the
river on each side leaving a narrow outlet to net fish. All such weirs
shall be removed.
- Judicial Procedure -
Henry II wanted all freemen to be equally protected by one system of
law and government. So he opened his court, the Royal Court, to all
people of free tenure. A court of five justices professionally expert in
the law, traveled with the King, and on points of difficulty consulted
with him. Justices began to be more than presiding officers; they,
instead of those attending, rendered the judgments. The chief court was
in Westminster, where the weightiest decisions were made. Other
professional itinerant justices appeared periodically in all counties of
the nation to hear certain criminal and civil cases and to hear
citizens' private civil suits [common pleas]. They came to perform many
other tasks, including promulgating and enforcing new legislation,
seeking out encroachments on royal rights, reviewing the local
communities' and officials' performance of their public duties, imposing
penalties for failure to do them or for corruption, gathering
information about outlaws and nonperformance of homage, and assessing
feudal escheats to the crown, wardships to which the king was entitled,
royal advowsons, feudal aids owed to the King, tallages of the
burgesses, and debts owed to the Jews. The decision-making of itinerant
justices on circuits begins the process which makes the custom of the
Royal Court the common law of the nation. The county courts, where the
traveling justices heard all manner of business in the counties, adopted
the doctrines of the Royal Court, which then acquired an appellate
jurisdiction. The itinerant justices came from the same small group of
royal justices who were on the Royal Court and the Exchequer, which was
headed by the justiciar. Difficult cases were decided by the king and
wise men of his council.
Tenants of manors and of escheats in royal hands, who had been excused
from the monthly county court, were required to appear. Side by side
with the reeve and four men of the rural townships appeared the twelve
legal men of each of the chartered boroughs which owed no suit to the
ordinary county court. In the formation of the jury of presentment for
criminal cases, each hundred sent twelve legal men and each township
four to make report to the justices. Women did not serve on juries.
Compurgation was not used; accused persons were sent directly to the
ordeal. In 1194, twelve knights or legal men from each hundred answer
before any itinerant justice for their hundred in all criminal, civil,
and fiscal cases. All who are bound to attend before the itinerant
justices are, in the forest counties, compelled to attend the forest
courts.
The Royal Court was chiefly concerned with 1) the due regulation and
supervision of the conduct of local government, 2) the ownership and
possession of land held by free tenure ("free tenement" was decided by
justices to be one held for life or one held heritably [a fee]), 3) the
repression of serious crime, and 4) the relations between the lay and
the ecclesiastical courts.
The doctrine of tenure applied universally to the land law formed the
basis for judicial procedure in determining land rights. Those who held
lands "in fee" from the king in turn subinfeudated their land to men of
lesser rank. The concept of tenure covered the earl, the knight
(knight's service), the church (frank-almoin [free alms]), the tenant
who performed labor services, and the tenant who paid a rent (socage).
Other tenures were: serjeanty [providing an implement of war or
performing a nonmilitary office] and burgage. All hold the land of some
lord and ultimately of the King.
Henry was determined to protect lawful seisin of land and issued
assizes giving the Royal Court authority to decide land law issues which
had not been given justice in the county or lord's court. But he did not
ordain that all litigation respecting free tenements, e.g. right of
seisin, should take place in the king's court. Rather he gave protection
to mere possession of land, which could be justified because possession
was intimately associated with the maintenance of the king's peace.
These assizes included issues of novel disseisin [recent ejectment] of a
person's free tenement or of his common of pasture which belonged to his
freehold. Though the petty assize of disseisin only provided a swift
preliminary action to protect possession pending the lengthy and
involved grand assize on the issue of which party had the more just
claim or ultimate right of seisin, the latter action was only
infrequently invoked. The temptation of a strong man to seize a
neighbor's land to reap its profits for a long time until the neighbor
could prove and enforce his right was deterred. Any such claim of recent
dispossession [novel disseisin] had to be made within three years of the
disseisin.
An example of a writ of novel disseisin is: The king to the sheriff,
greeting. N has complained to me that R unjustly and without a judgment
has disseised him of his free tenement in [Houndsditch] since my last
voyage to Normandy. Therefore I command you that, if N gives you
security for prosecuting his claim, you are to see that the chattels
which were taken from the tenement are restored to it, and that the
tenement and the chattels remain in peace until Sunday after Easter. And
meanwhile you are to see that the tenement is viewed by twelve free and
lawful men of the neighborhood, and their names endorsed on this writ.
And summon them by good summoners to be before me or my justices on the
Sunday after Easter, ready to make the recognition. And summon R. or his
bailiff if he himself cannot be found, on the security of gage and
reliable securities to be there then to hear the recognition. And have
there the summoners, and this writ and the names of the sureties.
Witness etc.
Then an assize panel of recognition summoned concurrently with the
defendant and before he had pleaded, viewed the land in question and
answered, from their knowledge, these questions of fact: 1) Was the
plaintiff disseised of the freehold in question, unjustly and without
judgment? 2) Did the defendant commit the disseisin? Testimony of a
warrantor (or an attorney sent by him in his place) or a charter of
warranty served to prove seisin by gift, sale, or exchange. No pleadings
were necessary and the action could proceed and judgment given even
without the presence of the defendant. The justices amerced the losing
party with a monetary penalty. A successful plaintiff might be awarded
damages to compensate for the loss of revenue.
There was also a writ for issues of inheritance of land called "mort
d'ancestor". By law the tenure of a person who died seised of a tenure
in a lord's demesne which was hereditary [seisin of fee] returned to the
lord, who had to give it to the heir of the decedent. If the lord
refused and kept it for himself or gave it to someone else, the heir
could sue in the Royal Court, which used an similar assize panel of
twelve men to decide whether the ancestor was seised as of fee in his
demesne, if the plaintiff was the nearest heir, and whether the ancestor
had died, gone on a crusade but not returned, or had become a monk. Then
it could give possession to the heir. Since about 1150, heiresses
divided the land of their father if there was no son. The widow, of
course, retained her dower rights. As of 1176, the widow held her dower
from the heir instead of from the husband's lord. If the heir was a
minor, the guardian lord would be in actual control of the land. A
national policy was implemented that in the case of the death of a
freeholder, the rights of the family, his will, and his debts were to be
provided for before relief was paid to his lord.
Eventually royal justices acquired authority to decide the ultimate
question of right to land using the grand assize as an alternative to
the traditional procedures which ended in trial by combat. Issues of the
ultimate right of seisin were brought to the Royal Court by a contestant
in a local court who "put himself [or herself] upon the King's grand
assize". The assize consisted of twelve knights from the county or
neighborhood who were elected by four knights of the same county or
neighborhood (selected by the sheriff or the suitors) and who were known
as truthful men and were likely to possess knowledge of the facts,
either from personal seeing or hearing, or from statements which their
fathers had made to them from their personal knowledge. The avenue by
which a person who felt he had not had justice in the manor court on his
claim for certain freehold land appealed to the king was by writ of
right after the manor court's decision or by a writ praecipe during the
manor court's proceeding. An example of a writ praecipe is: "The king to
the sheriff greeting. Command [praecipe] N. to render to R. justly and
without delay one hide of land in a certain vill, which the said R.
complains that the aforesaid N. is withholding from him. If he does not
do so, summon him by good summoners to be before me or my justices on
the day after the octaves of Easter, to show why he has not done so. And
have the summoners and this writ. Witness." When the parties appeared in
court, the claimant states his suit such as: "I claim against this N.
the fee of half a knight and two carucates of land in a certain vill as
my right and my inheritance, of which my father (or grandfather) was
seized in his demesne as of fee in the time of King Henry the First, and
from which he took the profits to the value of five shillings at least,
in grain and hay and other profits; and this I am ready to prove by this
freeman of mine, H., and if any evil befalls him them by this other man
or by this third man, who saw and heard it". Then the defendant chose to
deny the claim word for word with proof by combat or to put himself upon
the grand assize of the king. If he chose trial by combat, the parties
or their champions fought. The party losing, usually by crying craven,
had to pay a fine of 60s. If the grand assize was chosen, the action was
removed to the Royal Court. A writ of grand assize was issued as
follows: "The king to the sheriff, greeting. Summon by good summoners
the following twelve, namely, A. B. ..., to be before me or my justices
at a certain place on a certain day, ready to declare on oath whether N.
or R. has the greater right in one hide of land (or other things
claimed) which the aforesaid R. claims against the aforesaid N., who is
tenant, and in respect of which the aforesaid N., who is tenant, has put
himself upon my assize and has sought a recognition to determine which
of them has the greater right in the things claimed. And meanwhile the
twelve shall view the land (or tenements from which the services are
demanded). And summon by good summoners N., who is tenant, to be there
to hear the recognition. Witness..." The claimant could object to any of
the twelve knights for just cause as determined by the court. Each of
the twelve gave an oath as to whether the plaintiff's or the defendant's
position was correct. This oath was not to speak falsehood nor conceal
truth according to knowledge gained by eyewitness or "by the words of
their fathers and by such words as they are bound to have such
confidence in as if they were their own". If any did not know the truth
of the matter, others were found until twelve agreed [the recognitors]
on which party had the greater right. Perjury was punished by forfeiture
of all one's goods and chattels to the king and at least one year's
imprisonment. If the tenant in court vouched another to warranty, such
as the lord to whom he paid homage, that warrantor would stand in his
place in the proceedings. If the warrantor lost, he would have to give
to his vassal equivalent land in exchange. Burgage tenure was not
usually decided by assize. Also, if the parties were relatives, neither
the assize nor the combat was available to them, but the matter had to
be decided by the law of inheritance.
Itinerant justices could conduct these assizes: petty and grand. In
1198, the hundred is empowered to act on all the business of the
session, including all recognitions and petty assizes ordered by the
king's writ, where the property in dispute was worth no more than 200s.
[ten pounds] a year. The four knights came to be selected by the suitors
of the county court rather than by the sheriff.
This assize procedure extended in time to all other types of civil
actions.
Also removable to the Royal Court from the county courts were issues of
a lord's claim to a person as his villein (combat not available),
service or relief due to a lord, dower rights, a creditor's refusal to
restore a gage [something given as security] to a debtor who offered
payment or a deposit, money due to a lender, a seller, or a person to
whom one had an obligation under a charter, fish or harvest or cattle
taken from lands unjustly occupied, cattle taken from pasture, rights to
enjoy a common, to stop troubling someone's transport, to make
restitution of land wrongfully occupied, to make a lord's bailiff
account to him for the profits of the manor.
The Royal Court also decided disputes regarding baronies, nuisance or
encroachments on royal land or public ways or public waterways, such as
diverting waters from their right course and issues of nuisance by the
making or destroying of a ditch or the destruction of a pond by a mill
to the injury of a person's freehold. Other pleas of the Crown were:
insult to the royal dignity, treason, breaches of safe-conducts, and
injury to the King's servants.
Henry involved the Royal Court in many criminal issues, using the
agencies of the county and hundred courts. To detect crimes, he required
royal justices to routinely ask selected representatives: knights or
other landholders, of every neighborhood if any person were suspected of
any murder, robbery, theft, etc. A traveling royal justice or a sheriff
would then hold an inquest, in which the representatives answered by
oath what people were reputed to have done certain crimes. They made
such inquiries through assizes of presentment, usually composed of
twelve men from each hundred and the four best men of each township.
(These later evolved into grand juries). These assizes were an ancient
institution in many parts of the country. They consisted of
representatives of the hundreds, usually knights, and villages who
testified under oath to all crimes committed in their neighborhood, and
indicted those they suspected as responsible and those harboring them.
What Henry's assize did was to insist upon the adoption of a standard
procedure everywhere systematically. The procedure was made more regular
instead of depending on crime waves. If indicted, the suspected persons
were then sent to the ordeal. There was no trial by compurgation in the
Royal Courts, which was abolished by Henry. If determined guilty, he
forfeited his chattels to the king and his land reverted to his
landlord.
If a man failed at the ordeal, the penalty prescribed by the assize of
Clarendon of 1166 was loss of a foot and abjuring the realm. The assize
of Northhampton of 1176 added loss of the right hand. A man who had a
bad reputation had to abjure the realm even if he had successfully
undergone the ordeal.
As before, a person could also be brought to trial by the accusation of
the person wronged. If the accused still denied the charge after the
accuser testified and the matter investigated by inquiries and
interrogation and then analyzed, trial by combat was held, unless the
accuser was over the age of sixty or maimed, in which case the accused
went to the ordeal.
The ordeal was abolished by the Lateran Council of 1215.
Criminal matters such as killing the king or sedition or betraying the
nation or the army, fraudulent concealment of treasure trove [finding a
hoard of coins which had been buried when danger approached], breach of
the King's peace, homicide, murder (homicide for which there were no
eyewitnesses), burning (a town, house, men, animals or other chattel for
hatred or revenge), robbery, rape and falsifying (e.g. false charters or
false measures or false money) were punishable by death or loss of limb.
All murders were now punished alike because the applicability of the
murdrum couldn't be determined since it was impossible to prove that the
slain man had been English.
Trespass was a serious and forcible breach of the peace onto land that
developed from the criminal law of felony. One found guilty of it could
be fined and imprisoned as well as amerced.
Housebreaking, harboring outlaws, and interference with the royal
perquisites of shipwreck and the beasts of the sea which were stranded
on the coast [such as whales and sturgeon] were also punishable in the
Royal Court.
The Royal Court had grown substantially and was not always presided
over by the King. To avoid court agents from having too much
discretionary power, there was a systematic procedure for bringing cases
to the Royal Court. First, a plaintiff had to apply to the King's
Chancery for a standardized writ into which the cause had to fit. The
plaintiff had to pay a fee and provide a surety that the plea was
brought in good faith. The progress of the suit was controlled at
crucial points by precisely formulated writs to the sheriff, instructing
him for instance, to put the disputed property under royal protection
pending a decision, to impanel an assize and have it view the property
in advance of the justices' arrival, to ascertain a point of fact
material to the plea, or to summon a 'warrantor' to support a claim by
the defendant.
The Royal Court kept a record on its cases on parchment kept rolled up:
its "rolls". The oldest roll of 1194 is almost completely comprised of
land cases.
Anyone could appoint an agent, an "attorney", to appear in court on his
behalf, it being assumed that the principal could not be present and
royal authorization given. A wife could represent her husband. The
principal was then bound by the actions of his agent. Gradually men
appeared who made a business of representing whoever would employ them.
The common law system became committed to the "adversary system" with
the parties struggling judicially against each other.
The Royal Court took jurisdiction over issues of whether certain land
was civil or ecclesiastical [assize utrum], and therefore whether the
land owed services or payment to the Crown or not. It also heard issues
of disturbance of advowson, a complex of rights to income from a church
and to the selection of a parson for the church [assize of darrein
[last] presentment]. Many churches had been built by a lord on his manor
for his villeins. The lord had then appointed a parson and provided for
his upkeep out of the income of the church. In later times, the lord's
chosen parson was formally appointed by the bishop. By the 1100s, many
lords had given their advowsons to abbeys. This procedure used twelve
recognitors selected by the sheriff.
As before, the land of any person who had been outlawed or convicted of
a felony escheated to his lord. His moveable goods and chattels became
the King's. If he was executed, his heirs received nothing because they
were of the same blood as the felon, which was corrupt: "corruption of
the blood". The loss of civil rights and capacities after a sentence of
death for felony or treason, which resulted in forfeiture of property
and corruption of the blood, was called "attainder".
The manor court heard cases arising out of the unfree tenures of the
lord's vassals. It also heard distraint, also called "distress", issues.
Distraint was a landlord's method of forcing a tenant to perform the
services of his fief. To distrain by the fief, a lord first obtained a
judgment of his court. Otherwise, he distrained only by goods and
chattels without judgment of his court. A distraint was merely a
security to secure a person's services, if he agreed he owed them, or
his attendance in court, if he did not agree that he owed them. Law and
custom restricted the type of goods and chattels distrainable, and the
time and manner of distraint. For instance, neither clothes, household
utensils, nor a riding horse was distrainable. The lord could not use
the chattels taken while they were in his custody. If cattle in custody
were not accessible to the tenant, the lord had to feed them at his
expense. The lord, if he were not the King, could not sell the chattel.
This court also determined inheritance and dower issues.
The court of the vill enforced the village ordinances. The hundred
court met twice a month and dealt with the petty crimes of lowly men in
the neighborhood of a few vills. The county and borough courts heard
cases of felonies, accusations against freemen, tort, and debts. The
knights make the county courts work as legal and administrative agencies
of the Crown.
The peace of the sheriff still exists for his county. The King's peace
may still be specially given, but it will cease upon the death of the
King. Law required every good and lawful man to be bound to follow the
hue and cry when it was raised against an offender who was fleeing. The
village reeve was expected to lead the chase to the boundary of the next
jurisdiction, which would then take the responsibility to catch the man.
Admiralty issues (since no assize could be summoned on the high seas),
and tenement issues of land held in frankalmoin ["free alms" for the
poor to relieve the king of this burden], where the tenant was a cleric
were heard in the ecclesiastical courts.
Before Henry's reign, the church, with the pope's backing, had become
more powerful and asserted more authority. Henry tried to return to the
concept of the king being appointed by God and as the head of the church
as well as of the state, as in Henry I's time, and to include the church
in his reform of the legal system, which would make the spiritual
jurisdiction and temporal jurisdiction conform to a common justice.
Toward this end, he published the Constitutions of Clarendon. But the
Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Becket, refused to agree to them,
although as Chancellor he had seen the beneficial effects on the kingdom
of Henry's legal measures. The disagreement came to a head in Henry's
attempt to establish the principle of "one law to all" by having church
clerics punished by the civil courts as before, instead of having
"benefit of clergy" to be tried and punished only in ecclesiastical
courts, even for secular crimes. Clerics composed about one-sixth the
population. The church courts had characteristically punished with
spiritual penalties of a fine or a penance, and at most defrocking. It
could not impose a death penalty, even for murder. When Archbishop
Becket was murdered and became a martyr, "benefit of clergy" became a
standard right, except for offenses in the king's forests. Appeals could
be made to the pope without the king's permission. The king could take a
criminal cleric's chattels, but not his life. However, though
theoretically bishops were elected by the body of bishops with the
approval of the king, as a practical matter, the king chose the bishops
and the abbots. It was a constant matter of dispute, in which the pope
would sometimes involve himself. Selection of archbishops was also a
frequent matter of contention between king and pope.
The church copied the assize procedure developed by the Royal Court to
detect ecclesiastical offenses. Trial was still by compurgation. Bishops
could request the Chancery to imprison an offender who had remained
excommunicant for forty days, until he made amends. Chancery complied as
a matter of course. This went on for six centuries.
The delineations of jurisdiction among these courts were confused and
there was much competing and overlapping of jurisdictions. However, the
court could appoint arbitrators or suggest to the parties to compromise
to avoid the harshness of a decisive judgment which might drive the
losing party to violent self-help.
The office of coroner was established about 1194 to supplement the
judicial investigations of crimes with local officers prior to the
arrival of the itinerant justices. Four knights who were residents of
the county and possessed sufficient land were elected by the county
court for life. Sometimes they had county and royal connections instead.
They received no pay. They determined if sudden deaths were accidental
or due to murder and the cause of death of prisoners. They also held
inquests on other crime such as bodily injury, rape, and prison break.
They attached [arrested] the accused and evaluated and guarded his
chattels until after the trial. If the accused was found guilty, his
possessions went to the King. The coroner sat with the sheriff at every
county court and went with him on his turns. This office and the
forbidding of sheriffs to act as justices in their own counties reduced
the power of the sheriffs. The responsibility of receiving the oath of
the peace is changed from the sheriff to knights, the duty of the
sheriffs being only to receive and keep the criminals taken by these
knights until the justices came to try them.
Also, at this time, the constitution of the grand jury of the county
was defined. First, four knights were to be chosen in the county court.
These were to select on oath two knights from each hundred. These two,
also on oath, are to add by co-optation ten more for the jury of the
hundred.
In London, if one of two witnesses for the defense died while an action
was pending, the survivor, after offering his oath, could proceed to the
grave of the dead witness, and there offer oath as to what the dead man
would have sworn if he had been alive. If a foreigner was bound to make
oath for debt or any misdeed, he could make it with six others, his own
oath being the seventh; but if could not find six supporters, he alone
could make the oath and take it in the six nearest churches.
In London, the method of capital punishment was being confined to
hanging, instead of also being in the form of beheading, burning,
drowning, stoning, or hurling from a rock. In cases of drowning, the
offender was first sewn up in a sack with a snake, a dog, an ape, and a
cock.
Chief Justiciar Ranulph Glanvill wrote a treatise on the writs which
could be brought in the Royal Court and the way they could be used. It
was a practical manual of procedure and of the law administered in the
Royal Court.
There are personal actions such as "debt" for specific chattel or
specific sum of money. This splits into two actions. The detinue award
is for the specific chattel or its value. The action of "replevin" is
available to the tenant to recover personal property which had been
wrongly distrained, usually cattle; the goods are "repledged" pending
action. Also, but rarely used, are "covenant" to protect termors for
leases of land for terms of years, and "trespass": a semi-criminal
action brought by a private party for an offense punishable by death (or
in the 1100s by mutilation) such as murder, rape, robbery, or mayhem,
that is done with force of arms and against the peace of the king. The
use of trespass grew as private actions for felony were supplanted by
public indictment. It occasioned outlawry in default of appearance.
These personal actions were initiated in common law courts by their
respective writs.
These are some of the cases of novel disseisin brought to the king's
court:
Woodbridge v. Bardolf (1194, king's court): Ralf of Woodbridge seeks
before the justices his free tenement in Hebston by the assize of novel
disseisin against Hugh Bardolf. Against which assize Hugh said that he
had that seisin by judgment of his court for the default of the same
Ralf. And the court has recorded the summons and distraints reasonably
made on the same Ralf. And Ralf himself has acknowledged the summons and
distraints and said that he ought not hold anything from him in that
land; rather, it is of another's fee. And because neither he nor anyone
for him has complained to the justices that Hugh unjustly drew him into
a plea concerning a tenement which Ralf himself held of the fee of
another lord, it is considered that Hugh hold in peace. And let Ralf
plead by writ of right if he want and be in mercy for his false claim.
Turroc v. fitz Walter (1194, king's court): The assize came to recognize
if Clement son of Walter unjustly and without judgment disseised Matilda
of Turroc of her free tenement within the assize. Clement comes and says
that he disseised her by judgment of his court. The court is present and
records that she occupied more of her lord's land than she had in dower
by the sheriff and by order of the lord king, so that she was summoned
and distrained to come in to court, and she so responded that she
remained in mercy of 10s. by judgment, so that for that amercement and
for other complaints she made fine with her lord for 1/2 mark [7s.] and
put her land in pledge in his court and did not want to render the 1/2
mark [7s.]. And therefore by judgment of his court he seised it. Matilda
denies all word for word. And the same Clement only produces two men
from his court; and it is considered that it was no court. Judgment: let
Matilda have her seisin and let Clement be in mercy for disseisin.
Fitz Hereward v. Prior of Lecton (1195, king's court): The assize came
to recognize if the prior of Lecton unjustly and without judgment
disseised Reginald son of Hereward and Essolda his wife of his free
tenement in Clapston after the first coronation of the lord king. The
prior says that the assize ought not be taken thereof, because he seised
that land by judgment of his court for default of his service and his
rent, whereof he has his court present, which asserts the same thing. It
is considered that the prior replevy [give back] to them their land and
give them a day in his court concerning the arrears of rents and
services. And let him treat them justly by judgment of his court.
Stanfeld v. Brewes (1199, king's court): The assize comes to recognize
if Simon of Brewes and Luke cleric and Peter of Brewes unjustly and
without a judgment disseised Odo of Stanfeld and Juliana his wife of her
free tenement in Michehey within the assize. Simon says that the assize
ought not be taken thereof, because he took that land into his hand by
judgment of his court -- which he produced and which attests to this --
for default of his service. And it was testified that Odo holds that
land from the same Simon. Simon was ordered to replevy that land to Odo
as well as the chattels and to treat him rightfully in his court.
fitz William v. Amice et al. (1200, king's court): The assize comes to
recognize if Amice who was the wife of Richard earl of Clare and Hugh of
Ceriton, John of Cornherd, William of Wattevill, Alexander son of
Gilbert, Alexander son of Matthew, Bartholomew son of Alexander, Robert
of Cornherd, and Geoffrey son of Leveric unjustly and without judgment
disseised Richard son of William of Sudbury of his free tenement in
Sudbury after the feast of St Michael next before the coronation of the
lord king. The countess says that, when she was separated by papal order
from the earl of Clare her husband by reason of consanguinity, to which
husband the vill of Sudbury had been given with her as marriage portion,
she came to Sudbury and convoked her court and made the same Richard to
be summoned to come to show by what warrant he held her land. He
willingly entered into the plea and vouched the earl of Clare her former
husband to warrant and at the day given him to have [his warrantor] he
did not have him. And thus by consideration of her court she seised her
land and holds it. Which court she produced and which attests this.
Richard comes and denies that he was ever summoned or came into her
court by summons or vouched to warranty or so lost seisin by
consideration of the court of the countess. And this he offers [to
prove]. It is considered that he defend himself 12-handed that he did
not willingly enter into the plea and vouch to warranty. Let him wage
his law [prove by the 12-handed oath, thus, by compurgation]. Pledges of
the law: Hugh son of Hugh, Wido of Sudbury. Day is given them at the
quindene of St. John.
This is the suit of Richard of Sudbury: [there follow the names, but
only of 10 men] against the countess Amice who was the countess of
Clare, concerning whom he had complained concerning a novel disseisin of
his free tenement in Sudbury. She said that by judgment of her court for
default of warranty which he had vouched did she make the [dis]seisin
and thereof did she produce suit. And he denied against her and against
the suit, and law was adjudged. And he comes with his law and makes it
with the abovesaid suit. Therefore it is considered that he recover
thereof his seisin; let the countess be in mercy for unjust disseisin
and also her men, of whom the same Richard has complained. And let the
same countess return to him the damages done thereof by a jury of
law-worthy men of the vicinity. The names of the men of the countess are
in the writ.
A sample of crown pleas in several hundreds or wapentakes [Danish name
for a hundred] from 1201 to 1203 are:
1. Denise, who was wife to Anthony, appeals Nicholas Kam of the death
of Anthony, her husband, for that he wickedly slew her husband; and this
she offers to prove against him under award of the court. And Nicholas
defends all of it. It is considered that Denise's appeal is null, for in
it she does not say that she saw the deed. The jurors being asked, say
that they suspect him of it; the whole county likewise suspects him. Let
him purge himself by water [ordeal] under the Assize. He has waged his
law.
2. William de Ros appeals Ailward Bere, Roger Bald, Robert Merchant,
and Nicholas Parmenter, for that they came to his house and wickedly in
the king's peace took away from him a certain villein of his whom he
kept in chains because he wished to run away, and led him off, and in
robbery carried away his wife's coffer with one mark of silver and other
chattels; and this he offers to prove by his son, Robert de Ros, who saw
it. And Ailward and the others have come and defended the felony,
robbery, and breach of the king's peace, and say that (as the custom is
in Cornwall) Roger of Prideaux, by the sheriff's orders, caused twelve
men to come together and make oath about the said villein, whether he
was the king's villein or William's and it was found that he was the
king's villein, so the said Roger the serjeant demanded that [William]
should surrender him, and he refused, so [Roger] sent to the sheriff,
who then sent to deliver [the villein], who, however, had escaped and
was not to be found, and William makes this appeal because he wishes
to keep the chattels of Thomas [the villein], to wit, two oxen, one cow,
one mare, two pigs, nine sheep, eleven goats. And that this is so
the jurors testify. Judgment: William and Robert in mercy for the false
claim. William's amercement, a half-mark. Robert's amercement, a
half-mark. Pledge for the mark, Warin, Robert's son. Let the king have
his chattels from William. Pledge for the chattels, Richard, Hervey's
son.
3. Serlo of Ennis-Caven appeals Osbert of Dimiliock and Jordan,
Walter's son, for that they in the king's peace wickedly assaulted, beat
and seriously wounded him, so that by reason of the beating three bones
were extracted from his head; and this he offers to prove against him
under the court's award as a man maimed by that mayhem. And it is
testified by the coroners that the wounds when fresh were shown in the
county [court], and that [the bones were broken] as aforesaid. And
Osbert and Jordan come and defend word by word. It is considered that
Osbert do purge himself by ordeal of iron on account of the appeal, for
Serlo betook himself against Osbert in the first instance. And let
Jordan be in custody until it be known how Osbert shall fare. And the
other persons who are appealed as accessories are to be under pledge
until [Osbert's fate] be known.
4. The jurors say that they suspect William Fisman of the death of
Agnes of Chilleu, for the day before he had threatened her body and
goods. And the four neighboring townships being sworn, suspect him of
it. It is considered that he purge himself by water under the Assize.
5. William Burnell and Luke of the Well are suspected of the burglary
at the house of Richard Palmer by the jurors of the hundred, and by the
four neighboring townships, which are sworn. Let them purge themselves
by water under the Assize.
6. Malot Crawe appeals Robert, Godfrey's son, of rape. He comes and
defends. It is testified that he thus raped her and that she was seen
bleeding. By leave of the justices they made concord on the terms of his
espousing her.
7. Walter Wifin was burgled, and of his chattels taken from his house
in the burglary certain boots were found in the house of Lefchild of
Ranam, and the said Walter pursues those boots as his. And Lefchild
said that he bought them in Bodmin market for 2 1/2 pence, but he knows
not from whom. And besides Walter says that eleven ells of linen cloth,
part of the stolen goods, were sold in Lefchild's house, and all the
other proceeds of the burglary, and that Lefchild was the receiver of
the burglars, namely, Robert of Hideford and Alan the Foresters, whom
he [Walter] had appealed of the crime. And Lefchild defends. The jurors
on being asked, say that they suspect Lefchild of the said receipt. So
let him purge himself by water under the Assize.
8. Eadmer of Penwithen appeals Martin, Robert and Thomas of Penwithen,
for that Robert wounded him in the head so that twenty-eight pieces of
bone were extracted, and meanwhile Martin and Thomas held him; and
this he offers to deraign against the said Robert as a man thereby
maimed, under the court's award. And Robert comes and defends all of it
word by word. It is considered that he purge himself by ordeal of
iron. Let the others be in custody until it be known how Robert shall
fare. Afterwards Eadmer came and withdrew himself, and submitted to an
amercement of one mark.Pledges, Reinfrid, Gill's son, and Philip his
brother. Let the other appellees go quit.
9. Reginald le Teinus accused of the receipt and fellowship of Robert
the outlaw comes and defends. The jurors say that they suspect him, and
the four neighboring townships say that they suspect him of it. So
let him purge himself by water under the Assize. And there must be
inquiry as to Richard Revel, who was sheriff when the said Robert
escaped from his custody.
10. Osbert of Reterth appeals Odo Hay, for that he assaulted him as he
was returning from Bodmin market, and in the king's peace and wickedly
struck him on the hand with a stick, and afterwards struck him on the
arm with his sword so that he is maimed; and this he offers to prove as
a maimed man. And Odo defends it all. And that [Osbert] is maimed is
testified by knights sent to see him. Judgment: let [Odo] purge himself
by ordeal of iron because of this appeal.
11. Wulward of Wadebridge was burgled. And Odo Hay, Lawrence Smith,
Osbert Mediciner, and Benet his son, William Miller, Robert of
Frokemere, and Maud his sister, are suspected of the burglary by the
jurors of the hundred and by the four nearest townships, which are
sworn. Let the males purge themselves by water under the Assize, and
Maud by ordeal of iron. Roger Morand fled for that burglary, and he
was living in Bodmin, [which town is] therefore in mercy.
12. Robert, Godfrey's son, appeals Philip, William's son, for that he
came on the land of [Robert's] lord Richard Fortescue, and wickedly and
in the king's peace and in robbery took eight oxen and a mantle, cape,
and sword, and carried them off; and this he offers to prove against him
by his body under award of the court. And Philip comes and defends all
of it word by word. It is considered that the appeal is null, for the
oxen were not Robert's, but Richard's. The jurors being asked, say
that [Philip] did no robbery to [Richard]. So Richard Fortescue is in
mercy for a false appeal, and let Philip be quit.
13. Peter Burel appeals Anketil of Wingely, for that he wickedly in the
king's peace assaulted him in the field where he was pasturing his oxen,
and beat him, and gave him four wounds in the head, and in robbery
took from him an ax and a sword; and this he offers to prove against
him; but he shows no wound. And Anketil defends. And the county records
that [Peter] first appealed Roger of Tregadec of the same robbery and
of the same wounds. Therefore it is considered that the appeal is null,
and let Peter be in mercy for a false appeal. His amercement, a
half-mark; pledge for it, Ralph Giffard.
14. The jurors are in mercy for a silly presentment, for they presented
an appeal which was made in the hundred [court] and which was not
presented in the county [court].
15. Lucy of Morwinstow appeals Robert de Scaccis and Roland of Kellio
and Peter of Lancarf of robbing her of twenty shillings and eight pence,
and of a cloak, price a half-mark. And it is testified by the jurors
that they did not rob her, and that she is a hireling, and that a man
lay with her in a garden, and the boys hooted her, so that she left her
cloak, and the boys took it and pawned it for two gallons of wine. It is
considered that Robert do give her three pence in respect of the wine
and do go quit. And Roland and Peter neither come nor essoin [present an
excuse for nonappearance] themselves. And their pledges were Nicholas
brother of Alfred of Bodmin and Herbert Reeve of Bodmin, who are
therefore in mercy.
16. Osbert Church accused of the death of Roland, son of Reginald of
Kennel, on the appeal of the said Reginald, was detained in gaol and
defends word by word. And Reginald offers proof by the body of a
certain freeman, Arkald, who has his [Reginald's] daughter to wife, who
is to prove in his stead, since he has passed the age of sixty. Osbert
Church defends all of it. The knights of the hundred of Penwith say that
they suspect him of the said death. The knights of kerrier [hundred]
say the same. The knights of Penwith [hundred] say the same. The knights
of Pyder [hundred] say the same. Judgment: let him purge himself by
water, and Reginald is in mercy, for he does not allege sight and
hearing, and because he has withdrawn himself, and put another in his
place, who neither saw nor heard and yet offered to prove it, and so
let both Reginald and Arkald be in mercy. Osbert is purged by the water.
Osbert's pledges: Henry Little, Henry of Penant, Ossulf Black, Roger of
Trevithow, John of Glin, Ralph of Trelew.
17. Roger of Wick [was] appealed of the death of Brictmer by the appeal
of Hawise, Brictmer's wife, and was captured in flight, as say John of
Winielton and Ralph of Mertherin, but the flight is not testified by the
hundred. Kerier [hundred] says the same. Penwith [hundred] says the
same. So is considered that he purge himself by water. He is purged.
Roger's pledges: Ralph of Trelew, Ogier of Kurnick, Richard, Simon's
son, Alfred Malvoisin, Everwin of Lande, John of Kewerion, Warin of
Tiwardeni, Baldwin Tirel, Roger of Trevithow, John of Glin, William
of Dunham, Thomas, Osbert's son.
18. Richard, William's son, appealed Luke, Richard's son, and William,
the servant of Alan Clerk, of robbery and of binding him. The appellees
have not come nor essoined themselves. The county together with the
wapentake says that they were appealed, not of the king's peace, but of
the sheriff's peace, so that the suit was and is in the county [court],
and therefore they were not attached to come before the justices.
Therefore the jurors are in mercy for presenting what they ought not to
have presented.
19. William, Hawise's son, appeals Richard, son of Robert of Somercotes,
for that he came in the king's peace to his house at Somercotes, and
broke his house and robbed him of.[an abrasion] shillings, and a cape
and surcoat, and twenty-five fowls, and twenty shillings worth of corn
[grain], and wounded him in the head with the wound that he shows; and
this he offers to prove against him as the court shall consider etc. And
Richard comes and defends the breach of the king's peace and the
housebreaking, wounding and robbery, but confesses that he came to a
certain house, which William asserts to be his [William's], as to his
[Richard's] own proper house, which escheated into his hand on the death
of Roger his villein, and there he took certain chattels which were his
villein's and which on his villein's death were his [Richard's] own:
to wit, five thraves of oats, thirteen sheaves of barley, and
twenty-five fowls; and he offers the king twenty shillings for an
inquest [to find] whether this be so or no. And William says that
Richard says this unjustly, for the said Roger never had that house nor
dwelt therein, nor were those chattels Roger's, but he [William] held
that house as his own, and the chattels there seized were his. The
jurors being questioned whether Roger did thus hold the house of Richard
in villeinage, say, Yes. Also the coroners and the whole county testify
that [William] never showed any wound until now; and the wound that he
now shows is of recent date. Therefore it is considered that the appeal
is null, and let Richard go quit, and William be in mercy for his false
claim. Pledges for the amercement, Gilbert, Robert's son, and Richard,
Haldeng's son.
20. Astin of Wispington appeals Simon of Edlington, for that he wickedly
and in the king's peace assaulted him in his meadows and put out his
eye, so that he is maimed of that eye; and this he offers to prove etc.
Simon comes and defends all of it word by word. And the coroners and the
county testify that hitherto the appeal has been duly sued, at first by
[Astin's] wife, and then by [Astin himself]. Judgment: let law be made,
and let it be in the election of the appellee whether he or Astin shall
carry the iron. He has chosen that Astin shall carry it. Astin has waged
the law. Simon's pledges, William of Land and his frankpledge and Ralph
of Stures. Astin's pledges, Roger Thorpe, Osgot of Wispington, and
William, Joel's brother. Afterwards came [the appellor and appellee] and
both put themselves in mercy.
21. Gilbert of Willingham appeals Gilbert, Geoffrey's son, for that he
in the king's peace and wickedly set fire to his house and burned it, so
that after the setting fire [the appellor] went forth and raised hue and
cry so that his neighbors and the township of Willingham came thither,
and he showed them [the appellee] in flight and therefore they pursued
him with the cry; and this he offers etc. And the appellee defends all
of it word by word etc. And the neighbors and the township of
Willingham being questioned, say that they never saw him in flight, and
that [the appellor] never showed him to them. Likewise the jurors say
that in their belief he appeals him out of spite rather than for just
cause. Therefore it is considered that the appeal is null, and the
appellee is in mercy for a half-mark [7s.]. Pledge for the amercement,
Robert Walo.
22. William burel appeals Walter Morcock, for that he in the king's
peace so struck and beat Margery, [William's] wife, that he killed the
child in her womb, and besides this beat her and drew blood. And William
of Manby, the beadle, testifies that he saw the wound while fresh and
the blood in the wapentake [court]. And the serjeant of the riding and
the coroners and the twelve knights testify that they never saw wound
nor blood. And so it is considered that the appeal is null, for one part
of the appeal being quashed, it is quashed altogether, and William Burel
is in mercy. Let him be in custody. And William Manby is in mercy for
false testimony. Pledges for William's amercement, Richard of Bilsby,
Elias of Welton.
23. William Marshall fled for the death of Sigerid, Denis' mother,
whereof Denis appeals him; and he was in the Prior of Sixhills'
frankpledge of Sixhills, which is in mercy, and his chattels were two
cows and one bullock. Afterwards came the Prior of Sixhills and
undertook to have William to right before the justices. And he came, and
then Denis, Sigerid's son, came and appealed him of his mother's death.
And it was testified that [Denis] had an elder brother, and that nine
years are past since [Sigerid] died, and that she lived almost a year
after she was wounded, and that Denis never appealed [William] before
now. Therefore it is considered that the appeal is null and that
Denis be in mercy. Pledge for the amercement, his father, Ralph, son of
Denis.
24. Alice, wife of Geoffrey of Carlby, appealed William, Roger's son,
and William his son and Roger his son of the death of William her
brother. And Alice does not prosecute.Therefore let her be in mercy and
let her be arrested. To judgment against the sheriff who did not
imprison the said persons who were attached, whereas they are appealed
of homicide, and to judgment also as to a writ which he ought to
produce.
25. Hawise, Thurstan's daughter, appeals Walter of Croxby and William
Miller of the death of her father and of a wound given to herself. And
she has a husband, Robert Franchenay, who will not stir in the
matter. Therefore it is considered that the appeal is null, for a woman
has no appeal against anyone save for the death of her husband or for
rape. And let Robert be in mercy on his wife's account, for a
half-mark [7s.], and let the appellees be quit. Pledge for Robert's
amercement, Richard Dean of Mareham, who has lay property. Wapentake of
Aswardhurn.
26. Juliana of Creeton appeals Adam of Merle of battery and robbery. And
Adam does not come, but essoins himself as being in the king's service
beyond seas. And for that it is not allowed to anyone appealed of the
king's peace to leave the land without a warrant before he has been
before justices learned in the law, his pledges are in mercy: to wit,
Segar of Arceles, Alan of Renington, and Robert of Searby. Adam himself
is excused from the plea by the essoin that he has cast.
27. Thomas, Leofwin's son, appeals Alan Harvester, for that he in the
king's peace assaulted him as he went on the highway, and with his force
carried him into Alan's house, and struck him on the arm so that he
broke a small bone of his arm, whereby he is maimed, and robbed him of
his cape and his knife, and held him while Eimma, [Alan's] wife, cut off
one of his testicles and Ralph Pilate the other, and when he was thus
dismembered and ill-treated, the said Alan with his force carried him
back into the road, whereupon as soon as might be he raised the cry, and
the neighbors came to the cry, and saw him thus ill-treated, and then at
once he sent to the king's serjeant, who came and found, so [Thomas]
says, the robbed things in Alan's house and then as soon as might be
[Thomas] went to the wapentake [court] and to the county [court] and
showed all this. So inquiry is made of the king's sergeant, who
testifies that he came to Alan's house and there found the knife and the
testicles in a little cup, but found not the cape. Also the whole county
testifies that [Thomas] never before now appealed Alan of breaking a
bone. And so it is considered that the appeal is null, and that [Thomas]
be in mercy, and that the other appellees be quit. Thomas also appeals
Emma, Alan's wife, for that she in the peace aforesaid after he was
placed in her lord's house cut off one of his testicles. He also appeals
Ralph Pilate, for that he cut off the other of his testicles.
28. The twelve jurors presented in their verdict that Austin, Rumfar's
son, appealed Ralph Gille of the death of his brother, so that [Ralph]
fled, and that William, Rumfar's son, appealed Benet Carter of the same
death, and Ranulf, Ralph's son, appealed Hugh of Hyckham of the same
death and Baldwin of Elsham and Ralph Hoth and Colegrim as accessories.
And the coroners by their rolls testify this also. But the county
records otherwise, namely, that the said Ralph Gille, Benet, Hugh,
Baldwin, Ralph [Hoth] and Gocegrim were all appealed by Ranulf, Ralph's
son, and by no one else, so that four of them, to wit, Ralph Gille,
Hugh, Benet and Colegrim, were outlawed at the suit of the said Ranulf,
and that the said persons were not appealed by anyone other than the
said Ranulf. And for that the county could not [be heard to] contradict
the coroners and the said jurors who have said their say upon oath, it
is considered etc. Thereupon the county forestalled the judgment and
before judgment was pronounced made fine with 200 pounds [4,000s.] [to
be collected throughout the county], franchises excepted.
29. Hereward, William's son, appeals Walter, Hugh's son, for that he in
the king's peace assaulted him and wounded him in the arm with an iron
fork and gave him another wound in the head; and this he offers to prove
by his body as the court shall consider. And Walter defends all of it by
his body. And it is testified by the coroners and by the whole county
that Hereward showed his wounds at the proper time and has made
sufficient suit. Therefore it is considered that there be battle.
Walter's pledges, Peter of Gosberton church, and Richard Hereward's son.
Hereward's pledges, William his father and the Prior of Pinchbeck. Let
them come armed in the quindene of St. Swithin at Leicester.
30. William Gering appeals William Cook of imprisonment, to wit, that he
with his force in the king's peace and wickedly, while [Gering] was in
the service of his lord Guy at the forge, took him and led him to
Freiston to the house of William Longchamp, and there kept him in prison
so that his lord could not get him replevied; and this he offers to
prove as the court shall consider. And William Cook comes and defends
the felony and imprisonment, but confesses that whereas he had sent his
lord's servants to seize the beasts of the said Guy on account of a
certain amercement which [Guy] had incurred in the court of [Cook's]
lord [Longchamp], and which though often summoned he had refused to pay,
[Gering] came and rescued the beasts that had been seized and wounded a
servant of [Cook's] lord, who had been sent to seize them, whereupon
[Cook] arrested [Gering] until he should find pledges to stand to right
touching both the wounding and the rescue, and when [Gering's] lord
[Guy] came for him, [Cook] offered to let him be replevied, but this
[Guy] refused, and afterwards he repeated the offer before the king's
serjeant, but even then it was refused, and then [Cook] let [Gering] go
without taking security. And Guy says that he puts himself upon the
wapentake, whether the imprisonment took place in manner aforesaid, and
whether he [Guy] at once showed the matter to the king's serjeant, or
no. And William Cook does the same. And the wapentake says that the
alleged [imprisonment] took place in Lent, and Guy did not show the
matter to the wapentake until a fortnight before St. Botulph's day. And
the county together with the coroners says that they never heard the
suit in their court. Therefore it is considered that the appeal is null,
and Guy is in mercy. And let William and those who are appealed as
accessories go quit.
31. The jurors say that Andrew, sureman's son, appealed Peter, Leofwin's
son, Thomas Squire and William Oildene of robbery. And he does not
prosecute. So he and Stephen Despine and Baldwin Long are in mercy, and
the appellees go without day. Afterwards comes Andrew and says that [the
appellees] imprisoned him by the order of William Malesoures in the said
William's house, so that he sent to the sheriff that the sheriff might
deliver him, whereupon the sheriff sent his serjeant and others thither,
who on coming there found him imprisoned and delivered him and he
produces witnesses, to wit, Nicholas Portehors and Hugh, Thurkill's son,
who testify that they found him imprisoned, and he vouches the sheriff
to warrant this. And the sheriff, on being questioned, says that in
truth he sent thither four lawful men with the serjeant on a complaint
made by Nicholas Portehors on Andrew's behalf. And those who were sent
thither by the sheriff testify that they found him at liberty and
disporting himself in William's house. Therefore it is considered that
the appeal is null [and Andrew is in mercy] for his false complaint and
Nicholas Portehors and Hugh, Thurkill's son, are in mercy for false
testimony. Andrew and Hugh are to be in custody until they have found
pledges [for their amercement].
32. The jurors say that Geoffrey Cardun has levied new customs other
than he ought and other than have been usual, to wit, in taking from
every cart crossing his land at Winwick with eels, one stick of eels,
and from a cart with greenfish, one greenfish, and from a cart with
salmon, half a salmon, and from a cart with herrings, five herrings,
whereas he ought to take no custom for anything save for salt crossing
his land, to wit, for a cartload, one bole of salt, and in that case the
salter ought to have a loaf in return for the salt, and also if the
salter's cart breaks down, the salter's horses ought to have pasture on
Geoffrey's land without challenge while he repairs his cart. And
Geoffrey comes and confesses that he takes the said customs, and ought
to take them, for he and his ancestors have taken them from the conquest
of England, and he puts himself on the grand assize of our lord the
king, and craves that a recognition be made whether he ought to take
those customs or no. And afterwards he offers the king twenty shillings
that this action may be put before Sir Geoffrey FitzPeter [the
Justiciar]. Pledge for the twenty shillings, Richard of Hinton.
33. The jurors say that Hugh, son of Walter Priest, was outlawed for the
death of Roger Rombald at the suit of Robert Rombald, and afterwards
returned under the [protection of the] king's writ, and afterwards was
outlawed for the same death on the appeal of Geoffrey, Thurstan's son.
The county therefore is asked by what warrant they outlawed the same man
twice for the same death, and says that of a truth in King Richard's
time the said Hugh was outlawed at the suit of one Lucy, sister of
the said Roger, so that for a long time afterwards he hid himself; and
at length he came into the county [court] and produced letters of Sir
Geoffrey FitzPeter in the form following: "G. FitzPeter etc. to the
sheriff of Northamptonshire, greeting, Know thou that the king hath
pardoned to Hugh, son of the priest of Grafton, his flight and the
outlawry adjudged to him for the death of a certain slain man, and hath
signified to us by his letters that we be aiding to the said Hugh in
reestablishing the peace between him and the kinsfolk of the slain;
wherefore we command thee that thou be aiding to the said Hugh in making
the peace aforesaid, and do us to wit by thy letters under seal what
thou hast done in this matter, since we are bound to signify the same to
the king. In witness etc. by the king's writ from beyond seas." And the
said letters being read in full county [court] the county told the said
Hugh that he must find pledges that he would be in the king's peace, and
he went away to find pledges, and afterwards did not appear. But the
kinsfolk of the slain, having heard that Hugh had returned after his
outlawry, came to the next county [court] and Robert Rombald produced
Geoffrey, Thurstan's son, who said that if he saw the said Hugh he would
sue against him the death of the said Roger, who was [his kinsman]. And
the county showed him how Hugh had brought the Justiciar's letters
pardoning him the flight and outlawry, and that he was to find pledges
to stand to the king's peace, but had not returned. Whereupon the king's
serjeant was ordered to seek Hugh and bring him to a later county
[court]. And at a later county [court] Geoffrey offered himself against
Hugh, and Hugh did not appear; whereupon the king's serjeant being
questioned said that he had not found him, and the county advised
[Geoffrey] to come to another county [court], because if in the meantime
Hugh could be found, he would be brought to the county [court]. Then at
the third county [court] the said Geoffrey offered himself, and it was
testified by the serjeant that Hugh had not yet been found, wherefore
the county said that as Hugh would not appear to the king's peace, he
must bear the wolf's head as he had done before. To judgment against the
coroners and the twelve jurors.
34. Robert of Herthale, arrested for having in self-defense slain Roger,
Swein's son, who had slain five men in a fit of madness, is committed to
the sheriff that he may be in custody as before, for the king must be
consulted about this matter. The chattels of him who killed the five men
were worth two shillings, for which Richard [the sheriff must account].
35. Sibil, Engelard's daughter, appeals Ralph of Sandford, for that he
in the king's peace and wickedly and in breach of the peace given to her
in the county [court] by the sheriff, came to the house of her lord [or
husband] and broke her chests and carried off the chattels, and so
treated her that he slew the child that was living in her womb.
Afterwards she came and said that they had made a compromise and she
withdrew herself, for they have agreed that Ralph shall satisfy her for
the loss of the chattels upon the view and by the appraisement of lawful
men; and Ralph has assented to this.
36. William Pipin slew William [or John] Guldeneman and fled. He had no
chattels. Let him be exacted. And Hugh Fuller was taken for this death
and put in gaol because the said John [or William] was slain in his
house. And Hugh gives to the king his chattels which were taken with
him, that he may have an inquest [to find] whether he be guilty thereof
or no. The jurors say that he is not guilty, and so let him go quit
thereof. And William Picot is in mercy for having sold Hugh's chattels
before he was convicted of the death, and for having sold them at an
undervalue, for he sold them, as he says, for three shillings, and the
jurors say that they were worth seventeen shillings, for which
William Picot and those who were his fellows ought to account. And
William says that the chattels were sold by the advice of his fellows,
and his fellows deny this.
37. Robert White slew Walter of Hugeford and fled. The jurors say that
he was outlawed for the death, and the county and the coroners say that
he was not outlawed, because no one sued against him. And because the
jurors cannot [be heard to] contradict the county and the coroners,
therefore they are in mercy, and let Robert be exacted. His chattels
were [worth] fifteen shillings, for which R. of Ambresleigh, the
sheriff, must account.
38. Elyas of Lilleshall fled to church for the death of a woman slain at
Lilleshall. He had no chattels. He confessed the death and abjured the
realm. Alice Crithecreche and Eva of Lilleshall and Aldith and Mabel,
Geoffrey and Robert of Lilleshall, and Peter of Hopton were taken for
the death of the said woman slain at Lilleshall. And Alice, at once
after the death, fled to the county of Stafford with some of the
chattels of the slain, so it is said, and was taken in that county and
brought back into Shropshire and there, as the king's serjeant and many
knights and lawful men of the county testify, in their presence she
said, that at night she heard a tumult in the house of the slain;
whereupon she came to the door and looked in, and saw through the middle
of the doorway four men in the house, and they came out and caught
her, and threatened to kill her unless she would conceal them; and so
they gave her the pelf [booty] that she had. And when she came before
the [itinerant] justices she denied all this. Therefore she has deserved
death, but by way of dispensation [the sentence is mitigated, so] let
her eyes be torn out. The others are not suspected, therefore let them
be under pledges.
39. William, John's son, appeals Walter, son of Ralph Hose, for that
when [William's] lord Guy of Shawbury and [William] had come from
attending the pleas of our lord the king in the county court of
Shropshire, there came five men in the forest of Haughmond and there in
the king's peace and wickedly assaulted his lord Guy, and so that
[Walter], who was the fourth among those five, wounded Guy and was
accessory with the others in force as aid so that Guy his lord was
killed, and after having wounded his lord he [Walter] came to William
and held him so that he could not aid his lord; and this he offers to
deraign [determine by personal combat] against him as the court
shall consider. And Walter comes and defends all of it word by word as
the court etc. It is considered that there be battle [combat] between
them. The battle [combat] is waged. Day is given them, at Oxford on the
morrow of the octave of All Saints, and then let them come armed. And
Ralph [Walter's father] gives the king a half-mark that he may have the
custody of his son, [for which sum] the pledges are John of Knighton and
Reiner of Acton, and he is committed to the custody of Ralph Hose,
Reiner of Acton, John of Knighton, Reginald of Leigh, Adam of
Mcuklestone, William of Bromley, Stephen of Ackleton, Eudo of Mark.
40. Robert, son of Robert of Ferrers, appeals Ranulf of Tattesworth, for
that he came into Robert's garden and wickedly and in the king's peace
assaulted Robert's man Roger, and beat and wounded him so that his life
was despaired of, and robbed him [Roger?] of a cloak, a sword, a bow and
arrows: and the said Roger offers to prove this by his body as the court
shall consider. And Ranulf comes and defends the whole of it, word by
word, and offers the king one mark of silver that he may have an inquest
of lawful knights [to say] whether he be guilty thereof or no. Also he
says that Roger has never until now appealed him of this, and prays that
this be allowed in his favor. [Ranulf's] offering is accepted. The
jurors say that in truth there was some quarrel between Robert's
gardener, Osmund, and some footboys, but Ranulf was not there, and they
do not suspect him of any robbery or any tort done to Robert or to
Osmund. Also the county records that the knights who on Robert's
complaint were sent to view Osmund's wounds found him unwounded and
found no one else complaining, and that Robert in his plaint spoke of
Osmund his gardener and never of Roger, and that Roger never came to the
county [court] to make this appeal. Therefore it is considered that
Ranulf be quit, and Robert and Roger in mercy. Pledge for Ranulf's mark,
Philip of Draycot. Pledges for the amercement, Henry of Hungerhill, and
Richard Meverell. Pledge for Roger, the said Robert.
41. One L. is suspected by the jurors of being present when Reinild of
Hemchurch was slain, and of having aided and counseled her death. And
she defends. Therefore let her purge herself by the ordeal of iron; but
as she is ill, the ordeal is respited until her recovery.
42. Andrew of Burwarton is suspected by the jurors of the death of one
Hervey, for that he concealed himself because of that death. Therefore
let him purge himself by ordeal of water.
43. Godith, formerly wife of Walter Palmer, appeals Richard of Stonall,
for that he in the king's peace wickedly and by night with his force
came to her house and bound her and her husband, and afterwards slew the
said Walter her husband; and this she offers to prove against him as
wife of the slain as the court shall consider. And he defends all of it.
And the jurors and the whole neighborhood suspect him of that death. And
so it is considered that he purge himself by ordeal of iron for he has
elected to bear the iron.
44. The jurors of Oflow hundred say that the bailiffs of Tamworth have
unjustly taken toll from the knights of Staffordshire, to wit, for their
oxen and other beasts. And the men of Lichfield complain that likewise
they have taken toll from them, more especially in Staffordshire. And
the bailiffs deny that they take anything from the knights in
Staffordshire. And for that they cannot [be heard to] contradict the
jurors, the bailiffs are in mercy. As to the men of Lichfield, [the
Tamworth bailiffs] say that they ought to have, and in King Henry's time
had, toll of them, more especially of the merchants, as well in
Staffordshire as in Warwickshire. And the burgesses of Lichfield offer
the king a half-mark for an inquest by the county. And the county
records that in King Henry's time the men of Lichfield did not pay
toll in Staffordshire. Therefore the bailiffs are in mercy.
- - - Chapter 7 - - -
- The Times 1215-1272 -
Baron landholders' semi-fortified stone manor houses were improved and
extended. Many had been licensed to be embattled or crenelated [wall
indented at top with shooting spaces]. They were usually quadrangular
around a central courtyard. The central and largest room was the hall,
where people ate and slept. The hall had a hearth for fire in the center
of the room if the hall was one story high. Sometimes the lord had a
room with a sleeping loft above it. If the hall was more than one story
high, it had a fireplace at one end so that the smoke could go up and
out the roof. Other rooms each had a fireplace. There were small windows
around the top story and on the inside of the courtyard. They were
usually covered with oiled paper. Windows of large houses were of opaque
glass supplied by a glassmaking craft. The glass was thick, uneven,
distorted, and greenish in color. The walls were plastered. The floor
was wood with some carpets. Roofs were timbered with horizontal beams.
Many roofs had tiles supplied by the tile craft, which baked the tiles
in kilns or over an open fire. Because of the hazard of fire, the
kitchen was often a separate building, with a covered way connecting it
to the hall. It had one or two open fires in fireplaces, and ovens.
Sometimes there was a separate room for a dairy.
Furniture included heavy wood armchairs for the lord and lady, stools,
benches, trestle tables, chests, and cupboards. Outside was an enclosed
garden with cabbages, peas, beans, beetroots, onions, garlic, leeks,
lettuce, watercress, hops, herbs, nut trees for oil, some flowers, and a
fish pond and well. Bees were kept for their honey.
Nobles, doctors, and attorneys wore tunics to the ankle and an
over-tunic almost as long, which was lined with fur and had long
sleeves. A hood was attached to it. A man's hair was short and curled,
with bangs on the forehead. The tunic of merchants and middle class men
reached to the calf. The laborer wore a tunic that reached to the knee,
cloth stockings, and shoes of heavy felt, cloth, or perhaps leather.
Ladies wore a full-length tunic with moderate fullness in the skirt, and
a low belt, and tight sleeves. A lady's hair was concealed by a round
hat tied on the top of her head. Over her tunic, she wore a cloak. Monks
and nuns wore long black robes with hoods.
The barons now managed and developed their estates to be as productive
as possible, often using the successful management techniques of church
estates. They kept records of their fields, tenants, and services owed
by each tenant, and duties of the manor officers, such as supervision of
the ploughing and harrowing. Annually, the manor's profit or loss for
the year was calculated. Most manors were self-supporting except that
iron for tools and horseshoes and salt for curing usually had to be
obtained elsewhere. Wine, tar, canvas and millstones were imports from
other countries and bought at fairs, as was fish, furs, spices, and
silks. Sheep were kept in such large numbers that they were susceptible
to a new disease "scab". Every great household was bound to give alms.
As feudalism became less military and less rough, daughters were
permitted to inherit fiefs. It became customary to divide the property
of a deceased man without a son equally among his daughters. Lords were
receiving homage from all the daughters and thereby acquiring marriage
rights over all of them. Also, if a son predeceased his father but left
a child, that child would succeed to the father's land in the same way
that the deceased would have.
Manors averaged about ten miles distance between each other, the land
in between being unused and called "wasteland". Statutes after a period
of civil war proscribing the retaking of land discouraged the enclosure
of waste land.
Husbandry land held in villeinage was inherited according to the custom
of its manor as administered in the lords manorial court. (The royal
courts had jurisdiction of land held in socage. i.e. free tenure.) The
heir could be the oldest son, the youngest son, a son chosen by the
father to succeed him, or divided among the sons. If there were no sons,
one of the daughters inherited the land or it was divided among all the
daughters. If there were no heirs, the land went back to the lord. Land
could not be sold or alienated so that the heir did not inherit, without
the consent of the lord. Manorial custom also determined the manner of
descent of goods and chattels. A common custom for a villein was that
his best beast go to his lord as heriot and his second best beast go to
the parish priest as mortuary. Then, after debts and burial expenses had
been paid, a number of tools and utensils needed for husbandry and
housekeeping went with the land to its heir. These were the
heirlooms, loom in old English meaning tool. This usually
included, for a holding of more than 5 acres, a coulter, a plowshare, a
yoke, a cart, an axe, a cauldron, a pan, a dish, and a cask. Finally,
the remaining goods and chattels went one-third to the widow, one-third
to his children except for the heir to the land, and one-third according
to the deceaseds last will and testament. A son might take his share
before the death of his father in order to go out into the world and
seek his fortune, for instance in the church or military, upon which
event the father had to pay his lord a fine for his son permanently
leaving the manor. Many country boys became bound apprentices in nearby
boroughs or farm laborers. Others married heiresses of land. By the
custom of curtesy of the nation, he held this land for his
lifetime, even if his wife predeceased him. If a man remained on the
family land, he had no right to marry. Often, there were agreements over
land holdings that were recorded in the manor books. For instance, it
was common for a father or mother to hand his or her holding over to the
heir in exchange for sustenance in old age. An heir usually did not
marry until after receiving his land. Manorial custom determined whether
a fathers consent was necessary for a son or daughter to marry, the
nature of any agreement (trothplight) between the families as to
lands and goods brought to the marriage, the amount of her marriage
portion, and the sons endowment (her dower) of lands and goods
promised to the bride at the church door that would provide for her
support after his death. If dower was not specified, it was understood
to be one-third of all lands and tenements. At the next hallmote, if
manorial custom required it, the son would pay a fine to his lord for
entry onto the land and for license to marry. From 1246, priests taught
that betrothal and consummation constituted irrevocable marriage.
Some villeins bought out their servitude by paying a substitute to do
his service or paying his lord a firm (from hence, the words farm and
farmer) sum to hire an agricultural laborer in his place. This made it
possible for a farm laborer to till one continuous piece of land instead
of scattered strips.
Looms were now mounted with two bars. Women did embroidery. The
clothing of most people was made at home, even sandals. The village
tanner and bootmaker supplied long pieces of soft leather for more
protection than sandals. Tanning mills replaced some hand labor. The
professional hunter of wolves, lynx, or otters supplied head coverings.
Every village had a smith and possibly a carpenter for construction of
ploughs and carts. The smith obtained coal from coal fields for heating
the metal he worked. Horse harnesses were homemade from hair and hemp.
There were watermills and/or windmills for grinding grain, for malt,
and/or for fulling cloth. The position of the sails of the windmills was
changed by manual labor when the direction of the wind changed.
Most men wore a knife because of the prevalence of murder and robbery.
It was an every day event for a murderer to flee to sanctuary in a
church, which would then be surrounded by his pursuers while the coroner
was summoned. Usually, the fugitive would confess, pay compensation, and
agree to leave the nation permanently.
County courts were the center of decision-making regarding judicial,
fiscal, military, and general administrative matters. The writs for the
conservation of the peace, directing the taking of the oath, the pursuit
of malefactors, and the observance of watch and ward, were proclaimed in
full county court; attachments were made in obedience to them in the
county court. The county offices were: sheriff, coroner, escheator, and
constable or bailiff. There were 28 sheriffs for 38 counties. The
sheriff was usually a substantial landholder and a knight who had been
prominent in the local court. He usually had a castle in which he kept
persons he arrested. He no longer bought his office and collected
certain rents for himself, but was a salaried political appointee of the
King. He employed a deputy or undersheriff, who was an attorney, and
clerks. If there was civil commotion or contempt of royal authority, the
sheriff of the county had power to raise a posse of armed men to restore
order. The coroner watched the interests of the crown and had duties in
sudden deaths, treasure trove, and shipwreck cases. There were about
five coroners per county and they served for a number of years. They
were chosen by the county court. The escheator was appointed annually by
the Treasurer to administer the Crown's rights in feudal land, which
until 1242 had been the responsibility of the sheriff. He was usually
chosen from the local gentry. The constable and bailiff operated at the
hundred and parish [the geographical area of a churchs members] level
to detect crime and keep the peace. They assisted sheriffs and Justices
of the Peace, organized watches for criminals and vagrants at the
village level, and raised the hue and cry along the highway and from
village to village in pursuit of offenders who had committed felony or
robbery. The constables also kept the royal castles; they recruited,
fed, and commanded the castle garrison.
County knights served sheriffs, coroners, escheators, and justices on
special royal commissions of gaol-delivery. They sat in judgment in the
county court at its monthly meetings, attended the two great annual
assemblies when the lord, knights and freeholders of the county gathered
to meet the itinerant justices who came escorted by the sheriff and
weapon bearers. They served on the committees which reviewed the
presentments of the hundreds and village, and carried the record of the
county court to Westminster when summoned there by the kings' justices.
They served on the grand assize. As elected representatives of their
fellow knights of the county, they assessed any taxes due from each
hundred. Election might be by nomination by the sheriff from a fixed
list, by choice, or in rotation. They investigated and reported on local
abuses and grievances. The King's justices and council often called on
them to answer questions put to them on oath. In the villages, humbler
freeholders and sokemen were elected to assess the village taxes. Six
villeins answered for the village's offenses before the royal itinerant
justice.
Reading and writing in the English language was taught. The use of
English ceased to be a mark of vulgarity. In 1258 the first governmental
document was issued in English as well as in Latin and French, and later
Latin started falling into disuse. Boys of noblemen were taught reading,
writing, Latin, a musical instrument, athletics, riding, and gentlemanly
conduct. Girls were taught reading, writing, music, dancing, and perhaps
household nursing and first aid, spinning, embroidery, and gardening.
Girls of high social position were also taught riding and hawking.
Grammar schools taught, in Latin, grammar, dialectic (ascertaining word
meaning by looking at its origin, its sound (e.g. soft or harsh), its
power (e.g. robust and strong sound), its inflection, and its order; and
avoiding obscurity and ambiguity in statements), and rhetoric [art of
public speaking, oratory, and debate]. The teacher possessed the only
complete copy of the Latin text, and most of the school work was done
orally. Though books were few and precious, the students read several
Latin works. Girls and boys of high social position usually had private
teachers for grammar school, while boys of lower classes were sponsored
at grammar schools such as those at Oxford. Discipline was maintained by
the birch or rod.
There was no examination for admission as an undergraduate to Oxford,
but a knowledge of Latin with some skill in speaking Latin was a
necessary background. The students came from all backgrounds. Some had
their expenses paid by their parents, while others had the patronage of
a churchman, a religious house, or a wealthy layman. They studied the
"liberal arts", which derived its name from "liber" or free, because
they were for the free men of Rome rather than for the economic purposes
of those who had to work. The works of Greek authors such as Aristotle
were now available; the European monk Thomas Aquinas had edited
Aristotle's works to reconcile them to church doctrine. He opined that
man's intellectual use of reason did not conflict with the religious
belief that revelation came only from God, because reason was given to
man by God. He shared Aristotle's belief that the earth was a sphere,
and that the celestial bodies moved around it in perfect circles. Latin
learning had already been absorbed without detriment to the church.
A student at Oxford would become a master after graduating from a seven
year course of study of the seven liberal arts: [grammar, rhetoric (the
source of law), Aristotelian logic (which differentiates the true from
the false), arithmetic, including fractions and ratios, (the foundation
of order), geometry, including methods of finding the length of lines,
the area of surfaces, and the volume of solids, (the science of
measurement), astronomy (the most noble of the sciences because it is
connected with divinity and theology), music and also Aristotle's
philosophy of physics, metaphysics, and ethics; and then lecturing and
leading disputations for two years. He also had to write a thesis on
some chosen subject and defend it against the faculty. A Master's degree
gave one the right to teach. Further study for four years led to a
doctorate in one of the professions: theology and canon or civil law.
There were about 1,500 students in Oxford. They drank, played dice,
quarreled a lot and begged at street corners. There were mob fights
between students from the north and students from the south and between
students and townsmen. But when the mayor of Oxford hanged two students
accused of being involved in the killing of a townswoman, many masters
and students left for Cambridge. In 1214, a charter created the office
of Chancellor of the university at Oxford. He was responsible for law
and order and, through his court, could fine, imprison, and
excommunicate offenders and expel undesirables such as prostitutes from
the town. He had authority over all crimes involving scholars, except
murder and mayhem. The Chancellor summoned and presided over meetings of
the masters and came to be elected by indirect vote by the masters who
had schools, usually no more than a room or hall with a central hearth
which was hired for lectures. Students paid for meals there. Corners of
the room were often partitioned off for private study. At night, some
students slept on the straw on the floor. Six hours of sleep were
considered sufficient. In 1231, the king ordered that every student must
have his name on the roll of a master and the masters had to keep a list
of those attending his lectures.
In 1221 the friars established their chief school at Oxford. They were
bound by oaths of poverty, obedience, and chastity, but were not
confined within the walls of a monastery. They walked barefoot from
place to lace preaching. They begged for their food and lodgings. They
replaced monks, who had become self-indulgent, as the most vital
spiritual force among the people.
The first college was founded in 1264 by Walter de Merton, former
Chancellor to the King, at Oxford. A college had the living arrangements
of a Hall, with the addition of monastic-type rules. A warden and about
30 scholars lived and ate meals together in the college buildings.
Merton College's founding documents provided that:
[1] "The house shall be called the House of the Scholars of Merton, and
it shall be the residence of the Scholars forever.
[2] There shall be a constant succession of scholars devoted to the
study of letters, who shall be bound to employ themselves in the study
of Arts or Philosophy, the Canons or Theology. Let there also be one
member of the collegiate body, who shall be a grammarian, and must
entirely devote himself to the study of grammar; let him have the care
of the students in grammar, and to him also let the more advanced have
recourse without a blush, when doubts arise in their faculty.
[3] There is to be one person in every chamber, where Scholars are
resident, of more mature age than the others, who is to make his report
of their morals and advancement in learning to the Warden
[4] The Scholars who are appointed to the duty of studying in the House
are to have a common table, and a dress as nearly alike as possible.
[5] The members of the College must all be present together, as far as
their leisure serves, at the canonical hours and celebration of masses
on holy and other days.
[6] The Scholars are to have a reader at meals, and in eating together
they are to observe silence, and to listen to what is read. In their
chambers, they must abstain from noise and interruption of their
fellows; and when they speak they must use the Latin language.
[7] A Scrutiny shall be held in the House by the Warden and the Seniors,
and all the Scholars there present, three times a year; a diligent
inquiry is to be instituted into the life, conduct, morals, and progress
in learning, of each and all; and what requires correction then is to be
corrected, and excesses are to be visited with condign punishment. . ."
Educated men (and those of the 1200s through the 1500s), believed that
the earth was the center of the universe and that it was surrounded by a
giant spherical dome on which the stars were placed. The sun and moon
and planets were each on a sphere around the earth that was responsible
for their movements. The origin of the word "planet" meant "wanderer"
because the motion of the planets changed in direction and speed.
Astrology explained how the position of the stars and planets influenced
man and other earthly things. For instance, the position of the stars at
a person's birth determined his character. The angle and therefore
potency of the sun's rays influenced climate, temperament, and changes
of mortal life such as disease and revolutions. Unusual events such as
the proximity of two planets, a comet, an eclipse, a meteor, or a nova
were of great significance. A star often was thought to presage the
birth of a great man or a hero. There was a propitious time to have a
marriage, go on a journey, make war, and take herbal medicine or be bled
by leeches, the latter of which was accompanied by religious ceremony.
Cure was by God, with medical practitioners only relieving suffering.
But there were medical interventions such as pressure and binding were
applied to bleeding. Arrow and sword wounds to the skin or to any
protruding intestine were washed with warm water and sewn up with needle
and silk thread. Ribs were spread apart by a wedge to remove arrow
heads. Fractured bones were splinted or encased in plaster. Dislocations
were remedied. Hernias were trussed. Bladder stones blocking urination
were pushed back into the bladder or removed through an artificial
opening in the bladder. Surgery was performed by butchers, blacksmiths,
and barbers.
Roger Bacon, an Oxford master, began the science of physics. He read
Arab writers on the source of light rays being from the object seen, the
nature of refraction and reflection of light, and the properties of
lenses. He studied the radiation of light and heat. He studied angles of
reflection in plane, spherical, cylindrical, and conical mirrors, in
both their concave and convex aspects. He did experiments in refraction
in different media, e.g. air, water, and glass, and knew that the human
cornea refracted light, and that the human eye lens was doubly convex.
He comprehended the magnifying power of convex lenses and conceptualized
the combination of lenses which would increase the power of vision by
magnification. He realized that rays of light pass so much faster than
those of sound or smell that the time is imperceptible to humans. He
knew that rays of heat and sound penetrate all matter without our
awareness and that opaque bodies offered resistance to passage of light
rays. He knew the power of parabolic concave mirrors to cause parallel
rays to converge after reflection to a focus and knew that a mirror
could be produced that would start a fire at a fixed distance. These
insights made it possible for jewelers and weavers to use lenses to view
their work instead of glass globes full of water, which distorted all
but the center of the image: "spherical aberration". The lens, whose
opposite surfaces were sections of spheres, took the place of the
central parts of the globe over the image.
He knew about magnetic poles attracting, if different and repelling, if
the same, and the relation of magnets' poles to those of the heavens and
earth. He calculated the circumference of the world and the latitude and
longitude of terrestrial positions. He foresaw sailing around the world.
He studied the planetary motions and astronomical tables to forecast
future events. He did calculations on days in a month and days in a year
which later contributed to the legal definition of a leap year. His
explanation of a rainbow as a result of natural laws was contrary to
theological opinion that a rainbow was placed in the heavens to assure
mankind that there was not to be another universal deluge.
Bacon began the science of chemistry when he took the empirical
knowledge as to a few metals and their oxides and some of the principal
alkalis, acids, and salts to the abstract level of metals as compound
bodies the elements of which might be separated and recomposed and
changed among the states of solid, liquid, and gas. When he studied
man's physical nature, health, and disease, he opined that the
usefulness of a talisman was not to bring about a physical change, but
to bring the patient into a frame of mind more conducive to physical
healing. He urged that there be experiments in chemistry to develop
medicinal drugs.
He studied different kinds of plants and the differences between arable
land, forest land, pasture land, and garden land.
Bacon was an extreme proponent of the inductive method of finding
truths, e.g. by categorizing all available facts on a certain subject to
ascertain the natural laws governing it. His contribution to the
development of science was abstracting the method of experiment from the
concrete problem to see its bearing and importance as a universal method
of research. He advocated changing education to include studies of the
natural world using observation, exact measurement, and experiments.
The making and selling of goods diverged e.g. as the cloth merchant
severed from the tailor and the leather merchant severed from the
butcher. These craftsmen formed themselves into guilds, which sought
charters to require all craftsmen to belong to the guild of their craft,
to have legal control of the craft work, and be able to expel any
craftsman for disobedience. These guilds were composed of master
craftsmen, their journeymen, and apprentices. These guilds determined
the wages and working conditions of the craftsmen and petitioned the
borough authorities for ordinances restraining trade, for instance by
controlling the admission of outsiders to the craft, preventing
foreigners from selling in the town except at fairs, limiting purchases
of raw materials to suppliers within the town, forbidding night work,
restricting the number of apprentices to each master craftsmen, and
requiring a minimum number of years for apprenticeships. In return,
these guilds assured quality control. In some boroughs, they did work
for the town, such as maintaining certain defensive towers or walls of
the town near their respective wards. In some boroughs, fines for
infractions of these regulations were split between the guild and the
government.
In some towns, the merchant guilds attempted to directly regulate the
craft guilds. Crafts fought each other. There was a street battle with
much bloodshed between the goldsmiths and the parmenters and between the
tailors and the cordwainers in 1267 in London. There was also a major
fight between the goldsmiths and the tailors in 1268. The Parish Clerks'
Company was chartered in 1233.
The citizens of London had a common seal for the city. London merchants
traveled throughout the nation with goods to sell exempt from tolls.
Most of the London aldermen were woolmongers, vintners, skinners, and
grocers by turns or carried on all these branches of commerce at once.
Jews were allowed to make loans with interest up to 2d. a week for 20s.
lent. There are three inns in London. Inns typically had narrow facades,
large courtyards, lodging and refreshment for the well-off, warehousing
and marketing facilities for merchants, and stabling and repairs for
wagons. Caregiving infirmaries such as "Bethlehem Hospital" were
established in London. One was a lunatic infirmary founded by the
sheriff of London. Only tiles were used for roofing in London, because
wood shingles were fire hazards and fires in London had been frequent.
Some areas near London are disclaimed by the king to be royal forest
land, so all citizens could hunt there and till their land there without
interference by the royal foresters. The Sheriff's court in London lost
its old importance and handled mainly trespass and debt cases, while
important cases went to the Hustings, which was presided over by the
Mayor with the sheriffs and aldermen in attendance. From the early
1200s, the Mayor's Court took on the work which the weekly Husting could
not manage. This consisted mostly of assault and robbery cases. Murder
and manslaughter cases were left to the royal courts.
London aldermen were elected by the citizens of their respective wards
in wardmotes, in which was also arranged the watch, protection against
fire, and probably also assessment of the taxes within the ward. There
was much effort by the commoners to influence the governance of the
city. In 1261 they forced their way into the townmote and by this brute
show of strength, which threatened riot, they made their own candidate
mayor. Subsequent elections were tumultuous.
The Tower of London now had outer walls of fortress buildings
surrounded by a wide and deep moat, over which was one stone causeway
and wooden drawbridge. Within this was an inner curtain wall with twelve
towers and an inner moat. The palace within was a principal residence of
English monarchs, whose retinue was extensive, including the chief
officers of state: Lord High Steward, Lord High Chancellor, Lord High
Treasurer, Lord Great Chamberlain, Lord High Constable, Keeper of the
Seals, and the King's Marshall; lesser officials such as the Chamberlain
of the Candles, Keeper of the Tents, Master Steward of the Larder, Usher
of the Spithouse, Marshall of the Trumpets, Keeper of the Books, Keeper
of the Dishes and of the Cups, and Steward of the Buttery; and numbers
of cat hunters, wolf catchers, clerks and limners, carters, water
carriers, washerwomen and laundresses, chaplains, lawyers, archers,
huntsmen, hornblowers, barbers, minstrels, guards and servitors, and
bakers and confectioners. The fortress also contained a garrison,
armory, chapels, stables, forge, wardrobe for a tailor's workroom and
secure storage of valuable clothes, silver plate, and expensive imports
such as sugar, rice, almonds, dried fruits, cinnamon, saffron, ginger,
galingale, zedoary, pepper, nutmeg, and mace. There was a kitchen with
courtyard for cattle, poultry, and pigs; dairy, pigeon loft, brewery,
beehives, fruit stores, gardens for vegetables and herbs; and sheds for
gardeners. There was also a mint, which minted a gold penny worth 2s. of
silver, a jewel house, and a menagerie (with leopards, lions, a bear,
and an elephant). The fortress also served as a state prison. Most
prisoners there had opposed the royal will; they were usually permitted
to live in quarters in the same style they were used to, including
servants and visits by family and friends. But occasionally prisoners
were confined in irons in dark and damp dungeons.
The King's family, immediate circle, and most distinguished guests
dined elegantly in the Great Hall at midday. They would first wash their
hands in hot water poured by servants over bowls. The table had silver
plate, silver spoons, and cups of horn, crystal, maple wood, or silver
laid on a white cloth. Each guest brought his own knife in a leather
sheath attached to a belt or girdle. A procession of servitors brought
the many dishes to which the gentlemen helped the ladies and the young
their seniors by placing the food in scooped-out half-loaves of bread
that were afterwards distributed to the poor. A wine cup was handed
around the table. In the winter after dinner, there would often be games
of chess or dice or songs of minstrels, and sometimes dancing, juggler
or acrobat displays, or storytelling by a minstrel. In the summer there
were outdoor games and tournaments. Hunting with hounds or hawks was
popular with both ladies and gentlemen. The King would go to bed on a
feather mattress with fur coverlet that was surrounded by linen
hangings. His grooms would sleep on trundle beds in the same room. The
queen likewise shared her bedchamber with several of her ladies sleeping
on trundle beds. Breakfast was comprised of a piece of bread and a cup
of wine taken after the daily morning mass in one of the chapels.
Sometimes a round and deep tub was brought into the bedchamber by
servants who poured hot water onto the bather in the tub. Baths were
often taken in the times of Henry III, who believed in cleanliness and
sanitation. Henry III was also noted for his luxurious tastes. He had a
linen table cloth, goblets of mounted cocoa-nut, a glass cup set in
crystal, and silk and velvet mattresses, cushions, and bolster. He had
many rooms painted with gold stars, green and red lions, and painted
flowers. To his sister on her marriage, he gave goldsmith's work, a
chess table, chessmen in an ivory box, silver pans and cooking vessels,
robes of cloth of gold, embroidered robes, robes of scarlet, blue, and
green fine linen, Genoese cloth of gold, two napkins, and thirteen
towels.
In the King's 1235 grant to Oxford, the Mayor and good men were
authorized to take weekly for three years 1/2 d. on every cart entering
the town loaded with goods, if it was from the county, or 1d. if it came
from outside the county; 1/4 d. for every horse load, except for
brushwood; 1/2 d. on every horse, mare, ox, or cow brought to sell; and
1/2 d. for every five sheep, goats, or pigs.
English ships had one mast with a square sail. The hulls were made of
planks overlapping each other. There was a high fore castle [tower] on
the bow, a top castle on the mast, and a high stern castle from which to
shoot arrows down on other ships. There were no rowing oars, but
steering was still by an oar on the starboard side of the ship. The
usual carrying capacity was 30 tuns [big casks of wine each with about
250 gallons]. On the coasts there were lights and beacons. Harbors at
river mouths were kept from silting up. Ships were loaded from piers.
The construction of London Bridge had just been finished. Bricks began
to be imported for building. About 10% of the population lived in towns.
Churches had stained glass windows.
Newcastle-on-Tyne received these new rights:
1. And that they shall justly have their lands and tenures and
mortgages and debts, whoever owes them to them.
2. Concerning their lands and tenures within the town, right shall be
done to them according to the custom of the city Winton.
3. And of all their debts which are lent in Newcastle-on-Tyne and of
mortgages there made, pleas shall be held at Newcastle-on-Tyne.
4. None of them shall plead outside the walls of the City of
Newcastle-on-Tyne on any plea, except pleas of tenures outside the city
and except the minters and my ministers.
5. That none of them be distrained by any without the said city for the
repayment of any debt to any person for which he is not capital debtor
or surety.
6. That the burgesses shall be quit of toll and lastage [duty on a
ship's cargo] and pontage [tax for repairing bridges] and have passage
back and forth.
7. Moreover, for the improvement of the city, I have granted them that
they shall be quit of year's gift and of scotale [pressure to buy ale at
the sheriff's tavern], so that my sheriff of Newcastle-on-Tyne or any
other minister shall not make a scotale.
8. And whosoever shall seek that city with his merchandise, whether
foreigners or others, of whatever place they may be, they may come
sojourn and depart in my safe peace, on paying the due customs and
debts, and any impediment to these rights is prohibited.
9. We have granted them also a merchant guild.
10. And that none of them [in the merchant guild] shall fight by combat.
The king no longer lives on his own from income from his own lands, but
takes money from the treasury. A tax of a percentage of 1/15 th of
personal property was levied in 1225 for a war, in return for which the
king signed the Magna Carta. It was to be paid by all tenants-in-chief,
men of the royal domain, burgesses of the boroughs and cities, clerical
tenants-in-chief, and religious houses. The percentage tax came to be
used frequently and ranged from about 1/40 th to 1/5 th. In 1294, this
tax was bifurcated into one percentage amount for the rural districts
and a higher one for urban districts, because the burgesses had greater
wealth and much of it was hard to uncover because it was in the
possession of customers and debtors. It was usually 1/10 th for towns
and royal domains and 1/15 th in the country. This amount of money
collected by this tax increased with the wealth of the country.
The king takes custody of lands of lunatics and idiots, as well as
escheats of land falling by descent to aliens. Henry III took 20s. from
his tenants-in-chief for the marriage of his daughter, and two pounds
for the knighting of his son.
By 1250, the king was hiring soldiers at 2s. per day for knights, and
9d. a day for less heavily armed soldiers, and 6d. a day for
crossbowmen. Some castle-guard was done by watchmen hired at 2d. a day.
Ships were impressed when needed. Sometimes private ships were
authorized to ravage the French coasts and take what spoil they could.
While King Henry III was underage, there was much controversy as to who
should be his ministers of state, such as justiciar, chancellor, and
treasurer. This led to the concept that they should not be chosen by the
king alone. After he came of age, elected men from the baronage fought
to have meetings and his small council in several conferences called
great councils or parliaments (from French "to speak the mind") to
discuss the levying of taxes and the solution of difficult legal cases,
the implementation of the Magna Carta, the appointment of the king's
ministers and sheriffs, and the receipt and consideration of petitions.
The barons paid 1/30 th tax on their moveable property to have three
barons of their choice added to the council. Statutes were enacted.
Landholders were given the duty of electing four of their members in
every county to ensure that the sheriff observed the law and to report
his misdemeanors to the justiciar. They were also given the duty of
electing four men from the county from whom the exchequer was to choose
the sheriff of the year. Earl Montfort and certain barons forced King
Henry III to summon a great council or parliament in 1265 in which the
common people were represented officially by two knights from every
county, two burgesses from every borough, and two representatives from
each major port. So the King's permanent small council became a separate
body from parliament and its members took a specific councilor's oath in
1257 to give faithful counsel, to keep secrecy, to prevent alienation of
ancient demesne, to procure justice for the rich and poor, to allow
justice to be done on themselves and their friends, to abstain from
gifts and misuse of patronage and influence, and to be faithful to the
queen and to the heir.
- The Law -
The barons forced successive Kings to sign the Magna Carta until it
became the law of the land. It became the first statute of the official
statute book. Its provisions express the principle that a king is bound
by the law and is not above it. However, there is no redress if the king
breaches the law.
The Magna Carta was issued by John in 1215. A revised version was
issued by Henry III in 1225 with the forest clauses separated out into a
forest charter. The two versions are replicated together, with the
formatting of each indicated in the titles below.
{Magna Carta - 1215} Magna Carta - 1215 & 1225 MAGNA CARTA
- 1225
{John, by the grace of God, King of England, Lord of Ireland, Duke of
Normandy and Aquitaine, and Count of Anjou: To the Archbishops, Bishops,
Abbots, Earls, Barons, Justiciaries, Foresters, Sheriffs, Reeves,
Ministers, and all Bailiffs and others, his faithful subjects, Greeting.
Know ye that in the presence of God, and for the health of our soul, and
the souls of our ancestors and heirs, to the honor of God, and the
exaltation of Holy Church, and amendment of our realm, by the advice of
our reverend Fathers, Stephen, Archbishop of Canterbury, Primate of all
England, and Cardinal of the Holy Roman Church; Henry, Archbishop of
Dublin; William of London, Peter of Winchester, Jocelin of Bath and
Glastonbury, Hugh of Lincoln, Walter of Worcester, William of Coventry,
and Benedict of Rochester, Bishops; Master Pandulph, the pope's
subdeacon and familiar; Brother Aymeric, Master of the Knights of the
Temple in England; and the noble persons, William Marshall, Earl of
Pembroke; William, Earl of Salisbury; William, Earl of Warren; William,
Earl of Arundel; Alan de Galloway, Constable of Scotland; Warin
Fitz-Gerald, Peter Fitz-Herbert, Hubert de Burgh, Seneshal of Poitou,
Hugh de Neville, Matthew Fitz-Herbert, Thomas Basset, Alan Basset,
Philip Daubeny, Robert de Roppelay, John Marshall, John Fitz-Hugh, and
others, our liegemen:}
HENRY BY THE GRACE OF GOD, KING OF ENGLAND, LORD OF IRELAND, DUKE OF
NORMANDY AND GUYAN AND EARL OF ANJOU, TO ALL ARCHBISHOPS, BISHOPS,
ABBOTS, PRIORS, EARLS, BARONS, SHERIFFS, PROVOSTS, OFFICERS AND TO ALL
BAILIFFS AND OTHER OUR FAITHFUL SUBJECTS WHICH SHALL SEE THIS PRESENT
CHARTER, GREETING.
KNOW YE THAT WE, UNTO THE HONOR OF ALMIGHTY GOD, AND FOR THE SALVATION
OF THE SOULS OF OUR PROGENITORS AND SUCCESSORS KINGS OF ENGLAND, TO THE
ADVANCEMENT OF HOLY CHURCH AND AMENDMENT OF OUR REALM, OF OUR MERE AND
FREE WILL, HAVE GIVEN AND GRANTED TO ALL ARCHBISHOPS, BISHOPS, ABBOTS,
PRIORS, EARLS, BARONS, AND TO ALL FREE MEN OF THIS OUR REALM, THESE
LIBERTIES FOLLOWING, TO BE KEPT IN OUR KINGDOM OF ENGLAND FOREVER.
[I. A CONFIRMATION OF LIBERTIES]
First, we have granted to God, and by this our present Charter
confirmed, for us and our heirs forever, that the English Church shall
be free and enjoy her whole rights and her liberties inviolable. {And
that we will this so to be observed appears from the fact that we of our
own free will, before the outbreak of the dissensions between us and our
barons, granted, confirmed, and procured to be confirmed by Pope
Innocent III the freedom of elections, which is considered most
important and necessary to the English Church, which Charter we will
both keep ourself and will it to be kept with good faith by our heirs
forever.} We have also granted to all the free men of our realm, for us
and our heirs forever, all the liberties underwritten, to have and to
hold to them and their heirs of us and our heirs.
[II. THE RELIEF OF THE KING'S TENANT OF FULL AGE]
If any of our earls, barons, or others who hold of us in chief by
knight's service dies, and at the time of his death his heir is of full
age and owes to us a relief, he shall have his inheritance on payment of
[no more than] the old relief; to wit, the heir or heirs of an earl, for
an entire earldom, 100 pounds [2,000s.]; the heir or heirs of a baron of
an entire barony, {100 pounds} 100 MARKS [67 POUNDS OR 1340s.]; the heir
or heirs of an entire knight's fee, 100s. at the most [about 1/3 of a
knight's annual income]; and he who owes less shall give less, according
to the old custom of fees.
[III. THE WARDSHIP OF AN HEIR WITHIN AGE. THE HEIR A KNIGHT]
BUT IF THE HEIR OF SUCH BE UNDER AGE, HIS LORD SHALL NOT HAVE THE WARD
OF HIM, NOR OF HIS LAND, BEFORE THAT HE HAS TAKEN OF HIM HOMAGE. If,
however, any such heir is under age and in ward, he shall have his
inheritance without relief or fine when he comes of age, THAT IS,
TWENTY-ONE YEARS OF AGE. SO THAT IF SUCH AN HEIR NOT OF AGE IS MADE A
KNIGHT, YET NEVERTHELESS HIS LAND SHALL REMAIN IN THE KEEPING OF HIS
LORD UNTO THE AFORESAID TERM.
[IV. NO WASTE SHALL BE MADE BY A GUARDIAN IN WARD'S LANDS]
The guardian of the land of any heir thus under age shall take therefrom
only reasonable issues, customs, and services, without destruction or
waste of men or goods. And if we commit the custody of any such land to
the sheriff or any other person answerable to us for the issues of the
same land, and he commits destruction or waste, we will take an amends
from him and recompense therefore. And the land shall be committed to
two lawful and discreet men of that fee, who shall be answerable for the
issues of the same land to us or to whomsoever we shall have assigned
them. And if we give or sell the custody of any such land to any man,
and he commits destruction or waste, he shall lose the custody, which
shall be committed to two lawful and discreet men of that fee, who
shall, in like manner, be answerable to us as has been aforesaid.
[V. GUARDIANS SHALL MAINTAIN THE INHERITANCE OF THEIR WARDS AND OF
BISHOPRICKS, ETC.]
The guardian, so long as he shall have the custody of the land, shall
keep up and maintain the houses, parks, fishponds, pools, mills, and
other things pertaining thereto, out of the issues of the same, and
shall restore to the heir when he comes of age, all his land stocked
with {ploughs and tillage, according as the season may require and the
issues of the land can reasonably bear} PLOUGHS AND ALL OTHER THINGS, AT
THE LEAST AS HE RECEIVED IT. ALL THESE THINGS SHALL BE OBSERVED IN THE
CUSTODIES OF VACANT ARCHBISHOPRICKS, BISHOPRICKS, ABBEYS, PRIORIES,
CHURCHES, AND DIGNITIES, WHICH APPERTAIN TO US; EXCEPT THIS, THAT SUCH
CUSTODY SHALL NOT BE SOLD.
[VI. HEIRS SHALL BE MARRIED WITHOUT DISPARAGEMENT]
Heirs shall be married without loss of station. {And the marriage shall
be made known to the heir's nearest of kin before it is agreed.}
[VII. A WIDOW SHALL HAVE HER MARRIAGE, INHERITANCE, AND QUERENTINE
(period of forty days during which the widow has a privilege of
remaining in the mansion house of which her husband died seized). THE
KING'S WIDOW, ETC.]
A widow, after the death of her husband, shall immediately and without
difficulty have her marriage portion [property given to her by her
father] and inheritance. She shall not give anything for her marriage
portion, dower, or inheritance which she and her husband held on the day
of his death, and she may remain in her husband's house for forty days
after his death, within which time her dower shall be assigned to her.
IF THAT HOUSE IS A CASTLE AND SHE LEAVES THE CASTLE, THEN A COMPETENT
HOUSE SHALL FORTHWITH BE PROVIDED FOR HER, IN WHICH SHE MAY HONESTLY
DWELL UNTIL HER DOWER IS ASSIGNED TO HER AS AFORESAID; AND IN THE
MEANTIME HER REASONABLE ESTOVERS OF THE COMMON [NECESSARIES OR SUPPLIES
SUCH AS WOOD], ETC.
No widow shall be compelled [by penalty of fine] to marry so long as she
has a mind to live without a husband, provided, however, that she gives
security that she will not marry without our assent, if she holds of us,
or that of the lord of whom she holds, if she holds of another.
[VIII. HOW SURETIES SHALL BE CHARGED TO THE KING]
Neither we nor our bailiffs shall seize any land or rent for any debt as
long as the debtor's goods and chattels suffice to pay the debt AND THE
DEBTOR HIMSELF IS READY TO SATISFY THEREFORE. Nor shall the debtor's
sureties be distrained as long as the debtor is able to pay the debt. If
the debtor fails to pay, not having the means to pay, OR WILL NOT PAY
ALTHOUGH ABLE TO PAY, then the sureties shall answer the debt. And, if
they desire, they shall hold the debtor's lands and rents until they
have received satisfaction of that which they had paid for him, unless
the debtor can show that he has discharged his obligation to them.
{If anyone who has borrowed from the Jews any sum of money, great or
small, dies before the debt has been paid, the heir shall pay no
interest on the debt as long as he remains under age, of whomsoever he
may hold. If the debt falls into our hands, we will take only the
principal sum named in the bond.}
{And if any man dies indebted to the Jews, his wife shall have her dower
and pay nothing of that debt; if the deceased leaves children under age,
they shall have necessaries provided for them in keeping with the estate
of the deceased, and the debt shall be paid out of the residue, saving
the service due to the deceased's feudal lords. So shall it be done with
regard to debts owed persons other than Jews.}
[IX. THE LIBERTIES OF LONDON AND OTHER CITIES AND TOWNS CONFIRMED]
The City of London shall have all her old liberties and free customs,
both by land and water. Moreover, we will and grant that all other
cities, boroughs, towns, and ports shall have all their liberties and
free customs.
{No scutage or aid shall be imposed in our realm unless by common
counsel thereof, except to ransom our person, make our eldest son a
knight, and once to marry our eldest daughter, and for these only a
reasonable aid shall be levied. So shall it be with regard to aids from
the City of London.}
{To obtain the common counsel of the realm concerning the assessment of
aids (other than in the three aforesaid cases) or of scutage, we will
have the archbishops, bishops, abbots, earls, and great barons
individually summoned by our letters; we will also have our sheriffs and
bailiffs summon generally all those who hold lands directly of us, to
meet on a fixed day, but with at least forty days' notice, and at a
fixed place. In all such letters of summons, we will explain the reason
therefor. After summons has thus been made, the business shall proceed
on the day appointed, according to the advice of those who are present,
even though not all the persons summoned have come.}
{We will not in the future grant permission to any man to levy an aid
upon his free men, except to ransom his person, make his eldest son a
knight, and once to marry his eldest daughter, and on each of these
occasions only a reasonable aid shall be levied.}
[X. NONE SHALL DISTRAIN FOR MORE SERVICE THAN IS DUE.]
No man shall be compelled to perform more service for a knight's fee nor
any freehold than is due therefrom.
[XI. COMMON PLEAS SHALL NOT FOLLOW THE KING'S COURT]
People who have Common Pleas shall not follow our Court traveling about
the realm, but shall be heard in some certain place.
[XII. WHERE AND BEFORE WHOM ASSIZES SHALL BE TAKEN. ADJOURNMENT FOR
DIFFICULTY]
{Land assizes of novel disseisin, mort d'ancestor and darrein
presentment shall be heard only in the county where the property is
situated, and in this manner: We or, if we are not in the realm, our
Chief Justiciary, shall send two justiciaries through each county four
times a year [to clear and prevent backlog], and they, together with
four knights elected out of each county by the people thereof, shall
hold the said assizes in the county court, on the day and in the place
where that court meets.}
ASSIZES OF NOVEL DISSEISIN, MORT D'ANCESTOR SHALL BE HEARD ONLY IN THE
COUNTY WHERE THE PROPERTY IS SITUATED, AND IN THIS MANNER: WE, OR IF WE
ARE NOT IN THE REALM, OUR CHIEF JUSTICIARY, SHALL SEND JUSTICIARIES
THROUGH EACH COUNTY ONCE A YEAR, AND THEY TOGETHER WITH KNIGHTS OF THAT
COUNTY SHALL HOLD THE SAID ASSIZES IN THE COUNTY.
{If the said assizes cannot be held on the day appointed, so many of the
knights and freeholders as were present on that day shall remain as will
be sufficient for the administration of justice, according to the amount
of business to be done.}
AND THOSE THINGS THAT AT THE COMING OF OUR FORESAID JUSTICIARIES, BEING
SENT TO TAKE THOSE ASSIZES IN THE COUNTIES, CANNOT BE DETERMINED, SHALL
BE ENDED BY THEM IN SOME OTHER PLACE IN THEIR CIRCUIT; AND THOSE THINGS
WHICH FOR DIFFICULTY OF SOME ARTICLES CANNOT BE DETERMINED BY THEM,
SHALL BE REFERRED TO OUR JUSTICES OF THE BENCH AND THERE SHALL BE ENDED.
[XIII. ASSIZES OF DARREIN PRESENTMENT]
ASSIZES OF DARREIN PRESENTMENT SHALL ALWAYS BE TAKEN BEFORE OUR JUSTICES
OF THE BENCH AND THERE SHALL BE DETERMINED.
[XIV. HOW MEN OF ALL SORTS SHALL BE AMERCED AND BY WHOM]
A freeman shall be amerced [made to pay a fine to the King] for a small
offense only according to the degree thereof, and for a serious offense
according to its magnitude, saving his position and livelihood; and in
like manner a merchant, saving his trade and merchandise, and a villein
saving his tillage, if they should fall under our mercy. None of these
amercements shall be imposed except by the oath of honest men of the
neighborhood.
Earls and barons shall be amerced only by their peers, and only in
accordance with the seriousness of the offense.
{No amercement shall be imposed upon a cleric's lay tenement, except in
the manner of the other persons aforesaid, and without regard to the
value of his ecclesiastical benefice.}
NO MAN OF THE CHURCH SHALL BE AMERCED EXCEPT IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE
SERIOUSNESS OF THE OFFENSE AND AFTER HIS LAY TENEMENT, BUT NOT AFTER THE
QUANTITY OF HIS SPIRITUAL BENEFICE.
[XV. MAKING OF BRIDGES AND BANKS]
No town or freeman shall be compelled to build bridges over rivers OR
BANKS except those bound by old custom and law to do so.
[XVI. DEFENDING OF BANKS]
NO BANKS [LAND NEAR A RIVER] SHALL BE DEFENDED [USED BY THE KING ALONE,
E.G. FOR HUNTING], FROM HENCEFORTH, BUT SUCH AS WERE IN DEFENSE IN THE
TIME OF KING HENRY [II] OUR GRANDFATHER, BY THE SAME PLACES AND IN THE
SAME BOUNDS AS IN HIS TIME.
[XVII. HOLDING PLEAS OF THE CROWN]
No sheriff, constable, coroners, or other of our bailiffs shall hold
pleas of our Crown [but only justiciars, to prevent disparity of
punishments and corruption].
{All counties, hundreds, wapentakes, and tithings (except our demesne
manors) shall remain at the old rents, without any increase.}
[XVIII. THE KING'S DEBTOR DYING, THE KING SHALL BE FIRST PAID]
If anyone holding a lay fee of us dies, and our sheriff or our bailiff
show our letters patent [public letter from a sovereign or one in
authority] of summons for a debt due to us from the deceased, it shall
be lawful for such sheriff or bailiff to attach and list the goods and
chattels of the deceased found in the lay fee to the value of that debt,
by the sight and testimony of lawful men [to prevent taking too much],
so that nothing thereof shall be removed therefrom until our whole debt
is paid; then the residue shall be given up to the executors to carry
out the will of the deceased. If there is no debt due from him to us,
all his chattels shall remain the property of the deceased, saving to
his wife and children their reasonable shares.
{If any freeman dies intestate, his chattels shall be distributed by his
nearest kinfolk and friends, under supervision of the Church, saving to
each creditor the debts owed him by the deceased.}
[XIX. PURVEYANCE FOR A CASTLE]
No constable or other of our bailiffs shall take grain or other chattels
of any man without immediate payment, unless the seller voluntarily
consents to postponement of payment. THIS APPLIES IF THE MAN IS NOT OF
THE TOWN WHERE THE CASTLE IS. BUT IF THE MAN IS OF THE SAME TOWN AS
WHERE THE CASTLE IS, THE PRICE SHALL BE PAID TO HIM WITHIN 40 DAYS.
[XX. DOING OF CASTLE-GUARD]
No constable shall compel any knight to give money for keeping of his
castle in lieu of castle-guard when the knight is willing to perform it
in person or, if reasonable cause prevents him from performing it
himself, by some other fit man. Further, if we lead or send him into
military service, he shall be excused from castle-guard for the time he
remains in service by our command.
[XXI. TAKING OF HORSES, CARTS, AND WOOD]
No sheriff or bailiff of ours, or any other man, shall take horses or
carts of any freeman for carriage without the owner's consent. HE SHALL
PAY THE OLD PRICE, THAT IS, FOR CARRIAGE WITH TWO HORSES, 10d. A DAY;
FOR THREE HORSES, 14d. A DAY. NO DEMESNE CART OF ANY SPIRITUAL PERSON OR
KNIGHT OR ANY LORD SHALL BE TAKEN BY OUR BAILIFFS.
Neither we nor our bailiffs will take another man's wood for our castles
or for other of our necessaries without the owner's consent.
[XXII. HOW LONG FELONS' LANDS SHALL BE HELD BY THE KING]
We will hold the lands of persons convicted of felony for only a year
and a day [to remove the chattels and movables], after which they shall
be restored to the lords of the fees.
[XXIII. IN WHAT PLACE WEIRS SHALL BE REMOVED]
All fishweirs [obstructing navigation] shall be entirely removed by the
Thames and Medway rivers, and throughout England, except upon the
seacoast.
[XXIV. IN WHAT CASE A PRAECIPE IN CAPITE IS NOT GRANTABLE]
The [royal] writ called "praecipe in capite" [for tenements held in
chief of the Crown] shall not in the future be granted to anyone
respecting any freehold if thereby a freeman [who has a mesne lord] may
not be tried in his lord's court.
[XXV. THERE SHALL BE BUT ONE MEASURE THROUGHOUT THE REALM]
There shall be one measure of wine throughout our realm, one measure of
ale, and one measure of grain, to wit, the London quarter, and one
breadth of dyed cloth, russets, and haberjets, to wit, two {ells} YARDS
within the selvages. As with measures so shall it also be with weights.
[XXVI. INQUISITION OF LIFE AND LIMB]
Henceforth nothing shall be given or taken for a writ of inquisition
upon life or limb, but it shall be granted freely and not denied.
[XXVII. TENURE OF THE KING IN SOCAGE AND OF ANOTHER BY KNIGHT'S SERVICE.
PETIT SERJEANTY.]
If anyone holds of us by fee farm, socage, or burgage, and also holds
land of another by knight's service, we will not by reason of that fee
farm, socage, or burgage have the wardship of his heir, or the land
which belongs to another man's fee. Nor will we have the custody of such
fee farm, socage, or burgage unless such fee farm owe knight's service.
We will not have the wardship of any man's heir, or the land which he
holds of another by knight's service, by reason of any petty serjeanty
which he holds of us by service of rendering us knives, arrows, or the
like.
[XXVIII. WAGES OF LAW SHALL NOT BE WITHOUT WITNESS]
In the future no [royal] bailiff shall upon his own unsupported
accusation put any man to trial or oath without producing credible
witnesses to the truth of the accusation.
[XXIX. NONE SHALL BE CONDEMNED WITHOUT TRIAL. JUSTICE SHALL NOT BE SOLD
OR DELAYED.]
No freeman shall be taken, imprisoned, disseised OF HIS FREEHOLD OR
LIBERTIES OR FREE CUSTOMS, OR BE outlawed, banished, or in any way
ruined, nor will we prosecute or condemn him, except by the lawful
judgment of his peers or by the law of the land.
To no one will we sell [by bribery], to none will we deny or delay,
right or justice.
[XXX. MERCHANT STRANGERS COMING INTO THIS REALM SHALL BE WELL USED]
All merchants shall have safe conduct to go and come out of and into
England, and to stay in and travel through England by land and water, to
buy and sell, without evil tolls, in accordance with old and just
customs, except, in time of war, such merchants as are of a country at
war with us. If any such be found in our realm at the outbreak of war,
they shall be detained, without harm to their bodies or goods, until it
be known to us or our Chief Justiciary how our merchants are being
treated in the country at war with us. And if our merchants are safe
there, then theirs shall be safe with us.
{Henceforth anyone, saving his allegiance due to us, may leave our realm
and return safely and securely by land and water, except for a short
period in time of war, for the common benefit of the realm.}
[XXXI. TENURE OF A BARONY COMING INTO THE KING'S HANDS BY ESCHEAT]
If anyone dies holding of any escheat, such as the honor of Wallingford,
Nottingham, Boulogne, {Lancaster,} or other escheats which are in our
hands and are baronies, his heir shall not give any relief or do any
service to us other than he would owe to the baron, if such barony had
been in the baron's hands. And we will hold the escheat in the same
manner in which the baron held it. NOR SHALL WE HAVE, BY OCCASION OF ANY
BARONY OR ESCHEAT, ANY ESCHEAT OR KEEPING OF ANY OF OUR MEN, UNLESS HE
WHO HELD THE BARONY OR ESCHEAT ELSEWHERE HELD OF US IN CHIEF.
Persons dwelling outside the forest [in the county] need not in the
future come before our justiciaries of the forest in answer to a general
summons unless they are impleaded or are sureties for any person or
persons attached for breach of forest laws.
[XXXII. LANDS SHALL NOT BE ALIENED TO THE PREJUDICE OF THE LORD'S
SERVICE]
NO FREEMAN FROM HENCEFORTH SHALL GIVE OR SELL ANY MORE OF HIS LAND, BUT
SO THAT OF THE RESIDUE OF THE LANDS THE LORD OF THE FEE MAY HAVE THE
SERVICE DUE TO HIM WHICH BELONGS TO THE FEE.
{We will appoint as justiciaries, constables, sheriffs, or bailiffs only
such men as know the law of the land and will keep it well.}
[XXXIII. PATRONS OF ABBEYS SHALL HAVE THE CUSTODY OF THEM WHEN VACANT]
All barons who had founded abbeys of which they have charters of English
Kings or old tenure, shall have the custody of the same when vacant, as
is their due.
All forests which have been created in our time shall forthwith be
disafforested. {So shall it be done with regard to river banks which
have been enclosed by fences in our time.}
{All evil customs concerning forests and warrens [livestock grounds in
forests], foresters and warreners, sheriffs and their officers, or
riverbanks and their conservators shall be immediately investigated in
each county by twelve sworn knights of such county, who are chosen by
honest men of that county, and shall within forty days after this
inquest be completely and irrevocably abolished, provided always that
the matter has first been brought to our knowledge, or that of our
justiciars, if we are not in England.}
{We will immediately return all hostages and charters delivered to us by
Englishmen as security for the peace or for the performance of loyal
service.}
{We will entirely remove from their offices the kinsmen of Gerald de
Athyes, so that henceforth they shall hold no office in England:
Engelard de Cigogne, Peter, Guy, and Andrew de Chanceaux, Guy de
Cigogne, Geoffrey de Martigny and his brothers, Philip Mark and his
brothers, and Geoffrey his nephew, and all their followers.}
{As soon as peace is restored, we will banish from our realm all foreign
knights, crossbowmen, sergeants, and mercenaries, who have come with
horses and arms, to the hurt of the realm.}
{If anyone has been disseised or deprived by us, without the legal
judgment of his peers, of lands, castles, liberties, or rights, we will
immediately restore the same, and if any disagreement arises on this,
the matter shall be decided by judgment of the twenty- five barons
mentioned below in the clause for securing the peace. With regard to all
those things, however, of which any man was disseised or deprived,
without the legal judgment of his peers, by King Henry [II] our Father
or our Brother King Richard, and which remain in our hands or are held
by others under our warranty, we shall have respite during the term
commonly allowed to the Crusaders, excepting those cases in which a plea
was begun or inquest made on our order before we took the cross; when,
however, we return from our pilgrimage, or if perhaps we do not
undertake it, we will at once do full justice in these matters.}
{Likewise, we shall have the same respite in rendering justice with
respect to the disafforestation or retention of those forests which
Henry [II] our Father or Richard our Brother afforested, and concerning
custodies of lands which are of the fee of another, which we hitherto
have held by reason of the fee which some person has held of us by
knight's service, and to abbeys founded on fees other than our own, in
which the lord of that fee asserts his right. When we return from our
pilgrimage, or if we do not undertake it, we will forthwith do full
justice to the complainants in these matters.}
[XXXIV. IN WHAT ONLY CASE A WOMAN SHALL HAVE AN APPEAL OF DEATH]
No one shall be arrested or imprisoned upon a woman's appeal for the
death of any person other than her husband [since no woman was expected
to personally engage in trial by combat].
[XXXV. AT WHAT TIME SHALL BE KEPT A COUNTY COURT, SHERIFF'S TURN AND A
LEET COURT (COURT OF CRIMINAL JURISDICTION EXCEPTING FELONIES)]
NO COUNTY COURT FROM HENCEFORTH SHALL BE HELD, BUT FROM MONTH TO MONTH;
AND WHERE GREATER TIME HAS BEEN USED, THERE SHALL BE GREATER. NOR SHALL
ANY SHERIFF, OR HIS BAILIFF, KEEP HIS TURN IN THE HUNDRED BUT TWICE IN
THE YEAR; AND NO WHERE BUT IN DUE PLACE AND ACCUSTOMED TIME, THAT IS,
ONCE AFTER EASTER, AND AGAIN AFTER THE FEAST OF SAINT MICHAEL. AND THE
VIEW OF FRANKPLEDGE [THE RIGHT OF ASSEMBLING THE WHOLE MALE POPULATION
OVER 12 YEARS EXCEPT CLERGY, EARLS, BARONS, KNIGHTS, AND THE INFIRM, AT
THE LEET OR SOKE COURT FOR THE CAPITAL FRANKPLEDGES TO GIVE ACCOUNT OF
THE PEACE KEPT BY INDIVIDUALS IN THEIR RESPECTIVE TITHINGS] SHALL BE
LIKEWISE AT THE FEAST OF SAINT MICHAEL WITHOUT OCCASION, SO THAT EVERY
MAN MAY HAVE HIS LIBERTIES WHICH HE HAD, OR USED TO HAVE, IN THE TIME OF
KING HENRY [II] OUR GRANDFATHER, OR WHICH HE HAS SINCE PURCHASED. THE
VIEW OF FRANKPLEDGE SHALL BE SO DONE, THAT OUR PEACE MAY BE KEPT; AND
THAT THE TYTHING BE WHOLLY KEPT AS IT HAS BEEN ACCUSTOMED; AND THAT THE
SHERIFF SEEK NO OCCASIONS, AND THAT HE BE CONTENT WITH SO MUCH AS THE
SHERIFF WAS WONT TO HAVE FOR HIS VIEW-MAKING IN THE TIME OF KING HENRY
OUR GRANDFATHER.
[XXXVI. NO LAND SHALL BE GIVEN IN MORTMAIN]
IT SHALL NOT BE LAWFUL FROM HENCEFORTH TO ANY TO GIVE HIS LAND TO ANY
RELIGIOUS HOUSE, AND TO TAKE THE SAME LAND AGAIN TO HOLD OF THE SAME
HOUSE [THEREBY EXTINGUISHING THE FEUDAL RIGHTS OF THE TEMPORAL LORD].
NOR SHALL IT BE LAWFUL TO ANY HOUSE OF RELIGION TO TAKE THE LANDS OF
ANY, AND TO LEASE THE SAME TO HIM OF WHOM HE RECEIVED IT. IF ANY FROM
HENCEFORTH GIVE HIS LANDS TO ANY RELIGIOUS HOUSE, AND THEREUPON BE
CONVICTED, THE GIFT SHALL BE UTTERLY VOID, AND THE LAND SHALL ACCRUE TO
THE LORD OF THE FEE.
{All fines unjustly and unlawfully given to us, and all amercements
levied unjustly and against the law of the land, shall be entirely
remitted or the matter decided by judgment of the twenty-five barons
mentioned below in the clause for securing the peace, or the majority of
them, together with the aforesaid Stephen, Archbishop of Canterbury, if
he himself can be present, and any others whom he may wish to bring with
him for the purpose; if he cannot be present, the business shall
nevertheless proceed without him. If any one or more of the said
twenty-five barons has an interest in a suit of this kind, he or they
shall step down for this particular judgment, and be replaced by another
or others, elected and sworn by the rest of the said barons, for this
occasion only.}
{If we have disseised or deprived the Welsh of lands, liberties, or
other things, without legal judgment of their peers, in England or
Wales, they shall immediately be restored to them, and if a disagreement
arises thereon, the question shall be determined in the Marches by
judgment of their peers according to the law of England as to English
tenements, the law of Wales as to Welsh tenements, the law of the
Marches as to tenements in the Marches. The same shall the Welsh do to
us and ours.}
{But with regard to all those things of which any Welshman was disseised
or deprived, without legal judgment of his peers, by King Henry [II] our
Father or our Brother King Richard, and which we hold in our hands or
others hold under our warranty, we shall have respite during the term
commonly allowed to the Crusaders, except as to those matters whereon a
suit had arisen or an inquisition had been taken by our command prior to
our taking the cross. Immediately after our return from our pilgrimage,
or if by chance we do not undertake it, we will do full justice
according to the laws of the Welsh and the aforesaid regions.}
{We will immediately return the son of Llywelyn, all the Welsh hostages,
and the charters which were delivered to us as security for the peace.}
{With regard to the return of the sisters and hostages of Alexander,
King of the Scots, and of his liberties and rights, we will do the same
as we would with regard to our other barons of England, unless it
appears by the charters which we hold of William his father, late King
of the Scots, that it ought to be otherwise; this shall be determined by
judgment of his peers in our court.}
[XXXVII. SUBSIDY IN RESPECT OF THIS CHARTER, AND THE CHARTER OF THE
FOREST, GRANTED TO THE KING.]
ESCUAGE [SERVICE OF THE SHIELD, A TENURE IN KNIGHTS SERVICE] FROM
HENCEFORTH SHALL BE TAKEN AS IT WAS WONT TO BE IN THE TIME OF KING HENRY
[II] OUR GRANDFATHER; RESERVING TO ALL ARCHBISHOPS, BISHOPS, ABBOTS,
PRIORS, TEMPLERS, HOSPITALLERS, EARLS, BARONS, AND ALL PERSONS AS WELL
SPIRITUAL AS TEMPORAL; ALL THEIR FREE LIBERTIES AND FREE CUSTOMS, WHICH
THEY HAVE HAD IN TIME PASSED. AND ALL THESE CUSTOMS AND LIBERTIES
AFORESAID, WHICH WE HAVE GRANTED TO BE HELD WITHIN THIS OUR REALM, AS
MUCH AS PERTAINS TO US AND OUR HEIRS, WE SHALL OBSERVE.
{All the customs and liberties aforesaid, which we have granted to be
enjoyed, as far as it pertains to us towards our people throughout our
realm, let all our subjects, whether clerics or laymen, observe, as far
as it pertains toward their dependents.}
AND ALL MEN OF THIS OUR REALM, AS WELL SPIRITUAL AS TEMPORAL (AS MUCH AS
IN THEM IS) SHALL OBSERVE THE SAME AGAINST ALL PERSONS IN LIKE WISE. AND
FOR THIS OUR GIFT AND GRANT OF THESE LIBERTIES, AND OF OTHER CONSTRAINED
IN OUR CHARTER OF LIBERTIES OF OUR FOREST, THE ARCHBISHOPS, BISHOPS,
ABBOTS, PRIORS, EARLS, BARONS, KNIGHTS, FREEHOLDERS, AND OUR OTHER
SUBJECTS, HAVE GIVEN UNTO US THE FIFTEENTH PART OF ALL THEIR MOVABLES.
AND WE HAVE GRANTED UNTO THEM ON THE OTHER PART, THAT NEITHER WE, NOR
OUR HEIRS, SHALL PROCURE OR DO ANY THING WHEREBY THE LIBERTIES IN THIS
CHARTER CONTAINED SHALL BE INFRINGED OR BROKEN. AND IF ANY THING BE
PROCURED BY ANY PERSON CONTRARY TO THE PREMISES, IT SHALL BE HAD OF NO
FORCE NOR EFFECT.
[ENFORCEMENT]
{Whereas we, for the honor of God and the reform of our realm, and in
order the better to allay the discord arisen between us and our barons,
have granted all these things aforesaid. We, willing that they be
forever enjoyed wholly and in lasting strength, do give and grant to our
subjects the following security, to wit, that the barons shall elect any
twenty-five barons of the realm they wish, who shall, with their utmost
power, keep, hold, and cause to be kept the peace and liberties which we
have granted unto them and by this our present Charter have confirmed,
so that if we, our Justiciary, bailiffs, or any of our ministers offends
in any respect against any man, or transgresses any of these articles of
peace or security, and the offense is brought before four of the said
twenty-five barons, those four barons shall come before us, or our Chief
Justiciary if we are out of the realm, declaring the offense, and shall
demand speedy amends for the same. If we or, in case of our being out of
the realm, our Chief Justiciary fails to afford redress within forty
days from the time the case was brought before us or, in the event of
our having been out of the realm, our Chief Justiciary, the aforesaid
four barons shall refer the matter to the rest of the twenty-five
barons, who, together with the commonalty of the whole country, shall
distrain and distress us to the utmost of their power, to wit, by
capture of our castles, lands, and possessions and by all other possible
means, until compensation is made according to their decision, saving
our person and that of our Queen and children; as soon as redress has
been had, they shall return to their former allegiance. Anyone in the
realm may take oath that, for the accomplishment of all the aforesaid
matters, he will obey the orders of the said twenty-five barons and
distress us to the utmost of his power; and we give public and free
leave to everyone wishing to take oath to do so, and to none will we
deny the same. Moreover, all such of our subjects who do not of their
own free will and accord agree to swear to the said twenty-five barons,
to distrain and distress us together with them, we will compel to do so
by our command in the aforesaid manner. If any one of the twenty-five
barons dies or leaves the country or is in any way hindered from
executing the said office, the rest of the said twenty-five barons shall
choose another in his stead, at their discretion, who shall be sworn in
like manner as the others. In all cases which are referred to the said
twenty-five barons to execute, and in which a difference arises among
them, supposing them all to be present, or in which not all who have
been summoned are willing or able to appear, the verdict of the majority
shall be considered as firm and binding as if the whole number had been
of one mind. The aforesaid twenty-five shall swear to keep faithfully
all the aforesaid articles and, to the best of their power, to cause
them to be kept by others. We will not procure, either by ourself or any
other, anything from any man whereby any of these concessions or
liberties may be revoked or abated. If any such procurement is made, let
it be null and void; it shall never be made use of either by us or by
any other.}
[AMNESTY]
{We have also fully forgiven and pardoned all ill-will, wrath, and
malice which has arisen between us and our subjects, both clergy and
laymen, during the disputes, to and with all men. Moreover, we have
fully forgiven and, as far as it pertains to us, wholly pardoned to and
with all, clergy and laymen, all offenses made in consequence of the
said disputes from Easter in the sixteenth year of our reign until the
restoration of peace. Over and above this, we have caused letters patent
to be made for Stephen, Archbishop of Canterbury, Henry, Archbishop of
Dublin, the above-mentioned Bishops, and Master Pandulph, for the
aforesaid security and concessions.}
{Wherefore we will that, and firmly command that, the English Church
shall be free and all men in our realm shall have and hold all the
aforesaid liberties, rights, and concessions, well and peaceably,
freely, quietly, fully, and wholly, to them and their heirs, of us and
our heirs, in all things and places forever, as is aforesaid. It is
moreover sworn, as will on our part as on the part of the barons, that
all these matters aforesaid shall be kept in good faith and without
deceit. Witness the above-named and many others. Given by our hand in
the meadow which is called Runnymede, between Windsor and Staines, on
the fifteenth day of June in the seventeenth year of our reign.}
THESE BEING WITNESSES: LORD S. ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY, E. BISHOP OF
LONDON, F. BISHOP OF BATHE, G. OF WINCESTER, H. OF LINCOLN, R. OF
SALISBURY, W. OF ROCHESTER, X. OF WORCESTER, F. OF ELY, H. OF HEREFORD,
R. OF CHICHESTER, W. OF EXETER, BISHOPS; THE ABBOT OF ST. EDMONDS, THE
ABBOT OF ST. ALBANS, THE ABBOT OF BELLO, THE ABBOT OF ST. AUGUSTINES IN
CANTERBURY, THE ABBOT OF EVESHAM, THE ABBOT OF WESTMINSTER, THE ABBOT OF
BOURGH ST. PETER, THE ABBOT OF REDING, THE ABBOT OF ABINDON, THE ABBOT
OF MALMBURY, THE ABBOT OF WINCHCOMB, THE ABBOT OF HYDE, THE ABBOT OF
CERTESEY, THE ABBOT OF SHERBURN, THE ABBOT OF CERNE, THE ABBOT OF
ABBOREBIR, THE ABBOT OF MIDDLETON, THE ABBOT OF SELEBY, THE ABBOT OF
CIRENCESTER, H. DE BURGH JUSTICE, H. EARL OF CHESTER AND LINCOLN, W.
EARL OF SALISBURY, W. EARL OF WARREN, G. DE CLARE EARL OF GLOUCESTER AND
HEREFORD, W. DE FERRARS EARL OF DERBY, W. DE MANDEVILLE EARL OF ESSEX,
H. DE BYGOD EARL OF NORFOLK, W. EARL OF ALBEMARLE, H. EARL OF HEREFORD,
F. CONSTABLE OF CHESTER, G. DE TOS, H. FITZWALTER, R. DE BYPONTE, W. DE
BRUER, R. DE MONTEFICHET, P. FITZHERBERT, W. DE AUBENIE, F. GRESLY, F.
DE BREUS, F. DE MONEMUE, F. FITZALLEN, H. DE MORTIMER, W. DE BEUCHAMP,
W. DE ST. JOHN, P. DE MAULI, BRIAN DE LISLE, THOMAS DE MULTON, R. DE
ARGENTEYN, G. DE NEVIL, W. DE MAUDUIT, F. DE BALUN, AND OTHERS. GIVEN AT
WESTMINSTER THE 11TH DAY OF FEBRUARY THE 9TH YEAR OF OUR REIGN.
WE, RATIFYING AND APPROVING THESE GIFTS AND GRANTS AFORESAID, CONFIRM
AND MAKE STRONG ALL THE SAME FOR US AND OUR HEIRS PERPETUALLY, AND BY
THE TENOUR OF THESE PRESENTS, DO RENEW THE SAME; WILLING AND GRANTING
FOR US AND OUR HEIRS, THAT THIS CHARTER, AND ALL SINGULAR HIS ARTICLES,
FOREVER SHALL BE STEADFASTLY, FIRMLY, AND INVIOLABLY OBSERVED; AND IF
ANY ARTICLE IN THE SAME CHARTER CONTAINED, YET HITHERTO PERADVENTURE HAS
NOT BEEN KEPT, WE WILL, AND BY ROYAL AUTHORITY, COMMAND, FROM HENCEFORTH
FIRMLY THEY BE OBSERVED.
Statutes which were enacted after the Magna Carta follow:
Nuisance is recognized by this statute: "Every freeman, without danger,
shall make in his own wood, or in his land, or in his water, which he
has within our Forest, mills, springs, pools, clay pits, dikes, or
arable ground, so that it does not annoy any of his neighbors."
Anyone taking a widow's dower after her husband's death must not only
return the dower, but pay damages in the amount of the value of the
dower from the time of death of the husband until her recovery of
seisin.
Widows may bequeath the crop of their ground as well of their dowers as
of their other lands and tenements.
Freeholders of tenements on manors shall have sufficient ingress and
egress from their tenements to the common pasture and as much pasture as
suffices for their tenements.
"Grain shall not be taken under the pretense of borrowing or the
promise of after-payment without the permission of the owner."
"A parent or other who forcefully leads away and withholds, or marries
off, an heir who is a minor (under 14), shall yield the value of the
marriage and be imprisoned until he has satisfied the king for the
trespass. If an heir 14 years or older marries without his Lord's
permission to defraud him of the marriage and the Lord offers him
reasonable and convenient marriage, without disparagement, then the Lord
shall hold his land beyond the term of his age, that, of twenty one
years, so long that he may receive double the value of the marriage as
estimated by lawful men, or after as it has been offered before without
fraud or collusion, and after as it may be proved in the King's Court.
Any Lord who marries off a ward of his who is a minor and cannot consent
to marriage, to a villain or other, such as a burgess, whereby the ward
is disparaged, shall lose the wardship and all its profits if the ward's
friends complain of the Lord. The wardship and profit shall be converted
to the use of the heir, for the shame done to him, after the disposition
and provision of his friends." (The "marriage" could be annulled by the
church.)
"If an heir of whatever age will not marry at the request of his Lord,
he shall not be compelled thereunto; but when he comes of age, he shall
pay to his Lord the value of the marriage before receiving his land,
whether or not he himself marries."
"Interest shall not run against any minor, from the time of death of
his ancestor until his lawful age; so nevertheless, that the payment of
the principal debt, with the interest that was before the death of his
ancestor shall not remain."
The value of debts to be repaid to the king or to any man shall be
reasonably determined by the debtor's neighbors and not by strangers. A
debtors' plough cattle or sheep cannot be taken to satisfy a debt.
The wards and escheats of the king shall be surveyed yearly by three
people assigned by the King. The sheriffs, by their counsel, shall
approve and let to farm such wards and escheats as they think most
profitable for the King. The Sheriffs shall be answerable for the issues
thereof in the Exchequer at designated times. The collectors of the
customs on wool exports shall pay this money at the two designated times
and shall make yearly accounts of all parcels in ports and all ships.
By statute leap year was standardized throughout the nation, "the day
increasing in the leap year shall be accounted in that year", "but it
shall be taken and reckoned in the same month wherein it grew and that
day and the preceding day shall be counted as one day."
"An English penny [1 d.], called a sterling, round and without any
clipping, shall weigh 32 wheat grains dry in the middle of the ear."
Measurements of distance were standardized to twelve inches to a foot,
three feet to a yard, and so forth up to an acre of land.
Goods which could only be sold by the standard weights and measures
(such as ounces, pounds, gallons, bushels) included sacks of wool,
leather, skins, ropes, glass, iron, lead, canvas, linen cloth, tallow,
spices, confections cheese, herrings, sugar, pepper, cinnamon, nutmeg,
wheat, barley, oats, bread, and ale. The prices required for bread and
ale were based on the market price for the wheat, barley, and oats from
which they were made.
The punishment for repeated violations of required measures, weights,
or prices of bread and ale by a baker or brewer; selling of spoiled or
unwholesome wine, meat, fish by brewers, butchers, or cooks; or a
steward or bailiff receiving a bribe was reduced to placement in a
pillory with a shaven head so that these men would still be fit for
military service and not overcrowd the gaols.
Forest penalties were changed so that "No man shall lose either life or
member [limb] for killing of our deer. But if any man be taken and
convicted for taking our venison, he shall make a grievous fine, if he
has anything. And if he has nothing to lose, he shall be imprisoned for
a year and a day. And after that, if he can find sufficient sureties, he
shall be delivered, and, if not, he shall abjure the realm of England."
The Forest Charter provided that: Every freeman may allow his pigs to
eat in his own wood in the King's forest. He may also drive his pigs
through the King's forest and tarry one night within the forest without
losing any of his pigs. But people having greyhounds must keep them out
of the forest so they don't maim the deer.
The Forest Charter also allowed magnates traveling through the King's
forest on the King's command to come to him, to kill one or two deer as
long as it was in view of the forester if he was present, or while
having a horn blown, so it did not seem to be theft.
After a period of civil war, the following statutes were enacted:
"All persons, as well of high as of low estate, shall receive justice in
the King's Court; and none shall take any such revenge or distress by
his own authority, without award of our court, although he is damaged or
injured, whereby he would have amends of his neighbor either higher or
lower." The penalty is a fine according to the trespass.
A fraudulent conveyance to a minor or lease for a term of years made to
defraud a Lord of a wardship shall be void. A Lord who maliciously and
wrongfully alleges this to a court shall pay damages and costs.
If a Lord will not render unto an heir his land when he comes of age or
takes possession away from an heir of age or removes anything from the
land, he shall pay damages. (The king retained the right to take
possession of an heir's land for a year or, in lieu of this, to take one
year's profit from the land in addition to the relief.)
Kinsmen of a minor heir who have custody of his land held in socage
shall make no waste, sale, nor destruction of the inheritance and shall
answer to the heir when he comes of age for the issues of the land,
except for the reasonable costs of these guardians.
No lord may distrain any of his tenants. No one may drive animals taken
by distraint out of the county where they have been taken.
"Farmers during their terms, shall not make waste, sale, nor exile of
house, woods, and men, nor of any thing else belonging to the tenements
which they have to farm".
Church law required that planned marriages be publicly announced by the
priest so that any impediment could be made known. If a marriage was
clandestine or both parties knew of an impediment, or it was within the
prohibited degrees of consanguinity, the children would be illegitimate.
According to church rules, a man could bequeath his personal property
subject to certain family rights. These were that if only the wife
survived, she received half the property. Similarly, if children
survived, but no wife, they received half the property. When the wife
and children survived, each party received one third. The church hoped
that the remaining fraction would go to the church as a reward for
praying for the deceased's soul. It taught that dying without a will was
sinful. Adults were to confess their sins at least yearly to their
parish priest, which confession would be confidential.
Henry de Bracton, a royal justice and the last great ecclesiastical
attorney, wrote an unfinished treatise: A Tract on the Laws and Customs
of England, systematizing and organizing the law of the court rolls with
definitions and general concepts and describing court practice and
procedure. It was influenced by his knowledge of Roman legal concepts,
such as res judicata, and by his own opinions, such as that the law
should go from precedent to precedent. He also argued that the will and
intent to injure was the essence of murder, so that neither an infant
nor a madman should be held liable for such and that degrees of
punishment should vary with the level of moral guilt in a killing. He
thought the deodand to be unreasonable.
Bracton defines the requirements of a valid and effective gift as: "It
must be complete and absolute, free and uncoerced, extorted neither by
fear nor through force. Let money or service play no part, lest it fall
into the category of purchase and sale, for if money is involved there
will then be a sale, and if service, the remuneration for it. If a gift
is to be valid the donor must be of full age, for if a minor makes a
gift it will be ineffective since (if he so wishes) it shall be returned
to him in its entirety when he reaches full age. Also let the donor hold
in his own name and not another's, otherwise his gift may be revoked.
And let him, at the least, be of sound mind and good memory, though an
invalid, ill and on his death bed, for a gift make under such conditions
will be good if all the other [requirements] of a valid gift are met.
For no one, provided he is of good memory, ought to be kept from the
administration or disposition of his own property when affected by
infirmity, since it is only then that he must make provision for his
family, his household and relations, given stipends and settle his
bequests; otherwise such persons might suffer damage without fault. But
since charters are sometimes fraudulently drawn and gifts falsely taken
to be made when they are not, recourse must therefore be had to the
country and the neighborhood so that the truth may be declared."
In Bracton's view, a villein could buy his own freedom and the child of
a mixed marriage was free unless he was born in the tenement of his
villein parent.
- Judicial Procedure -
The Royal Court split up into several courts with different specialties
and became more like departments of state than offices of the King's
household. The justices were career civil servants knowledgeable in the
civil and canon law. The Court of the King's Bench (a marble slab in
Westminster upon which the throne was placed) traveled with the king and
heard criminal cases and pleas of the Crown. Any use of force, however
trivial, was interpreted as breach of the royal peace and could be
brought before the king's bench. Its records were the coram rege rolls.
The title of the Chief Justiciar of England changed to the Chief Justice
of England. The Court of Common Pleas heard civil cases brought by one
subject against another. Pursuant to the Magna Carta, it sat only at one
place, the Great Hall in Westminster. It had concurrent jurisdiction
with the King's Bench over trespass cases. Its records were the de banco
rolls. The Court of the Exchequer with its subsidiary department of the
Treasury was in almost permanent session at Westminster, collecting the
Crown's revenue and enforcing the Crown's rights.
Appeals from these courts could be made to the king and/or his small
council, which was the curia regis and could hear any plea of the land.
In 1234, the justiciar as the principal royal executive officers and
chief presiding officer over the curia regis ended. In 1268, a chief
justiciar was appointed the hold pleas before the king. Henceforth, a
justiciar was a royal officer who dealt only with judicial work. About
the same time the presiding justice of the court of common pleas also
came to be styled justiciar or chief justice. Justices were no longer
statesmen or politicians, but simply men learned in the law.
Membership in or attendance at the great council or parliament no
longer rested upon feudal tenure, but upon a writ of summons which was,
to a degree, dependent on the royal will.
Crown pleas included issues of the King's property, fines due to him,
murder (a body found with no witnesses to a killing), homicide (a
killing for which there were witnesses), rape, wounding, mayhem,
consorting, larceny, robbery, burglary, arson, poaching, unjust
imprisonment, selling cloth by nonstandard widths, selling wine by
nonstandard weights. Crown causes were pled by the king's serjeants or
servants at law, who were not clerics. Apprentices at law learned
pleading from them.
Between the proprietary action and the possessory assizes there is
growing use in the king's courts of writs of entry, by which a tenant
may be ordered to give up land, e.g. by a recent flaw in a tenant's
title, for a term which has expired, by a widow for her late husband's
land, or by an heir who has become of full age from his guardian. For
instance: " ...Command Tertius that ... he render to Claimant, who is of
full age, as it is said, ten acres ...which he claims to be his right
and inheritance and into which the said Tertius has no entry save by
Secundus, to whom Primus demised [gaged] them, who had only the wardship
thereof while the aforesaid Claimant was under age, as he says...". But
most litigation about land is still through the writ of right for
proprietary issues and the assizes of novel disseisin and mort
d'ancestor for possessory issues.
Royal itinerant justices traveled to the counties every seven years.
There, they gave interrogatories to local assizes of twelve men to
determine what had happened there since the last eyre. All boroughs had
to send twelve burgesses who were to indict any burgesses suspected of
breaking the royal law. Every crime, every invasion of royal rights, and
every neglect of police duties was to be presented and tried. Suspects
were held in gaol until their cases could be heard and gaol breaks were
common. Punishment after trial was prison for serious crimes, expulsion
from the realm for less serious crimes, and pledges for good behavior
for lesser crimes. The visitation of these justices was anticipated with
trepidation. In 1237, the residents of Cornwall hid in the woods rather
than face the itinerant justices.
Royal coroners held inquests on all sudden deaths to determine whether
they were accidental or not. If not, royal justices held trial. They
also had duties in treasure trove and shipwreck cases.
Justices of assize, Justices of the Peace, and itinerant justices
operated at the county level. The traditional county courts had lost
much jurisdiction to the royal courts and were now limited to personal
actions in causes involving usually no more than 40s. There were pleas
of trespass and debt, unjust seizure and detention of beasts, rent
collection, claims of fugitive villeins and their goods, nuisances, and
encroachments. The sheriff still constitutes and conducts the court. The
county court met every three or four weeks, usually in the sheriff's
castle located in the chief borough of the county, but some met in the
open air.
Twice a year the sheriff visited each hundred in the county to hold a
turn [court for small offenses, such as encroachment of public land,
brewing and baking contrary to government regulations, and use of
dishonest weights and measures.]. Everyone who held freehold land in the
hundred except the greater magnates had to attend or be fined for
absence. The sheriff annually viewed frankpledge, in which every layman
without land that could be forfeited for felony, including villeins,
were checked for being in a tithing, a group of neighbors responsible
for each other's good conduct. This applied to every boy who had reached
the age of twelve. He had to swear on the Bible "I will be a lawful man
and bear loyalty to our lord the King and his heirs, and I will be
justiciable to my chief tithing man, so help me God and the saints."
Each tithing man paid a penny to the sheriff.
The hundred court decided cases of theft, viewing of boundaries of
land, claims for tenurial services, claims for homage, relief, and for
wardship; enfeoffments made, battery and brawls not amounting to felony,
wounding and maiming of beasts, collection of debts, trespass, detinue
[detention of personal property which originally was rightfully
acquired] and covenant, which now requires a sealed writing; defamation,
and inquiries and presentments arising from the assizes of bread and ale
and measures. A paid bailiff had responsibility for the hundred court,
which met every three weeks.
Still in existence is the old self-help law of hamsocne, the thief
hand-habbende, the thief back-berend, the old summary procedure where
the thief is caught in the act, AEthelstan's laws, Edward the
Confessor's laws, and Kent's childwyte [fine for begetting a bastard on
a lord's female bond slave]. Under the name of "actio furti" [appeal of
larceny] is the old process by which a thief can be pursued and goods
vindicated. As before and for centuries later, deodands were forfeited
to the king to appease God's wrath. These chattel which caused the death
of a person were usually carts, cart teams, horses, boats, or
millwheels. Then they were forfeited to the community, which paid the
king their worth. Sometimes the justices named the charitable purpose
for which the deodand was to be spent, such as the price of a boat to go
to the repair of a bridge.
Five cases are:
CASE: "John Croc was drowned from his horse and cart in the water of
Bickney. Judgment: misadventure. The price of the horse and cart is
4s.6d. deodand."
CASE: "Willam Ruffus was crushed to death by a certain trunk. The price
of the trunk is 4d., for which the sheriff is to answer. 4d. deodand."
CASE: "William le Hauck killed Edric le Poter and fled, so he is to be
exacted and outlawed. He was in the tithing of Reynold Horloc in Clandon
of the abbot of Chertsey (West Clandon), so it is in mercy. His chattels
were 4 s., for which the bailiff of the abbot of Chertsey is to answer."
CASE: "Richard de Bregsells, accused of larceny, comes and denies the
whole and puts himself on the country for good or ill. The twelve jurors
and four vills say that he is not guilty, so he is quit."
CASE: William le Wimpler and William Vintner sold wine contrary to the
statute, so they are in mercy.
Other cases dealt with issues of entry, e.g. whether land was conveyed
or just rented; issues of whether a man was free, for which his lineage
was examined; issues of to which lord a villein belonged; issues of
nuisance such as making or destroying a bank, ditch, or hedge; diverting
a watercourse or damming it to make a pool; obstructing a road, and
issues of what grazing rights were conveyed in pasture land, waste,
woods, or arable fields between harvest and sowing. Grazing right
disputes usually arose from the ambiguous language in the grant of land
"with appurtenances".
Courts awarded specific relief as well as money damages. If a landlord
broke his covenant to lease land for a term of years, the court restored
possession to the lessee. If a lord did not perform the services due to
his superior lord, the court ordered him to perform the services. The
courts also ordered repair by a lessee.
Debts of country knights and freeholders were heard in the local
courts; debts of merchants and burgesses were heard in the courts of the
fairs and boroughs; debts due under wills and testaments were heard in
the ecclesiastical courts. The ecclesiastical courts deemed marriage to
legitimize bastard children whose parents married, so they inherited
personal property and money of their parents. Proof was by compurgation.
Church law required excommunication to be in writing with the reasons
therefore, and a copy given to the excommunicant. A church judge was
required to employ a notary or two men to write down all acts of the
judge and to give a copy to the parties to protect against unjust
judges. No cleric was allowed to pronounce or execute a sentence of
death or to take part in judicial tests or ordeals. Anyone knowingly
accepting a stolen article was required to restore it to its owner.
Heretics were to be excommunicated.
Trial by combat is still available, although it is extremely rare for
it to take place.
The manor court imposed penalties on those who did not perform their
services to the manor and the lord wrote down the customs of the manor
for future use in other courts.
By statute, no fines could be taken of any man for fair pleading in the
Circuit of Justiciars, county, hundred, or manor courts.
Various statutes relaxed the requirements for attendance at court of
those who were not involved in a case as long as there were enough to
make the inquests fully. And "every freeman who owes suit to the county,
tything, hundred, and wapentake, or to the Court of his Lord, may freely
make his attorney attend for him." All above the rank of knight were
exempted from attendance on the sheriff's turn, unless specifically
summoned. Prelates and barons were generally excepted from the county
courts by the charters of their estates. Charters of boroughs often
excepted their representatives at the county court when there were no
justices. Some barons and knights paid the sheriff to be excused. The
king often relieved the simple knights by special license. There was
frequently a problem of not having enough knights to hold the assizes.
Henry III excused the attendance at hundred courts of all but those who
were bound to special service, or who were concerned in suits.
Trespass has become a writ of course in the common law. It still
involves violence, but its element of breach of the peace extends to
those breaches which do not amount to felony. It can include assault and
battery, physical force to land, and physical force to chattels, e.g.
assaulting and beating the plaintiff, breaking into his close, or
carrying off his goods. One found guilty is fined and imprisoned. As in
criminal matters, if a defendant does not appear at court, his body can
be seized and imprisoned, and if he cannot be found, he may be outlawed.
Trespass to goods results in damages, rather than the return of the
goods, for goods carried off from the plaintiff's possession and can be
brought by bailees.
In Chancery, the court of the Chancellor, if there is a case with no
remedy specified in the law, that is similar to a situation for which
there is a writ, then a new writ may be made for that case. (By this
will later be expanded the action of trespass called "trespass on the
case".)
Various cases from the manors of the abbey of Bec in 1248-1249 are:
1. Ragenilda of Bec gives 2s. for having married without licence.
Pledge, William of Pinner. The same Ragenilda demands against Roger Loft
and Juliana his wife a certain messuage which belonged to Robert le
Beck, and a jury of twelve lawful men is granted her in consideration
of the said fine, and if she recovers seisin she will give in all 5s.
And twelve jurors are elected, to wit, John of Hulle, William Maureward,
Robert Hale Walter But, Walter Sigar, William Brihtwin, Richard
Horseman, Richard Leofred, William John's son, Hugh Cross, Richard
Pontfret and Robert Croyser, John Bisuthe and Gilbert Bisuthe who are
sworn. And they say that the said Ragenilda has the greater right.
Therefore let her have seisin.
2. Richard Guest gives 12d. and if he recovers will give 2s. to have a
jury of twelve lawful men as to whether he has the greater right in a
certain headland at Eastcot which Ragenilda widow of William Andrews
holds, or the said Ragenilda. Pledges for the fine, John Brook and
Richard of Pinner. And the said Ragenilda comes and says that she has no
power to bring that land into judgment because she has no right in it
save by reason of the wardship of the son and heir of her husband, who
is under age. And Richard is not able to deny this. Therefore let him
await [the heir's] full age.
3. Walter Hulle gives 13s.4d. for licence to dwell on the land of the
Prior of Harmondsworth so long as he shall live and as a condition finds
pledges, to wit, William Slipper, John Bisuthe, Gilbert Bisuthe, Hugh
Tree, William John's son, John Hulle, who undertake that the said Walter
shall do to the lord all the services and customs which he would do if
he dwelt on the lord's land and that his heriot shall be secured to the
lord in case he dies there [i.e. at Harmondsworth].
4. Geoffrey Sweyn demands the moiety of one virgate of land which John
Crisp and Alina Hele hold, and he gives 2s. to have a jury, and if he
recovers will give 20s. And the said jurors come and say upon their oath
that the said Geoffrey has no right in the said land. Therefore let the
said tenants go thence without day and let the said Geoffrey pay 2s.
Pledges, Hugh Bussel and Godfrey Francis.
5. Juliana Saer's daughter demands as her right the moiety of one
messuage with a croft, which messuage William Snell and Goda his wife,
sister of the said Juliana hold. And they have made accord by leave [of
the court] to the effect that the said William and Goda give to the said
Juliana a barn and the curtilage nearest the Green and two selions [a
ridge of land between two furrows] in the western part of the said croft
[a small enclosed field]. And the said William put himself in mercy.
Fine, 12d.
6. Hugh of Stanbridge complains of Gilbert Vicar's son and William of
Stanbridge that the wife of the said Gilbert who is of [Gilbert's]
mainpast and the said William unjustly etc. beat and unlawfully struck
him and dragged him by his hair out of his own proper house, to his
damage 40s. and to his dishonor 20s., and [of this] he produces suit.
And Gilbert and William come and defend all of it fully. Therefore let
each of them go to his law six-handed. Afterwards they make accord to
this effect that in case the said Hugh shall hereafter in any manner
offend against [Gilbert and William] and thereof shall be convicted he
will give the lord 6s.8d. by way of penalty and will make amends to
[Gilbert and William] according to the judgment of six lawful men, and
the others on their part will do the like by him. And Hugh put himself
in mercy. Fine, 3s. Pledges, John Tailor and Walter Brother.
7. Breakers of the assize [of beer:] William Idle (fined 6d.), maud
carter's widow (6d.), Walter Carter.
8. John Witriche in mercy for carrying off thorns. Fine, 6d.
9. Robert Dochi in mercy (fine, 2d.) for divers trespasses. Pledges,
Gilbert Priest's son, Ralph Winbold and Walter Green.
10. Ailwin Crisp in mercy for his cow caught in the lord's pasture when
ward had been made. Fine, 12d.
11. John Bernard in mercy for his beasts caught by night in the lord's
meadow. Fine, 2s.
12. Richard Love gives 12d. to have a jury of twelve touching a rod of
land which Robert of Brockhole and Juliana his wife hold. This action is
respited to the next court [when the jurors are to come] without further
delay. Afterwards the jurors come and say upon their oath that the said
Richard has the greater right in the said land. Therefore let him have
seisin.
13. William Blackbeard in mercy for not coming with his law as he was
bound to do. Pledges, Geoffrey of Wick and Geoffrey Payn. Fine, 6d.
14. It was presented that Stephen Shepherd by night struck his sister
with a knife and grievously wounded her. Therefore let him be committed
to prison. Afterwards he made fine with 2s. Pledge, Geoffrey of wick.
15. It was presented that Robert Carter's son by night invaded the house
of Peter Burgess and in felony threw stones at his door so that the said
Peter raised the hue.Therefore let the said Robert be committed to
prison. Afterwards he made fine with 2s.
16. Nicholas Drye, Henry le Notte (fine, 12d.) and Thomas Hogue (fine,
12d.) were convicted for that they by night invaded the house of Sir
Thomas the Chaplain and forcibly expelled thence a man and woman who had
been taken in there as guests. Therefore they are in mercy. Pledges of
the said Thomas, richard of Lortemere and Jordan of Paris. Pledges of
the said Henry, Richard Pen...and Richard Butry.
17. Adam Moses gives half a sextary of wine to have an inquest as to
whether Henry Ayulf accused him of the crime of larceny and used
opprobrious and contumelious words of him. Afterwards they made accord
and Henry finds security for an amercement. Fine, 12d.
18. Isabella Sywards in mercy for having sold to Richard Bodenham land
that she could not warrant him.
19. All the ploughmen of great Ogbourne are convicted by the oath of
twelve men....because by reason of their default [the land] of the lord
was ill ploughed whereby the lord is damaged to the amount of 9s.... And
Walter Reaper is in mercy for concealing [i.e. not giving information as
to] the said bad ploughing. Afterwards he made fine with the lord with 1
mark.
20. From Ralph Joce 6s.8d. for his son, because he [the son] unlawfully
carried off grain from the lord's court. Pledge,Geoffrey Joce.
21. From Henry Pink 12d. for a trespass by waylaying.
22. From Eve Corner 6d. for a trespass of her pigs.
23. From Ralph Scales 6d. for timber carried off.
24. From William Cooper 12d. for ploughing his own land with the lord's
plough without licence.
25. From Hugh Newman 12d. for trespass in the wood.
26. From Richard Penant 12d. for the same.
27. From Helen widow of Little Ogbourne 6d. for the same.
28. From Nicholas Siward 6d. for a false complaint against William
Pafey.
29. From William Pafey 12d. for fighting with the said Nicholas.
30. From the widow of Ralph Shepherd 6d. for a trespass in Pencombe.
31. Richard Blund gives a half-mark and if he recovers will give two
marks and a half to have a jury of the whole court, to inquire whether
he has the greater right in a virgate of land which Hugh Frith holds in
wardship with Cristiana daughter of Simon White, or the said Cristiana.
Pledges for the fine, Richard Dene, William Hulle, John of Senholt, Hugh
Smith, and William Ketelburn. And the whole court say upon their oath
that the said Richard has greater right in the said land than anyone
else. Therefore let him recover his seisin.
32 ....Miller gives 2d. [the Latin translates as 4s.] for a trespass
against the assize of beer and because the lord's grain has been ill
kept at the mill. Pledges, John Orped and Joce Serjeant.
33. Noah gives 2s. in the same way for an inquest as to one acre.
Afterwards they submit themselves to arbitrators, who adjudge that the
said Robert shall pay 3s. to the said Roger and 6s. to the said Gilbert
and 7s. to the said Noah, and that he will do so [Robert] finds pledges.
34. Ralph Bar in mercy for having beaten one of the lord's men. Pledges,
Herbert Rede and Ralph Brunild.
35. For the common fine of the township, a half-mark.
36. John Boneffiant found pledges, to wit, William Smith and William of
Bledlow, that he will not eloign himself from the lord's land and that
he will be prompt to obey the lord's summons.
- - - Chapter 8 - - -
- The Times: 1272-1348 -
King Edward I was respected by the people for his good government,
practical wisdom, and genuine concern for justice for everyone. He loved
his people and wanted them to love him. He came to the throne with
twenty years experience governing lesser lands on the continent which
were given to him by his father Henry III. He spoke Latin, English, and
French. He gained a reputation as a lawgiver and as a peacemaker in
disputes on the continent. His reputation was so high and agreement on
him as the next king so strong that England was peaceful in the almost
two years that it took him to arrive there from continental business. He
was truthful, law-abiding, and kept his word. He had close and solid
family relationships, especially with his father and with his wife
Eleanor, to whom he was faithful. He was loyal to his close circle of
good friends. He valued honor and adhered reasonably well to the terms
of the treaties he made. He was generous in carrying out the royal
custom of subsidizing the feeding of paupers. He visited the sick. He
was frugal and dressed in plain, ordinary clothes rather than
extravagant or ostentatious ones. He disliked ceremony and display.
At his accession, there was a firm foundation of a national law
administered by a centralized judicial system, a centralized executive,
and an organized system of local government in close touch with both the
judicial and the executive system. To gain knowledge of his nation, he
sent royal commissioners into every county to ask about any
encroachments on the King's rights and about misdeeds by any of the
King's officials: sheriffs, bailiffs, or coroners. The results were
compiled as the "Hundred Rolls". They were the basis of reforms which
improved justice at the local as well as the national level. They also
rationalized the array of jurisdictions that had grown up with feudal
government. Statutes were passed by a parliament of two houses, that of
peers (lords) and that of an elected [rather than appointed] commons,
and the final form of the constitution was fixed.
Wardships of children and widows were sought because they were very
profitable. A guardian could get one tenth of the income of the property
during the wardship and a substantial marriage amount when the ward
married. Parents often made contracts to marry for their young children.
This avoided a forced marriage by a ward should the parents die.
Most earldoms and many baronages came into the royal house by escheat
or marriage. The royal house employed many people. The barons developed
a class consciousness of aristocracy and became leaders of society. Many
men, no matter of whom they held land, sought knighthood. The king
granted knighthood by placing his sword on the head of able-bodied and
moral candidates who swore an oath of loyalty to the king and to defend
"all ladies, gentlewomen, widows and orphans" and to "shun no adventure
of your person in any war wherein you should happen to be". A code of
knightly chivalry became recognized, such as telling the truth and
setting wrongs right. About half of the knights were literate. In 1278,
the king issued a writ ordering all freeholders who held land of the
value of at least 400s. to receive knighthood at the King's hands.
At the royal house and other great houses gentlemanly jousting
competitions, with well-refined and specific rules, took the place of
violent tournaments with general rules. Edward forbade tournaments at
which there was danger of a "melee". At these knights competed for the
affection of ladies by jousting with each other while the ladies
watched. Courtly romances were common. If a man convinced a lady to
marry him, the marriage ceremony took place in church, with feasting and
dancing afterwards. Romantic stories were at the height of their
popularity. A usual theme was the lonely quest of a knight engaged in
adventures which would impress his lady.
Riddles include: 1. I will make you a cross, and a thing will not touch
you, and you will not be able to leave the house without breaking that
cross. Answer: Stand before a post in your house, with your arms
extended. 2. What you do not know, and I do not know, and no one can
know after I have told you. Answer: I will take a straw from the floor
of the room, measure its inches, tell you the length, and break the
straw. 3. A pear tree bears all the fruit a pear tree can bear and did
not bear pears. Answer: It bore only one pear.
The dress of the higher classes was very changeable and subject to
fashion as well as function. Ladies no longer braided their hair in long
tails, but rolled it up in a net under a veil, often topped with an
elaborate and fanciful headdress. They wore non- functional long trains
on their tunics and dainty shoes. Men wore a long gown, sometimes
clasped around the waist. Overtunics were often lined or trimmed with
native fur such as squirrel. People often wore solid red, blue, or green
clothes. Only monks and friars wore brown. The introduction of buttons
and buttonholes to replace pins and laces made clothing warmer, and it
could be made tighter. After Edward I established the standard inch as
three continuous dried barleycorns, shoes came in standard sizes and
with a right one different from a left one. The spinning wheel came into
existence to replace the handheld spindle. Now one hand could be used to
form the thread while the other hand turned a large upright wheel that
caused the thread to wind around the spindle, which did not have to be
held by hand. This resulted in an uninterrupted spinning motion which
was not interrupted by alternately forming the thread and winding it on
the spindle.
In the 1300s, there were extremes of fashion in men's and women's
clothing including tight garments, pendant sleeves down to the ground,
coats so short they didn't reach the hips or so long they reached the
heels, hoods so small they couldn't cover the head, and shoes with long
curved peaks like claws at the toes. Both men and women wore belts low
on the hips. The skirt of a lady's tunic was fuller and the bodice more
closely fitted than before. Her hair was usually elaborately done up,
e.g. with long curls or curled braids on either side of the face. A
jeweled circlet was often worn around her head. Ladies wore on their
arms or belts, cloth handbags, which usually contained toiletries, such
as combs made of ivory, horn, bone, or wood, and perhaps a little book
of devotions. A man wore a knife and a bag on his belt. Some women
painted their faces and/or colored their hair. There were hand- held
glass mirrors. Some people kept dogs purely as pets.
There was a great development of heraldic splendor with for instance,
crests, coat-armor, badges, pennons [long, triangular flag], and
helmets. They descended through families. Not only was it a mark of
service to wear the badge of a lord, but lords wore each other's badges
by way of compliment.
Lords surrounded themselves with people of the next lower rank, usually
from nearby families, and had large households. For instance, the king
had a circle of noblemen and ladies about him. A peer or great prelate
had a household of about 100-200 people, among which were his inner
circle, companions, administrators, secretaries, bodyguards and armed
escort, chaplain, singing priests and choirboys, and servants. All
officers of the household were gentlemen. The secretary was usually a
clerk, who was literate because he had taken minor clerical orders.
Since the feudal obligation of the tenants was disappearing, a lord
sometimes hired retainers to supplement his escort of fighting men. They
proudly wore his livery of cloth or hat, which was in the nature of a
uniform or badge of service. A nobleman and his lady had a circle of
knights and gentlemen and their ladies. A knight had a circle of
gentlemen and their ladies.
The great barons lived in houses built within the walls of their
castles. Lesser barons lived in semi-fortified manors, many of which had
been licensed to be embattled or crenelated. Their halls were two
stories high, and usually built on the first rather than on the second
floor. Windows came down almost to the floor. The hall had a raised
floor at one end where the lord and lady and a few others sat at a high
table. The hearth was in the middle of the room or on a wall. Sometimes
a cat was used to open and shut the louvers of the smoke outlet in the
roof. The lord's bedroom was next to the hall on the second floor and
could have windows into the hall and a spiral staircase connecting the
two rooms. There was a chapel, in which the lord attended mass every
morning. The many knights usually lived in unfortified houses with two
rooms.
In the great houses, there were more wall hangings, and ornaments for
the tables. The tables were lit with candles or torches made of wax.
Plates were gold and silver. The lord, his lady, and their family and
guests sat at the head table, which was raised on a dais. On this high
table was a large and elaborate salt cellar. One's place in relationship
to the salt cellar indicated one's status: above or below the salt.
Also, those of higher status at the table ate a superior bread. The
almoner [alms giver] said grace. Gentlemen poured the lord's drink
[cupbearer], served his meat [carver], and supervised the serving of the
food [sewer]. A yeoman ewery washed the hands of the lord and his guests
and supplied the napkins, ewers [pitchers], and basins. A yeoman
cellarer or butler served the wine and beer. The yeoman of the pantry
served the bread, salt, and cutlery. The steward presided over the table
of household officers of gentle birth. The marshall of the hall, clerk
of the kitchen, or other yeomen officers supervised other tables. Salt
and spices were available at all tables. Most people ate with their
fingers, although there were knives and some spoons. Drinking vessels
were usually metal, horn, or wood. A marshall and ushers kept order.
Minstrels played musical instruments or recited histories of noble deeds
or amusing anecdotes. Reading aloud was a favorite pastime. The almoner
collected the leftovers to distribute to the poor.
In lesser houses people ate off trenchers [a four day old slab of
coarse bread or a piece of wood with the middle scooped out like a
bowl], or plates of wood or pewter [made from tin, copper, and lead].
They often shared plates and drinking vessels at the table.
Queen Eleanor, a cultivated, intelligent, and educated lady from the
continent, fostered culture and rewarded individual literary efforts,
such as translations from Latin, with grants of her own money. She
patronized Oxford and Cambridge Universities and left bequests to poor
scholars there. She herself had read Aristotle and commentaries thereon,
and she especially patronized literature which would give cross-cultural
perspectives on subjects. She was kind and thoughtful towards those
about her and was also sympathetic to the afflicted and generous to the
poor. She shared Edward's career to a remarkable extent, even
accompanying him on a crusade. She had an intimate knowledge of the
people in Edward's official circle and relied on the advice of two of
them in managing her lands. She mediated disputes between earls and
other nobility, as well as softened her husband's temper towards people.
Edward granted her many wardships and marriages and she arranged
marriages with political advantages. She dealt with envoys coming to the
court. Her intellectual vitality and organized mentality allowed her to
deal with arising situations well. Edward held her in great esteem. She
introduced to England the merino sheep, which, when bred with the
English sheep, gave them a better quality of wool. She and Edward often
played games of chess and backgammon.
Farm efficiency was increased by the use of windmills in the fields to
pump water and by allowing villeins their freedom and hiring them as
laborers only when needed. Customary service was virtually extinct. A
man could earn 5d. for reaping, binding, and shocking into a pile, an
acre of wheat. A strong man with a wife to do the binding could do this
in a long harvest day. Harvests were usually plentiful, with the
exception of two periods of famine over the country due to weather
conditions. Then the price of wheat went way up and drove up the prices
of all other goods correspondingly. The story of outlaw Robin Hood, who
made a living by robbing, was passed around. This Robin Hood did not
give to the poor. But generally, there was enough grain to store so that
the population was no longer periodically devastated by famine. The
population grew and all arable land in the nation came under the plough.
The acre was standardized. About 1300, the price of an ox was 9s., a
heifer or cow 7s., a hide 2s.6d., a cart horse 2 or 3 pounds. Farm women
went to nearby towns to sell eggs and dairy products, usually to town
women.
Although manors needed the ploughmen, the carters and drivers, the
herdsmen, and the dairymaid on a full-time basis, other tenants spent
increasing time in crafts and became village carpenters, smiths, weavers
or millers' assistants. Trade and the towns grew. Smiths used coal in
their furnaces.
Money rents often replaced service due to a lord, such as fish silver,
malt silver, or barley silver. The lord's rights are being limited to
the rights declared on the extents [records showing service due from
each tenant] and the rolls of the manor. Sometimes land is granted to
strangers because none of the kindred of the deceased will take it.
Often a manor court limited a fee in land to certain issue instead of
being inheritable by all heirs. Surveyors' poles marked boundaries
declared by court in boundary disputes. This resulted in survey maps
showing villages and cow pastures.
The revival of trade and the appearance of a money economy was
undermining the long-established relationship between the lord of the
manor and his villeins. As a result, money payments were supplementing
or replacing payments in service and produce as in Martham, where Thomas
Knight held twelve acres in villeinage, paid 16d. for it and 14d. in
special aids. "He shall do sixteen working days in August and for every
day he shall have one repast - viz. Bread and fish. He shall hoe ten
days without the lord's food - price of a day 1/2 d. He shall cart to
Norwich six cartings or shall give 9d., and he shall have for every
carting one leaf and one lagena - or gallon - of ale. Also for ditching
1d. He shall make malt 3 1/2 seams of barley or shall give 6d. Also he
shall flail for twelve days or give 12d. He shall plough if he has his
own plough, and for every ploughing he shall have three loaves and nine
herrings ... For carting manure he shall give 2."
Another example is this manor's holdings, when 3d. would buy food for a
day: "Extent of the manor of Bernehorne, made on Wednesday following the
feast of St. Gregory the Pope, in the thirty-fifth year of the reign of
King Edward, in the presence of Brother Thomas, keeper of Marley, John
de la More, and Adam de Thruhlegh, clerks, on the oath of William de
Gocecoumbe, Walter le Parker, Richard le Knyst, Richard the son of the
latter, Andrew of Estone, Stephen Morsprich, Thomas Brembel, William of
Swynham, John Pollard, Roger le Glide, John Syward, and John de
Lillingewist, who say that there are all the following holdings:... John
Pollard holds a half acre in Aldithewisse and owes 18d. at the four
terms, and owes for it relief and heriot. John Suthinton holds a house
and 40 acres of land and owes 3s.6d. at Easter and Michaelmas. William
of Swynham holds one acre of meadow in the thicket of Swynham and owes
1d. at the feast of Michaelmas. Ralph of Leybourne holds a cottage and
one acre of land in Pinden and owes 3s. at Easter and Michaelmas, and
attendance at the court in the manor every three weeks, also relief and
heriot. Richard Knyst of Swynham holds two acres and a half of land and
owes yearly 4s. William of Knelle holds two acres of land in
Aldithewisse and owes yearly 4s. Roger le Glede holds a cottage and
three roods of land and owes 2s.6d. Easter and Michaelmas. Alexander
Hamound holds a little piece of land near Aldewisse and owes one goose
of the value of 2d. The sum of the whole rent of the free tenants, with
the value of the goose, is 18s.9d. They say, moreover, that John of
Cayworth holds a house and 30 acres of land, and owes yearly 2s. at
Easter and Michaelmas; and he owes a cock and two hens at Christmas of
the value of 4d. And he ought to harrow for two days at the Lenten
sowing with one man and his own horse and his own harrow, the value of
the work being 4d.; and he is to receive from the lord on each day three
meals, of the value of 5d., and then the lord will be at a loss of 1d.
Thus his harrowing is of no value to the service of the lord. And he
ought to carry the manure of the lord for two days with one cart, with
his own two oxen, the value of the work being 8d.; and he is to receive
from the lord each day three meals at the value as above. And thus the
service is worth 3d. clear. And he shall find one man for two days, for
mowing the meadow of the lord, who can mow, by estimation, one acre and
a half, the value of the mowing of an acre being 6d.: the sum is
therefore 9d. And he is to receive each day three meals of the value
given above. And thus that mowing is worth 4d. clear. And he ought to
gather and carry that same hay which he has cut, the price of the work
being 3d. And he shall have from the lord two meals for one man, of the
value of 1 1/2 d. Thus the work will be worth 1 1/2 d. clear. And he
ought to carry the hay of the lord for one day with a cart and three
animals of his own, the price of the work being 6d. And he shall have
from the lord three meals of the value of 2 1/2 d. And thus the work is
worth 3 1/2 d. clear. And he ought to carry in autumn beans or oats for
two days with a cart and three animals of his own, the value of the work
being 12d. And he shall receive from the lord each day three meals of
the value given above. And thus the work is worth 7d. clear. And he
ought to carry wood from the woods of the lord as far as the manor, for
two days in summer, with a cart and three animals of his own, the value
of the work being 9d. And he shall receive from the lord each day three
meals of the price given above. And thus the work is worth 4d. clear.
And he ought to find one man for two days to cut heath, the value of the
work being 4d., and he shall have three meals each day of the value
given above: and thus the lord will lose, if he receives the service,
3d. Thus that mowing is worth nothing to the service of the lord. And he
ought to carry the heath which he has cut, the value of the work being
5d. And he shall receive from the lord three meals at the price of 2 1/2
d. And thus the work will be worth 2 1/2 d. clear. And he ought to carry
to Battle, twice in the summer season, each time half a load of grain,
the value of the service being 4d. And he shall receive in the manor
each time one meal of the value of 2d. And thus the work is worth 2d.
clear. The totals of the rents, with the value of the hens, is 2s.4d.
The total of the value of the works is 2s.3 1/2 d., being owed from the
said John yearly. William of Cayworth holds a house and 30 acres of land
and owes at Easter and Michaelmas 2s. rent. And he shall do all customs
just as the aforesaid John of Cayworth. William atte Grene holds a house
and 30 acres of land and owes in all things the same as the said John.
Alan atte Felde holds a house and 16 acres of land (for which the
sergeant pays to the court of Bixley 2s.), and he owes at Easter and
Michaelmas 4s., attendance at the manor court, relief, and heriot. John
Lyllingwyst holds a house and four acres of land and owes at the two
terms 2s., attendance at the manor court, relief, and heriot. The same
John holds one acre of land in the fields of Hoo and owes at the two
periods 2s., attendance, relief, and heriot. Reginald atte Denne holds a
house and 18 acres of land and owes at the said periods 18d.,
attendance, relief, and heriot. Robert of Northehou holds three acres of
land at Saltcote and owes at the said periods attendance, relief, and
heriot. Total of the rents of the villeins, with the value of the hens,
20s. Total of all the works of these villeins, 6s.10 1/2 d. And it is to
be noted that none of the above-mentioned villeins can give their
daughters in marriage, nor cause their sons to be tonsured, nor can they
cut down timber growing on the lands they hold, without licence of the
bailiff or sergeant of the lord, and then for building purposes and not
otherwise. And after the death of any one of the aforesaid villeins, the
lord shall have as a heriot his best animal, if he had any; if, however,
he have no living beast, the lord shall have no heriot, as they say. The
sons or daughters of the aforesaid villeins shall give, for entrance
into the holding after the death of their predecessors, as much as they
give of rent per year. Sylvester, the priest, holds one acre of meadow
adjacent to his house and owes yearly 3s. Total of the rent of tenants
for life, 3s. Petronilla atte Holme holds a cottage and a piece of land
and owes at Easter and Michaelmas - ; also, attendance, relief, and
heriot. Walter Herying holds a cottage and a piece of land and owes at
Easter and Michaelmas 18d., attendance, relief, and heriot. Isabella
Mariner holds a cottage and owes at the feast of St. Michael 12d.,
attendance, relief, and heriot. Jordan atte Melle holds a cottage and 1
1/2 acres of land and owes at Easter and Michaelmas 2s., attendance,
relief, and heriot. William of Batelesmere holds one acre of land with a
cottage and owes at the feast of St. Michael 3d., and one cock and one
hen at Christmas of the value of 3d., attendance, relief, and heriot.
John le Man holds half an acre of land with a cottage and owes at the
feast of St. Michael 2s., attendance, relief, and heriot. Hohn Werthe
holds one rood of land with a cottage and owes at the said term 18d.,
attendance, relief, and heriot. Geoffrey Caumbreis holds half an acre
and a cottage and owes at the said term 18d., attendance, relief, and
heriot. William Hassok holds one rood of land and a cottage and owes at
the said term 18d., attendance, relief, and heriot. The same man holds 3
1/2 acres of land and owes yearly at the feast of St. Michael 3s. for
all. Roger Doget holds half an acre of land and a cottage, which were
those of R. the miller, and owes at the feast of St. Michael 18d.,
attendance, relief, and heriot. Thomas le Brod holds one acre and a
cottage and owes at the said term 3s., attendance, relief, and heriot.
Agnes of Cayworth holds half an acre and a cottage and owes at the said
term 18d., attendance, relief, and heriot. Total of the rents of the
said cottagers, with the value of the hens, 34s.6d. And it is to be
noted that all the said cottagers shall do as regards giving their
daughters in marriage, having their sons tonsured, cutting down timber,
paying heriot, and giving fines for entrance, just as John of Cayworth
and the rest of the villeins above mentioned." The above fines and
penalties, with heriots and reliefs, are worth 5s. yearly.
Often one village was divided up among two or more manors, so different
manorial customs made living conditions different among the villagers.
Villages usually had carpenters, smiths, saddlers, thatchers, carters,
fullers, dyers, soapmakers, tanners, needlers, and brassworkers. Each
villein had his own garden in which to grow fruit and vegetables next to
his house, a pig (which fattened more quickly than other animals),
strips in the common field, and sometimes an assart [a few acres of his
own to cultivate as he pleased on originally rough uncultivated waste
land beyond the common fields and the enclosed common pastures and
meadows]. Most villeins did not venture beyond their village except for
about ten miles to a local shrine or great fair a couple times a year.
At the fair might be fish, honey, spices, salt, garlic, oil, furs,
silks, canvas, soap, pans, pots, grindstones, coal, nails, tar, iron,
shovels, brushes, pails, horses, and packsaddles. Early apothecaries
might sell potions there. Men and women looking for other employment
might attend to indicate their availability.
Under Edward I, villages were required to mount watches to protect life
and property and were called upon to provide one man for the army and to
pay his wages.
People told time by counting the number of rings of the church bell,
which rang on the hour. Every Sunday, the villagers went to church,
which was typically the most elaborate and centrally located building in
the village. The parishioners elected churchwardens, who might be women.
This religion brought comfort and hope of going to heaven after judgment
by God at death if sin was avoided. On festival days, Bible stories,
legends, and lives of saints were read or performed as miracle dramas.
They learned to avoid the devil, who was influential in lonely places
like forests and high mountains. At death, the corpse was washed,
shrouded, and put into a rectangular coffin with a cross on its lid.
Priests sang prayers amid burning incense for the deliverance of the
soul to God while interring the coffin into the ground. Men who did not
make a will risked the danger of an intestate and unconfessed death. The
personal property of a man dying intestate now went to the church as a
trust for the dead man's imperiled soul instead of to the man's lord.
Unqualified persons entered holy orders thereby obtaining "benefit of
clergy", and then returned to secular employments retaining this
protection.
A villein could be forever set free from servitude by his lord as in
this example:
"To all the faithful of Christ to whom the present writing shall come,
Richard, by the divine permission, abbot of Peterborough and of the
Convent of the same place, eternal greeting in the Lord: Let all know
that we have manumitted and liberated from all yoke of servitude
William, the son of Richard of Wythington, whom previously we have held
as our born bondman, with his whole progeny and all his chattels, so
that neither we nor our successors shall be able to require or exact any
right or claim in the said William, his progeny, or his chattels. But
the same William, with his whole progeny and all his chattels, shall
remain free and quit and without disturbance, exaction, or any claim on
the part of us or our successors by reason of any servitude forever.
We will, moreover, and concede that he and his heirs shall hold the
messuages, land, rents, and meadows in Wythington which his ancestors
held from us and our predecessors, by giving and performing the fine
which is called merchet for giving his daughter in marriage, and tallage
from year to year according to our will, - that he shall have and hold
these for the future from us and our successors freely, quietly,
peacefully, and hereditarily, by paying to us and our successors yearly
40s. sterling, at the four terms of the year, namely: at St. John the
Baptist's day 10s., at Michaelmas 10s., at Christmas 10s., and at Easter
10s., for all service, exaction, custom, and secular demand; saving to
us, nevertheless, attendance at our court of Castre every three weeks,
wardship, and relief, and outside service of our lord the King, when
they shall happen. And if it shall happen that the said William or his
heirs shall die at any time without an heir, the said messuage, land
rents, and meadows with their appurtenances shall return fully and
completely to us and our successors. Nor will it be allowed to the said
William or his heirs to give, sell, alienate, mortgage, or encumber in
any way, the said messuage, land, rents, and meadows, or any part of
them, by which the said messuage, land, rents, and meadows should not
return to us and our successors in the form declared above. And if this
should occur later, their deed shall be declared null, and what is thus
alienated shall come to us and our successors...
Given at Borough, for the love of Lord Robert of good memory, once
abbot, our predecessor and maternal uncle of the said William, and at
the instance of the good man, Brother Hugh of Mutton, relative of the
said abbot Robert, A.D. 1278, on the eve of Pentecost."
Villeins who were released from the manorial organization by
commutation of their service for a money payment took the name of their
craft as part of their name, such as, for the manufacture of textiles,
Weaver, Draper, Comber, Fuller, Napper, Cissor, Tailor, Textor; for
metalwork, Faber, Ironmonger; for leatherwork, Tanner; for woodwork,
building and carpentry, Carpenter, Cooper, Mason, Pictor; for food
production, Baker, Pistor. Iron, tin, lead, salt, and even coal were
providing increasing numbers of people with a livelihood.
Many new boroughs were founded as grants of market rights by the king
grew in number. These grants implied the advantage of the King's
protection. In fact, one flooded town was replaced with a new town
planned with square blocks. It was the charter which distinguished the
borough community from the other communities existing in the country. It
invested each borough with a distinct character. The privileges which
the charter conferred were different in different places. It might give
trading privileges: freedom from toll, a guild merchant, a right to hold
a fair. It might give jurisdictional privileges: a right to hold court
with greater or less franchises. It might give governmental privileges:
freedom from the burden of attending the hundred and county courts, the
return of writs, which meant the right to exclude the royal officials,
the right to take the profits of the borough, paying for them a fixed
sum to the Crown or other lord of the borough, the right to elect their
own officials rather than them being appointed by the king or a lord,
and the right to provide for the government of the borough. It might
give tenurial privileges: the power to make a will of lands, or freedom
from the right of a lord to control his tenants' marriages. It might
give procedural privileges: trial by combat is excluded, and trial by
compurgation is secured and regulated. These medieval borough charters
are very varied, and represent all stages of development and all grades
of franchise. Boroughs bought increasing rights and freedoms from their
lord, who was usually the King.
In the larger towns, where cathedrals and public building were built,
there arose a system for teaching these technical skills and elaborate
handicraft, wood, metal, stained glass, and stone work. A boy from the
town would be bound over in apprenticeship to a particular craftsman,
who supplied him with board and clothing. The craftsman might also
employ men for just a day. These journeymen were not part of the
craftsman's household as was the apprentice. After a few years of an
apprenticeship, one became a journeyman and perfected his knowledge of
his craft and its standards by seeing different methods and results in
various towns. He was admitted as a master of his trade to a guild upon
presenting an article of his work worthy of that guild's standard of
workmanship: his "masterpiece". Women, usually wives of brethren only,
could be admitted. The tailors' guild and the skinners' guild are extant
now.
When guilds performed morality plays based on Bible stories at town
festivals, there was usually a tie between the Bible story and the
guild's craft. For instance, the story of the loaves and fishes would be
performed by the Bakers' or Fishmongers' Guild. The theme of the
morality play was the fight of the Seven Cardinal Virtues against the
Seven Deadly Sins for the human soul, a life- long battle. The number
seven was thought to have sacred power; there were seven sacraments,
seven churches in the Biblical Apocalypse, seven liberal arts and seven
devilish arts. The seven sacraments were: baptism, confirmation, Lord's
Supper, penance, orders, matrimony, and extreme unction.
A borough was run by a mayor elected usually for life. By being members
of a guild, merchant-traders and craftsmen acquired the legal status of
burgesses and had the freedom of the borough. Each guild occupied a
certain ward of the town headed by an alderman. The town aldermen, who
were unpaid, made up the town council, which advised the mayor. The
Mayor of London received 40 pounds for hospitality, but in small towns,
20s. sufficed. Often there were town police, bailiffs, beadles
[messengers], a town crier, and a town clerk. London offices included
recorder, prosecutor, common sergeant, and attorneys. In the center of
town were the fine stone houses, a guildhall with a belfry tower, and
the marketplace - a square or broad street, where the town crier made
public announcements with bell or horn. Here too was the ducking stool
for scandalmongers and the stocks which held offenders by their legs and
perhaps their hands to be scorned and pelted by bystanders with, for
instance, rotten fruit and filth. No longer were towns dominated by the
local landholders.
In London there were 4 royal princes, 6 great earls, 17 barons, 26
knights, and 11 female representatives of the peerage (counted in 1319).
There was a wall with four towers surrounding the White Tower, and this
castle was known as the Tower of London. Another wall and a moat were
built around it and it has reached its final form. Hovels, shops, and
waste patches alternated with high walls and imposing gateways
protecting mansions. The mansions had orchards, gardens, stables,
brewhouses, bakeries, guardrooms, and chapels. London streets were paved
with cobbles and sand. Each citizen was to keep the street in front of
his tenement in good repair. Later, each alderman appointed four
reputable men to repair and clean the streets for wages. The repair of
Bishopsgate was the responsibility of the Bishop because he received one
stick from every cart of firewood passing through it. Rules as to tiled
roofs were enforced. A 1297 ordinance required all taverns to close at
curfew, an hour that fluctuated. Prostitutes were expelled from the city
because the street with their bawdy houses had become very noisy. Women
huckster-retailers, nurses, servants, and loose women were limited to
wearing hoods furred with lambskin or rabbitskin and forbidden to wear
hoods furred with vair or miniver [grey or white squirrel] in the guise
of good ladies. An infirmary for the blind was founded by a mercer, who
became its first prior.
The London mayoral elections were hotly fought over until in 1285, when
the aldermen began to act with the aid of an elected council in each of
the twenty-four wards, which decentralized the government of the city.
Each ward chose certain of its inhabitants to be councilors to the
aldermen. This council was to be consulted by him and its advice to be
followed. In 1291, the aldermen for the first time included a
fishmonger. The Fishmongers were the only guild at this time, besides
the Weavers, which had acquired independent jurisdiction by the transfer
of control of their weekly hallmote from a public official to
themselves. Craftsmen began to take other public offices too. By the
reign of Edward II, all the citizens were obliged to be enrolled among
the trade guilds. A great quarrel between the weaver's guild and the
magistracy began the control of the city by the craft guilds or city
companies. Admission to freedom of the city [citizenship] was controlled
by the citizens, who decided that no man of English birth, and
especially no English merchant, who followed any specific mistery
[French word for a calling or trade] or craft, was to be admitted to the
freedom of the city except on the security of six reputable men of that
mistery or craft. No longer could one simply purchase citizenship.
Apprentices had to finish their terms before such admission, and often
could not afford the citizenship fee imposed on them. Only freemen could
sell wares in the city, a custom of at least two hundred years.
As economic activity in London became more complex and on a larger
scale in the 1200s, some craftsmen were brought under the control of
other crafts or merchants. The bakers fell under the control of the
wholesale grain dealers; the weavers became pieceworkers for rich cloth
merchants; the blademakers and shearers were employed by cutlers;
coppersmiths were controlled by girdlers; fullers were controlled by
entrepreneurial dyers; and the painters, joiners, and lorimers were
controlled by the saddlers. Guilds moved their meeting places from
churches, which were now too small, to guild halls. The controlling
officers of the large guilds met at the Guildhall, which became the seat
of mayoral authority. London streets in existence by this time include
Cordwainer, Silver, Cannon (Candlewick), and Roper. Lanes included
Ironmonger, Soper, Spurrier, Lad (ladles), Distaff, Needles, Mede,
Limeburner, and Hosier. Fighting among groups was common in London.
There was a street fight on a large scale in 1327 between the saddlers
and a coalition of joiners, painters, and lorimers (makers of metal work
of saddles). Much blood was shed in the street battle between the
skinners and the fishmongers in 1340. There was a city ordinance that no
one except royal attendants, baronial valets, and city officials were to
go about armed. Disputes among neighbors that were brought to court
included the use and upkeep of party walls, blocked and overflowing
gutters, cesspits too close to a neighbor's property, noisy tenants,
loss of light, and dangerous or overhanging structures.
In 1275, a goldsmith was chief assay-master of the King's mint and
keeper of the exchange at London. The king gave the Goldsmiths' Company
the right of assay [determination of the quantity of gold or silver in
an object] and required that no vessels of gold or silver should leave
the maker's hands until they had been tested by the wardens and stamped
appropriately. In 1279, goldsmith William Farrington bought the soke of
the ward containing the goldsmiths' shops. It remained in his family for
80 years. A patent of 1327 empowered the guild to elect a properly
qualified governing body to superintend its affairs, and reform subjects
of just complaint. It also prescribed, as a safeguard against a
prevailing fraud and abuse, that all members of the trade should have
their standing in Cheapside or in the King's exchange, and that no gold
or silver should be manufactured for export, except that which had been
bought at the exchange or of the trade openly.
Some prices in London were: large wooden bedstead 18s., a small
bedstead 2s., a large chest for household items 2s., feather beds 2-3s.,
a table 1s., a chair 4-6d., cloth gown lined with fur 13- 20s., plain
coats and overcoats 2-8s., caps 2-8d., a pair of pen- cases with inkhorn
4d., a skin of parchment 1d., 24 sheets of paper 6d, a carcass of beef
15s., a pig 4s., a swan 5s., and a pheasant 4s. There was a problem with
malefactors committing offenses in London and avoiding its jurisdiction
by escaping to Southwark across the Thames. So Southwark was given a
royal charter which put it under the jurisdiction of London for peace
and order matters and allowed London to appoint its tax collector.
London forbade games being played because they had replaced practice in
archery, which was necessary for defense.
A royal inquiry into the state of the currency indicated much
falsification and coin-clipping by the Jews and others. About 280 Jews
and many Englishmen were found guilty and hanged. The rest of the Jews,
about 16,000, were expelled in 1290. This was popular with the public
because of the abuses of usury. There had been outbreaks of violence
directed at the Jews since about 1140. The king used Italian bankers
instead because he thought them more equitable in their dealings. The
lepers were driven out of London in 1276. Exports and imports were no
longer a tiny margin in an economy just above the subsistence level.
Exports were primarily raw wool and cloth, but also grain, butter, eggs,
herring, hides, leather goods such as bottles and boots, embroideries,
metalware, horseshoes, daggers, tin, coal, and lead. Imported were wine,
silk, timber, furs, rubies, emeralds, fruits, raisins, currents, pepper,
ginger, cloves, rice, cordovan leather, pitch, hemp, spars, fine iron,
short rods of steel, bow-staves of yew, tar, oil, salt, cotton (for
candlewicks), and alum (makes dyes hold). Ships which transported them
had one or two masts upon which sails could be furled, the recently
invented rudder, and a carrying capacity of up to 200 tuns [about one
ton]. Many duties of sheriffs and coroners were transferred to county
landholders by commissions. In coastal counties, there were such
commissions for supervising coastal defense and maintaining the beacons.
Each maritime county maintained a coast guard, which was under the
command of a knight. Ports had well-maintained harbors, quays, and
streets. By 1306 there was an office of admiral of the fleet of the
ships of the southern ports.
Women could inherit land in certain circumstances. Some tenants holding
land in chief of the king were women.
Regulation of trade became national instead of local. Trade was
relatively free; almost the only internal transportation tolls were
petty portages and viages levied to recoup the expense of a bridge or
road which had been built by private enterprise. Responsibility for the
coinage was transferred from the individual moneyers working in
different boroughs to a central official who was to become Master of the
Mint. The round half penny and farthing [1/4 penny] were created so that
the penny needn't be cut into halves and quarters anymore.
Edward I called meetings of representatives from all social and
geographic sectors of the nation at one Parliament to determine taxes
due to the Crown. He declared that "what touches all, should be approved
by all". He wanted taxes from the burgesses in the towns and the
clergy's ecclesiastical property as well as from landholders. He argued
to the clergy that if barons had to both fight and pay, they who could
do no fighting must at least pay. When the clergy refused to pay, he put
them outside the royal protection and threatened outlawry and
confiscation of their lands. Then they agreed to pay and to renounce all
papal orders contrary to the King's authority.
The Model Parliament of 1295 was composed of the three communities. The
first were the lords, which included seven earls and forty-one barons.
Because of the increase of lesser barons due to a long national peace
and prosperity, the lords attending were reduced in numbers and peerage
became dependent not on land tenure, but on royal writ of summons. The
great barons were chosen by the king and received a special summons in
their own names to the council or Parliament. Others were called by a
general summons. The second community was the clergy, represented by the
two archbishops, bishops from each of eighteen dioceses, and sixty-seven
abbots. The third community was the commons. It was composed of two
knights elected by the suitors who were then present at the county
court, two burgesses elected by principal burgesses of each borough, and
two representatives from each city. The country knights had a natural
affinity with the towns in part because their younger sons sought their
occupation, wife, and estate there. Also, great lords recruited younger
brothers of yeoman families for servants and fighting men, who
ultimately settled down as tradesmen in the towns. The country people
and the town people also had a community of interest by both being
encompassed by the county courts. The peasants were not represented in
the county courts nor in Parliament. One had to have land to be entitled
to vote because the landowner had a stake in the country, a material
security for his good behavior.
Parliaments without knights and burgesses still met with the king. But
it was understood that no extraordinary tax could be levied without the
knights and burgesses present. Ordinary taxes could be arranged with
individuals, estates, or communities. The lower clergy ceased to attend
Parliament and instead considered taxes to pay to the king during their
national church convocations, which were held at the same time as
Parliament. For collection purposes, their diocesan synod was analogous
to the count court. The higher clergy remained in Parliament because
they were feudal vassals of the king.
Edward's council was the highest tribunal. It comprised the chancellor,
treasurer and other great officers of state, the justices of the three
courts, the master or chief clerks of the chancery, and certain selected
prelates and barons. The council assisted the king in considering
petitions. Most petitions to the King were private grievances of
individuals, including people of no social rank, such as prisoners.
Other petitions were from communities and groups, such as religious
houses, the two universities, boroughs, and counties. These groups
sometimes formed alliances in a common cause. Women sometimes
petitioned. From 1293, the petitions were placed in four stacks for
examination by the King and council, by the Chancery, by the Exchequer,
or by the justices. Many hours were spent hearing and answering
petitions. From 1305, the petitions were presented to the king in full
Parliament.
The king still exercised a power of legislation without a full
Parliament. He might in his council issue proclamations. The Chief
Justices still had, as members of the king's council, a real voice in
the making of laws. The king and his justices might, after a statute has
been made, put an authoritative interpretation upon it. Royal
proclamations had the same force as statutes while the king lived;
sometimes there were demands that certain proclamations be made
perpetual by being embodied in statutes, e.g. fixing wages. There was no
convention that agreement or even the presence of representatives was
required for legislation. The idea that the present can bind the absent
and that the majority of those present may outvote the minority was
beginning to take hold. Edward I's councilors and justices took an oath
to give, expedite, and execute faithful counsel; to maintain, recover,
increase, and prevent the diminution of, royal rights; to do justice,
honestly and unsparingly; to join in no engagements which may present
the councilor from fulfilling his promise; and to take no gifts in the
administration of justice, save meat and drink for the day. These were
in addition to other matters sworn to by the councilors.
Parliament soon was required to meet at least once a year at the Great
Hall at Westminster located beside the royal palace. London paid its
representatives 10s. per day for their attendance at Parliament. From
the time of Edward II, the counties paid their knight- representatives
4s. daily, and the boroughs paid their burgess- representatives 2s.
daily. When it convened, the Chancellor sat on the left and the
Archbishop of Canterbury on the right of the king. Just below and in
front of the king his council sits on wool sacks brought in for their
comfort from wool stored nearby. It answers questions. Behind them on
the wool sacks sit the justices, who may be called upon to give legal
advice, e.g. in framing statutes. Then come the spiritual and lay
barons, then the knights, and lastly the elected burgesses and citizens.
Lawmaking became a function of Parliament, of which the King's council
is a part, instead of a function of the king with his council and
justices. The common people now had a voice in lawmaking, though
legislation could be passed without their consent. The first legislation
proposed by the commons was alteration of the forest laws governing the
royal pleasure parks. Such a statute was passed in a bargain for taxes
of a percentage of all movables, which were mostly foodstuffs and
animals. The king offered to give up the royal right to tax merchandise
for a new tax: customs on exports. The barons and knights of the county
agreed to pay an 11th, the burgesses, a 7th, and the clergy a 10th on
their other movables. In time, several boroughs sought to be included in
the county representation so they could pay the lower rate. This new
system of taxation began the decline of the imposition of feudal aids,
knights' fees, scutages, carucage, and tallage, which had been
negotiated by the Exchequer with the reeves of each town, the sheriff
and county courts of each county, and the bishops of each diocese.
The staple [depot or mart, from the French "estaple"] system began when
the export of wool had increased and Parliament initiated customs duties
of 6s.8d. on every sack of wool, woolfells [sheepskin with wool still on
it], or skins exported in 1275. These goods had to be assessed and
collected at certain designated ports. Certain large wool merchants, the
merchants of the staple, were allowed to have a monopoly on the purchase
and export of wool. Imports of wine were taxed as tunnage as before,
that is there was a royal right to take from each wine ship one cask for
every ten at the price of 20s. per cask.
In 1297, Edward I confirmed the Magna Carta and other items. Judgments
contrary to Magna Carta were nullified. The documents were to be read in
cathedral churches as grants of Edward and all violators were to be
excommunicated. He also agreed not to impose taxes without the consent
of Parliament after baronial pressure had forced him to retreat from
trying to increase, for a war in France, the customs tax on every
exported sack of wool to 40s. from the 6s. 8d. per sack it had been
since 1275. The customs tax was finally fixed at 10s. for every sack of
wool, 2s. for each tun [casket] of wine, and 6d. for every pound's worth
of other goods. The "tenths and fifteenths" tax levied on income from
movables or chattels became regular every year. Edward also confirmed
the Forest Charter, which called for its earlier boundaries. And he
agreed not to impound any grain or wool or and like against the will of
the owners, as had been done before to collect taxes. Also, the special
prises or requisitions of goods for national emergency were not to be a
precedent. Lastly, he agreed not to impose penalties on two earls and
their supporters for refusing to serve in the war in France when the
king did not go.
Teh Magna Carta is the first statute. From 1299, statutes were recorded
in a Statute Roll as they were enacted.
By the end of the 1200s, the King's wardrobe, where confidential
matters such as military affairs were discussed in his bedroom, became a
department of state with the King's privy seal. The keeper of the privy
seal was established as a new office by Edward I in 1318. The wardrobe
paid and provisioned the knights, squires, and sergeants of the king and
was composed mostly of civil servants. It traveled with the King. The
Crown's treasure, plate, tents, hangings, beds, cooking utensils, wine,
and legal and financial rolls were carried on pack horses or in
two-wheeled carts drawn by oxen, donkeys, or dogs. The people in the
entourage rode horses or walked. The other two specialized
administrative bodies were the Exchequer, which received most of the
royal revenue and kept accounts at Westminster, and the Chancery, which
wrote royal writs, charters, and letters, and kept records.
The chief functions of administration in the 1300s were performed by
the council, chancery, wardrobe, chamber [room off wardrobe for dressing
and for storage], and exchequer. Many of the chancellors had come from
the wardrobe and chamber. In time, the chancellor ceased to be a part of
the king's personal retinue and to follow the court. The chancery became
primarily a department of central administration rather than a
secretariat and record-keeping part of the royal household. The king
used a privy seal to issue directives to the chancery. Edward III made
some merchants earls and appointed them to be his ministers. He did not
summon anyone to his council who did not have the confidence of the
magnates [barons, earls, bishops, and abbots].
There was a recoinage due to debasement of the old coinage. This
increased the number of coins in circulation. The price of wheat went
from about 7s. in 1270 to about 5s. per quarter in 1280. Also the price
of an ox went from 14s. to 10s. Then there were broad movements of
prices, within which there were wide fluctuations, largely due to the
state of the harvest. From 1280 to 1290, there was runaway inflation. In
some places, both grain and livestock prices almost doubled between 1305
and 1310. Wheat prices peaked at 15s.5d. a quarter in the famine year of
1316. In 1338, prices dropped and remained low for twenty years. The
poor were hurt by high prices and the lords of the manors were hurt by
low prices.
As before, inadequate care and ignorance of nutrition caused many
infant deaths. Accidents and disease were so prevalent that death was
always near and life insecure. Many women died in childbirth.
Edward I always sought the agreement of Parliament before assembling an
army or taking actions of war, and Parliamentary consent came to be
expected for such. He completed the conquest and annexation of Wales in
1284. The feudal army was summoned for the last time in the 100 year war
with France, which began in 1337. In it the English longbow was used to
pierce French knights' armor. There had been much competition between
the strength of arrows to pierce and the heaviness of armor to resist.
Guns and cannon with gunpowder were introduced in 1338. A system to
raise an army by contract was developed. Contracts were made with
nobles, knights, or esquires who undertook to enlist an agreed number of
armored men-at-arms and archers, who were paid wages. The King provided
transport for each contractor and his retinue, baggage, and horses. The
title of "knight" now resumed its military character as well as being a
social rank.
After Edward I died in 1307, there was a period of general lawlessness
and contests for power between earls and barons and the irresponsible
King Edward II, who was not a warrior king. He eventually was
assassinated. Also in 1307, Parliament required the king to obtain its
consent for any exchange or alteration of the currency.
By 1319, the guilds of London had become so powerful that they
extracted a charter from the king that to be a citizen of London one had
to be a member of a guild.
By 1326, scholars, the nobility, and the clergy had reading eyeglasses,
which had been invented in Italy, probably by the glass blowers. Italy
was famous for its glasswork. The first eyeglasses were fabricated by
pouring molten glass into curved molds. The actual shape was difficult
to control because thermal expansion and contraction resulted in bubbles
and other optical imperfections.
As of 1336, importing foreign cloth or fur, except for use by the
King's family, was prohibited, as was the export of unwoven wool. Later,
this was relaxed and a customs tax of 33% was imposed on wool exported.
Foreign cloth workers were allowed by statute to come to live in the
nation, be granted franchises, and be in the King's protection. But no
cloth was to be exported until it was fulled. During the reign of Edward
III, Flanders weavers were encouraged to come to England to teach the
English how to weave and finish fine cloth. A cloth industry grew with
all the manufacturing processes under the supervision of one capitalist
manufacturer, who set up his enterprise in the country to avoid the
regulations of the towns. The best places were hilly areas where there
were many streams and good pasture for flocks of sheep. He hired
shearers to cut the nap as short as possible to give a smooth surface,
then spinsters to card and spin the wool in their country cottages, then
weavers, and then fullers and dyers to come to fulling mills established
near streams for their waterpower. Fulling became mechanized as heavy
wooden hammers run by water- power replaced feet trampling the cloth
covered with soap or fuller's clay. The shaft loom was a technological
advance in weaving. This loom was horizontal and its frames, which
controlled the lifting of the warp threads, could each be raised by a
foot treadle. This left both hands free to throw and catch the shuttle
attached to the weft thread from side to side through the warp. Also
many more weaving patterns became possible through the use of different
thread configurations on the frames.
In 1341, the commons forced King Edward III and council to approve
their petition when Parliament was still in session so that they would
draft the legislation in true accordance with the petition. This had not
been done when drafting had been done after Parliament ended, when the
phrase "saving the prerogatives of the king" was often added. Also the
lords and commons consulted each other and joined in petitions. But they
usually stated their conclusions to the king separately. It was
considered a burden rather than a privilege to attend Parliament and
elections for such were not often contested. They were conducted
according to local custom until 1600.
In 1348, the Commons voted a tax of 1/15 th on movables for three years
with the proviso that it be spent only on the war against Scotland. This
began the practice of appropriation of funds. In 1381, began the
practice of appointing treasurers of the subsidies to account to
Parliament for both receipts and disbursements.
Alien merchants were under the king's special protection. In return for
paying extra import and export duties, Edward III gave alien merchants
full rights of trade, travel, and residence in England free of all local
tolls and restrictions, and guaranteed a fair hearing of their
commercial and criminal cases in special pie powder (after French "pie
poudrous" or dusty feet) courts at fairs.
- The Law -
Edward I remodeled the law in response to grievances and to problems
which came up in the courts. The changes improved the efficiency of
justice and served to accommodate it to the changing circumstances of
the social system.
"No man by force of arms, malice or menacing shall disturb anyone in
making free election [of sheriffs, coroners, conservators of the peace
by freeholders of the county]."
"No city, borough, town, nor man shall be amerced without reasonable
cause and according to the severity of his trespass. That is, every
freeman saving his freehold, a merchant saving his merchandise, a
villein saving his wainage [implements of agriculture], and that by his
peers."
No distress shall be taken of ploughing-cattle or sheep.
No loan shall be made for interest.
If an heir who is a minor is married off without the consent of the
guardian, the value of the marriage will be lost and the wrongdoer
imprisoned. If anyone marries off an heir over 14 years of age without
the consent of the guardian, the guardian shall have double the value of
the marriage. Moreover, anyone who has withdrawn a marriage shall pay
the full value thereof to the guardian for the trespass and make amends
to the King. And if a lord refuses to marry off a female heir of full
age and keep her unmarried because he covets the land, then he shall not
have her lands more than two years after she reaches full age, at which
time she can recover her inheritance without giving anything for the
wardship or her marriage. However, if she maliciously refuses to be
married by her lord, he may hold her land and inheritance until she is
the age of a male heir, that is, 21 years old and further until he has
taken the value of the marriage.
Aid to make one's son a knight or marry off his daughter of a whole
knight's fee shall be taken 20s., and 400s. [yearly income from] land
held in socage 20s. [5%], and of more, more; and of less, less; after
the rate. And none shall levy such aid to make his son a knight until
his son is 15 years old, nor to marry his daughter until she is seven
year old.
A conveyance of land which is the inheritance of a minor child by his
guardian or lord to another is void.
Dower shall not abate because the widow has received dower of another
man unless part of the first dower received was of the same tenant and
in the same town. But a woman who leaves her husband for another man is
barred from dower.
A tenant for a term of years who has let land from a landlord shall not
let it lie waste, nor shall a landlord attempt to oust a tenant for a
term of years by fictitious recoveries.
When two or more hold wood, turfland, or fishing or other such thing in
common, wherein none knows his several, and one does waste against the
minds of the others, he may be sued.
Lands which are given to a man and his wife upon condition that if they
die without heirs, the land shall revert to the donor or his heir, may
not be alienated to defeat this condition.
If a man takes land in marriage with a wife, and she dies before him,
the land will revert to the donor or his heir, unless the couple has a
child, in which case the husband will have the land by the courtesy of
the nation for his life before it reverts to the donor or his heir.
Young salmon shall not be taken from waters in the spring.
The ecclesiastical law had a doctrine for women-covert, i.e. women
under the protection or coverture of a husband. It held that chattels of
a woman who married vested in her husband, but he could not dispose of
them by will. Her jewelry, but not her apparel, could go to his
creditors if his assets didn't cover his debts. If she was a merchant
when she married, she could still sell her goods in the open market. The
husband also had the right to the rents and profits from his wife's real
estate, but not the real estate itself, unless by the birth of a child
he became tenant for life by courtesy. Only the father, but not the
mother had authority over their children. A father had a right to his
child's services, and could sue a third party for abducting, enticing
away, or injuring the child, just as he could for his servants. A
husband was liable for the debts of his wife, even if incurred before
the marriage. He was answerable for her torts and trespasses, except for
battery. For this reason, he was allowed to chastise her, restrain her
liberty for gross misbehavior, and punish her by beating for some
misdemeanors. But the courts would protect her from death, serious
bodily harm, or his failure to supply her the necessities of life.
Promises under oath by married women were not recognized. A conveyance
or agreement of a married woman was void. These principles held only if
she was under the protection of her husband, i.e. a woman-covert, and
not if they lived separately, for instance if he went to sea. If
separated, she had a right to alimony from him to maintain herself.
A free tenant may alienate his land freely, but if the alienation was
for an estate in fee simple [to a man and his heirs], the person
acquiring the land would hold of the land's lord and not of the person
alienating the land. (This halted the growth of subinfeudation and
caused services as well as incidents of aids, relief, escheat, wardship,
and marriage to go directly to the Chief Lord. It also advantaged the
Crown as overlord, which then acquired more direct tenants.)
One may create an estate which will descend in unbroken succession down
the line of inheritance prescribed in the original gift as long as that
line should last, instead of descending to all heirs. This was called a
fee simple conditional holding of land. The successive occupants might
draw the rents and cut the wood, but on the death of each, his heir
would take possession of an unencumbered interest, unfettered by any
liability for the debt of his ancestor or by any disposition made by him
during his lifetime e.g. a wife's estate in dower or a husband's estate
in courtesy. If there was no issue, it reverted to the original donor.
This curtailed the advantage of tenants of the greater barons who
profited by increased wardships and reliefs from subinfeudation from
subdivision and better cultivation of their land while still paying the
greater barons fixed sums. This statute that protected reversionary
estates incidentally established a system of entails. This new manner of
holding land: "fee tail", is in addition to the concepts of land held in
fee simple and land held for life. The donor could give directions that
an estate of inheritance go to a man or woman and certain classes of
particular heirs rather than reverting to himself. A fee tail was often
given to a man and the issue of his body. No donee or nor his heirs
could alienate the land held in fee tail.Interests in remainder or
reversion of estates in land replaced the lord's tenurial right to
succeed to land by escheat if his tenant dies without heirs.
Anyone disseising another whereby he also robs him or uses force and
arms in the disseisin shall be imprisoned and fined. The plaintiff shall
recover seisin and damages.
"All must be ready at the command and summons of sheriffs, and at the
cry of the country, to sue and arrest felons as necessary as well within
franchise as without." Otherwise, he shall be fined. A Lord defaulting
shall lose his franchise to the King. A Bailiff defaulting shall be
imprisoned a year as well as fined, or be imprisoned two years if he
cannot pay the fine. A sheriff, coroner, or any other bailiff who
conceals a felony will be imprisoned for a year and pay a fine, or be
imprisoned for three years if he cannot pay the fine.
Villeins must report felons, pursue felons, serve in the watch, and
clear growth of concealing underwood from roads. They must join the
military to fight on the borders when called. Desertion from the army is
punishable.
Accessories to a crime shall not be declared outlaw before the
principal is proven guilty. (This made uniform the practice of the
various counties.)
Only those imprisoned for the smaller offenses of a single incidence of
petty larceny, receipt of felons, or accessory to a felony, or some
other trespass not punishable by life or limb shall be let out by
sufficient surety. Prisoners who were outlawed or escaped from prison or
are notorious thieves or were imprisoned for felonious house burning,
passing false money, counterfeiting the King's seal, treason touching
the king himself, or other major offenses or have been excommunicated by
the church may not be released.
Killing in self-defense and by mischance shall be pardoned from the
King's indictment. Killing by a child or a person of unsound mind shall
be pardoned from the King's indictment. (But a private accuser can still
sue.)
Any man who ravishes [abducts] any woman without her consent or by
force shall have the criminal penalty of loss of life or limb. (The
criminal penalty used to be just two years in prison.)
Trespasses in parks or ponds shall be punished by imprisonment for
three years and a fine as well as paying damages to the wronged person.
After his imprisonment, he shall find a surety or leave the nation.
"Forasmuch as there have been often times found in the country devisors
of tales, where discord, or occasion of discord, has many times arisen
between the King and his people, or great men of this realm; For the
damage that has and may thereof ensue, it is commanded, that from
henceforth none be so hardy to tell or publish any false news or tales,
whereby discord or occasion of discord or slander may grow between the
King and his people, or the great men of the realm." Anyone doing so
shall be imprisoned until he brings into the court the first author of
the tale.
A system of registration and enforcement of commercial agreements was
established by statute. Merchants could obtain a writing of a debt
sealed by the debtor and authenticated by royal seal or a seal of a
mayor of certain towns, and kept by the creditor. Failure to pay a such
a debt was punishable by imprisonment and, after three months, the
selling of borough tenements and chattels and of county lands. During
the three months, the merchant held this property in a new tenure of
"statute merchant". (Prior to this, it was difficult for a foreign
merchant to collect a debt because he could not appear in court which
did not recognize him as one of its proper "suitors" or constituents, so
he had to trust a local attorney. Also, the remedy was inadequate
because the history of the law of debt was based on debt as a substitute
for the blood feud, so that failure to pay meant slavery or death. Also
a debtor's land was protected by feudal custom, which was contrary to
the idea of imposing a new tenant on a lord.)
"In no city, borough, town, market, or fair shall a person of the realm
be distrained for a debt for which he is not the debtor or pledge."
Anyone making those passing with goods through their jurisdiction
answer to them in excess of their jurisdiction shall be grievously
amerced to the King.
No market town shall take an outrageous toll contrary to the common
custom of the nation.
Since good sterling money has been counterfeited with base and false
metal outside the nation and then brought in, foreigners found in the
nation's ports with this false money shall forfeit their lives. Anyone
bringing money into the nation must have it examined at his port of
entry. Payments of money shall be made only by coin of the appropriate
weight delivered by the Warden of the Exchange and marked with the
King's mark. (A currency exchange was established at Dover for the
exchange of foreign currency for English sterling.)
The silver in craftwork must be sterling and marked with the Leopard's
Head. The gold in craftwork must meet the standard of the Touch of
Paris.
The assize of bread and ale had been and was enforced locally by local
inspectors. Now, the Crown appointed royal officers for the gauge of
wines and measurement of cloths. Edicts disallowed middlemen from
raising prices against consumers by such practices as forestalling
[intercepting goods before they reached the market and then reselling
them] or engrossing [buying a large supply of a commodity to drive up
the price] and price regulation was attempted. For instance, prices were
set for poultry and lamb, in a period of plenty. Maximum prices were set
for cattle, pigs, sheep, poultry, and eggs in 1314, but these prices
were hard to enforce. In London examples of prices set are: best hen
3d.2q., best wild goose 4d., best hare 4d., best kid 10d., best lamb
4d., best fresh herrings 12 for 1d., best pickled herrings 20 for 1d.,
best haddock 2d., best fresh salmon 3s.
Freemen may drive their swine through the King's demesne Forest to feed
in their own woods or elsewhere. No man shall lose his life or limb for
killing deer in the Forest, but instead shall be grievously fined or
imprisoned for a year.
The Forest Charter allowed a man to cut down and take wood from his own
woods in the King's forest to repair his house, fences, and hedges. He
may also enclose his woods in the King's forest with fences and hedges
to grow new trees and keep cattle and beasts therefrom. After seven
years growth of these new trees, he may cut them down for sale with the
King's permission.
Each borough has its own civil and criminal ordinances and police
jurisdiction. Borough courts tended to deal with more laws than other
local courts because of the borough's denser populations, which were
composed of merchants, manufacturers, and traders, as well as those
engaged in agriculture. Only borough courts have jurisdiction over
fairs. In some boroughs the villein who resides for a year and a day
becomes free. There are special ordinances relating to apprentices.
There are sometimes ordinances against enticing away servants bound by
agreement to serve another. The wife who is a trader is regarded in many
places as a feme sole [single woman rather than a feme covert
[woman-covert], who was under the protection of a husband]. There may be
special ordinances as to the liability of masters for the acts of their
apprentices and agents, or as to brokers, debt, or earnest money binding
a bargain. The criminal and police jurisdiction in the borough was
organized upon the same model as in the country at large, and was
controlled by the King's courts upon similar principles, though there
are some survivals of old rules, such as mention of the bot and the wer.
The crimes committed are similar to those of the country, such as
violence, breaches of the assize of bread and beer, stirring up suits
before the ecclesiastical courts, digging up or obstructing the highway,
not being enrolled in a tithing, encroachments upon or obstructions of
rights of common. The most striking difference with the country at large
are the ordinances on the repair or demolition of buildings,
encroachments on another's building, fires, and nuisances. Specimens of
other characteristic urban disputes are: selling bad food, using bad
materials, unskillful or careless workmanship, fraudulent weights and
measures, fraud in buying and selling, forestalling or regrating [buying
in one market to resell in another market], acting in a way likely to
endanger the liberties of the borough, usury, trading without being a
citizen, assisting other unlicensed persons to trade, unlawfully forming
a guild, complaints against various guilds in which trade might be
organized. Since the ordinances were always liable to be called in
question before the King's courts, they tended to become uniform and in
harmony with the principles of the common law. Also, trading between
boroughs kept them knowledgeable about each other's customs and
conditions for trade, which then tended to standardize. Boroughs often
had seals to prove communal consent and tended to act as a corporate
body.
Borough ordinances often include arson such as this one: "And if a
street be set on fire by any one, his body shall be attached and cast
into the midst of the fire." Robbery by the miller was specially treated
by an ordinance that "And if the miller be attainted [found guilty] of
robbery of the grain or of the flour to the amount of 4d., he shall be
hanged from the beam in his mill."
In London, an ordinance prescribed for bakers for the first offense of
making false bread a forfeiture of that bread. For the second offense
was prescribed imprisonment, and for the third offense placement in the
pillory. A London ordinance for millers who caused bread to be false
prescribed for them to be carried in a tumbrel cart through certain
streets, exposed to the derision of the people.
By statute, no one may make a gift or alienation of land to the church.
An attempt to do so will cause the land to escheat to the lord, or in
his default, to the King. Religious houses may not alienate land given
to them by the king or other patrons because such gifts were for the
sake of someone's soul. An attempt to do so will cause the land to
revert to the donor or his heir. If the church did not say the prayers
or do the other actions for which land was given to it, the land will
revert to the donor or his heir. Land may not be alienated to religious
bodies in such a way that it would cease to render its due service to
the King. (The church never died, never married, and never had
children.) The church shall send no money out of the nation. (This
statute of mortmain was neutralized by collusive lawsuits in which the
intended grantor would sue the intended grantee claiming superior title
and then would default, surrendering the land to the intended grantee by
court judgment.)
"Concerning wrecks of the sea, where a man, a dog, or a cat escape
alive out of the ship, that such ship nor barge nor anything within them
shall be deemed wreck, but the goods shall be saved and kept by view of
the Sheriff, Coroner, or the King's Bailiff". If anyone proves the goods
were his within a year and a day, they shall be restored to him without
delay. Otherwise, they shall be kept by the King. "And where wreck
belongs to one other than the King, he shall have it in like manner". If
he does otherwise, he shall be imprisoned and pay damages and fine.
Some statutes applied only to Kent County, which had a unique position
between London and the continent. Money flowed between England and the
continent through Kent. So Kent never developed a manorial system of
land holding, but evolved from a system of clans and independent
villages directly into a commercial system.
In Kent, all men are free and may give or sell their lands without
permission of their lords, as before the Conquest.
One could sell or give away his land without the consent of one's lord.
The services of the land, however, could only be sold to the chief lord.
Inheritance of land was to all sons by equal portions, and if there were
no sons, then to all daughters in equal portions. The eldest brother has
his choice of portion, then the next oldest, etc. The goods of a
deceased person were divided into three parts after his funeral expenses
and debts were paid. One third went to the surviving spouse. One third
went to the deceased's sons and daughters. One third could be disposed
by will of the decedent. If there were no children, one half went to the
spouse and one half went according to will. If an heir was under 15
years old, his next of kin to whom inheritance could not descend was to
be his guardian. A wife who remarried or bore a child lost her dower
land. A husband lost his dower if he remarried. If a tenant withheld
rent or services, his lord could seek award of court to find distress on
his tenement and if he could find none, he could take the tenement for a
year and a day in his hands without manuring it. It the tenant paid up
in this time, he got the tenement back. If he didn't within a year and a
day, however, the lord could manure the land. A felon forfeited his life
and his goods, but not his lands or tenements. A wife of a felon had the
dower of one half or her husband's lands and tenements.
The common law recognized the tort of false imprisonment if a man
arrested as a felon, a person who was not a felon.
- Judicial Procedure -
The writ of Quo Warranto [by what right] is created, by which all
landholders exercising jurisdictions must bring their ancestors'
charters before a traveling justice for the Common Pleas for examination
and interpretation as to whether they were going beyond their charters
and infringing upon the jurisdiction of the Royal Court. As a result,
many manor courts were confined to manorial matters and could no longer
view frankpledge or hear criminal cases, which were reserved for the
royal courts. In the manor courts which retained criminal jurisdiction,
there was a reassertion of the obligation to have present a royal
coroner, whose duty it was to see that royal rights were not infringed
and that the goods of felons were given to the Crown and not kept by the
lords.
The supreme court was the king and his council in Parliament. It heard
the most important causes, important because they concern the king, or
because they concern very great men (e.g. treason), or because they
involve grave questions of public law, or because they are
unprecedented. It has large, indefinite powers and provides new remedies
for new wrongs. The office of great justiciar disappears and the
chancellor becomes the head of the council. After the council were the
royal courts of the King's Bench, Common Pleas, and the Exchequer, which
had become separate, each with its own justices and records. The Court
of Common Pleas had its own Chief Justice and usually met at
Westminster. This disadvantaged the small farmer, who would have to
travel to Westminster to present a case. The King's Council maintained a
close connection with the Court of the King's Bench, which heard
criminal cases and appeals from the Court of Common Pleas. It traveled
with the King. There were many trespass cases so heard by it in the
reign of Edward I. The King's Council did a great deal of justice, for
the more part criminal justice. It was supported by the populace because
it dealt promptly and summarily with rebellion or some scandalous
acquittal of a notorious criminal by bribed or partial jurors, and
thereby prevented anarchy. Its procedure was to send for the accused and
compel him to answer upon oath written interrogatories. Affidavits were
then sworn upon both sides. With written depositions before them, the
Lords of the council, without any jury, acquit or convict. Fines and
imprisonments were meted out to rioters, conspirators, bribers, and
perjured jurors. No loss of life or limb occurred because there had been
no jury.
In criminal cases, witnesses acquainted with particular facts were
added to the general assize of twelve men from each hundred and four men
from each town. The assize then bifurcated into the grand jury of twelve
to twenty-four men and the petty jury or jury of verdict of twelve men,
which replaced ordeal, compurgation, and trial by combat as the method
of finding the truth. The men of the petty jury as well as those of the
grand jury were expected to know or to acquaint themselves with the
facts of the cases. The men of the petty jury tended to be the same men
who were on the grand jury.
Felony included such crimes as homicide, arson, rape, robbery,
burglary, and larceny. Secret homicide was still murder. Burglary was an
offense committed in times of peace and consisted of breaking into
churches, houses, and into the walls and gates of villages and boroughs.
These six offenses could be prosecuted by indictment or private
accusation by an individual. The penalties involved loss of life or limb
or outlawry; a felon's goods were confiscated by the crown and his land
was forfeited to the crown for a year and a day, after which it
escheated to the felon's lord. The peace of the king now did not die
with the king, but renewed automatically without an interval before the
inauguration of a new king.
Notorious felons who would not consent or put themselves on inquests
for felonies with which they were charged at royal courts were put in
strong and hard imprisonment to persuade them to accept trial by assize.
This inducement progressed into being loaded with heavy chains and
placed on the ground in the worst part of the prison and being fed a
only little water one day and a little bread the next. Sometimes pieces
of iron or stones were placed one another onto their prone bodies to
persuade them to plead. This then developed into being loaded with as
much iron as could be borne, and finally into being pressed to death
["peine forte et dure"]. Many of these men chose to die by this pressing
so that their families could inherit their property, which would have
been forfeited if they had been convicted of serious crimes.
The most common cases in the Court of Common Pleas were "detinue"
[wrongful detention of a good or chattel which had been loaned, rented,
or left for safekeeping with a "bailee", but belonged to the plaintiff],
"debt" [for money due from a sale, for money loaned, for rent upon a
lease for years, from a surety, promised in a sealed document, or due to
arbitrators to whom a dispute had been submitted] and "account" [e.g.
against bailiffs of manors, a guardian in socage, and partners]. It also
heard estovers [right to use during a lease] of wood, profit by
gathering nuts, acorns, and other fruits in wood, corody [allowance of
food], yearly delivery of grain, toll, tunnage, passage, keeping of
parks, woods, forests, chases, warrens, gates, and other bailiwicks, and
offices in fee.
The itinerant justices gradually ceased to perform administrative
duties on their journeys because landed society had objected to their
intrusiveness. Edward I substituted regular visitations of justices of
assize for the irregular journeys of the itinerant justices. Each one of
four circuits had two justices of assize. From about 1299, these
justices of assize heard cases of gaol delivery. Their jurisdiction
expanded to include serious criminal cases and breach of the king's
peace.
Breaches of the forest charter laws were determined by justices of the
King's forest, parks, and chases, along with men of assize.
Coroners' inquest procedures were delineated by statute and included
describing in detail in the coroner's rolls every wound of a dead body,
how many may be culpable, and people claiming to have found treasure who
might be suspects.
The precedent for punishment for treason was established by the
conviction of a knight, David ab Gruffydd, who had turned traitor to the
Welsh enemy, after fighting with Edward and being rewarded with land,
during the conquest of Wales. He had plotted to kill the King. He was
found guilty of treason by Parliament and condemned to be dragged at the
heels of horses for being a traitor to his knightly vows, hanged by the
neck for his murders, cut down before consciousness left him to have his
entrails cut out for committing his crimes during the holy week of
Easter, and his head cut off and his body divided into four parts for
plotting against the King's life. The head was placed on the Tower of
London and his body sections were placed in public view at various other
locations in England. This came to be known as "hanging, drawing, and
quartering". Prior to this the penalty had been imprisonment, usually
followed by ransom.
Trial by combat is now limited to certain claims of enfeoffment of
large land holding and is barred for land held in socage, burgage, or by
marriage. Assize is the usual manner of trial, but compurgation remains
in the borough court long after it becomes obsolete in the royal courts.
It came to be that defendants no longer request assizes but are
automatically put to them.
Numerous statutes protect the integrity of the courts and King's
offices by double and treble damages and imprisonment for offenses such
as bribery, false informers, conspiracy to falsely move or maintain
pleas, champerty [covenant between a litigant and another for the other
to have a part or profit in the award in return for maintaining the
suit], conflict of interest by court officers taking part in a quarrel
pending in court or working any fraud whereby common right may be
delayed or disturbed. There had been many abuses, the most common of
which was extortion by sheriffs, who gaoled people without cause to make
them pay to be released. The 1275 prohibition of maintenance of a
quarrel of a party in court by a nonparty was extended in 1327 to all
persons, including the king's councilors and ministers, and great men,
e.g. by sending letters. In 1346, this prohibition specifically included
prelates, earls, barons taking in hand quarrels other than their own, or
maintaining them for gift, promise, amity, favor, doubt, or fear, in
disturbance of law and hindrance of right. The reason given was that
there had been persons disinherited, delayed or disturbed in their
rights, and not guilty persons convicted or otherwise oppressed. All
great men were required to put out of their service all maintainers who
had been retained, and void their fees and robes, without giving them
aid, favor, or comfort. This law was not obeyed.
The king reserved to himself and his council in its judicial capacity
the correction of all breaches of the law which the lower courts had
failed to remedy, whether from weakness, partiality, corruption, or jury
timidity, and especially when the powerful barons defied the courts. The
Chancery also sought to address causes which were impeded in their
regular course, which often involved assaults, batteries, and forcible
dispossessions.
Disputes within the royal household were administered by the King's
steward. He received and determined complaints about acts or breaches of
the peace within twelve miles around the King's person or "verge". He
was assisted by the marshall in the "court of the hall" and by the clerk
of the market when imposing fines for trading regulation violations in
the "court of the market".
Ecclesiastical courts were successful in their competition with the
secular courts for jurisdiction over testamentary matters [concerning
wills] and succession [no will] to chattels.
There were local courts of the vill, borough, manor, hundred, county,
sheriff, escheator, and royal bailiff, with overlapping jurisdictions.
The county court in its full session, that is, as it attended the
itinerant justices on their visitation, contained the archbishops,
bishops, priors, earls, barons, knights, and freeholders, and from each
township four men and the reeve, and from each borough twelve burgesses.
It was still the folkmote, the general assembly of the people. In 1293,
suitors who could not spend 40s. a year within their county were not
required to attend their county court.
The most common plea in the hundred court was trespass. It also heard
issues concerning services arising out of land, detention of chattels,
small debts, wounding or maiming of animals, and personal assaults and
brawls not amounting to felony. It met every three weeks. The sheriff
held his turn twice a year and viewed frankpledge once a year.
When Edward I came to the throne, over half of the approximately 600
hundred courts had gone under the jurisdiction of a private lord owing
to royal charter, prescriptive right, and usurpation. The sheriff's
powers in these hundreds varied. In some, the sheriff had no right of
entry.
In the manor courts, actions of debt, detinue, and covenant were
frequent. Sometimes there are questions of a breach of warranty of title
in agreements of sale of land. Accusations of defamation were frequent;
this offense could not be taken to the King's court, but it had been
recognized as an offense in the Anglo-Saxon laws. In some cases, the
damages caused are specifically stated. For instance, defamation of a
lord's grain would cause other purchasers to forbear buying it. There
are frequent cases of ordinary thefts, trespasses, and assaults. The
courts did rough but substantial justice without distinction between
concepts such as tort and contract. In fact, the action of covenant was
the only form of agreement enforceable at common law. It required a
writing under seal and awarded damages. Manor court law was not
technical, but elastic, and remedies could include injunctions, salary
attachment, and performance of acts. The steward holding the manor court
was often a lawyer.
Some pleas in the manors of the abbey of Bec were:
1. Hugh le Pee in mercy (fine, 12d.) for concealing a sheep for half a
year. Pledges, Simon of Newmere, John of Senholt
2. William Ketelburn in mercy (fine, 13s.4d.) for divers trespasses.
Pledge, Henry Ketelburn.
3. Hugh Derwin for pasture, 6d. Richard Hulle for divers trespasses,
12d. Henry Stanhard for pasture, 6d.
4. William Derwin for a trespass, 6d.; pledge, William Sperling.
5. Hugh Hall gives the lord 12d. that he may have the judgment of the
court as to a tenement and two acres of land, which he demands as of
right, so he says. And it being asserted that the said land is not
free[hold] let the court say its say. And the court says that the
tenement and one of the two acres are of servile condition and that the
other acre is of free condition. The case is reserved for the lord's
presence. Pledge, John Brian.
6. John Palmer is put in seisin of his father's tenement and gives the
lord 53s.4d. as entry money.
7. William Ketelburn gives the lord 6s.8d. that he may be removed from
the office of reeve. Pledge, Robert Serjeant.
8. William Frith for subtraction of work, 6d. John Reginald for the
same, 6d. John of Senholt, 12d. William Ketelburn, 12d.
9. For the common fine to be paid on S. Andrew's day, 100s.
10. It is presented by the chief pledges that Godfrey Serjeant has made
default; also that John le Pee has unlawfully thrown up a bank;
therefore let it be set to rights.
11. Robert Smith is put in seisin of his father's tenement and gives the
lord four pounds for entry money. Pledge, Robert Serjeant.
12. William Ketelburn for a trespass, 13s.4d.
13. William Fleming gives four pounds for leave to contract [marriage]
with widow Susan. Pledge, Richard Serjeant.
14. John Mabely gives the lord 3s. to have the judgment of twelve men as
to certain land whereof Noah deforces him; pledges, Richard Smith, Ralph
Bernard. The said jurors say that Noah the Fat has right; therefore
etc.
15. Agnes Stampelove gives the lord 2s. for leave to come and go in the
vill but to dwell outside the lord's land. Pledge, Richard Smith.
16. Godfrey Tailor the younger for a trespass, 2s.
17. Whereas Godfrey Tailor the younger has demanded against Noah a
farthing land, now the action is compromised in manner following:
Godfrey for himself and his heirs remises to the said Noah and his heirs
all right and claim which he has or can have in the said farthing land
by reason of the gift made by his grandfather John Tailor.
18. Agnes Mabely is put in seisin of a farthing land which her mother
held, and gives the lord 33s.4d. for entry money. Pledges, Noah, William
Askil.
19. The full court declares that in case any woman shall have altogether
quitted the lord's domain and shall marry a freeman, she may return and
recover whatever right and claim she has in any land; but if she shall
be joined to a serf, then she cannot do this during the serf's lifetime,
but after his death she may. t
20. William Alice's son is put in seisin of a bakehouse in the King's
Street, and shall keep up the house at his own cost and gives 12d. for
entry money, and 10s. annual rent payable at three terms, viz. 3s.4d. at
Martinmas, 3s.4d. at Lady Day, 3s.4d. at Christmas. Pledges, Adam Clerk,
John Deboneir.
20. John son of Alma demands a cottage which Henry Fleming holds and
gives the lord 12d. for the oath and recognition of 12 men; pledge,
Richard Jordan. The jurors say that Henry Fleming has the better right.
21. Baldwin Cobbler's son finds [as pledges] Walter Cobbler, Roger of
Broadwater, Robert Linene, William Frances, that notwithstanding his
stay in London he will always make suit with his tithing and will at no
time claim any liberty contrary to the lord's will and will come to the
lord whenever the lord wills.
22. Simon Patrick gives the lord 12d. to have the judgment of the court
as to a cottage of which the widow of Geoffrey Dogers deforces him;
pledge, Simon of Strode. The said jurors say that the said Simon has
the better right. And the said Simon remises and quitclaims all his
right to his sister Maud and her husband John Horin, [who] gives the
lord 10s. for entry money; pledges, Simon Patrick, John Talk.
23. Hugh Wiking for not making suit at the lord's mill, 12d.
24. It was presented that William Derwin and John Derwin (fine, 12d.)
committed a trespass against Agnes Dene, and the cry was raised,
therefore etc.
25. Hugh Churchyard contracted [marriage] without the lord's leave;
[fine] 12d.
26. Let Juliana Forester be distrained for her default, also William
Moor.
27. John Kulbel in mercy (fine, 12d.) for not producing Gregory Miller,
and he is commanded to produce him at the next court.
28. Hugh Andrew's son gives the lord 4s. for leave to marry; pledge,
Robert Serjeant.
29. Juliana Forester gives the lord 12d. in order that for the future no
occasion may be taken against her for neglect of suit of court.
30. John Franklain is put in seisin of his father's tenement and gives
the lord 20s. for entry; pledge, Robert Serjeant.
31. Henry Cross gives the lord 4s. for license to marry; pledge, Robert
Serjeant.
32. Isabella Warin gives the lord 4s. for leave to give her daughter
Mary in marriage; pledge, John Serjeant.
33. It is presented by the whole township that Ralph le War has
disseised the lord of a moiety of a hedge, whereas it had often been
adjudged by award of the court that the said hedge belongs as to one
moiety to the lord and as to the other to Ralph, and the said Ralph
claims and takes to his use the whole to the lord's damage etc. Also
they say that the said Ralph holds Overcolkescroft, which land by right
is the lord's.
34. It is presented by unanimous verdict of the whole court that if
anyone marries a woman who has right in any land according to the custom
of the manor and is seised thereof by the will of the lord, and the said
woman surrenders her right and her seisin into the hands of the lord and
her husband receives that right and seisin from the hands of the lord,
in such case the heirs of the woman are for ever barred from the said
land and the said right remains to the husband and his heirs. Therefore
let William Wood, whose case falls under this rule, hold his land in
manner aforesaid. And for the making of this inquest the said William
gives the lord 6s.8d.
35. The tenements of Lucy Mill are to be seized into the lord's hands
because of the adultery which she has committed and the bailiff is to
answer for them.
The chief pledges present that Cristina daughter of Richard
Maleville has married at London without the lord's licence; therefore
let the said Richard be distrained. He has made fine with 12d. Also that
Alice Berde has done the same; therefore let her be distrained. Also
that Robert Fountain has committed a trespass against William Gery;
therefore the said Robert is in mercy; pledge, Humfrey; fine, 6d. Also
that Richard Maleville has drawn blood from Stephen Gust; therefore he
is in mercy; fine, 2s.
36. Geoffrey Coterel in mercy for a battery; fine, 12d.; pledge, Adam
Serjeant. Geoffrey Coterel for trespass in the hay; fine, 6d.; pledge,
Alan Reaper. Hugh of Senholt in mercy for trespass in the green wood;
fine, 6d.
37. Hugh Wiking in mercy for delay in doing his works; fine, 6d. Hugh
Churchyard for trespass in [cutting] thorns; fine, 6d. Thomas Gold in
mercy for trespass in the wood; fine, 3d.; pledge, Robert Grinder.
38. William Dun in mercy for subtraction of his works due in autumn;
fine, 2s. Avice Isaac for the same, 6d.; Hugh Wiking for the same, 6d.;
Agnes Rede in mercy for her daughter's trespass in the corn [grain], 6d.
39. Walter Ash in mercy for not making suit to the lord's mill; fine,
6d. Hugh Pinel in mercy for diverting a watercourse to the nuisance of
the neighbors; fine, 6d.; pledge, Robert Fresel.
40. John Dun in mercy for carrying off corn [grain] in the autumn;
pledge, Adam White. Alan Reaper gives the lord 12d. on account of a
sheep which was lost while in his custody.
41. Adam White in mercy for bad mowing; fine, 6d. Hugh Harding in mercy
for the same; fine, 6d.
42. The chief pledges present that Henry Blackstone (fine, 6d.), Hugh
Churchyard (fine, 18d.), Walter Ash (fine, 6d.), Henry of Locksbarow
(fine, 12d.), Avice Isaac (fine, 6d.), Richard Matthew (fine, 6d.), Hugh
Wiking (fine,--), Ralph Dene (fine, 6d.), John Palmer (fine, 12d.), John
Coterel (fine, 6d.), John Moor (fine, 6d.), John Cubbel (fine, 12d.),
Hugh Andrew (fine, 6d.), Philip Chapman (fine, 6d.), John Fellow (fine,
12d.), Robert Bailiff (fine, 6d.), Alice Squire (fine, 12d.), John
Grately (fine,--), Richard Hull (fine, 6d.), Osbert Reaper (fine, 6d.),
and Robert Cross (fine, 6d.), have broken the assize of beer. Also that
Henry of Senholt, Henry Brown, Hugh Hayward, Richard Moor, Juliana
Woodward, Alice Harding, Peronel Street, Eleanor Mead make default. Also
that Walter Ash (fine,--), John Wiking (fine,--), John Smart (fine,--),
and Henry Coterel have married themselves without the lord's licence;
therefore let them be distrained to do the will of the lord.
43. Alan Reaper for the trespass of his foal; fine, 6d.
44. Philip Chapman in mercy for refusing his gage to the lord's bailiff;
fine, 3d.
45. William Ash in mercy for trespass in the growing crop; fine, 6d.
46. John Iremonger in mercy for contempt; fine, 6d.
47. The chief pledges present that William of Ripley (fine, 6d.), Walter
Smith (no goods), Maud of Pasmere (fine, 6d.), have received [strangers]
contrary to the assize; therefore they are in mercy.
48. Maud widow of Reginald of Challow has sufficiently proved that a
certain sheep valued at 8d. is hers, and binds herself to restore it or
its price in case it shall be demanded from her within year and day;
pledges, John Iremonger and John Robertd; and she gives the lord 3d. for
[his] custody [of it].
The Court of Hustings in London is empowered to award landlords their
tenements for which rent or services are in arrears if the landlord
could not distrain enough tenant possessions to cover the arrearages.
Wills are proven in the Court of Husting, the oldest court in London,
which went back to the times of Edward the Confessor. One such proven
will is:
"Tour (John de La) - To Robert his eldest son his capital messuage and
wharf in the parish of Berchingechurch near the land called
'Berewardesland`. To Agnes his wife his house called 'Wyvelattestone',
together with rents, reversions, etc. in the parish of S. Dunstan
towards the Tower, for life; remainder to Stephen his son. To Peter and
Edmund his sons lands and rents in the parish of All Hallows de
Berhyngechurch; remainders over in default of heirs. To Agnes, wife of
John le Keu, fishmonger, a house situate in the same parish of Berhyng,
at a peppercorn [nominal] rent."
The Court of the Mayor of London heard diverse cases, including
disputes over goods, faulty or substandard goods, adulteration, selling
food unfit for human consumption, enhancing the price of goods, using
unlawful weighing beams, debts, theft, distraints, forgery, tavern
brawling, bullying, and gambling. Insulting or assaulting a city
dignitary was a very serious crime; an attack on the mayor was once
capitally punished. Sacrilege, rape, and burglary were punished by
death. Apart from the death penalty, the punishment meted out the most
was public exposure in the pillory, with some mark of ignominy slung
round the neck. If the crime was selling bad food, it was burnt under
the offender's nose. If it was sour wine, the offender was drenched in
it. Standing in the pillory for even one hour was very humiliating, and
by the end of the day, it was known throughout the city. The offender's
reputation was ruined. Some men died in the pillory of shame and
distress. A variation of the pillory was being dragged through the
streets on a hurdle. Prostitutes were carted through the streets in
coarse rough cloth hoods, with penitential crosses in their hands.
Scolds were exposed in a "thewe" for women. In more serious cases,
imprisonment for up to a year was added to the pillory. Mutilation was
rare, but there are cases of men losing their right hands for rescuing
prisoners. The death penalty was usually by hanging. The following four
London cases pertain to customs, bad grain, surgery, and apprenticeship,
respectively.
"John le Paumer was summoned to answer Richer de Refham, Sheriff, in a
plea that, whereas the defendant and his Society of Bermen [carriers] in
the City were sworn not to carry any wine, by land or water, for the use
of citizens or others, without the Sheriff's mark, nor lead nor cause it
to be led, whereby the Sheriff might be defrauded of his customs,
nevertheless he caused four casks of wine belonging to Ralph le Mazun of
Westminster to be carried from the City of Westminster without the
Sheriff's mark, thus defrauding the latter of his customs in contempt of
the king etc. The defendant acknowledged the trespass. Judgment that he
remain in the custody of the Sheriff till he satisfy the King and the
Court for offense."
"Walter atte Belhaus, William atte Belhous, Robert le Barber dwelling at
Ewelleshalle, John de Lewes, Gilbert le Gras, John his son, Roger le
Mortimer, William Ballard atte Hole, Peter de Sheperton, John Brun and
the wife of Thomas the pelterer, Stephen de Haddeham, William de
Goryngg, Margery de Frydaiestrate, Mariot, who dwells in the house of
William de Harwe, and William de Hendone were attached to answer for
forestalling all kinds of grain and exposing it, together with putrid
grain, on the pavement, for sale by the bushel, through their men and
women servants; and for buying their own grain from their own servants
in deception of the people. The defendants denied that they were guilty
and put themselves on their country. A jury of Richard de Hockeleye and
others brought in a verdict of guilty, and the defendants were committed
to prison till the next Parliament."
"Peter the Surgeon acknowledged himself bound to Ralph de Mortimer, by
Richard atte Hill his attorney, in the sum of 20s., payable at certain
terms, the said Ralph undertaking to give Peter a letter of acquittance
[release from a debt]. This Recognizance arose out of a covenant between
them with regard to the effecting of a cure. Both were amerced for
coming to an agreement out of Court. A precept was issued to summon all
the surgeons of the City for Friday, that an inquiry might be made as to
whether the above Peter was fitted to enjoy the profession of a
surgeon."
"Thomas de Kydemenstre, shoemaker, was summoned to answer William de
Beverlee, because he did not clothe, feed and instruct his apprentice
Thomas, William's son, but drove him away. The defendant said that the
apprentice lent his master's goods to others and promised to restore
them or their value, but went away against his wish; and he demanded a
jury. Subsequently, a jury of William de Upton and others said the
apprentice lent two pairs of shoes belonging to his master and was told
to restore them, but, frightened by the beating which he received, ran
away; further that the master did not feed and clothe his apprentice as
he ought, being unable to do so, to the apprentice's damage 40d., but
that he was now in a position to look after his apprentice. Thereupon
Thomas de Kydemenstre said he was willing to have the apprentice back
and provide for him, and the father agreed. Judgment that the master
take back the apprentice and feed and instruct him, or that he repay to
the father, the money paid to the latter, and that he pay the father the
40d. and be in mercy."
A professional class of temporal attorneys whose business it is to
appear on behalf of litigants is prominent in the nation. Attorneys are
now drawn from the knightly class of landed gentlemen, instead of
ecclesiastical orders. Since it was forbidden for ecclesiastics to act
as advocates in the secular courts, those who left the clergy to become
advocates adopted a close-fitting cap to hide their tonsures, which came
to be called a "coif". The great litigation of the nation is conducted
by a small group of men, as is indicated by the earliest Year Books of
case decisions. They sit in court and will sometimes intervene as amicus
curiae [friends of the court]. Parliament refers difficult points of law
to them as well as to the justices. These reports became so
authoritative that they could be cited in the courts as precedent.
Groups of attorneys from the countryside who are appearing in London
courts during term-time and living in temporary lodgings start to form
guild-like fellowships and buy property where they dine and reside
together, called the Inns of Court. They begin to think of themselves as
belonging to a profession, with a feeling of responsibility for training
the novices who sat in court to learn court procedures and attorney
techniques. They invited these students to supper at the Inns of Court
for the purpose of arguing about the day's cases. The Inns of Court
evolved a scheme of legal education, which was oral and used
disputations. Thus they became educational institutions as well as clubs
for practicing attorneys. The call to the bar of an Inn was in effect a
degree. To be an attorney one had to be educated and certified at the
Inns of Court. They practice law full time. Some are employed by the
King. Justices come to be recruited from among those who had passed
their lives practicing law in court, instead of from the ecclesiastical
orders. All attorneys were brought under the control of the justices.
There are two types of attorney: one attorney appears in the place of
his principal, who does not appear. The appointment of this attorney is
an unusual and a solemn thing, only to be allowed on special grounds and
with the proper formalities. For instance, a poor person may not be able
to afford to travel to attend the royal court in person. The other one
is the pleader-attorney, who accompanies his client to court and
advocates his position with his knowledge of the law and his
persuasiveness.
In 1280, the city of London made regulations for the admission of both
types of attorneys to practice before the civic courts, and for their
due control. In 1292 the king directed the justices to provide a certain
number of attorneys and apprentices to follow the court, who should have
the exclusive right of practicing before it. This begins the process
which will make the attorney for legal business an "officer of the
court" which has appointed him.
- - - Chapter 9 - - -
- The Times: 1348-1399 -
Waves of the black death, named for the black spots on the body, swept
over the nation. The black blotches were caused by extensive internal
bleeding. The plague was carried in the blood of black rats and
transmitted to humans by the bite of the rat flea, but this cause was
then unknown. The first wave of this plague, in 1348, lasted for three
years and desolated the nation by about one half the population in the
towns and one third in the country. People tried to avoid the plague by
flight. The agony and death of so many good people caused some to
question their belief in God. Also, it was hard to understand why
priests who fled were less likely to die than priests who stayed with
the dying to give them the last rites. Legal and judicial, as well as
other public business weere interrupted by theplague and ceased for two
years. Thus begins a long period of disorganization, unrest, and social
instability. Customary ways were so upset that authority and tradition
were no longer automatically accepted. Fields lay waste and sheep and
cattle wandered over the countryside. Local courts could seldom be held.
Some monasteries in need of cash sold annuities to be paid in the form
of food, drink, clothing, and lodging during the annuitant's life, and
sometimes that of his widow also. Guilds and rich men made contributions
to the poor and ships with provisions were sent to various parts of the
country for the relief of starving people. In London, many tradesmen and
artisans formed parish fraternities which united people of all social
levels and women on almost equal terms with men, in communal devotion
and mutual support, such as help in resolving disputes, moral guidance,
money when needed, and burial and masses.
Farm workers were so rare that they were able to demand wages at double
or triple the pre-plague rate. The pre-plague had been 4-6d. daily for
masons, carpenters, plasterers, and tilers and 3d. for their laborers.
These laborers could buy 12 cheap loaves, 3 gallons of ale, and a gallon
of cheap wine or half a pair of shoes. Prices did not go up nearly as
much as wages. Villeins relinquished their tenements, and deserted their
manors, to get better wages elsewhere. They became nomadic, roaming from
place to place, seeking day work for good wages where they could get it,
and resorting to thievery on the highways or beggary where they could
not. The Robin Hood legends were popular among them. In them, Robin Hood
is pure outlaw and does not contribute money to the poor. Nor does he
court Maid Marion.
Villeins spread political songs among each other, such as: "To seek
silver to the King, I my seed sold; wherefore my land lieth fallow and
learneth to sleep. Since they fetched my fair cattle in my fold; when I
think of my old wealth, well nigh I weep. Thus breedeth many beggars
bold; and there wakeneth in the world dismay and woe, for as good is
death anon as so for to toil."
Groups of armed men took lands, manors, goods, and women by force. The
villeins agreed to assist each other in resisting by force their lords'
efforts to return them to servitude. A statute of laborers passed in
1351 for wages to be set at the pre-plague rates was ineffectual.
Justices became afraid to administer the law. Villeins, free peasants,
and craftsmen joined together and learned to use the tactics of
association and strikes against their employers.
The office of Justice of the Peace was created for every county to deal
with rioting and vagrants. Cooperation by officials of other counties
was mandated to deal with fugitives from its justice.
The Black Death visited again in 1361 and in 1369. The Black Death
reduced the population from about 5 million to about 2 1/2 million. It
was to rise to about 4 million by 1600.
When there were attempts to enforce the legal servitude of the
villeins, they spread rhymes of their condition and need to revolt. A
secret league, called the "Great Society" linked the centers of
intrigue. A high poll tax, graduated from 20s. to 12d., that was to be
raised for a war with France, touched off a spontaneous riot all over
the nation in 1381. This tax included people not taxed before, such as
laborers, the village smith, and the village tiler. Each area had its
own specific grievances. There was no common political motive, except
maladministration in general.
In this Peasants' Revolt, mobs overran the counties around London. The
upper classes fled to the woods. Written records of the servitude of
villeins were burned in their halls, which were also looted. Title deeds
of landlords were burned. Rate rolls of general taxation were destroyed.
Prisoners were released from gaols. Men connected with tax collection,
law enforcement, attorneys, and alien merchants were beheaded. The Chief
Justice was murdered while fleeing. The archbishop, who was a
notoriously exploitive landlord, the chancellor, and the treasurer were
murdered. Severed heads were posted on London Bridge. A mob took control
of the king's empty bedchamber in the Tower. The villeins demanded that
service to a lord be by agreement instead of by servitude, a commutation
of villein service for rents of a maximum of 4d. per acre yearly,
abolition of a lord's right for their work on demand (e.g. just before a
hail storm so only his crops were saved), and the right to hunt and
fish. The sokemen protested having to use the lord's mill and having to
attend his court.
The revolt was suppressed and its leaders punished. The king issued
proclamations forbidding unauthorized gatherings and ordering tenants of
land to perform their customary services. The poll tax was dropped. For
the future, the duty to deal with rioting and vagrants was given to
royal justices, sheriffs, mayors, bailiffs, and constables as well as
the Justices of the Peace. There was a high Justice of the Peace in each
hundred and a petty constable in each parish. Justices of the Peace
could swear in neighbors as unpaid special constables when disorder
broke out.
The sheriff was responsible for seeing that men of the lower classes
were organized into groups of ten for police and surety purposes, and
for holding of hundred and county courts, arresting suspects, guarding
prisoners awaiting trial, carrying out the penalties adjudged by the
courts, and collecting Crown revenue through his bailiffs. Royal writs
were addressed to the sheriff. Because many sheriffs had taken fines and
ransoms for their own use, a term limit of one year was imposed.
Sheriffs, hundreders, and bailiffs had to have lands in the same
counties or bailiwicks [so they could be held answerable to the King].
Efforts were made to keep laborers at the plough and cart rather than
learn a craft or entering and being educated by the church. The new
colleges at the universities ceased to accept villeins as students.
Due to the shortage of labor, landlords' returns had decreased from
about 20% to about 5%. But some found new methods of using land that
were more profitable than the customary services of villeins who had
holdings of land or the paid labor of practically free men who paid a
money rent for land holdings. One method was to turn the land to sheep
breeding. Others leased their demesne land, which transferred the burden
of getting laborers from the landlord to the lessee-tenant. The payment
was called a "farm" and the tenant a "farmer". First, there were
stock-and-land leases, in which both the land and everything required to
cultivate it were let together. After 50 years, when the farmers had
acquired assets, there were pure land leases. Landlords preferred to
lease their land at will instead of for a term of years to prevent the
tenant from depleting the soil with a few richer crops during the last
years of his tenancy. The commutation of labor services into a money
payment developed into a general commutation of virtually all services.
Lords in need of money gladly sold manumissions to their villeins.
The lord and lady of some manors now ate with their family and
entertained guests in a private parlor [from French word 'to speak"] or
great chamber, where they could converse and which had its own
fireplace. The great chamber was usually at the fireplace end of the
great hall, where there was a high table. The great hall had been too
noisy for conversation and now was little used. There were also separate
chambers or bed-sitting rooms for guests or members the family or
household, in which one slept, received visitors, played games, and
occasionally ate.
Some farmers achieved enough wealth to employ others as laborers on
their farms. The laborers lived with their employer in his barn,
sleeping on hay in the loft, or in mud huts outside the barn. The
farmer's family lived at one end of the barn around an open fire. Their
possessions typically were: livestock, a chest, a trestle table,
benches, stools, an iron or bronze cauldron and pots, brooms, wooden
platters, wooden bowls, spoons, knives, wooden or leather jugs, a salt
box, straw mattresses, wool blankets, linen towels, iron tools, and rush
candles [used the pith of a rush reed for the wick]. Those who could not
afford rush candles could get a dim light by using a little grease in a
shallow container, with a few twisted strands of linen thread afloat in
it. The peasants ate dark bread and beans and drank water from springs.
Milk and cheese were a luxury for them. Those who could not afford bread
instead ate oat cakes made of pounded beans and bran, cheese, and
cabbage. They also had leeks, onions, and peas as vegetables. Some
farmers could afford to have a wooden four-posted bedstead, hens, geese,
pigs, a couple of cows, a couple of sheep, or two-plough oxen. July was
the month when the divide between rich and poor became most apparent.
The rich could survive on the contents of their barns, but the poor
tried to survive by grinding up the coarsest of wheat bran and shriveled
peas and beans to make some sort of bread. Grain and bread prices soared
during July. Farming still occupied the vast majority of the population.
Town inhabitants and university students went into the fields to help
with the harvest in the summer. Parliament was suspended during the
harvest.
Town people had more wealth than country people. Most townspeople slept
in nightgowns and nightcaps in beds with mattresses, blankets, linen
sheets, and pillows. Beds were made every morning. Bathing was by
sponging hot water from a basin over the body, sometimes with herbs in
it, rinsing with a splash of warm water, and drying off with a towel.
Tubs used only for baths came into use. There were drapery rugs hung
around beds, handheld mirrors of glass, and salt cellars. The first meal
of the day was a light breakfast, which broke the fast that had lasted
the night. Meals were often prepared according to recipes from cook
books which involved several preparation procedures using flour, eggs,
sugar, cheese, and grated bread, rather than just simple seasoning.
Menus were put together with foods that tasted well together and served
on plates in several courses. Children's sweets included gingerbread and
peppermint drops. Sheffield cutlery was world famous. Table manners
included not making sounds when eating, not playing with one's spoon or
knife, not placing one's elbows on the table, keeping one's mouth clean
with a napkin, and not being boisterous. There were courtesies such as
saying "Good Morning" when meeting someone and not pointing one's finger
at another person. King Richard II invented the handkerchief for
sneezing and blowing one's nose. There were books on etiquette. Cats
were the object of superstition, but there was an Ancient and Honorable
Order of the Men Who Stroke Cats.
New burgesses were recruited locally, usually from within a 20 mile
radius of town. Most of the freemen of the larger boroughs, like
Canterbury and London, came from smaller boroughs. An incoming burgess
was required to buy his right to trade either by way of a seven year
apprenticeship or by payment of an entry fee. To qualify, he needed both
a skill and social respectability.
Towns started acquiring from the king the right to vacant sites and
other waste places, which previously was the lord's right. The
perpetuality of towns was recognized by statutes of 1391, which compared
town-held property to church-held property. The right of London to pass
ordinances was confirmed by charter. Some towns had a town clerk, who
was chief of full-time salaried officers. There was a guildhall to
maintain, a weigh-house, prison, and other public buildings, municipal
water supplies, wharves, cranes, quays, wash-houses, and public
lavatories.
After the experience of the black death, some sanitary measures were
taken. The notorious offenders in matters of public hygiene in the
towns, such as the butchers, the fishmongers, and the leather tanners
were assigned specific localities where their trades would do least
harm. The smiths and potters were excluded from the more densely
populated areas because they were fire risks. In the town of Salisbury,
there was Butcher Row, Ox Row, Fish Row, Ironmongers' Row, Wheelwrights'
Row, Smiths' Row, Pot Row, Silver Street, Cheese Market, and Wool
Market.
For water, most communities depended on rivers that ran near by or on
public wells that were dug to reach the water underground. Some towns
had water public water supply systems. Fresh water was brought into the
town from a spring or pond above the town by wood or lead pipes or open
conduits. Sometimes tree trunks were hollowed out and tapered at the
ends to fit into the funnel-shaped end of another. But they leaked a
lot. In London, a conduit piped water underground to a lead tank, from
which it was delivered to the public by means of pipes and brass taps in
the stone framework. This was London's chief water supply. Water
carriers carried water in wooden devices on their backs to houses.
The paving and proper drainage of the streets became a town concern.
Building contracts began specifying the provision of adequate cesspits
for the privies at town houses, whether the latrines were built into the
house or as an outhouse. Also, in the better houses, there grew a
practice of carting human and animal fecal matter at night to dung heaps
outside the city walls. There was one public latrine in each ward and
about twelve dung carts for the whole city. Country manor houses had
latrines on the ground floor and/or the basement level.
In London, the Goldsmiths, Merchant Taylors [Tailors], Skinners, and
Girdlers bought royal charters, which recognized their power of
self-government as a company and their power to enforce their standards,
perhaps throughout the country. The Goldsmiths, the Mercers, and the
Saddlers became in 1394 the first guilds to receive charters of
incorporation, which gave them perpetual existence. As such they could
hold land in "mortmain" [dead hand], thus depriving the king of rights
that came to him on the death of a tenant-in-chief. They were authorized
to bestow livery on their members and were called Livery Companies. The
liverymen [freemen] of the trading companies elected London's
representatives to Parliament.
In all towns, the organization of craft associations spread rapidly
downwards through the trades. These associations sought self-government.
Craft guilds were gaining much power relative to the old merchant guilds
in governing the towns. The greater crafts such as the fishmongers,
skinners, and the corders (made rope, canvas, and pitch) organized and
ultimately were recognized by town authorities as self-governing craft
guilds. The building trade guilds such as the tilers, carpenters,
masons, and joiners, became important. Masons were still itinerant,
going to sites of churches, public buildings, or commanded by the king
to work on castles. The guild was not necessarily associated with a
specific product. For instance, a saddle and bridle were the result of
work of four crafts: joiner (woodworker), painter, saddler (leather),
and lorimer (metal trappings).
In London in 1392 craft guilds included: baker, fishmonger (cut up and
sold fish), fruitier, brewer, butcher, bird dealer, cook, apothecary
(sold potions he had ground up), cutler (made knives and spoons),
barber, tailor, shoemaker, glover (made gloves), skinner (sold furs),
girdler (made girdles of cloth to wear around one's waist), pouchmaker,
armorer, sheathmaker, weaver, fuller, painter, carpenter, joiner
(woodworker who finished interior woodwork such as doors and made
furniture), tiler, mason (cut stone for buildings), smith (made metal
tools for stonemasons and builders), tallow chandler (made candles and
sometimes soap from the fat and grease the housewife supplied), wax
chandler (made candles), stirrup maker, spurrier (made spurs), and
hosteler (innkeeper). However, the merchant guilds of the goldsmiths,
vintners (sold wine), mercers (sold cloth), grocers, and drapers
(finished and sold English cloth) were still strong. It was a long
custom in London that freemen in one company could practice the trade of
another company. There were paint mills and saw mills replacing human
labor. There were apothecary shops and women surgeons. Women who earned
their own living by spinning were called "spinsters".
Some prices in London were: a hen pastry 5d., a capon pastry 8d., a
roast pheasant 13d., a roast heron 18d., roast goose 7d., a hen 4d., a
capon 6d., three roast thrushes 2d., ten larks 3d., ten finches 1d, and
ten cooked eggs 1d.
Many of the guilds bought sites on which they built a chapel, which was
later used as a secular meeting place. The guild officers commonly
included an alderman, stewards, a dean, and a clerk, who were elected.
The guild officers sat as a guild court to determine discipline for
offenses such as false weights or measures or false workmanship or work
and decided trade disputes. The brethren in guild fraternity were
classified as masters, journeymen, or apprentices. They were expected to
contribute to the support of the sick and impoverished in their
fellowship. Their code required social action such as ostracizing a man
of the craft who was living in adultery until he mended his ways.
The rules of the Company of Glovers were:
1. None but a freeman of the city shall make or sell gloves.
2. No glover may be admitted to the freedom of the city unless with the
assent of the wardens of the trade.
3. No one shall entice away the servant of another.
4. If a servant in the trade makes away with his master's chattels to
the value of 12d., the wardens shall make good the loss; and if the
servant refuses to be judged by the wardens, he shall be taken
before the mayor and aldermen.
5. No one may sell his goods by candlelight.
6. Any false work found shall be taken before the mayor and aldermen by
the wardens.
7. All things touching the trade within the city between those who are
not freemen shall be forfeited.
8. Journeymen shall be paid their present rate of wages.
9. Persons who entice away journeymen glovers to make gloves in their
own houses shall be brought before the mayor and aldermen.
10. Any one of the trade who refuses to obey these regulations shall be
brought before the mayor and aldermen.
Cordwainers [workers in soft cordovan leather from Spain, especially
shoes] of good repute petitioned the city of London in 1375 for
ordinances on their trade as follows:
"To the mayor and aldermen of the city of London pray the good folks of
the trade of cordwainers of the same city, that it may please you to
grant unto them the articles that follow, for the profit of the common
people; that so, what is good and right may be done unto all manner of
folks, for saving the honor of the city and lawfully governing the said
trade.
In the first place - that if any one of the trade shall sell to any
person shoes of bazen [sheepskin tanned in oak or larch-bark] as being
cordwain, or of calf-leather for ox-leather, in deceit of the common
people, and to the scandal of the trade, he shall pay to the Chamber of
the Guildhall, the first time that he shall be convicted thereof, forty
pence; the second time, 7s. half a mark; and the third time the same,
and further, at the discretion of the mayor and aldermen.
Also - that no one of the trade shall keep house within the franchise if
he be not free [invested with the rights or privileges] of the city and
one knowing his trade, and that no one shall be admitted to the freedom
without the presence of the wardens of the trade bearing witness to his
standing, on the pain aforesaid.
Also - if any one of the trade shall be found offending touching the
trade, or rebellious against the wardens thereof, such person shall not
make complaint to any one of another trade, by reason of the discord or
dissension that may have arisen between them; but he shall be ruled by
the good folks of his own trade. And if he shall differ from them as
acting against right, then let the offense be adjudged upon before the
mayor and aldermen; and if he be found rebellious against the ordinance,
let him pay to the Chamber the sum above mentioned.
Also - that no one of the trade shall entice or purloin the servant of
another from the service of his master by paying him more than is
ordained by the trade, on the pain aforesaid.
Also - that no one shall carry out of his house any wares connected with
his trade for sale in market or elsewhere except only at a certain place
situated between Soperesland and the Conduit; and that at a certain time
of the day, that is to say, between prime [the first hour of the day]
and noon. And that no shoes shall exceed the measure of seven inches, so
that the wares may be surveyed by the good folks of the trade, because
of the deceit upon the common people that might ensue and the scandal of
the trade, on the pain aforesaid.
Also - that no one shall expose his wares openly for sale in market on
Sundays at any place, but only within his own dwelling to serve the
common people, on the pain aforesaid.
Also - that if any one sells old shoes, he shall not mix new shoes among
the old in deceit of the common people and to the scandal of the trade,
on the pain aforesaid."
Smithfield was a field outside the city gates at which horses were sold
and raced. In 1372, the horse dealers and drovers petitioned for a tax
on animals sold there to pay for cleaning the field. The city ordinance
reads as follows: "On Wednesday next after the Feast of St. Margaret the
Virgin came reputable men, the horse dealers and drovers, and delivered
unto the mayor and aldermen a certain petition in these words: 'To the
mayor, recorder, and aldermen show the dealers of Smithfield, that is to
say, the coursers and drovers, that for the amendment of the said field
they have granted and assented among them that for the term of three
years next ensuing after the date of this petition for every horse sold
in the said field there shall be paid one penny, for every ox and cow
one halfpenny, for every eight sheep one penny, and for every swine one
penny by the seller and the same by the purchaser who buys the same for
resale.` Afterwards, on the eleventh day of August in the same year,
Adam Fernham, keeper of the gaol at Newgate, Hugh, Averelle, bailiff of
Smithfield, and William Godhewe, weaver, were chosen and sworn
faithfully to collect and receive the said pennies in form aforesaid and
to clean the field of Smithfield from time to time during such term of
three years when necessary."
Many London houses were being made from stone and timber and even brick
and timber, instead of just timber and mud. However, chimneys were still
a luxury of the rich. They were made of stone, tile, or plaster. There
were windows of glass and a guild of glaziers was chartered by the King.
A typical merchant's house had a cellar; a ground floor with a shop and
storage space; a first floor with a parlor to receive guests, a spacious
hall for dining, and perhaps a kitchen; and at the top, a large family
bedroom and a servant's room. Stairwells between floors had narrow and
winding steps. Many single-roomed houses added a second-floor room for
sleeping, which was approached by a wooden or stone staircase from the
outside. Their goods were displayed on a booth outside the door of the
house or hung in the windows. They were stored at night in the cellar.
Over the booths swung huge signs, which had to be nine feet above street
level to allow a man on horseback to ride underneath. There were no
sidewalks. Street repair work for wages was supervised by a stone
master. The streets sloped down from the middle so that the filth of the
streets would run down the sides of the road. There were many wood chips
in the streets due to cutting up of firewood before taking it indoors.
People often threw the rubbish from their houses onto the street
although they were supposed to cart it outside the city walls and to
clean the frontage of their houses once a week. Dustmen scavenged
through the rubbish on the streets. Pigs and geese were no longer
allowed to run at large in the streets, but had to be fed at home. There
were other city rules on building, public order, the use of fountains,
precautions against fire, trading rights in various districts, closing
time of taverns, and when refuse could be thrown into the streets, e.g.
nighttime.
Aldermen were constantly making rounds to test measures and weights,
wine cups, the height of tavern signs, and the mesh of the fishing nets,
which had to be at least two inches wide. They saw that the taverns were
shut when curfew was rung and arrested anyone on the street after curfew
who had a weapon, for no one with a sword was allowed on the streets
unless he was some great lord or other substantial person of good
reputation. Wards provided citizens to guard the gates in their
respective neighborhood and keep its key.
The city was so dense that nuisance was a common action brought in
court, for instance, vegetable vendors near a church obstructing
passageway on the street or plumbers melting their solder with a lower
than usual shaft of the furnace so smoke was inhaled by people nearby.
Crime in London was rare. Murder, burglary, highway robbery, and gross
theft were punishable by hanging. Forgery and fraud, were punishable by
the placement in the pillory or stocks or by imprisonment. Perjury was
punished by confession from a high stool for the first offense, and the
pillory for the second. Slander and telling lies were punished by the
pillory and wearing a whetstone around one's neck. There was an
ordinance passed against prostitutes in 1351. London as well as other
port towns had not only prostitutes, but syphilis.
Prominent Londoners sought to elevate their social position by having
their family marry into rural landholding families of position. For poor
boys with talent, the main routes for advancement were the church, the
law, and positions in great households.
Many master freemasons, who carved freestone or finely grained
sandstone and limestone artistically with mallet and chisel, left the
country for better wages after their wages were fixed by statute. The
curvilinear gothic style of architecture was replaced by the
perpendicular style, which was simpler and cheaper to build. Church
steeples now had clocks on them with dials and hands to supplement the
church bell ringing on the hour. Alabaster was often used for sepulchral
monuments instead of metal or stone. With it, closer portraiture could
be achieved.
In the 1300s and 1400s the London population suffered from
tuberculosis, typhus, influenza, leprosy, dysentery, smallpox,
diphtheria, measles, heart disease, fevers, coughs, cramps, catarrhs and
cataracts, scabs, boils, tumors, and "burning agues". There were also
many deaths by fires, burning by candles near straw beds when drunk,
falling downstairs when drunk, and drowning in the river or wells.
Children were often crushed by carts, trampled by horses, or mauled by
pigs.
Towns recognized surgery as a livelihood subject to admission and oath
to serve the social good. Master surgeons were admitted to practice in
1369 in London in full husting before the mayor and the aldermen and
swore to:
[1] faithfully serve the people in undertaking their cures,
[2] take reasonably from them,
[3] faithfully follow their calling,
[4] present to the said mayor and aldermen the defaults of others
undertaking, so often as should be necessary,
[5] to be ready, at all times when they should be warned, to attend the
maimed or wounded and others,
[6] to give truthful information to the officers of the city as to such
maimed, wounded, or others whether they be in peril of death or not, and
[7] to faithfully do all other things touching their calling.
Some young girls of good families were boarded at nunneries to be
taught there. Some upper class widows retired there. Only women were
allowed to be present at a birth, at which they spread the knowledge of
midwifery. As usual, many women died giving birth. Various ways to
prevent pregnancy were tried. It was believed that a baby grew from a
seed of the father planted in the woman's body.
Infant mortality was especially high in boroughs and burgess family
lines usually died out. A three-generation family span was exceptional
in the towns, despite family wealth.
After the plague, gentlemen no longer had their children learn to speak
Norman. The grammar schools taught in English instead of Norman as of
1362. Bishops began to preach in English. English became the official
language of Parliament, in 1363, and in the courts, replacing Norman and
Latin.
The requirements of elementary and higher studies were adjusted in 1393
and began the public school system. William of Wykeham's school, St.
Mary College of Winchester in Oxford was the prototype. The curriculum
was civil law, canon law, medicine, with astronomical instruments that
students made, theology, and the arts. The arts textbooks were still
grammar, logic, Donatus, and Aristotle. Many laymen were literate, for
instance country gentry, merchants, and craftsmen. Laymen instead of
clerics were now appointed to the great offices of state.
A will in 1389 in which a wealthy citizen arranges for one son to
become an attorney and the other a merchant:
"Will of William de Tonge, citizen of London: One hundred marks
[1,333s.] each to my two sons. And I will that my said two sons shall
live upon the profits of the money bequeathed to them above until the
age of twenty years. And if my said two sons be well learned in grammar
and adorned with good manners, which shall be known at the end of twenty
years, and the elder son wish to practice common law, and if it is known
that he would spend his time well in that faculty, I will that over and
above the profit of the said one hundred marks he shall have yearly from
my rents for the term of seven years five marks [67s.]. And if he should
waste his time aforesaid, or if he should marry foolishly and
unsuitably, I will that he receive nothing more of the said five marks.
And if younger son wishes to attend the University of Oxford or to
establish himself well in the mystery of a merchant after the age of
twenty years, and [if] there be knowledge of his praiseworthy progress
in his faculty or his carefulness in trading ... I will that he shall
receive five marks yearly in the manner described above for his
maintenance, over and above the profit of the said one hundred marks to
him bequeathed, for the space of seven years; and if he behave himself
otherwise, I will that thereupon he be excluded from the said five
marks. And in case the said bequest of 200 marks [2,667s.] to him and
his brother shall be annulled so that he shall have nothing therefrom
... then the said 200 marks shall be spent upon all the yearly chaplains
who can be had to celebrate divine service in the church of All Hallows
for my soul."
Most great lords were literate. Many stories described good men, who
set an example to be followed, and bad men, whose habits were to be
avoided. Stories were written about pilgrimage vacations of ordinary
people to religious sites in England. Will Langland's poem "The Vision
of William Concerning Piers Plowman" portrays a pilgrimage of common
people to the shrine of Truth led by a virtuous laborer. Mystics wrote
practical advice with transcendental teaching, for instance "Scale of
Perfection" attributed to Walter Hilton and "Cloud of Unknowing".
Richard Rolle wrote about spiritual matters, probably the "Prick of
Conscience". Richard de Bury wrote "Philobiblon" about book lovers. Jean
Froissart wrote the "Chronicles" on knights. Courtly ideals were
expressed in "Sir Gawaine and the Grene Knyght", wherein the adventures
of the hero, an Arthur knight, are allegorical in the struggle against
the world, the flesh, and the devil (1370). "Pearl" eulogized all that
is pure and innocent on the event of the death of a two year old child.
Marco Polo's book of discoveries on his journey to China was known.
Geoffrey Chaucer was a squire and diplomat of the king. His "Tales of
the Canterbury Pilgrims" portrayed characters of every social class,
including the knight with his squire, abbot, prioress, nun, priest,
monk, friar, poor parson of the country, summoner (who enforced the
jurisdiction and levied the dues of the church courts), pardoner (sold
pardons from the pope), scholar, attorney, doctor, merchant, sailor,
franklin, yeoman, haberdasher, tapestry- maker, ploughman, cook, weaver,
dyer, upholsterer, miller, reeve, carpenter. There were Chaucer stories
about a beautiful and virtuous wife disliked by her mother-in-law, the
difficulty of marriage between people of different religions, the hatred
of a poor person by his brother and his neighbor, rich merchants who
visited other kingdoms, the importance of a man himself following the
rules he sets for other people's behavior, the spite of a man for a
woman who rejected him, the relative lack of enthusiasm of a wife for
sex as compared to her husband, a mother giving up her own comfort for
that of her child, the revenge killing of a murderer by the dead man's
friends, the joy of seeing a loved one after years of separation, that
life is more sad than happy, that lost money can be retrieved, but time
lost is lost forever.
Other stories in the Canterbury Tales were about two men who did not
remain friends after they fell in love with the same woman, about a
child who preferred to learn from an older child than from his
schoolteacher, about a wife who convinced her husband not to avenge her
beating for the sake of peace, about a man who woke up from bad dreams
full of fear, about a man wanting to marry a beautiful woman but later
realizing a plain wife would not be pursued by other men, about a man
who drank so much wine that he lost his mental and physical powers,
about a woman who married for money instead of love, about a man who
said something in frustration which he didn't mean, about a person
brought up in poverty who endured adversity better than one brought up
in wealth, about a wife who was loving and wise, about a good marriage
being more valuable than money, about a virgin who committed suicide
rather than be raped, about a wife persuaded to adultery by a man who
said he would otherwise kill himself, about three men who found a pile
of gold and murdered each other to take it all, about an angry man who
wanted to kill, about a malicious man who had joy in seeing other men in
trouble and misfortune, about a man whose face turned red in shame,
about a wife expecting to have half of what her husband owned.
Political songs and poems were written about the evil times of King
Edward II, the military triumphs of King Edward III, and the complaints
of the poor against their oppressors, such as "Song of the Husbandman".
John Gower wrote moralizing poems on the villein's revolt, the sins of
the clergy and attorneys, and the bad rule of King Richard II, who in
1377 succeeded Edward III. Robin Hood ballads were popular. The
minstrel, who was a honorable person, replaced the troubadour of older
times.
There were many colleges at Oxford and Cambridge due to the prohibition
of gifts to the church. Laymen instead of ecclesiastics were appointed
as Chancellor. The Masters at Oxford got rid of ecclesiastical
supervision by a bishop and archdeacon by 1368. One could be admitted as
a student at age thirteen. The rate of maintenance for a student was
10d. weekly.
A Bachelor of Arts degree was granted after four years of study and an
oral exam. Required reading in 1340 for the Bachelor's Degree was the
new logic of Aristotle ("Prior and Posterior Analytics" e.g. on
syllogistic logic and deduction, the "Topics", or the "Sophistical
Refutations", e.g. logical fallacies such as from 'All A are B' to 'All
B are A'), and a selection from these Aristotle works on physics: "Of
Heaven and Earth", "On the Soul", "Of meteors", "Of Birth and Decay", or
"Of Feeling and What is Felt" with "Of Memory and Recollection" and "Of
Sleep and Waking", or "Of the Movement of Animals" with "Of Minor Points
in Natural History".
A Master of Arts degree could be awarded after three more years of
study and teaching. A Doctorate degrees in theology required ten more
years of study. A Doctorate in civil or canon law required eight more
years. A man with a degree in canon law who wanted to practice in a
certain bishop's court had to first satisfy this bishop of his
competence.
Another source of legal learning was in London, where the guilds gave
rise to the Inns of Court. They used the Register of Writs, the case law
of the Year Books, and disputation to teach their students.
For a doctorate in medicine from Oxford or Cambridge, five more years
plus two years of practice were required. Surgery was not taught because
it was considered manual labor, and there was some feeling that it was a
sacrilege and dishonorable. Urinalysis and pulse beat were used for
diagnosis. Epilepsy and apoplexy were understood as spasms inside the
head. It was known what substances served as laxatives and diuretics.
Teeth were extracted, eye cataracts were removed with a silver needle,
and skin from the arm was grafted onto a mutilated face.
Englishmen who had collected books on philosophy, medicine, astronomy,
and history and literature books from the continent gave their
collections to the universities, which started their libraries. Paper
supplemented parchment, so there were more books.
England was still an agricultural rather than a manufacturing country.
Imported were cloth, silks, linen, velvets, furs, glass, wines, candles,
millstones, amber, iron, and mercury. Exported were wool, leather, lead,
tin, and alabaster for sculpturing. Merchant adventurers came to
manufacture cloth good enough for export and began to buy up raw wool in
such quantity that its export declined. They took their cloth abroad to
sell, personally or by agents.
An Oxford theologian and preacher, John Wyclif, voiced the popular
resentment of the materialism of the church, benefit of clergy,
immorality of priests, and the selling of indulgences and pardons.
Encouraged by the king, he argued against the supremacy of the papal law
over the King's courts and against payments to the papacy. He opined
that the church had no power to excommunicate. The friars had become
mere beggars and the church was still wealthy. He proposed that all
goods should be held in common by the righteous and that the church
should hold no property but be entirely spiritual. He believed that
people should rely on their individual consciences. He thought that the
Bible should be available to people who could read English so that the
people could have a direct access to God without priests or the pope.
Towards this end, he translated it from Latin into English in 1384. His
preachers spread his views throughout the country. The church then
possessed about one-third of the land of the nation.
Parliament met about twice a year and lasted from two weeks to several
months. There was a well-defined group of about fifty barons and a few
spiritual peers who were always summoned to Parliament and who composed
a House of Lords. "Peer" now meant a member of the House of Lords. All
peers had the right to approach the king with advice. The baron peers
reasoned that the custom of regular attendance was a right that should
be inherited by the eldest son, or by a female heir, if there were no
male heirs. However, the theory of nobility by blood as conveying
political privilege had no legal recognition. No female could attend
Parliament; the husband of a baroness attended Parliament in her stead.
Edward III and Richard II created new peers with various titles of
dignity, such as duke and marquess, which were above barons and earls.
The dukes and marquesses were identified with a territorial designation
such as an English county or county town. Whenever a Parliament was
assembled the commons were present. The commons was composed of
representatives from 100 boroughs and 37 counties. Each new Parliament
required an election of representatives. The members of the commons were
generally the most prominent and powerful economic and political figures
of the county and were repeatedly reelected. The electors were usually
influenced by the sheriff or a powerful lord who suggested suitable men.
The wealthy merchants typically represented the boroughs and paid much
of the taxes. Under Edward III, the commons took a leading part in the
granting of taxes and the presentation of petitions and became a
permanent and distinct body, the House of Commons, with a spokesman or
"speaker", chosen by the Crown, and a clerk. The speaker came to be an
intermediary between the Commons and the king and between the Commons
and the Lords. A clerk of Parliament registered its acts and sat with
the Lords. A clerk of the Crown superintended the issue of writs and the
receipt of the returns and attested the signature of the king on
statutes. It became a regular practice for the Chancellor to open
Parliament with an opportunity to present petitions after his opening
speech. The king then referred them to certain peers and justices, who
decided to which court, or Parliament, they should be sent. During the
1300s, the number of barons going to Parliament gradually decreased.
At the 1376 Parliament, ("the Good Parliament") the Commons, which
formerly had only consented to taxes, took political action by
complaining that the King's councilors had grown rich by war
profiteering at the cost of impoverishing the nation and the people were
too poor to endure any more taxation for the war and held a hearing on
financial malfeasance and dishonesty of two ministers. The chamberlain
had extorted enormous sums, had intercepted fines meant for the king's
treasury, and had sold a castle to the enemy. The steward had bought
debts of the king's. The House of Lords, the High Court of Parliament,
found the charges proved and dismissed them permanently from office.
This established the constitutional means for impeachment and
prosecution by the Commons and removal by the House of Lords of
ministers. By this process, there could be no royal intimidation, as
there could be in the ordinary courts. The Commons demanded that its
members be elected by county citizens rather than appointed by the
sheriff.
The roles of Parliament and the King's council are starting to
differentiate into legislative and executive, respectively. The
legislative function is lawmaking, and the executive is
regulation-making that refines and effectuates the laws of Parliament.
But the legislative, executive, and judicial authorities have not as yet
become so completely separated that they cannot on occasion work
together.
Sheriffs dealt directly with the king instead of through an earl.
From 1150 to 1400, resistance was an ordinary remedy for political
disagreements. If a popular leader raised his standard in a popular
cause, an irregular army could be assembled in a day. (There was no
regular army, since England was protected by the sea from invasion.) So
misgovernment by a king would be quickly restrained. Society recovered
quickly from conflict and civil war because the national wealth
consisted chiefly in flocks and herds and in the simple buildings
inhabited by the people. In a week after armed resistance, the
agricultural worker was driving his team. There was little furniture,
stock of shops, manufactured goods, or machinery that could be
destroyed.
To support a war with France, the staple was reinstated by statute of
1353 after an experiment without it in which profits of a staple went to
staples outside the nation. Wool exports were inspected for quality and
taxed through his officials only at the designated staple ports. These
officials included collectors, controllers, searchers [inspectors],
surveyors, clerks, weighers, and crane-keepers. Wool, woolfells,
leather, and lead sold for export had to go through the staple town. The
penalty was forfeiture of lands, tenements, goods, and chattel. The
mayor and constables of the staple were elected annually by the native
and foreign merchants of the place. The mayor gave validity to contracts
for a set fee, by seal of his office. He and the constables had
jurisdiction over all persons and things touching the staple, which was
regulated by the Law Merchant in all matters of contract, covenant,
debt, and felonies against foreign merchants. A hue and cry was required
to be raised and followed for anyone taking a cart of merchandise or
slaying a merchant, denizen [resident alien] or alien, or the town would
answer for the robbery and damage done. In 1363, Calais, a continental
town held by the English, became the staple town for lead, tin, cloth,
and wool and was placed under a group of London capitalists: the
Merchants of the Staple. All exports of these had to pass through
Calais, where customs tax was collected. The staple statute remained
basically unchanged for the next 200 years.
Guns and cannon were common by 1372. In the 1300s and 1400s, the king
relied on mercenaries hired directly or by contract with his great
nobles for foreign wars. The King reimbursed the contractors with the
profits of war, such as the ransoms paid by the families of rich
prisoners. The fighting men supplemented their pay by plunder.
Featherbeds and blooded horses were favorite spoils of war brought back
to England from the continent. As new techniques with footmen came into
being, the footmen became the core of the army and the knightly
abilities of the feudal tenants-in-chief became less valuable.
Many lords got men to fight with them by livery and maintenance
employment agreements such as this one of 1374: "Bordeaux, February 15.
This indenture, made between our lord King John [of Gaunt, of Castile,
etc.] of the one part and Symkyn Molyneux, esquire, of the other part,
witnesses that the said Symkyn is retained and will remain with our said
lord for peace and for war for the term of his life, as follows: that is
to say, the said Symkyn shall be bound to serve our said lord as well in
time of peace as of war in whatsoever parts it shall please our said
lord, well and fitly arrayed. And he shall be boarded as well in time of
peace as of war. And he shall take for his fees by the year, as well in
time of peace as of war, ten marks sterling [133s.] from the issues of
the Duchy of Lancaster by the hands of the receiver there who now is or
shall be in time to come, at the terms of Easter and Michaelmas by even
portions yearly for the whole of his life. And, moreover, our lord has
granted to him by the year in time of war five marks sterling [67s.] by
the hands of the treasurer of war for the time being. And his year of
war shall begin the day when he shall move from his inn towards our said
lord by letters which shall be sent to him thereof, and thenceforward he
shall take wages coming and returning by reasonable daily [payments] and
he shall have fitting freightage for him, his men, horses, and other
harness within reason, and in respect of his war horses taken and lost
in the service of our said lord, and also in respect to prisoners and
other profits of war taken or gained by him or any of his men, the said
our lord will do to him as to other squires of his rank."
Forecastles and stern castles on ships were lower and broader.
Underneath them were cabins. The English ship was still single masted
with a single square sail. A fleet was formed with over 200 ships
selected by the English admirals acting for the king at the ports. Men
were seized and pressed into service and criminals were pardoned from
crimes to become sailors in the fleet, which was led by the King's ship.
They used the superior longbow against the French sailor's crossbow. In
1372, the Tower of London had four mounted fortress cannon and the port
of Dover had six.
The war's disruption of shipping caused trade to decline. But the
better policing of the narrow seas made piracy almost disappear.
English merchants may carry their merchandise in foreign ships if there
are no English ships available.
Anyone may ship or carry grain out of the nation, except to enemies,
after paying duties. But the council may restrain this passage when
necessary for the good of the nation. Any merchant, privy or stranger,
who was robbed of goods on the sea or lost his ship by tempest or other
misfortune on the sea banks, his goods coming to shore could not be
declared Wreck, but were to be delivered to the merchant after he proves
ownership in court by his marks on the goods or by good and lawful
merchants.
All stakes and obstacles set up in rivers impeding the passage of boats
shall be removed.
Waterpower was replacing foot power in driving the mills where cloth
was cleaned and fulled.
A boundary dispute between two barons resulted in the first true survey
map. Nine cow pastures were divided by a boundary marked by a shield on
a pole which the commission of true and sworn men had set up.
King Richard II, an irresponsible sovereign, asserted an absolute
supremacy of the king over Parliament and declared certain statutes
which he claimed to have been forced on him to be revoked. He interfered
with county elections of knights to Parliament by directing sheriffs to
return certain named persons. He wanted to dispense altogether with
Parliament and instead have a committee of representatives. He claimed
that the goods of his subjects were his own and illegally taxed the
counties. There were many disputes as to who should be his ministers.
High treason was extended to include making a riot and rumor, compassing
or purposing to depose the King, revoking one's homage or liege to the
King, or attempting to repeal a statute. When Henry Bolingbroke reported
to Parliament that another lord had cast doubt on the king's
trustworthiness, a duel between them was arranged. But Richard, probably
fearing the gain of power of the lord who won, instead exiled the two
lords. He took possession of the Lancaster estates to which Bolingbroke
was heir and forbade this inheritance. This made all propertied men
anxious and they united behind Bolingbroke in taking up arms against
Richard. Richard was not a warrior king and offered to resign the crown.
The "Merciless Parliament" of 1388 swept out Richard's friends.
Parliament deposed and imprisoned Richard. It revoked the extensions to
the definition of high treason. It elected Bolingbroke, who claimed to
be a descendant of Henry III, to be King Henry IV. This action
established clearly that royal decrees were subordinate to parliamentary
statutes, that Parliament was the ultimate legal arbiter of the realm,
and that the consent of Parliament was necessary in determining
kingship. The House of Commons became very powerful. It was responsible
for the major part of legislation. It's members began to assert the
privilege of free speech. That is, they wanted to discuss other matters
than what was on the king's agenda and they opposed punishment for what
they said unless it was treasonable. Henry IV agreed to their request
not to consider reports of proceedings unless they came to him through
official channels.
- The Law -
High treason was defined by statute in 1352 as levying war against the
King, aiding the King's enemies, compassing or imagining the death of
the King, Queen, or their eldest son and heir, or violating the Queen or
the eldest unmarried daughter or the wife of the King's eldest son and
heir; making or knowingly using counterfeits of the King's great or
privy seal or coinage; or slaying the Chancellor, Treasurer, or any
justice in the exercise of their duty. The penalty was forfeit of life
and lands.
Petit treason was defined by statute and included a servant slaying his
master, a wife her husband, or a man his lord, to whom was owed faith
and obedience.
No one shall tell false news or lies about prelates, dukes, earls,
barons, and other nobles and great men or the Chancellor, Treasurer, a
Justice, Clerk of the Privy Seal, Steward of the King's house whereby
debates and discords might arise between these lords or between the
lords and the commons. Cases shall be tried by the King's Council, which
included the Chancellor, Treasurer, and chief justices.
Preachers drawing crowds by ingenious sermons and inciting them to riot
shall be arrested by sheriffs and tried by the ecclesiastical court.
Any stranger passing at night of whom any have suspicion shall be
arrested and taken to the Sheriff.
No man shall ride with a spear, upon pain of forfeiting it.
No servant of agriculture or laborer shall carry any sword or dagger,
or else forfeit it, except in time of war in defense of the nation. He
may carry bow and arrow [for practice] on Sundays and holy days, when he
should not play games such as tennis, football, or dice.
No one may enter another's land and tenements by strong hand nor with a
mob, upon pain of imprisonment and ransom at the King's will.
Charters, releases, obligations, quitclaim deeds and other deeds burnt
or destroyed in uprisings shall be reissued without fee, after trial by
the king and his council. Manumissions, obligations, releases and other
bonds and feoffments in land made by force, coercion or duress during
mob uprisings are void.
Men who rape and women consenting after a rape shall lose their
inheritance and dower and joint feoffments. The husbands, or father or
next of kin of such women may sue the rapist by inquisition, but not by
trial by combat. The penalty is loss of life and member.
The Statute of Laborers of 1351 required all workers, from tailors to
ploughmen, to work only at pre-plague wage rates and forced the vagrant
peasant to work for anyone who claimed him or her. It also encouraged
longer terms of employment as in the past rather than for a day at a
time. Statutory price controls on food limited profits to reasonable
ones according to the distance of the supply. Later, wages were
determined in each county by Justices of the Peace according to the
dearth of victuals while allowing a victualer a reasonable profit and a
penalty was specified as paying the value of the excess wages given or
received for the first offense, double this for the second offense, and
treble this or forty days imprisonment for the third offense.
A fugitive laborer will be outlawed, and when found, shall be burnt in
the forehead with the letter "F" for falsity.
Children who labored at the plough and cart or other agriculture shall
continue in that labor and may not go into a craft.
A statute of 1363 designed to stop hoarding various types of
merchandise until a type became scarce so to sell it at high prices,
required merchants to deal in only one type of merchandise. It also
required craftsmen to work in only one craft as before (except women who
traditionally did several types of handiwork). This was repealed a year
later.
Where scarcity has made the price of poultry high, it shall be lowered
to 8d. for a young capon, 7d. for an old capon or a goose, 9d. for a
hen, and 10d. for a pullet.
The fares for passage on boats on fresh waters and from Dover to the
continent shall remain at their old rate.
Any merchant selling at a fair after it has ended will forfeit to the
king twice the value of that sold.
Anyone finding and proving cloth contrary to the assize of cloth shall
have one-third of it for his labor.
No shoemaker nor cordwainer shall tan their leather and no tanner shall
make shoes, in order that tanning not be false or poorly done.
All denizen [foreigner permitted to reside in the realm with certain
rights and privileges] and alien merchants may buy and sell goods and
merchandise, in gross, in any part of the country, despite town charters
or franchises, to anyone except an enemy of the King. They may also sell
small wares: victuals, fur, silk, coverchiefs [an item of woman's
apparel], silver wire, and gold wire in retail, but not cloth or wine.
They must sell their goods within three months of arrival. Any alien
bringing goods to the nation to sell must buy goods of the nation to the
value of at least one-half that of his merchandise sold. These merchants
must engage in no collusion to lower the price of merchandise bought,
take merchandise bought to the staple, and promise to hold no staple
beyond the sea for the same merchandise. An amendment disallowed
denizens from taking wools, leather, woolfells, or lead for export, but
only strangers.
Towns failing to bring disturbers of this right to justice shall
forfeit their franchise to the king and pay double damages to the
merchant. The disturber shall be imprisoned for a year.
Cloth may not be tacked nor folded for sale to merchants unless they
are opened to the buyers for inspection, for instance for concealed
inferior wool. Workers, weavers, and fullers shall put their seals to
every cloth. Anyone may bring his own wools, woolfells, leather, and
lead to the staple to sell without being compelled to sell them in the
country. Special streets or warehouses were appointed with warehouse
rent fixed by the mayor and constables with four of the principal
inhabitants. Customs duties were regulated and machinery provided for
their collection. No one may forestall or regrate, that is, buy at one
price and sell at a higher price in the same locale. Forestallers were
those who bought raw material on its way to market. Regrators were those
who tried to create a "corner" in the article in the market itself.
Imported cloth shall be inspected by the King's officials for non-
standard measurements or defects [despite town franchises].
No one shall leave the nation except at designated ports, on pain of
one year's imprisonment.
Social distinctions by attire were mandated by statute of 1363. A
servant, his wife, son, or daughter, shall only wear cloth worth no more
than 27s. and shall not have more than one dish of meat or fish a day.
Carters, ploughmen, drivers of the plough, oxherds, cowherds, shepherds,
and all other people owning less than 40s. of goods and chattels shall
only wear blanket and russet worth no more than 12d. and girdles of
linen according to their estate. Craftsmen and free peasants shall only
wear cloth worth no more than 40s. Esquires and gentlemen below the rank
of knight with no land nor rent over 2,000s. a year shall only wear
cloth worth no more than 60s., no gold, silver, stone, fur, or the color
purple. Esquires with land up to 2,667s. per year may wear 67s. cloth,
cloth of silk and silver, miniver [grey squirrel] fur and stones, except
stones on the head. Merchants, citizens, burgesses, artificers, and
people of handicraft having goods and chattels worth 10,000s. shall wear
cloth the same value as that worn by esquires and gentlemen with land or
rent within 2,000s. per year. The same merchants and burgesses with
goods and chattels worth 13,333s. and esquires and gentlemen with land
or rent within 400s. per year may not wear gold cloth, miniver fur,
ermine [white] fur, or embroidered stones. A knight with land or rents
within 2,667s. yearly are limited to cloth of 80s., but his wife may
wear a stone on her head. Knights and ladies with land or rents within
8,000s. to 20,000s. yearly may not wear fur of ermine or of letuse, but
may wear gold, and such ladies may wear pearls as well as stones on
their heads. The penalty is forfeiture of such apparel. This statute is
necessary because of "outrageous and excessive apparel of diverse
persons against their estate and degree, to the great destruction and
impoverishment of all the land".
If anyone finds a hawk [used to hunt birds, ducks, and pheasant] that a
lord has lost, he must take it to the sheriff for keeping for the lord
to claim. If there is no claim after four months, the finder may have it
only if he is a gentleman. If one steals a hawk from a lord or conceals
from him the fact that it has been found, he shall pay the price of the
hawk and be imprisoned for two years.
No laborer or any other man who does not have lands and tenements of
the value of 40s. per year shall keep a greyhound or other hound or dog
to hunt, nor shall they use nets or cords or other devices to take deer,
hare, rabbits, nor other gentlemen's game, upon pain of one year
imprisonment. (The rabbit had been introduced by the Normans.) This 1390
law was primarily intended to stop the meetings of laborers and
artificers.
No man shall eat more than two courses of meat or fish in his house or
elsewhere, except at festivals, when three are allowed [because great
men ate costly meats to excess and the lesser people were thereby
impoverished].
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 purveyor.
Every man who has wood within the forest may take houseboot [right to
take wood for repair of one's house] and heyboot [right to take material
for the maintenance of hedges and fences, and the making of farming
utensils] in his wood without being arrested so long as it take such
within the view of the foresters.
No fecal matter, dung, garbage, or entrails of animals killed shall be
put into ditches or rivers or other waters, so that maladies and
diseases will not be caused by corrupted and infected air. The penalty
is 400s. to the king after trial by the Chancellor.
Gifts or alienation of land to guilds, fraternities, or towns are
forbidden. Instead, it escheats to its lord, or in his default, to the
King.
No man will be charged to go out of his county to do military service
except in case of an enemy invasion of the nation. Men who chose to go
into the king's service outside the nation shall be paid wages by the
king until their return.
Admiralty law came into being when ancient naval manners and customs
were written down as the "Black Book of the Admiralty". This included
the organization of the fleet under the Admiral, sea-maneuver rules such
as not laying anchor until the Admiral's ship had, engagement rules, and
the distribution of captured goods: one-fourth to the vessel owner,
one-fourth to the king if the seamen were paid by the king's wages, and
the rest divided among the crew and Admiral. Stealing a boat or an
anchor holding a boat was punishable by hanging. Stealing an oar or an
anchor was punishable by forty days imprisonment for the first offense,
six months imprisonment for the second, and hanging for the third.
Desertion was punishable by loss of double the amount of wages earned
and imprisonment for one year. Cases were tried by jury in the Admiral's
court.
Wines, vinegar, oil and honey imported shall be gauged by the King's
appointees.
- Judicial Procedure -
The office of Justice of the Peace was developed and filled by knights,
esquires and gentlemen who were closely associated with the magnates.
There was no salary nor any requirement of knowledge of the law. They
were to pursue, restrain, arrest, imprison, try, and duly punish felons,
trespassers, and rioters according to the law. They were expected to
arrest vagrants who would not work and imprison them until sureties for
good behavior was found for them. They also were empowered to inspect
weights and measures. Trespass included forcible offenses of breaking of
a fence enclosing private property, assault and battery, false
imprisonment, and taking away goods and chattels.
The action of trespass was replacing private suits for murder and for
personal injury.
Pardons may be given only for slaying another in one's own defense or
by misfortune [accident], and not for slaying by lying in wait, assault,
or malice aforethought.
Justices of Assize, sheriffs, and Justices of the Peace and mayors
shall have power to inquire of all vagabonds and compel them to find
surety of their good bearing or be imprisoned.
A reversioner shall be received in court to defend his right when a
tenant for a term of life, tenant in dower, or by curtesy of the nation,
or in [Fee] Tail after Possibility of Issue extinct are sued in court
for the land, so as to prevent collusion by the demandants.
A person in debt may not avoid his creditors by giving his tenements or
chattels to his friends in collusion to have the profits at his will.
Where there was a garnishment given touching a plea of land, a writ of
deceit is also maintainable.
Actions of debt will be heard only in the county where the contract was
made. The action of debt includes enforcement of contracts executed or
under seal, e.g. rent due on a lease, hire of an archer, contract of
sale or repair of an item. Thus there is a growing connection between
the actions of debt and contract.
Executors have an action for trespass to their testators' goods and
chattels in like manner as did the testator when alive.
If a man dies intestate, his goods shall be administered by his next
and most lawful friends appointed. Such administrators shall have the
same powers and duties as executors and be accountable as are executors
to the ecclesiastical court.
Children born to English parents in parts beyond the sea may inherit
from their ancestors in the same manner as those born in the nation.
A person grieved by a false oath in a town court proceeding may appeal
to the King's Bench or Common Pleas, regardless of any town franchise.
It was exceptional for the King to sit on the Court of the King's
Bench, which worked independently of the King.and became confined to the
established common law.
Decisions of the common law courts are appealable to the House of
Lords. The king's council members who are not peers, in particular the
justices and the Masters of the Chancery, are summoned by the House of
Lords only as mere assistants. Parliament may change the common law by
statute. The right of a peer to be tried for capital crimes by a court
composed of his peers was established. There was a widespread belief
that all the peers are by right the king's councilors.
No attorney may practice law and also be a justice of assize. No
justice may take any gift except from the king nor give counsel to any
litigant before him.
In 1390, there was a statute against maintainers, instigators,
barretors, procurers, and embracers of quarrels and inquests because of
great and outrageous oppressions of parties in court. Because this
encouraged maintenance by the retinue of lords with fees, robes, and
other liveries, such maintainers were to be put out of their lords'
service, and could not be retained by another lord. No one was to give
livery to anyone else, except household members and those retained for
life for peace or for war. Justices of the Peace were authorized to
inquire about yeomen, or other of lower estate than squire, bearing
livery of any lord.
Whereas it is contained in the Magna Carta that none shall be
imprisoned nor put out of his freehold, nor of his franchises nor free
custom, unless it be by the law of the land; it is established that from
henceforth none shall be taken by petition or suggestion made to the
king unless by indictment of good and lawful people of the same
neighborhood where such deeds be done, in due manner, or by process made
by writ original at the common law; nor that none be out of his
franchise, nor of his freeholds, unless he be duly brought into answer
and before judges of the same by the course of law.
The Chancery came to have a separate and independent equitable
jurisdiction. It heard petitions of misconduct of government officials
or of powerful oppressors, fraud, accident, abuse of trust, wardship of
infants, dower, and rent charges. Because the common law and its
procedures had become technical and rigid, the Chancery was given equity
jurisdiction by statute in 1285. King Edward III proclaimed that
petitions for remedies that the common law didn't cover be addressed to
the Chancellor, who was not bound by established law, but could do
equity. In Chancery, if there is a case that is similar to a case for
which there is a writ, but is not in technical conformity with the
requirements of the common law for a remedy, then a new writ may be made
for that case by the Chancellor. These were called "actions on the
case". Also, Parliament may create new remedies. There were so many
cases that were similar to a case with no remedy specified in the common
law, that litigants were flowing into the Chancery. The Chancellor gave
swift and equitable relief, which was summary. With the backing of the
council, the Chancellor made decisions implementing the policy of the
Statute of Laborers. Most of these concerned occupational competency,
for instance negligent activity of carriers, builders, shepherds,
doctors, cloth workers, smiths, innkeepers, and gaolers. For instance,
the common law action of detinue could force return of cloth bailed for
fulling or sheep bailed for pasturing, but could not address damages due
to faulty work. The Chancellor addressed issues of loss of wool, dead
lambs, and damaged sheep, as well as dead sheep. He imposed a legal duty
on innkeepers to prevent injury or damage to a patron or his goods from
third parties. A dog bite or other damage by a dog known by its owner to
be vicious was made a more serious offense than general damage by any
dog. A person starting a fire was given a duty to prevent the fire from
damaging property of others. The King will fine instead of seize the
land of his tenants who sell or alienate their land, such fine to be
determined by the Chancellor by due process.
Only barons who were peers of the House of Lords were entitled to trial
in the House of Lords. In practice, however, this pertained only to
major crimes.
Treason was tried by the lords in Parliament, by bill of "attainder".
It was often used for political purposes. Most attainders were reversed
as a term of peace made between competing factions.
The King's coroner and a murderer who had taken sanctuary in a church
often agreed to the penalty of confession and perpetual banishment from
the nation as follows: "Memorandum that on July 6, [1347], Henry de
Roseye abjured the realm of England before John Bernard, the King's
coroner, at the church of Tendale in the County of Kent in form
following: 'Hear this, O lord the coroner, that I, Henry de Roseye, have
stolen an ox and a cow of the widow of John Welsshe of Retherfeld; and I
have stolen eighteen beasts from divers men in the said county. And I
acknowledge that I have feloniously killed Roger le Swan in the town of
Strete in the hundred of Strete in the rape [a division of a county] of
Lewes and that I am a felon of the lord King of England. And because I
have committed many ill deeds and thefts in his land, I abjure the land
of the Lord Edward King of England, and [I acknowledge] that I ought to
hasten to the port of Hastings, which thou hast given me, and that I
ought not to depart from the way, and if I do so I am willing to be
taken as a thief and felon of the lord King, and that at Hastings I will
diligently seek passage, and that I will not wait there save for the
flood and one ebb if I can have passage; and if I cannot have passage
within that period, I will go up to the knees into the sea every day,
endeavoring to cross; and unless I can do so within forty days, I will
return at once to the church, as a thief and a felon of the lord King,
so help me God."
Property damage by a tenant of a London building was assessed in a 1374
case: "John Parker, butcher, was summoned to answer Clement Spray in a
plea of trespass, wherein the latter complained that the said John, who
had hired a tavern at the corner of St. Martin- le-Grand from him for
fifteen months, had committed waste and damage therein, although by the
custom of the city no tenant for a term of years was entitled to destroy
any portion of the buildings or fixtures let to him. He alleged that the
defendant had taken down the door post of the tavern and also of the
shop, the boarded door of a partition of the tavern, a seat in the
tavern, a plastered partition wall, the stone flooring in the chamber,
the hearth of the kitchen, and the mantelpiece above it, a partition in
the kitchen, two doors and other partitions, of a total value of 21s.
four pounds, 1s. 8d., and to his damage, 400s. [20 pounds]. The
defendant denied the trespass and put himself on the country. Afterwards
a jury [panel]... found the defendant guilty of the aforesaid trespass
to the plaintiff's damage, 40d. Judgment was given for that amount and a
fine of 1s. to the King, which the defendant paid immediately in court."
The innkeeper's duty to safeguard the person and property of his
lodgers was applied in this case:
"John Trentedeus of Southwark was summoned to answer William Latymer
touching a plea why, whereas according to the law and custom of the
realm of England, innkeepers who keep a common inn are bound to keep
safely by day and by night without reduction or loss men who are passing
through the parts where such inns are and lodging their goods within
those inns, so that, by default of the innkeepers or their servants, no
damage should in any way happen to such their guests ...
On Monday after the Feast of the Purification of the Virgin Mary in the
fourth year of the now King by default of the said John, certain
malefactors took and carried away two small portable chests with 533s.
and also with charters and writings, to wit two writings obligatory, in
the one of which is contained that a certain Robert Bour is bound to the
said William in 2,000s. and in the other that a certain John Pusele is
bound to the same William in 800s. 40 pounds ... and with other
muniments [writings defending claims or rights] of the same William, to
wit his return of all the writs of the lord King for the counties of
Somerset and Dorset, whereof the same William was then sheriff, for the
morrow of the Purification of the Blessed Mary the Virgin in the year
aforesaid, as well before the same lord the King in his Chancery and in
his Bench as before the justices of the King's Common Bench and his
barons of his Exchequer, returnable at Westminster on the said morrow,
and likewise the rolls of the court of Cranestock for all the courts
held there from the first year of the reign of the said lord the King
until the said Monday, contained in the same chests being lodged within
the inn of the same John at Southwark
And the said John ... says that on the said Monday about the second hour
after noon the said William entered his inn to be lodged there, and at
once when he entered, the same John assigned to the said William a
certain chamber being in that inn, fitting for his rank, with a door and
a lock affixed to the same door with sufficient nails, so that he should
lie there and put and keep his things there, and delivered to the said
William the key to the door of the said chamber, which chamber the said
William accepted...
William says that ... when the said John had delivered to him the said
chamber and key as above, the same William, being occupied about divers
businesses to be done in the city of London, went out from the said inn
into the city to expedite the said businesses and handed over the key of
the door to a certain servant of the said William to take care of in
meantime, ordering the servant to remain in the inn meanwhile and to
take care of his horses there; and afterwards, when night was falling,
the same William being in the city and the key still in the keeping of
the said servant, the wife of the said John called unto her into her
hall the said servant who had the key, giving him food and drink with a
merry countenance and asking him divers questions and occupying him thus
for a long time, until the staple of the lock of the door aforesaid was
thrust on one side out of its right place and the door of the chamber
was thereby opened and his goods, being in the inn of the said John,
were taken and carried off by the said malefactors ... The said John
says ...[that his wife did not call the servant into the hall, but that]
when the said servant came into the said hall and asked his wife for
bread and ale and other necessaries to be brought to the said chamber of
his master, his wife immediately and without delay delivered to the same
servant the things for which he asked ... protesting that no goods of
the same William in the said inn were carried away by the said John his
servant or any strange malefactors other than the persons of the
household of the said William."
On the Coram Rege Roll of 1395 is a case on the issue of whether a
court crier can be seized by officers of a staple:
"Edmund Hikelyng, 'crier', sues William Baddele and wife Maud, John
Olney, and William Knyghtbrugge for assault and imprisonment at
Westminster, attacking him with a stick and imprisoning him for one hour
on Wednesday before St. Martin, 19 Richard II.
Baddele says Mark Faire of Winchester was prosecuting a bill of debt for
18s. against Edmund and John More before William Brampton, mayor of the
staple of Westminster, and Thomas Alby and William Askham, constables of
the said staple, and on that day the Mayor and the constables issued a
writ of capias against Edmund and John to answer Mark and be before the
Mayor and the constables at the next court. This writ was delivered to
Baddele as sergeant of the staple, and by virtue of it he took and
imprisoned Edmund in the staple. Maud and the others say they aided
Baddele by virtue of the said writ.
Edmund does not acknowledge Baddele to be sergeant of the staple or Mark
a merchant of the staple or that he was taken in the staple. He is
minister of the King's Court of his Bench and is crier under Thomas
Thorne, the chief crier, his master. Every servant of the court is under
special protection while doing his duty or on his way to do it. On the
day in question, he was at Westminster carrying his master's staff of
office before Hugh Huls, one of the King's justices, and William took
him in the presence of the said justice and imprisoned him.
The case is adjourned for consideration from Hilary to Easter."
A law of equity began to be developed from decisions by the Chancellor
in his court of conscience from around 1370. One such case was that of
Godwyne v. Profyt sometime after 1393. This petition was made to the
Chancellor: To the most reverend Father in God, and most gracious Lord,
the bishop of Exeter, Chancellor of England. Thomas Godwyne and Joan his
wife, late wife of Peter at More of Southwerk, most humbly beseech that,
whereas at Michaelmas in the 17th year of our most excellent lord King
Richard who now is, the said Peter at More in his lifetime enfeoffed
Thomas Profyt parson of St. George's church Southwerk, Richard Saundre,
and John Denewey, in a tenement with the appurtenances situated in
Southwerk and 24 acres of land 6 acres of meadow in the said parish of
St. George and in the parish of our Lady of Newington, on the conditions
following, to wit, that the said three feoffees should, immediately
after the death of the said Peter, enfeoff the said Joan in all the said
lands and tenements with all their appurtenances for the life of the
said Joan, with remainder after her decease to one Nicholas at More,
brother of the said Peter, to hold to him and the heirs of his body
begotten, and for default of issue, then to be sold by four worthy
people of the said parish, and the money to be received for the same to
be given to Holy Church for his soul; whereupon the said Peter died. And
after his death two of the said feoffees, Richard and John, by the
procurement of one John Solas, released all their estate in the said
lands and tenements to the said Thomas Profyt, on the said conditions,
out of the great trust that they had in the said Thomas Profyt, who was
their confessor, that he would perform the will of the said Peter [at
More] in the form aforesaid; and this well and lawfully to do the said
Thomas Profyt swore on his Verbum Dei and to perform the said conditions
on all points. And since the release was so made, the said Thomas
Profyt, through the scheming and false covin of the said John Solas, has
sold all the lands and tenements aforesaid to the same John Solas for
ever. And the said John Solas is bound to the said Thomas Profyt in 100
pounds by a bond to make defense of the said lands and tenements by the
bribery and maintenance against every one; and so by their false
interpretation and conspiracy the said Joan, Nicholas, and Holy Church
are like to be disinherited and put out of their estate and right, as is
abovesaid, for ever, tortiously, against the said conditions, and
contrary to the will of the said Peter [at More]. May it please your
most righteous Lordship to command the said Thomas Profyt, Richard
Saundre, and John Denewy to come before you, and to examine them to tell
the truth of all the said matter, so that the said Joan, who has not the
wherewithal to live, may have her right in the said lands and tenements,
as by the examination before you, most gracious Lord, shall be found and
proved; for God and in way of holy charity.
- - - Chapter 10 - - -
- The Times: 1399-1485 -
This period, which begins with the reign of the usurper King, Henry IV,
is dominated by war: the last half of the 100 year war with France,
which, with the help of Joan of Arc, took all English land on the
continent except the port of Calais, and the War of the Roses over the
throne in England. The ongoing border fights with Wales and Scotland
were fought by England's feudal army. But for fighting in France, the
king paid barons and earls to raise their own fighting forces. When they
returned to England, they fought to put their candidate on its throne,
which had been unsteady since its usurpation by Henry IV. All the great
houses kept bands of armed retainers. These retainers were given land or
pay or both as well as liveries [uniforms or badges] bearing the family
crest. In the system of "livery and maintenance", if the retainer was
harassed by the law or by enemies, the lord protected him. The liveries
became the badges of the factions engaged in the War of the Roses. The
white rose was worn by the supporters of the house of York, and the red
rose by supporters of the house of Lancaster. Great lords fought each
other for property and made forcible entries usurping private property.
Nobles employed men who had returned from fighting in war to use their
fighting skill in local defense.Henry IV was the last true warrior king.
In both wars, the musket was used as well as the longbow. To use it,
powder was put into the barrel, then a ball rammed down the barrel with
a rod, and then the powder lit by a hot rod held with one hand while the
other hand was used to aim the musket. Cannon were used to besiege
castles and destroy their walls, so many castles were allowed to
deteriorate. The existence of cannon also limited the usefulness of town
walls for defense. But townspeople did not take part in the fighting.
Since the power of the throne changed from one faction to another,
political and personal vindictiveness gave rise to many bills of
attainder that resulted in lords being beheaded and losing their lands
to the King. However, these were done by the form of law; there were no
secret executions in England. Families engaged in blood feuds. Roving
bands ravaged the country, plundering the people, holding the forests,
and robbing collectors of Crown revenue. Some men made a living by
fighting for others in quarrels. Individual life and property were
insecure. Whole districts were in a permanent alarm of riot and robbery.
The roads were not safe. There was fighting between lords and gangs of
ruffians holding the roads, breaking into and seizing manor houses, and
openly committing murders.
Peace was never well-kept nor was law ever well-executed, though
fighting was suspended by agreement during the harvest. Local
administration was paralyzed by party faction or lodged in some great
lord or some clique of courtiers. The elections of members to Parliament
was interfered with and Parliament was rarely held. Barons and earls
fought their disputes in the field rather than in the royal courts.
Litigation was expensive, so men relied increasingly on the protection
of the great men of their neighborhood and less on the King's courts for
the safety of their lives and land. Local men involved in court
functions usually owed allegiance to a lord which compromised the
exercise of justice. Men serving in an assize often lied to please their
lord instead of telling the truth. Lords maintained, supported, or
promoted litigation with money or aid supplied to one party to the
detriment of justice. It was not unusual for lords to attend court with
a great force of retainers behind them. Many Justices of the Peace wore
liveries of magnates and accepted money from them. Royal justices were
flouted or bribed. The King's writ was denied or perverted. For 6-8s., a
lord could have the king instruct his sheriff to impanel a jury which
would find in his favor. A statute against riots, forcible entries, and,
excepting the King, magnates' liveries of uniform, food, and badges to
their retainers, except in war outside the nation, was passed, but was
difficult to enforce because the offenders were lords, who dominated the
Parliament and the council.
With men so often gone to fight, their wives managed the household
alone. The typical wife had maidens of equal class to whom she taught
household management, spinning, weaving, carding wool with iron
wool-combs, heckling flax, embroidery, and making garments. There were
foot-treadles for spinning wheels. She taught the children. Each day she
scheduled the activities of the household including music, conversation,
dancing, chess, reading, playing ball, and gathering flowers. She
organized picnics, rode horseback and went hunting, hawking to get
birds, and hare-ferreting. She was nurse to all around her. If her
husband died, she usually continued to manage the household because most
men named their wife as executor of their will with full power to act as
she thought best. The wives of barons shared their right of immunity
from arrest by the processes of common law and to be tried by their
peers.
For ladies, close-fitting jackets came to be worn over close- fitting
long gowns with low, square-cut necklines and flowing sleeves, under
which was worn a girdle or corset of stout linen reinforced by stiff
leather or even iron. Her skirt was provocatively slit from knee to
ankle. All her hair was confined by a hair net. Headdresses were very
elaborate and heavy, trailing streamers of linen. Some were in the shape
of hearts, butterflies, crescents, double horns, steeples, or long
cones. Men also wore hats rather than hoods. They wore huge hats of
velvet, fur, or leather. Their hair was cut into a cap-like shape on
their heads, and later was shoulder-length. They wore doublets with
thick padding over the shoulders or short tunics over the trucks of
their bodies and tightened at the waist to emphasize the shoulders.
Their collars were high. Their sleeves were long concoctions of velvet,
damask, and satin, sometimes worn wrapped around their arms in layers.
Their legs and hips were covered with hosen, often in different colors.
Codpieces worn between the legs emphasized the sensuality of the age as
did ladies' tight and low- cut gowns. Men's shoes were pointed with
upward pikes at the toes that impeded walking. At another time, their
shoes were broad with blunt toes. Both men and women wore much jewelry
and ornamentation. But, despite the fancy dress, the overall mood was a
macabre preoccupation with mortality, despair, and a lack of confidence
in the future. Cannon and mercenaries had reduced the military
significance of knighthood, so its chivalric code deteriorated into
surface politeness, ostentation, and extravagance.
Master and servants ceased to eat together in the same hall, except for
great occasions, on feast days, and for plays. The lord, and his lady,
family, and guests took their meals in a great chamber, usually up
beneath the roof next to the upper floor of the great hall. The
chimney-pieces and windows were often richly decorated with paneled
stonework, tracery and carving. There was often a bay or oriel window
with still expensive glass. Tapestries, damask, and tablecloths covered
the tables. The standard number of meals was three: breakfast, dinner,
and supper. There was much formality and ceremonial ritual, more
elaborate than before, during dinners at manorial households, including
processions bringing and serving courses, and bowing, kneeling, and
curtseying. There were many courses of a variety of meats, fish, stews,
and soups, with a variety of spices and elaborately cooked. Barons,
knights, and their ladies sat to the right of the lord above the salt
and were served by the lord's sewer [served the food] and carver and
gentlemen waiters; their social inferiors such as "gentlemen of worship"
sat below the salt and were served by another sewer and yeomen. The
lord's cupbearer looked after the lord alone. A knights table was
waited on by yeomen. The gentlemen officers, gentlemen servants and
yeomen officers were waited on by their own servants. The amount of food
dished out to each person varied according to his rank. The almoner said
grace and distributed the leftovers to the poor gathered at the gate.
The superior people's hands were washed by their inferiors. Lastly, the
trestle tables were removed while sweet wine and spices were consumed
standing. Then the musicians were called into the hall and dancing
began. The lord usually slept in a great bed in this room.
The diet of an ordinary family such as that of a small shopholder or
yeoman farmer included beef, mutton, pork, a variety of fish, both fresh
and salted, venison, nuts, peas, oatmeal, honey, grapes, apples, pears,
and fresh vegetables. Cattle and sheep were driven from Wales to English
markets. This droving lasted for five centuries.
Many types of people besides the nobility and knights now had property
and thus were considered gentry: female lines of the nobility, merchants
and their sons, attorneys, auditors, squires, and peasant-yeomen. The
burgess grew rich as the knight dropped lower. The great merchants lived
in mansions which could occupy whole blocks. In towns these mansions
were entered through a gate through a row of shops on the
street.Typically, there would be an oak-paneled great hall, with
adjoining kitchen, pantry, and buttery on one end and a great parlor to
receive guests, bedrooms, wardrobes, servants' rooms, and a chapel on
the other end or on a second floor. A lesser dwelling would have these
rooms on three floors over a shop on the first floor. An average
Londoner would have a shop, a storeroom, a hall, a kitchen, and a
buttery on the first floor, and three bedrooms on the second floor.
Artisans and shopkeepers of more modest means lived in rows of
dwellings, each with a shop and small storage room on the first floor,
and a combination parlor-bedroom on the second floor. The humblest
residents crowded their shop and family into one 6 by 10 foot room for
rent of a few shillings a year. All except the last would also have a
small garden. The best gardens had a fruit tree, herbs, flowers, a well,
and a latrine area. There were common and public privies for those
without their own. Kitchen slops and casual refuse continued to be
thrown into the street. Floors of stone or planks were strewn with
rushes. There was some tile flooring. Most dwellings had glass windows.
Candles were used for lighting at night. Torches and oil-burning
lanterns were portable lights. Furnishings were still sparse. Men sat on
benches or joint stools and women sat on cushions on the floor. Hall and
parlor had a table and benches and perhaps one chair. Bedrooms had beds
that were surrounded by heavy draperies to keep out cold drafts. The
beds had pillows, blankets, and sheets. Clothes were stored in a chest,
sometimes with sweet-smelling herbs such as lavender, rosemary, and
southernwood. Better homes had wall hanging and cupboards displaying
plate. Laundresses washed clothes in the streams, rivers, and public
conduits. Country peasants still lived in wood, straw, and mud huts with
earth floors and a smoky hearth in the center or a kitchen area under
the eaves of the hut.
In 1442, bricks began to be manufactured in the nation and so there was
more use of bricks in buildings. Chimneys were introduced into manor
houses where stone had been too expensive. This was necessary if a
second floor was added, so the smoke would not damage the floor above it
and would eventually go out of the house.
Nobles and their retinue moved from manor to manor, as they had for
centuries, to keep watch upon their lands and to consume the produce
thereof; it was easier to bring the household to the estate than to
transport the yield of the estate to the household. Also, at regular
intervals sewage had to be removed from the cellar pits. Often a footman
walked or ran on foot next to his master or mistress when they rode out
on horseback or in a carriage. He was there primarily for prestige.
Jousting tournaments were held for entertainment purposes only and were
followed by banquets of several courses of food served on dishes of
gold, silver, pewter, or wood on a linen cloth covering the table. Hands
were washed before and after the meal. People washed their faces every
morning after getting up. Teeth were cleaned with powders. Fragrant
leaves were chewed for bad breath. Garlic was used for indigestion and
other ailments. Feet were rubbed with salt and vinegar to remove
calluses. Good manners included not slumping against a post, fidgeting,
sticking one's finger into one's nose, putting one's hands into one's
hose to scratch the privy parts, spitting over the table or too far,
licking one's plate, picking one's teeth, breathing stinking breath into
the face of the lord, blowing on one's food, stuffing masses of bread
into one's mouth, scratching one's head, loosening one's girdle to
belch, and probing one's teeth with a knife.
Fishing and hunting were reserved for the nobility rather than just the
King.
As many lords became less wealthy because of the cost of war, some
peasants, villein and free, became prosperous, especially those who also
worked at a craft, e.g. butchers, bakers, smiths, shoemakers, tailors,
carpenters, and cloth workers.
An agricultural slump caused poorer soils to fall back into waste. The
better soils were leased by peasants, who, with their families, were in
a better position to farm it than a great lord, who found it hard to
hire laborers at a reasonable cost. Further, peasants' sheep, hens,
pigs, ducks, goats, cattle, bees, and crop made them almost
self-sufficient in foodstuffs. They lived in a huddle of cottages,
pastured their animals on common land, and used common meadows for
haymaking. They subsisted mainly on boiled bacon, an occasional chicken,
worts and beans grown in the cottage garden, and cereals. They wore fine
wool cloth in all their apparel. Brimless hats were replacing hoods.
They had an abundance of bed coverings in their houses. And they had
more free time. Village entertainment included traveling jesters,
acrobats, musicians, and bear-baiters. Playing games and gambling were
popular pastimes.
Most villeins were now being called "customary tenants" or "copy-
holders" of land because they held their acres by a copy of the
court-roll of the manor, which listed the number of teams, the fines,
the reliefs, and the services due to the lord for each landholder. The
Chancery court interpreted many of these documents to include rights of
inheritance. The common law courts followed the lead of the Chancery and
held that copyhold land could be inherited as was land at common law.
Evictions by lords decreased.
The difference between villein and freeman lessened but landlords
usually still had profits of villein bondage, such as heriot, merchet,
and chevage.
Social mobility was most possible in the towns, where distinctions were
usually only of wealth. So a poor apprentice could aspire to become a
master, a member of the livery of his company, a member of the council,
an alderman, a mayor, and then an esquire for life. The distance between
baron and a country knight and between a yeoman and knight was wider.
Manor custom was strong. But a yeoman could give his sons a chance to
become gentlemen by entering them in a trade in a town, sending them to
university, or to war. Every freeman was to some extent a soldier, and
to some extent a lawyer, serving in the county or borough courts. A
burgess, with his workshop or warehouse, was trained in warlike
exercises, and he could keep his own accounts, and make his own will and
other legal documents, with the aid of a scrivener or a chaplain, who
could supply an outline of form. But law was growing as a profession.
Old-established London families began to choose the law as a profession
for their sons, in preference to an apprenticeship in trade. Many
borough burgesses in Parliament were attorneys.
A class of laborers was arising who depended entirely on the wages of
industry for their subsistence. The cloth workers in rural areas were
isolated and weak and often at the mercy of middlemen for employment and
the amount of their wages. When rural laborers went to towns to seek
employment in the new industries, they would work at first for any rate.
This deepened the cleavage of the classes in the towns. The artificers
in the town and the cottagers and laborers in the country lived from
hand to mouth, on the edge of survival, but better off than the old, the
diseased, the widows, and the orphans. However, the 1400s were the most
prosperous time for laborers considering their wages and the prices of
food. Meat and poultry were plentiful and grain prices low.
In London, shopkeepers appealed to passersby to buy their goods,
sometimes even seizing people by the sleeve. The drapers had several
roomy shops containing shelves piled with cloths of all colors and
grades, tapestries, pillows, blankets, bed draperies, and bankers and
dorsers to soften hard wooden benches. A rear storeroom held more
cloth for import or export. Many shops of skinners were on Fur Row.
There were shops of leather sellers, hosiers, gold and silver cups, and
silks. At the Stocks Market were fishmongers, butchers, and poulterers.
London grocers imported spices, canvas, ropery, potions, unguents, soap,
confections, garlic, cabbages, onions, apples, oranges, almonds, figs,
dates, raisins, dyestuffs, woad, madder (plant for medicine and dye),
scarlet grains, saffron, iron, and a primitive steel. They were
retailers as well as wholesalers and had shops selling honey, licorice,
salt, vinegar, rice, sugar loaves, syrups, spices, garden seeds, dyes,
alum, soap, brimstone, paper, varnish, canvas, rope, musk, incense,
treacle of Genoa, and mercury. The Grocers did some money lending,
usually at 12% interest. The guilds did not restrict themselves to
dealing in the goods for which they had a right of inspection, and so
many dealt in wine that it was a medium of exchange. There was no sharp
distinction between retail and wholesale trading.
London grocers sold herbs for medicinal as well as eating purposes.
Breadcarts sold penny wheat loaves. Foreigners set up stalls on certain
days of the week to sell meat, canvas, linen, cloth, ironmongery, and
lead. There were great houses, churches, monasteries, inns, guildhalls,
warehouses, and the King's Beam for weighing wool to be exported. In
1410, the Guildhall of London was built through contributions, proceeds
of fines, and lastly, to finish it, special fees imposed on
apprenticeships, deeds, wills, and letters-patent. The Mercers and
Goldsmiths were in the prosperous part of town. The Goldsmiths' shops
sold gold and silver plate, jewels, rings, water pitchers, drinking
goblets, basins to hold water for the hands, and covered saltcellars.
The grain market was on Cornhill. Halfway up the street, there was a
supply of water which had been brought up in pipes. On the top of the
hill was a cage where riotous folk had been incarcerated by the night
watch and the stocks and pillory, where fraudulent schemers were exposed
to ridicule. No work was to be done on Sundays, but some did work
surreptitiously. The barbers kept their shops open in defiance of the
church. Outside the London city walls were tenements, the Smithfield
cattle market, Westminster Hall, green fields of crops, and some marsh
land.
On the Thames River to London were large ships with cargoes; small
boats rowed by tough boatmen offering passage for a penny; small private
barges of great men with carved wood, gay banners, and oarsmen with
velvet gowns; the banks covered with masts and tackle; the nineteen arch
London Bridge supporting a street of shops and houses and a drawbridge
in the middle; quays; warehouses, and great cranes lifting bales from
ship to wharf. Merchant guilds which imported or exported each had their
own wharves and warehouses. Downstream, pirates hung on gallows at the
low-water mark to remain until three tides had overflowed their bodies.
A climate change of about 1 1/2 degree Celcius lower caused the Thames
to regularly freeze over in winter.
The large scale of London trade promoted the specialization of the
manufacturer versus the merchant versus the shipper. Merchants had
enough wealth to make loans to the government or for new commercial
enterprises. Local reputation on general, depended upon a combination of
wealth, trustworthiness of character, and public spirit; it rose and
fell with business success. Some London merchants were knighted by the
King. Many bought country estates thereby turning themselves into
gentry.
The king granted London all common soils, improvements, wastes,
streets, and ways in London and in the adjacent waters of the Thames
River and all the profits and rents to be derived therefrom. Later the
king granted London the liberty to purchase lands and tenements worth up
to 2,667s. yearly. With this power, London had obtained all the
essential features of a corporation: a seal, the right to make by-laws,
the power to purchase lands and hold them "to them and their successors"
(not simply their heirs, which is an individual and hereditary
succession only), the power to sue and be sued in its own name, and the
perpetual succession implied in the power of filling up vacancies by
election. Since these powers were not granted by charters, London is a
corporation by prescription. In 1446, the liverymen obtained the right
with the council to elect the mayor, the sheriff, and certain other
corporate officers.
Many boroughs sought and obtained formal incorporation with the same
essential features as London. This tied up the loose language of their
early charters of liberties. Often, a borough would have its own
resident Justice of the Peace. Each incorporation involved a review by a
Justice of the Peace to make sure the charter of incorporation rule
didn't conflict with the law of the nation. A borough typically had a
mayor accompanied by his personal sword- bearer and serjeants-at-mace
bearing the borough regalia, bailiffs, a sheriff, and chamberlains or a
steward for financial assistance. At many boroughs, aldermen, assisted
by their constables, kept the peace in their separate wards. There might
be coroners, a recorder, and a town clerk, with a host of lesser
officials including beadles [a messenger of a court], aletasters,
sealers, searchers [inspectors], weighers and keepers of the market,
ferrymen and porters, clock-keepers and criers [cries out public
announcements through the streets], paviors [maintained the roads],
scavengers and other street cleaners, gatekeepers and watchmen of
several ranks and kinds. A wealthy borough would have a chaplain and two
or three minstrels. The mayor replaced the bailiffs as the chief
magistracy.
In all towns, the wealthiest and most influential guilds were the
merchant traders of mercers, drapers, grocers, and goldsmiths. From
their ranks came most of the mayors, and many began to intermarry with
the country knights and gentry. Next came the shopholders of skinners,
tailors, ironmongers, and corvisors [shoemakers]. Thirdly came the
humbler artisans, the sellers of victuals, small shopkeepers,
apprentices, and journeymen on the rise. Lastly came unskilled laborers,
who lived in crowded tenements and hired themselves out. The first three
groups were the free men who voted, paid scot and bore lot, and belonged
to guilds. Scot was a ratable proportion in the payments levied from the
town for local or national purposes. Merchant guilds in some towns
merged their existence into the town corporation, and their guild halls
became the common halls of the town, and their property became town
property.
In London, the Cutlers' Company was chartered in 1415, the
Haberdashers' Company in 1417, the Grocers' Company in 1428, the
Drapers' and Cordwainers' companies in 1429, the Vintners' and Brewers'
companies in 1437, the Leathersellers' Company in 1444, the Girdlers'
Company in 1448, the Armourers' and Brassiers' companies in 1453, the
Barbers' Company in 1461, the Tallow Chandlers' Company in 1462, the
Ironmongers' Company in 1464, the Dyers' Company in 1471, the Musicians'
Company in 1472, the Carpenters' Company in 1477, the Cooks' Company in
1481, and the Waxchandlers' Company in 1483. The Fishmongers, which had
been chartered in 1399, were incorporated in 1433, the Cordwainers in
1439, and the Pewterers in 1468.
There were craft guilds in the towns, at least 65 in London. In fact,
every London trade of twenty men had its own guild. The guild secured
good work for its members and the members maintained the reputation of
the work standards of the guild. Bad work was punished and night work
prohibited as leading to bad work. The guild exercised moral control
over its members and provided sickness and death benefits for them.
There was much overlapping in the two forms of association: the craft
guild and the religious fraternity. Apprentices were taken in to assure
an adequate supply of competent workers for the future. The standard
indenture of an apprentice bound him to live in his master's house;
serve him diligently; obey reasonable commands; keep his master's
secrets; protect him from injury; abstain from dice, cards and haunting
of taverns; not marry; commit no fornication, and not absent himself
without permission. In return the master undertook to provide the boy or
girl with bed, board, and lodging and to instruct him or her in the
trade, craft, or mystery. When these apprentices had enough training
they were made journeymen with a higher rate of pay. Journeymen traveled
to see the work of their craft in other towns. Those journeymen rising
to master had the highest pay rate.
Occupations free of guild restrictions included horse dealers,
marbelers, bookbinders, jewelers, organ makers, feathermongers, pie
makers, basket makers, mirrorers, quilters, and parchment makers.
Non-citizens of London could not be prevented from selling leather,
metalwares, hay, meat, fruit, vegetables, butter, cheese, poultry, and
fish from their boats, though they had to sell in the morning and sell
all their goods before the market closed.
In the towns, many married women had independent businesses and wives
also played an active part in the businesses of their husbands. Wives of
well-to-do London merchants embroidered, sewed jewelry onto clothes, and
made silk garments. Widows often continued in their husband's
businesses, such as managing a large import-export trade, tailoring,
brewing, and metal shop. Socially lower women often ran their own
breweries, bakeries, and taverns. It was possible for wives to be free
burgesses in their own right in some towns.
Some ladies were patrons of writers. Some women were active in prison
reform in matters of reviews to insure that no man was in gaol without
due cause, overcharges for bed and board, brutality, and regulation of
prisoners being placed in irons. Many men and women left money in their
wills for food and clothing for prisoners, especially debtors. Wills
often left one-third of the wealth to the church, the poor, prisoners,
infirmaries, young girls' education; road, wall, and bridge repair;
water supply, markets and almshouses. Some infirmaries were for the
insane, who were generally thought to be possessed by the devil or
demons. Their treatment was usually by scourging the demons out of their
body by flogging. If this didn't work, torture could be used to drive
the demons from the body.
The guilds were being replaced by associations for the investment of
capital. In associations, journeymen were losing their chance of rising
to be a master. Competition among associations was starting to supplant
custom as the mainspring of trade.
The cloth exporters, who were mostly mercers, were unregulated and
banded together for mutual support and protection under the name of
Merchant Adventurers of London. The Merchant Adventurers was chartered
in 1407. It was the first and a prototype of regulated companies. That
is the company regulated the trade. Each merchant could ship on his own
a certain number of cloths each year, the number depending on the length
of his membership in the company. He could sell them himself or by his
factor at the place where the company had privileges of market. Strict
rules governed the conduct of each member. He was to make sales only at
certain hours on specified days. All disagreements were to be settled by
the company's governor, or his deputy in residence, and those officials
dealt with such disputes as arose between members of the company and
continental officials and buyers. A share in the ownership of one of
their vessels was a common form of investment by prosperous merchants.
By 1450, the merchant adventurers were dealing in linen cloths, buckrams
[a stiffened, coarse cloth], fustians [coarse cloth made of cotton
threads going in one direction and linen threads the other], satins,
jewels, fine woolen and linen wares, threads, potions, wood, oil, wine,
salt, copper, and iron. They began to replace trade by alien traders.
The history of the "Merchant Adventurers" was associated with the growth
of the mercantile system for more than 300 years. It eventually replaced
the staples system.
Paved roads in towns were usually gravel and sometimes cobble. They
were frequently muddy because of rain and spillage of water being
carried. Iron-shod wheels and overloaded carts made them very uneven.
London was the first town with paviors. They cleaned and repaired the
streets, filling up potholes with wood chips and compacting them with
hand rams. The paviors were organized as a city company in 1479. About
1482, towns besides London began appointing salaried road paviors to
repair roads and collect their expenses from the householders because
the policy of placing the burden on individual householders didn't work
well. London streets were lighted at night by public lanterns, under the
direction of the mayor. The residents were to light these candle
lanterns in winter from dusk to the 9 p.m. curfew. There were
fire-engines composed of a circular cistern with a pump and six feet of
inflexible hose on wheels pulled by two men on one end and pushed by two
men on the other end. In 1480 the city walls were rebuilt with a weekly
tax of 5d. per head.
In schools, there was a renaissance of learning from original sources
of knowledge written in Greek and rebirth of the Greek pursuit of the
truth and scientific spirit of inquiry. There was a striking increase in
the number of schools founded by wealthy merchants or town guilds. Every
cathedral, monastery, and college had a grammar school. Merchants tended
to send their sons to private boarding schools, instead of having them
tutored at home as did the nobility. Well-to-do parents still sent sons
to live in the house of some noble to serve them as pages in return for
being educated with the noble's son by the household priest. They often
wore their master's coat of arms and became their squires as part of
their knightly education. Sometimes girls were sent to live in another
house to receive education from a tutor there under the supervision of
the lady of the house. Every man, free or villein, could send his sons
and daughters to school. In every village, there were some who could
read and write.
In 1428, Lincoln's Inn required barristers normally resident in London
and the county of Middlesex to remain in residence and pay commons
during the periods between sessions of court and during vacations, so
that the formal education of students would be continuous. In 1442, a
similar requirement was extended to all members.
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 Cuckoo and the
Nightengale", and "The Flower and Leaf" on morality as secular common
sense. King James I of Scotland wrote a book about how he fell in love.
Chaucer, Cicero, Ovid, and Aesops's Fables 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. There were religious folk ballads such as "The Cherry Tree
Carol", about the command of Jesus from Mary's womb for a cherry tree to
bend down so that Mary could have some cherries from it. 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 Londoners could read English. Books were bought in London
in such quantities by 1403 that the craft organizations of text-letter
writers, illuminators, bookbinders, 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 who are rebellious against the said wardens as to the
survey and good rule of the same trades may be punished according to the
general ordinance made as to rebellious persons in trades of the said
city [fines and imprisonment]. And that it may please you to command
that this petition, by your sagenesses granted, may be entered of record
for time to come, for the love of God and as a work of charity."
Gutenberg's printing press, which used movable type of small blocks
with letters on them, was brought to London in 1476 by a mercer: William
Caxton. It supplemented the text-writer and monastic copyist. It was a
wood and iron frame with a mounted platform on which were placed small
metal frames into which words with small letters of lead had been set
up. Each line of text had to be carried from the type case to the press.
Beside the press were pots filled with ink and inking balls. When enough
lines of type to make a page had been assembled on the press, the balls
would be dipped in ink and drawn over the type. Then a sheet of paper
would be placed on the form and a lever pulled to press the paper
against the type. Linen usually replaced the more expensive parchment
for the book pages.
The printing press made books more accessible to all literate people.
Caxton printed major English texts and some translations from French and
Latin. He commended different books to various kinds of readers, for
instance, for gentlemen who understand gentleness and science, or for
ladies and gentlewomen, or to all good folk. There were many cook books
in use. There were convex eyeglasses for reading and concave ones for
distance to correct near-sightedness. The first public library in London
was established from a bequest in a will in 1423.
Many carols were sung at the Christian festival of Christmas. Ballads
were sung on many features of social life of this age of disorder,
hatred of sheriffs, but faith in the King. The legend of Robin Hood was
popular, as were town miracle plays on leading incidents of the Bible
and morality plays. Vintners portrayed the miracle of Cana where water
was turned into wine and Goldsmiths ornately dressed the three Kings
coming from the east. In York, the building of Noah's Ark was performed
by the Shipwrights and the Flood performed by the Fishery and Mariners.
Short pantomimes and disguising, forerunners of costume parties, were
good recreation. Games of cards became popular as soon as cards were
introduced. The king, queen, and jack were dressed in contemporary
clothes. Men bowled, kicked footballs, and played tennis. In London,
Christmas was celebrated with masques and mummings. There was a great
tree in the main market place and evergreen decorations in churches,
houses, and streets. There were also games, dances, street bonfires in
front of building doors, and general relaxation of social controls.
Sometimes there was drunken licentiousness and revelry, with peasants
gathering together to make demands of lords for the best of his goods.
May Day was celebrated with crowns and garlands of spring flowers. The
village May Day pageant was often presided over by Robin Hood and Maid
Marion.
People turned to mysticism to escape from the everyday violent world.
They read works of mystics, such as "Scale of Perfection" and "Cloud of
Unknowing", the latter describing how one may better know God. They
believed in magic and sorcery, but had no religious enthusiasm because
the church was engendering more disrespect. Monks and nuns had long ago
resigned spiritual leadership to the friars; now the friars too lost
much of their good reputation. The monks became used to life with many
servants such as cooks, butlers, bakers, brewers, barbers, laundresses,
tailors, carpenters, and farm hands. The austerity of their diet had
vanished. The schedule of divine services was no longer followed by many
and the fostering of learning was abandoned. Into monasteries drifted
the lazy and miserable. Nunneries had become aristocratic boarding
houses. The practice of taking sanctuary was abused; criminals and
debtors sought it and were allowed to overstay the 40-day restriction
and to leave at night to commit robberies. There were numerous
chaplains, who were ordained because they received pay from private
persons for saying masses for the dead; They had much leisure time for
mischief because they had to forego wife and family. Church courts
became corrupt, but jealously guarded their jurisdiction from temporal
court encroachment. Peter's Pence was no longer paid by the people, so
the burden of papal exaction fell wholly on the clergy. But the church
was rich and powerful, paying almost a third of the whole taxation of
the nation and forming a majority in the House of Lords. Many families
had kinsmen in the clergy. Even the lowest cleric or clerk could read
and write in Latin.
People relied on saint's days as reference points in the year, because
they did not know dates of the year. But townspeople knew the hour and
minute of each day, because clocks driven by a descending weight on a
cord were in all towns and in the halls of the well-to-do. This
increased the sense of punctuality and lifted standards of efficiency.
These weight-driven clocks replaced water clocks, which had a problem of
water freezing, and sandclocks, which could measure only small time
intervals.
A linguistic unity and national pride was developing. London English
became the norm and predominated over rural dialects. Important news was
announced and spread by word of mouth in market squares and sometimes in
churches. As usual, traders provided one of the best sources of news;
they maintained an informal network of speedy messengers and accurate
reports because political changes so affected their ventures. News also
came from peddlers, who visited villages and farms to sell items that
could not be bought in the local village. These often included scissors,
eyeglasses, colored handkerchiefs, calendars, fancy leather goods,
watches, and clocks. Peddling was fairly profitable because of the lack
of competition. But peddlers were often viewed as tramps and suspected
of engaging in robbery as well as peddling.
A royal post service was established by relays of mounted messengers.
The first route was between London and the Scottish border, where there
were frequent battles for land between the Scotch and English.
The inland roads from town to town were still rough and without signs.
A horseman could make up to 40 miles a day. Common carriers took
passengers and parcels from various towns to London on scheduled
journeys. Now the common yeoman could order goods from the London
market, communicate readily with friends in London, and receive news of
the world frequently. Trade with London was so great and the common
carrier so efficient in transporting goods that the medieval fair began
to decline. First the Grocers and then the Mercers refused to allow
their members to sell goods at fairs. There was much highway robbery.
Most goods were still transported by boats along the coasts, with
trading at the ports.
Embroidery was exported. Imported were timber, pitch, tar, potash [for
cloth dying], furs, silk, satin, gold cloth, damask cloth, furred gowns,
gems, fruit, spices, and sugar. Imports were restricted by national
policy for the purpose of protecting native industries.
English single-masted ships began to be replaced by two or three masted
ships with high pointed bows to resist waves and sails enabling the ship
to sail closer to the wind. 200 tuns was the usual carrying capacity.
The increase in trade made piracy, even by merchants, profitable and
frequent until merchant vessels began sailing in groups for their mutual
protection. The astrolabe, which took altitude of sun and stars, was
used for navigation.
Consuls were appointed to assist English traders abroad.
Henry IV appointed the first admiral of the entire nation and resolved
to create a national fleet of warships instead of using merchant ships.
In 1417, the war navy had 27 ships. In 1421, Portsmouth was fortified as
a naval base. Henry V issued the orders that formed the basic law of
English admiralty and appointed surgeons to the navy and army.
For defense of the nation, especially the safeguard of the seas,
Parliament allotted the king for life, 3s. for every tun of wine
imported and an additional 3s. for every tun of sweet wine imported.
>From about 1413, tunnage on wine [tax per tun] and poundage [tax per
pound] on merchandise were duties on goods of merchants which were
regularly granted by Parliament to the king for life for upkeep of the
Navy. Before this time, such duties had been sporadic and temporary.
The most common ailments were eye problems, aching teeth, festering
ears, joint swelling and sudden paralysis of the bowels. Epidemics broke
out occasionally in the towns in the summers. The plague swept London in
1467 and the nation in 1407, 1445, and 1471. Leprosy disappeared.
Infirmaries were supported by a tax of the king levied on nearby
counties. The walls, ditches, gutters, sewers, and bridges on waterways
and the coast were kept in repair by laborers hired by commissions
appointed by the Chancellor. Those who benefited from these waterways
were taxed for the repairs in proportion to their use thereof.
Alabaster was sculptured into tombs surmounted with a recumbent effigy
of the deceased, and effigies of mourners on the sides. Few townsmen
choose to face death alone and planned memorial masses to be sung to
lift their souls beyond Purgatory. Chantries were built by wealthy men
for this purpose.
Chemical experimentation was still thought to be akin to sorcery, so was
forbidden by King Henry IV in 1404.
Gold was minted into coins: noble, half noble, and farthing.
King Henry IV lost power to the Commons and the Lords because he needed
revenue from taxes and as a usurper King, he did not carry the natural
authority of a King. The Commons acquired the right to elect its own
speaker. The lords who helped the usurpation felt they should share the
natural power of the kingship. The council became the instrument of the
Lords. Also, the Commons gained power compared to the nobility because
many nobles had died in war. The consent of the Commons to legislation
became so usual that the justices declared that it was necessary. The
Commons began to see itself as representative of the entire commons of
the realm instead of just their own counties. Its members had the
freedom to consider and debate every matter of public interest, foreign
or domestic, except for church matters. The Commons, the poorest of the
three estates, established an exclusive right to originate all money
grants to the king in 1407. The Speaker of the Commons announced its
money grant to the king only on the last day of the parliamentary
session, after the answers to its petitions had been declared, and after
the Lords had agreed to the money grant. It tied its grants by rule
rather than just practice to certain appropriations. For instance,
tunnage and poundage were appropriated for naval defenses. Wool customs
went to the maintenance of Calais, a port on the continent, and defense
of the nation. It also put the petitions in statutory form, called
"bills", to be enacted after consideration and amendment by all without
alteration. Each house had a right to deliberate in privacy. In the
Commons, members spoke in the order in which they stood up bareheaded.
Any member of Parliament or either house or the king could initiate a
bill. Both houses had the power to amend or reject a bill. There were
conferences between select committees of both houses to settle their
differences. The Commons required the appointment of auditors to audit
the King's accounts to ensure past grants had been spent according to
their purpose. It forced the King's council appointees to be approved by
Parliament and to be paid salaries. About 1430, kings' councilors were
required to take an oath not to accept gifts of land, not to maintain
private suits, not to reveal secrets, and not to neglect the kings
business. A quorum was fixed and rules made for removal from the
council. For the next fifty years, the council was responsible both to
the king and to Parliament. This was the first encroachment on the
King's right to summon, prorogue, or dismiss a Parliament at his
pleasure, determine an agenda of Parliament, veto or amend its bills,
exercise his discretion as to which lords he summoned to Parliament, and
create new peers by letters patent [official public letters]. Parliament
was affected by the factionalism of the times. The speaker of the
commons was often an officer of some great lord. In 1426, the retainers
of the barons in Parliament were forbidden to bear arms, so they
appeared with clubs on their shoulders. When the clubs were forbidden,
they came with stones concealed in their clothing.
Kings created dukes and marquesses to be peers. A duke was given
creation money or allowance of 40 pounds a year. A marquess was given 35
pounds. These new positions could not descend to an heiress, unlike a
barony or earldom. An earl was given 20 pounds, which probably took the
place of his one-third from the county. King Henry VI gave the title of
viscount to several people; it had an allowance of 13.3 pounds and was
above baron. It allowed them to be peers. There were about 55 peers. In
King Edward IV's reign, the king's retinue had about 16 knights, 160
squires, 240 yeomen, clerks, grooms, and stablemen. The suitable annual
expense of the household of the king was 13,000 pounds for his retinue
of about 516 people, a duke 4,000 pounds for about 230 people, a
marquess 3,000 pounds for about 224 people, an earl 2,000 pounds for
about 130 people, a viscount 1,000 pounds for about 84 people, a baron
500 pounds for about 26 people, a banneret [a knight made in the field,
who had a banner] 200 pounds for about 24 people, a knight bachelor 100
pounds for about 16 people, and a squire 50 pounds for about 16 people.
Of a squire's 50 pounds, about 25 pounds were spent in food, repairs and
furniture 5, on horses, hay, and carriage 4, on clothes, alms and
oblations 4, wages 9, livery of dress 3, and the rest on hounds and the
charges of harvest and hay time. Many servants of the household of the
country gentleman were poor relations. They might by education and
accomplishment rise into the service of a baron who could take him to
court, where he could make his fortune.
Barons' households also included steward, chaplains, treasurer,
accountants, chamberlain, carvers, servers, cupbearers, pages, and even
chancellor. They were given wages and clothing allowances and had meals
in the hall at tables according to their degree.
The authority of the King's privy seal had become a great office of
state which transmitted the King's wishes to the Chancery and Exchequer,
rather than the King's personal instrument for sealing documents. Now
the king used a signet kept by his secretary as his personal seal.
Edward IV made the household office of secretary, who had custody the
king's signet seal, a public office. The secretary was generally a
member of the council. Edward IV invented the benevolence, a gift wrung
from wealthy subjects.
King Edward IV introduced an elaborate spy system, the use of the rack
to torture people to give information, and other interferences with
justice, all of which the Tudor sovereigns later used. Torture was used
to discover facts, especially about coconspirators, rather than to
elicit a confession, as on the continent. It was only used on prisoners
held in the Tower of London involved in state trials and could only be
authorized by the king's closest councilors in virtue of the royal
prerogative. The rack stretched the supine body by the wrists and legs
with increasing agony at the joints until the limbs were dislocated.
Some victims were permanently crippled by it; others died on it. Most
told what they knew, often at the very sight of the rack. Torture was
forbidden in the common law, which favored an accusatorial system, in
which the accuser had to prove guilt, rather than an inquisitional
system, in which the accused had to prove innocence. Edward IV applied
martial law to ordinary cases of high treason by extending the
jurisdiction of the politically- appointed High Constable of England to
these cases, thus depriving the accused of trial by jury. He executed
many for treason and never restored their forfeited land to their
families, as had been the usual practice.
King Richard III prohibited the seizure of goods before conviction of
felony. He also liberated the unfree villeins on royal estates.
It was declared under Parliamentary authority that there was a
preference for the Crown to pass to a King's eldest son, and to his male
issue after him. Formerly, a man could ascend to the throne through his
female ancestry as well.
- The Law -
The forcible entry statute is expanded to include peaceful entry with
forcible holding after the justices arrived and to forcible holding with
departure before the justices arrived. Penalties are triple damages,
fine, and ransom to the King. A forceful possession lasting three years
is exempt.
By common law, a tenant could not take away buildings or fixtures he
built on land because it would be wasteful. This applied to agricultural
fixtures, but not to other trade fixtures. Also at common law, if a
person had enjoyed light next to his property for at least 20 years, no
one could build up the adjacent land so that the light would be blocked.
Women of age fourteen or over shall have livery of their lands and
tenements by inheritance without question or difficulty.
Purposely cutting out another's tongue or putting out another's eyes is
a felony, the penalty for which is loss of all property].
No one may keep swans unless he has lands and tenements of the estate
of freehold to a yearly value of 67s., because swans of the King, lords,
knights, and esquires have been stolen by yeomen and husbandmen.
The wage ceiling for servants is: bailiff of agriculture 23s.4d. per
year, and clothing up to 5s., with meat and drink; chief peasant, a
carter, chief shepherd 20s. and clothing up to 4s., with meat and drink;
common servant of agriculture 15s., and clothing up to 3s.4d.; woman
servant 10s., and clothing up to 4s., with meat and drink; infant under
fourteen years 6s., and clothing up to 3s., with meat and drink. Such as
deserve less or where there is a custom of less, that lesser amount
shall be given.
For laborers at harvest time: mower 4d. with meat and drink or 6d.
without; reaper or carter: 3d. with or 5d. without; woman laborer and
other laborers: 2d with and 4d. without.
The ceiling wage rate for craftsmen per day is: free mason or master
carpenter 4d. with meat and drink or 5d. without; master tiler or
slater, rough mason, and mesne [intermediary] carpenter and other
artificiers in building 3d. with meat and drink or 4d. without; every
other laborer 2d. with meat and drink or 3d. without. In winter the
respective wages were less: mason category: 3d. with or 4d. without;
master tiler category: 2d. with or 4d. without; others: 1d. with or 3d.
without meat and drink.
Any servant of agriculture who is serving a term with a master and
covenants to serve another man at the end of this term and that other
man shall notify the master by the middle of his term so he can get a
replacement worker. Otherwise, the servant shall continue to serve the
first master.
No man or woman may put their son or daughter to serve as an apprentice
in a craft within any borough, but may send the child to school, unless
he or she has land or rent to the value of 20s. per year.This was
because of scarcity of laborers and other servants of agriculture.
No laborer may be hired by the week.
Masons may no longer congregate yearly, because it has led to violation
of the statute of laborers.
No games may be played by laborers because they lead to [gambling and]
murders and robberies.
Apparel worn must be appropriate to one's status to preserve the
industry of agriculture. The following list of classes shows the lowest
class, which could wear certain apparel:
1. Lords - gold cloth, gold corses, sable fur, purple silk
2. Knights - velvet, branched satin, ermine fur
3. Esquires and gentlemen with possessions to the value of 800s. per
year, daughters of a person who has possessions to the value of 2,000s.
a year damask, silk, kerchiefs up to 5s. in value.
4. Esquires and gentlemen with possessions to the yearly value of 800s.
40 pounds - fur of martron or letuse, gold or silver girdles, silk corse
not made in the nation, kerchief up to 3s.4d in value
5. Men with possessions of the yearly value of 40s. excluding the above
three classes - fustian, bustian, scarlet cloth in grain
6. Men with possessions under the yearly value of 40s. excluding the
first three classes - black or white lamb fur, stuffing of wool, cotton,
or cadas.
7. Yeomen - cloth up to the value of 2s., hose up to the value of 14s.,
a girdle with silver, kerchief up to 12d.
8. Servants of agriculture, laborer, servant, country craftsman - none
of the above clothes
Gowns and jackets must cover the entire trunk of the body, including
the private parts. Shoes may not have pikes over two inches.
Every town shall have at its cost a common balance with weights
according to the standard of the Exchequer. All citizens may weigh goods
for free. All cloth to be sold shall be sealed according to this
measure.
There is a standard bushel of grain throughout the nation.
There are standard measures for plain tile, roof tile, and gutter tile
throughout the nation.
No gold or silver may be taken out of the nation.
The price of silver is fixed at 30s. for a pound, to increase the value
of silver coinage, which has become scarce due to its higher value when
in plate or masse.
A designee of the king will inspect and seal cloth with lead to prevent
deceit. Cloth may not be tacked together before inspection. No cloth may
be sold until sealed.
Heads of arrows shall be hardened at the points with steel and marked
with the mark of the arrowsmith who made it, so they are not faulty.
Shoemakers and cordwainers may tan their leather, but all leather must
be inspected and marked by a town official before it is sold.
To prevent deceitful tanning, cordwainers shall not tan leather.
Tanners who make a notorious default in leather which is found by a
cordwainer shall make a forfeiture.
Defective embroidery for sale shall be forfeited.
No fishing net may be fastened or tacked to posts, boats, or anchors,
but may be used by hand, so that fish are preserved and vessels may
pass.
No one may import any articles which could be made in the nation,
including silks, bows, woolen cloths, iron and hardware goods, harness
and saddlery, except printed books.
The following merchandise shall not be brought into the nation already
wrought: woolen cloth or caps, silk laces, ribbons, fringes, and
embroidery, gold laces, saddles, stirrups, harnesses, spurs, bridles,
gridirons, locks, hammers, fire tongs, dripping pans, dice, tennis
balls, points, purses, gloves, girdles, harness for girdles of iron
steel or of tin, any thing wrought of any treated leather, towed furs,
shoes, galoshes, corks, knives, daggers, woodknives, thick blunt
needles, sheers for tailors, scissors, razors, sheaths, playing cards,
pins, pattens [wooden shoes on iron supports worn in wet weather], pack
needles, painted ware, forcers, caskets, rings of copper or of gilt
sheet metal, chaffing dishes, hanging candlesticks, chaffing balls, mass
bells, rings for curtains, ladles, skimmers, counterfeit felt hat
moulds, water pitchers with wide spouts, hats, brushes, cards for wool,
white iron wire, upon pain of their forfeiture. One half this forfeiture
goes to the king and the other half to the person seizing the wares.
No sheep may be exported, because being shorn elsewhere would deprive
the king of customs.
No wheat, rye, or barley may be imported unless the prices are such
that national agriculture is not hurt.
Clothmakers must pay their laborers, such as carders and spinsters, in
current coin and not in pins and girdles and the like.
The term "freemen" in the Magna Carta includes women.
The election of a knight from a county to go to Parliament shall be
proclaimed by the sheriff in the full county so all may attend and none
shall be commanded to do something else at that time. Election is to be
by majority of the votes and its results will be sealed and sent to
Parliament.
Electors and electees to Parliament must reside in the county or be
citizens or burgesses of a borough. To be an elector to Parliament, a
knight must reside in the county and have a freehold of land or
tenements there of the value of at least 40s. per year, because
participation in elections of too many people of little substance or
worth had led to homicides, assaults, and feuds. (These "yeomen" were
about one sixth of the population. Most former electors and every
leaseholder and every copyholder were now excluded. Those elected for
Parliament were still gentry chosen by substantial freeholders.)
London ordinances forbade placing rubbish or dung in the Thames River
or any town ditch or casting water or anything else out of a window. The
roads were maintained with tolls on carts and horses bringing victuals
or grains into the city and on merchandise unloaded from ships at the
port. No carter shall drive his cart more quickly when it is unloaded
than when it is loaded. No pie bakers shall sell beef pies as venison
pies, or make any meat pie with entrails. To assist the poor, bread and
ale shall be sold by the farthing.
Desertion by a soldier is penalized by forfeiture of all land and
property.
The common law held that a bailee is entitled to possession against all
persons except the owner of the bailed property.
Former justice Sir Thomas Littleton wrote a legal textbook describing
tenancies in dower; the tenures of socage, knight's service, serjeanty,
and burgage; estates in fee simple, fee tail, and fee conditional;
inheritance and alienation of land. For instance, "Also, if feoffment be
made upon such condition, that if the feoffor pay to the feofee at a
certain day, etc., 800s. forty pounds of money, that then the feoffor
may reenter, etc., in this case the feoffee is called tenant in
mortgage, ... and if he doth not pay, then the land which he puts in
pledge upon condition for the payment of the money is gone from him for
ever, and so dead as to the tenant, etc."
Joint tenants are distinguished from tenants in common by Littleton
thus: "Joint-tenants are, as if a man be seised of certain lands or
tenements, etc., and thereof enfeoffeth two, or three, or four, or more,
to have and to hold to them (and to their heirs, or letteth to them) for
term of their lives, or for term of another's life; by force of which
feoffment or lease they are seised, such are joint-tenants. ... And it
is to be understood, that the nature of joint-tenancy is, that he that
surviveth shall have solely the entire tenancy, according to such estate
as he hath, ..." "Tenants in common are they that have lands or
tenements in fee-simple, fee-tail, or for term of life, etc., the which
have such lands and tenements by several title, and not by joint title,
and neither of them knoweth thereof his severalty, but they ought by the
law to occupy such lands or tenements in common pro indiviso
[undivided], to take the profits in common. ...As if a man enfeoff two
joint-tenants in fee, and the one of them alien that which to him
belongeth to another in fee, now the other joint-tenant and the alienee
are tenants in common, because they are in such tenements by several
titles, ..."
There are legal maxims and customs of ancient origin which have become
well established and known though not written down as statutes. Some
delineated by Christopher St. Germain in "Doctor and Student" in 1518
are:
1. The spouse of a deceased person takes all personal and real chattels
of the deceased.
2. For inheritance of land, if there are no descendant children, the
brothers and sisters take alike, and if there are none, the next blood
kin of the whole blood take, and if none, the land escheats to the lord.
Land may never ascend from a son to his father or mother.
3. A child born before espousals is a bastard and may not inherit, even
if his father is the husband.
4. If a middle brother purchases lands in fee and dies without heirs of
his body, his eldest brother takes his lands and not the younger
brother. The next possible heir in line is the younger brother, and the
next after him, the father's brother.
5. For lands held in socage, if the heir is under 14, the next friend
to the heir, to whom inheritance may not descend, shall have the ward of
his body and lands until the heir is 14, at which time the heir may
enter.
6. For lands held by knight's service, if the heir is under 14, then
the lord shall have the ward and marriage of the heir until the heir is
21, if male, or 14 (changed to 16 in 1285), if female. When of age, the
heir shall pay relief.
7. A lease for a term of years is a real chattel rather than a free
tenement, and may pass without livery of seisin.
8. He who has possession of land, though it is by disseisin, has right
against all men but against him who has right.
9. If a tenant is past due his rent, the lord may distrain his beasts
which are on the land.
10. All birds, fowls, and wild beasts of the forest and warren are
excepted out of the law and custom of property. No property may be had
of them unless they are tame. However, the eggs of hawks and herons and
the like belong to the man whose land they are on.
11. If a man steals goods to the value of 12d., or above, it is felony,
and he shall die for it. If it is under the value of 12d., then it is
but petit larceny, and he shall not die for it, but shall be punished at
the discretion of the judges. This not apply to goods taken from the
person, which is robbery, a felony punishable by death.
12. If the son is attainted [convicted of treason or felony with the
death penalty and forfeiture of all lands and goods] in the life of the
father, and after he purchases his charter of pardon of the King, and
after the father dies; in this case the land shall escheat to the lord
of the fee, insomuch that though he has a younger brother, yet the land
shall not descend to him: for by the attainder of the elder brother the
blood is corrupt, and the father in the law died without heir.
13. A man declared outlaw forfeits his profits from land and his goods
to the King.
14. He who is arraigned upon an indictment of felony shall be admitted,
in favor of life, to challenge thirty-five inquirers (three whole
inquests would have thirty-six) peremptorily. With cause, he may
challenge as many as he has cause to challenge if he can prove it. Such
peremptory challenge shall not be admitted in a private suit.
15. An accessory shall not be put to answer before the principal.
16. If a man commands another to commit a trespass, and he does it, the
one who made the command is a trespasser.
17. The land of every man is in the law enclosed from other, though it
lies in the open field, and a trespasser in it may be brought to court.
18. Every man is bound to make recompense for such hurt as his beasts do
in the growing grain or grass of his neighbor, though he didn't know
that they were there.
19. If two titles are concurrent together, the oldest title shall be
preferred.
20. He who recovers debt or damages in the King's court when the person
charged is not in custody, may within a year after the judgment take the
body of the defendant, and commit him to prison until he has paid the
debt and damages.
21. If the demandant or plaintiff, hanging his writ (writ pending in
court), will enter into the thing demanded, his writ shall abate.
22. By the alienation of the tenant, hanging the writ, or his entry into
religion, or if he is made a knight, or she is a woman and takes a
husband hanging the writ, the writ shall not abate.
23. The king may disseise no man and no man may disseise the king, nor
pull any reversion or remainder out of him.
- Judicial Procedure -
The prohibition against maintenance was given penalties in 1406 of
100s. per person for a knight or lower giving livery of cloth or hats,
and of 40s. for the receiver of such. A person who brought such suit to
court was to be given half the penalty. The Justices of Assize and
King's Bench were authorized to inquire about such practices. The
statute explicitly included ladies and any writing, oath, or promise as
well as indenture. Excepted were guilds, fraternities, and craftsmen of
cities and boroughs which were founded on a good purpose; universities;
the mayor and sheriffs of London; and also lords, knights, and esquires
in time of war. A penalty of one year in prison without bail was given.
In 1468, there was a penalty of 100s. per livery to the giver of such,
100s. per month to the retainer or taker of such, and 100s. per month to
the person retained. Still this law was seldom obeyed.
People took grievances outside the confines of the rigid common law to
the Chancellor, who could give equitable remedies under authority of a
statute of 1285 (described in Chapter 8). The Chancery heard many cases
of breach of faith in the "use", a form of trust in which three parties
were involved: the holder of land, feofees to whom the holder had made
it over by conveyance or "bargain and sale", and the beneficiary or
receiver of the profits of the land, who was often the holder, his
children, relatives, friends, an institution, or a corporation. This
system of using land had been created by the friars to get around the
prohibition against holding property. Lords and gentry quickly adopted
it. The advantages of the use were that 1) there was no legal
restriction to will away the beneficial interest of the use although the
land itself could not be conveyed by will; 2) it was hard for the king
to collect feudal incidents because the feoffees were often unknown 3)
the original holder was protected from forfeiture of his land in case of
conviction of treason if the Crown went to someone he had not supported.
Chancery gave a remedy for dishonest or defaulting feofees.
Chancery also provided the equitable relief of specific performance in
disputes over agreements, for instance, conveyance of certain land,
whereas the common law courts awarded only monetary damages by the writ
of covenant.
Chancery ordered accounts to be made in matters of foreign trade
because the common law courts were limited to accounts pursuant to
transactions made within the nation. It also involved itself in the
administration of assets and accounting of partners to each other.
The Chancellor took jurisdiction of cases of debt, detinue, and account
which had been decided in other courts with oath-helping by the
defendant. He did not trust the reliance on friends of the defendant
swearing that his statement made in his defense was true. An important
evidentiary difference between procedures of the Chancery and the common
law courts was that the Chancellor could orally question the plaintiff
and the defendant under oath. He also could order persons to appear at
his court by subpoena, under pain of punishment, such as a heavy fine.
Whereas the characteristic award of the common law courts was seisin of
land or monetary damages, Chancery often enjoined certain action.
Because malicious suits were a problem, the Chancery identified such
suits and issued injunctions against taking them to any court.
The Chancery was given jurisdiction by statute over men of great power
taking by force women who had lands and tenements or goods and not
setting them free unless they bound themselves to pay great sums to the
offenders or to marry them. A statute also gave Chancery jurisdiction
over servants taking their masters' goods at his death.
Justices of the Peace, appointed by the Crown, investigated all riots
and arrested rioters, by authority of statute. If they had departed, the
Justices certified the case to the King. The case was then set for trial
first before the king and his council and then at the King's Bench. If
the suspected rioters did not appear at either trial, they could be
convicted for default of appearance. If a riot was not investigated and
the rioters sought, the Justice of the Peace nearest forfeited 2,000s.
Justices of the peace were not paid. For complex cases and criminal
cases with defendants of high social status, they deferred to the
Justices of Assize, who rode on circuit once or twice a year. Since
there was no requirement of legal knowledge for a Justice of the Peace,
many referred to the "Boke of the Justice of the Peas" compiled about
1422 for them to use. Manor courts still formally admitted new tenants,
registered titles, sales of land and exchanges of land, and commutation
of services, enrolled leases and rules of succession, settled boundary
disputes, and regulated the village agriculture.
All attorneys shall be examined by the royal justices for their
learnedness in the law and, at their discretion, those that are good and
virtuous shall be received to make any suit in any royal court. These
attorneys shall be sworn to serve well and truly in their offices.
Attorneys may plead on behalf of parties in the hundred courts.
A qualification for jurors was to have an estate to one's own use or
one of whom other persons had estates of fee simple, fee tail, or
freehold in lands and tenements, which were at least 40s. per year in
value. In a plea of land worth at least 40s. yearly or a personal plea
with relief sought at least 800s., jurors had to have land in the
bailiwick to the value of at least 400s., because perjury was considered
less likely in the more sufficient men.
In criminal cases, there were many complaints made that the same men
being on the grand assize and petty assize was unfair because
prejudicial. So it became possible for a defendant to challenge an
indictor for cause before the indictor was put on the petty assize. Then
the petty assize came to be drawn from the country at large and was a
true petty or trial jury. Jurors were separated from witnesses.
Justices of the Peace were to have lands worth 267s. yearly, because
those with less had used the office for extortion and lost the respect
and obedience of the people.
A Sheriff was not to arrest, but to transfer indictments to the
Justices of the Peace of the county. He had to reside in his bailiwick.
The sheriff could be sued for misfeasance such as bribery in the King's
court.
Impeachment was replaced with bill of attainder during the swift
succession of parliaments during the civil war. This was a more rapid
and efficient technique of bringing down unpopular ministers or
political foes. There was no introduction of evidence, nor opportunity
for the person accused to defend himself, nor any court procedure, as
there was with impeachment.
An example of a case of common law decided by Court of King's Bench is
Russell's Case (1482) as follows:
In the king's bench one Thomas Russell and Alice his wife brought a writ
of trespass for goods taken from Alice while she was single. The
defendant appeared and pleaded not guilty but was found guilty by a jury
at nisi prius, which assessed the damages at 20 pounds. Before the case
was next to be heard in the King's Court an injunction issued out of the
Chancery to the plaintiffs not to proceed to judgment, on pain of 100
pounds, and for a long time judgment was not asked for. Then Hussey
CJKB. asked Spelman and Fincham, who appeared for the plaintiff if they
wanted to ask for judgment according to the verdict. Fincham [P]: We
would ask for judgment, except for fear of the penalty provided for in
the injunction, for fear that our client will be imprisoned by the
Chancellor if he disobeys. Fairfax, JKB: He can ask for judgment in
spite of the injunction, for if it is addressed to the plaintiff his
attorney can ask for judgment, and vice versa. Hussey, CJKB: We have
consulted together on this matter among ourselves and we see no harm
which can come to the plaintiff if he proceeds to judgment. The law will
not make him pay the penalty provided in the injunction. If the
Chancellor wants to imprison him he must send him to the Fleet Prison,
and, as soon as you are there you will inform us and we shall issue a
habeas corpus returnable before us, and when you appear before us we
shall discharge you, so you will not come to much harm, and we shall do
all we can for you. Nevertheless, Fairfax said he would go to the
Chancellor and ask him if he would discharge the injunction. And they
asked for judgment and it was held that they should recover their
damages as assessed by the jury, but they would not give judgment for
damages caused by the vexation the plaintiff suffered through the
Chancery injunction. And they said that if the Chancellor would not
discharge the injunction, they would give judgment if the plaintiff
would ask for it.
An example of a petition to chancery in the 1400s is Hulkere v. Alcote,
as follows:
To the right reverend father in God and gracious lord bishop of Bath,
chancellor of England, your poor and continual bedwoman Lucy Hulkere,
widow of Westminster, most meekly and piteously beseeches: that whereas
she has sued for many years in the King's Bench and in the Common Pleas
for withholding diverse charters and evidences of land, leaving and
delaying her dower of the manor of Manthorpe in Lincolnshire and also of
the manor of Gildenburton in Northamptonshire, together with the
withdrawing of her true goods which her husband gave her on his deathbed
to the value of 100 pounds and more, under record of notary, sued
against Harry Alcote and Elizabeth of the foresaid Gildenburton within
the same county of Northampton. And by collusion and fickle counsel of
the foresaid Harry and Elizabeth his mother there was led and shown for
him within the Common Pleas a false release, sealed, to void and exclude
all her true suit by record of true clerks and attorneys of the
aforesaid Common Pleas. Of the which false release proved she has a copy
to show. [All this is] to her great hindrance and perpetual destruction
unless she have help and remedy by your righteous and gracious lordship
in this matter at this time. That it please your noble grace and pity
graciously to grant a writ subpoena to command the foresaid Henry Alcote
and Elizabeth Alcote to come before your presence by a certain day by
you limited in all haste that they may come to Westminster to answer to
this matter abovesaid, for love of God and a deed of charity,
considering graciously that the foresaid Harry Alcote, with another
fellow of his affinity who is not lately hanged for a thief in Franceled
her into a garden at Gildenburton and put her down on the ground, laying
upon her body a board and a summer saddle and great stones upon the
board, the foresaid Harry Alcote sitting across her feet and the other
at her head for to have slain her and murdered her, and by grace of our
lady her mother- in-law out walking heard a piteous voice crying and by
her goodness she was saved and delivered, and otherwise would be dead.
Pledges to prosecute: John Devenshire of Berdevyle in Essex and James
Kelom of London. Returnable in Michaelmas term.
- - - Chapter 11 - - -
- The Times: 1485-1509 -
Henry Tudor and other exiles defeated and killed Richard III on
Bosworth field, which ends the civil War of the Roses between the
Lancaster and York factions. As King, Henry VII restored order to the
nation. He was readily accepted as king because he was descended from
the Lancaster royal line and he married a woman from the York royal
line. Henry was intelligent and sensitive. He weighed alternatives and
possible consequences before taking action. He was convinced by reason
on what plans to make. In his reign of 24 years, Henry applied himself
diligently to the details of the work of government to make it work
well. He strengthened the monarchy, shored up the legal system to work
again, and provided a peace in the land in which a renaissance of the
arts and sciences, culture, and the intellectual life could flourish.
His primary strategy was enacting and enforcing statutes to shore up the
undermined legal system, which includes the establishment of a new
court: the Court of the Star Chamber, to obtain punishment of persons
whom juries were afraid to convict. It had no jury and no grand jury
indictment. For speed and certainty, it tried people "ex officio": by
virtue of its office. Suspects were required to take an oath ex officio,
by which they swore to truthfully answer all questions put to them. A
man could not refuse to answer on the grounds of self-incrimination. The
Star Chamber was the room in which the King's council had met since the
1300s.
The most prevalent problems were: murder, robbery, rape or forced
marriage of wealthy women, counterfeiting of coin, extortion,
misdemeanors by sheriffs and escheators, bribing of sheriffs and jurors,
perjury, livery and maintenance agreements, idleness, unlawful plays,
and riots. Interference with the course of justice was not committed
only by lords on behalf of their retainers; men of humbler station were
equally prone to help their friends in court or to give assistance in
return for payment. Rural juries were intimidated by the old baronage
and their armed retinues. Juries in municipal courts were subverted by
gangs of townsmen. Justices of the Peace didn't enforce the laws. The
agricultural work of the nation had been adversely affected.
Henry made policy with the advice of his council and had Parliament
enact it into legislation. He dominated Parliament by having selected
most of its members. Many of his council were sons of burgesses and had
been trained in universities. He chose competent and especially trusted
men for his officers and commanders of castles and garrison. The fact
that only the king had artillery deterred barons from revolting. Also,
the baronial forces were depleted due to the civil War of the Roses. If
Henry thought a magnate was exercising his territorial power to the
King's detriment, he confronted him with an army and forced him to bind
his whole family in recognizances for large sums of money to ensure
future good conduct. Since the king had the authority to interpret these
pledges, they were a formidable check on any activity which could be
considered to be disloyal. The earl of Kent, whose debts put him
entirely at the King's mercy, was bound to "be seen daily once in the
day within the King's house". Henry also required recognizances from men
of all classes, including clergy, captains of royal castles, and
receivers of land. The higher nobility now consisted of about twenty
families. The heavy fines by the Star Court put an end to conspiracies
to defraud, champerty [an agreement with a litigant to pay costs of
litigation for a share in the damages awarded], livery, and maintenance.
The ties between the nobility and the Justices of the Peace had
encouraged corruption of justice. So Henry appointed many of the lesser
gentry and attorneys as Justices of the Peace. Also he appointed a few
of his councilors as nonresident Justices of the Peace. There were a
total of about thirty Justices of the Peace per county. Their
appointments were indefinite and most remained until retirement or
death. Henry instituted the Yeomen of the Guard to be his personal
bodyguards night and day.
Many bills of attainder caused lords to lose their land to the King.
Most of these lords had been chronic disturbers of the peace. Henry
required retainers to be licensed, which system lasted until about 1600.
Henry was also known to exhaust the resources of barons he suspected of
disloyalty by accepting their hospitality for himself and his household
for an extended period of time.
Henry built up royal funds by using every available procedure of
government to get money, by maximizing income from royal estates by
transferring authority over them from the Exchequer to knowledgeable
receivers, and from forfeitures of land and property due to attainders
of treason. He also personally reviewed all accounts and initialed every
page, making sure that all payments were made. He regularly ordered all
men with an income of 800s. [40 pounds] yearly from lands or revenue in
hand to receive knighthoods, which were avoided by those who did not
want to fight, or pay a high fee. As a result, the Crown became rich and
therefore powerful.
Henry's Queen, Elizabeth, was a good influence on his character. Her
active beneficence was a counteracting influence to his avaricious
predisposition. When Henry and his Queen traveled through the nation,
they often stopped to talk to the common people. They sometimes gave
away money, such as to a man who had lost his hand. Henry paid for an
intelligent boy he met to go to school.
Henry had the first paper mill erected in the nation. He fostered the
reading of books and the study of Roman law, the classics, and the
Bible. He had his own library and gave books to other libraries.
The age of entry to university was between 13 and 16. It took four
years' study of grammar, logic, and rhetoric to achieve the Bachelor of
Arts degree and another five before a master could begin a specialized
study of the civil law, canon law, theology, or medicine. Humanist
studies were espoused by individual scholars at the three centers of
higher learning: Oxford University, Cambridge University, and the Inns
of Court in London. The Inns of Court attracted the sons of gentry and
merchants pursuing practical and social accomplishments. The text of
readings to members of the inns survive from this time. In the
legalistic climate of these times, attorneys were prosperous.
The enclosure of land by hedges for sheep farming continued, especially
by rich merchants who bought country land for this purpose. Often this
was land that had been under the plough. Any villeins were given their
freedom and they and the tenants at will were thrown off it immediately.
That land held by copyholders of land who had only a life estate, was
withheld from their sons. Only freeholders and copyholders with the
custom of the manor in their favor were secure against eviction. But
they could be pressured to sell by tactics such as breeding rabbits or
keeping geese on adjoining land to the detriment of their crops, or
preventing them from taking their traditional short cuts across the now
enclosed land to their fields. The real line of distinction between
rural people was one of material means instead of legal status: free or
unfree. On one extreme was the well-to-do yeoman farmer farming his own
land. On the other extreme was the agricultural laborer working for
wages. Henry made several proclamations ordering certain enclosures to
be destroyed and tillage to be restored.
Other land put to use for sheep breeding was waste land. There were
three sheep to every person. The nearby woodlands no longer had wolves
or lynx who could kill the sheep. Bears and elk are also gone.There were
still deer, wild boar, wildcats and wild cattle in vast forests for the
lords to hunt. Wood was used for houses, arms, carts, bridges, and
ships.
The villages were still isolated from each other, so that a visitor
from miles away was treated as warily as a foreigner. Most people lived
and died where they had been born. A person's dialect indicated his
place of origin. The life of the village still revolved around the
church. In some parishes, its activities were highly organized, with
different groups performing different functions. For example, the
matrons looked after a certain altar; the maidens raised money for a
chapel or saw to the gilding of the images; the older men collected
money for church repair; and the younger men organized the church ales
and the church plays. Wills often left property or rents from leased
land to the church. Church cows and sheep given could be leased out to
villagers. Church buildings given could be leased out, turned over to
the poor, used to brew ale or bake bread for church ales, or used in
general as a place for church activities. Church ales would usually a
good source of income; alehouses would be closed during the ceremonies
and parishioners would contribute malt for the ale and grain, eggs,
butter, cheese, and fruits.
The largest town, London, had a population of about 70,000. Other towns
had a population less than 20,000. The population was increasing, but
did not reach the level of the period just before the black death.
In most large towns, there were groups of tailors and hatmakers,
glovers, and other leatherworkers. Some towns had a specialization due
to their proximity to the sources of raw materials, such as nails,
cutlery, and effigies and altars. Despite the spread of wool
manufacturing to the countryside, there was a marked increase of
industry and prosperity in the towns. The principal streets of the
larger towns were paved with gravel. Guild halls became important and
imposing architecturally.
A large area of London was taken up by walled gardens of the
monasteries and large mansions. There were some houses of stone and
timber and some mansions of brick and timber clustered around palaces.
In these, bedrooms increased in number, with rich bed hangings, linen
sheets, and bolsters. Bedspreads were introduced. Nightgowns were worn.
Fireplaces became usual in all the rooms. Tapestries covered the walls.
Carpets were used in the private rooms. Some of the great halls had
tiled floors. The old trestle tables were replaced by tables with legs.
Benches and stools had backs to lean on. A long gallery was used for
exercise, recreation such as music and dancing, and private
conversations. Women and men wore elaborate headdresses. On the outer
periphery are taverns and brothels, both made of mud and straw. Houses
are beginning to be built outside the walls of London along the Thames
because the collapse of the power of the great feudal lords decreased
the fear of an armed attack on London. The merchants introduced this
idea of living at a distance from the place of work so that they could
escape living in the narrow, damp, and dark lanes of the City and have
more light and space. Indeed no baronial army ever threatened the king
again. East of London were cattle pastures, flour mills, bakers,
cloth-fulling mills, lime burners, brick and tile makers, bell founders,
and ship repairing. There was a drawbridge on the south part of London
Bridge for defense and to let ships through. Water sports were played on
the Thames such as tilting at each other with lances from different
boats.
The Tailors' and Linen Armorers' Guild received a charter in 1503 from
the king as the "Merchant Tailors" to use all wares and merchandise,
especially wool cloth, as well wholesale as retail, throughout the
nation. Some schooling was now being made compulsory in certain trades;
the goldsmiths' company made a rule that all apprentices had to be able
to read and write. There are guilds of ironmongers, salters, and
haberdashers [hats and caps]
A yeoman was the second-rank person of some importance, below a knight,
below a gentleman, below a full member of a guild. In London, it meant
the journeyman or second adult in a small workshop. These yeomen had
their own fraternities and were often on strike. Some yeomen in the
large London industries, e.g. goldsmiths, tailors, cloth workers, who
had served an apprenticeship started their own businesses in London
suburbs outside the jurisdiction of their craft to search them.
The Merchant Adventurers created a London fellowship confederacy to
make membership of their society and compliance with its regulations
binding on all cloth traders and to deal with common interests and
difficulties such as taxation, relations with rulers, and dangers at
sea. They made and enforced trading rules, chartered fleets, and
organized armed convoys when the seas were unsafe and coordinated
policies with Henry VII. Membership could be bought for a large fee or
gained by apprenticeship or by being the son of a member.
Tudor government was paternalistic, curtailing cutthroat competition,
fixing prices and wages, and licensing production under grants of
monopoly to achieve a stable and contented society and a fair living for
all.
Foreign trade was revived because it was a period of comparative peace.
The nation sought to sell as much as possible to foreign nations and to
buy at little as possible and thereby increase its wealth in gold and
silver, which could be used for currency.
Ships weighed 200 tons and had twice the cargo space they had
previously. Their bows were more pointed and their high prows made them
better able to withstand gales. The mariners' compass with a pivoting
needle and circular dial with a scale was introduced. The scale gave
precision to directions. Ships had three masts. On the first was a
square sail. On the second was a square sail with a small rectangular
sail above it. On the third was a three cornered lateen sail. These
sails make it possible to sail in almost any direction. This opened the
seas of the world to navigation. At this time navigators kept their
knowledge and expertise secret from others. Adventurous seamen went on
voyages of discovery, such as John Cabot to North America in 1497,
following Italian Christopher Columbus' discovery of the new world in
1492. Ferdinand Magellan of Portugal circumnavigated the world in 1519,
proving uncontrovertedly that the earth was spherical rather than flat.
Theologians had to admit that Jerusalem was not the center of the world.
Sailors overcame their fear of tumbling into one of the openings into
hell that they believed were far out into the Atlantic Ocean and ceased
to believe that a red sunset in the morning was due to a reflection from
hell. Seamen could venture forth into the darkness of the broad Atlantic
Ocean with a fair expectation of finding their way home again. They
gradually learned that there were no sea serpents or monsters that would
devour foolhardy mariners. They learned to endure months at sea on a
diet of salt beef, beans, biscuits, and stale water and the bare deck
for a bed. But there were still mutinies and disobedient pilots.
Mortality rates among seamen were high. There are more navy ships, and
they have some cannon.
The blast furnace was introduced in the iron industry. A blast of hot
air was constantly forced from a stove into the lower part of the
furnace which was heating at high temperature a mixture of the iron ore
and a reducing agent that combined with the oxygen released. After the
iron was extracted, it was allowed to harden and then reheated and
hammered on an anvil to shape it and to force out the hard, brittle
impurities. Blast furnace heat was maintained by bellows worked by water
wheels. Alchemists sought to make gold from the baser metals and to make
a substance that would give them immortality. There was some thought
that suffocation in mines, caverns, wells, and cellars was not due to
evil spirits, but to bad air such as caused by "exhalation of metals".
In 1502, German Peter Henlein invented the pocket watch and the
mainspring inside it.
There were morality plays in which the seven deadly sins: pride,
covetousness, lust, anger, gluttony, envy, and sloth, fought the seven
cardinal virtues: faith, hope, charity, prudence, temperance, justice,
and strength, respectively, for the human soul. The play "Everyman"
demonstrates that every man can get to heaven only by being virtuous and
doing good deeds in his lifetime. It emphasizes that death may come
anytime to every man, when his deeds will be judged as to their goodness
or sinfulness. Card games were introduced. The legend of Robin Hood was
written down.
The Commons gained the stature of the Lords and statutes were regularly
enacted by the "assent of the Lords spiritual and temporal and the
Commons". The Commons now assented instead merely requested enactments.
- The Law -
Royal proclamations clarifying, refining or amplifying the law had the
force of parliamentary statutes. In 1486, the King proclaimed that
"Forasmuch as many of the King our sovereign lord's subjects [have] been
disposed daily to hear feigned, contrived, and forged tidings and tales,
and the same tidings and tales, neither dreading God nor his Highness,
utter and tell again as though they were true, to the great hurt of
divers of his subjects and to his grievous displeasure: Therefore, in
eschewing of such untrue and forged tidings and tales, the King our said
sovereign lord straitly chargeth and commandeth that no manner person,
whatsoever he be, utter nor tell any such tidings or tales but he bring
forth the same person the which was author and teller of the said
tidings or tales, upon pain to be set on the pillory, there to stand as
long as it shall be thought convenient to the mayor, bailiff, or other
official of any city, borough, or town where it shall happen any such
person to be taken and accused for any such telling or reporting of any
such tidings or tales. Furthermore the same our sovereign lord straitly
chargeth and commandeth that all mayors, bailiffs, and other officers
diligently search and inquire of all such persons tellers of such
tidings and tales not bringing forth the author of the same, and them
set on the pillory as it is above said." He also proclaimed in 1487 that
no one, except peace officers, may carry a weapon, e.g. bows, arrows, or
swords, in any town or city unless on a journey. He proclaimed in 1498
that no one may refuse to receive silver pennies or other lawful coin as
payment regardless of their condition as clipped, worn, thin, or old, on
pain of imprisonment and further punishment.
A statute provided that: Lords holding castles, manors, lands and
tenements by knight's service of the king shall have a writ of right for
wardship of the body as well as of the land of any minor heir of a
deceased person who had the use [beneficial enjoyment of a trust] of the
land for himself and his heirs as if the land had been in the possession
of the deceased person. And if such an heir is of age, he shall pay
relief to the lord as if he had inherited possession of the land. An
heir in ward shall have an action of waste against his lord as if his
ancestor had died seised of the land. That is, lands of "those who use"
shall be liable for execution of his debt and to the chief lord for his
relief and heriot, and if he is a bondsman, they may be seized by the
lord. The king tried to retain the benefits of feudal incidents on land
by this Statute of Uses, but attorneys sought to circumvent it by
drafting elaborate and technical instruments to convey land free of
feudal burdens.
Any woman who has an estate in dower, or for a term of life, or in
[fee] tail, jointly with her husband, or only to herself, or to her use,
in any manors, lands, tenements, or other hereditaments of the
inheritance or purchase of her husband, or given to the said husband and
wife in tail, or for term of life, by any of the ancestors of the said
husband, or by any other person seised to the use of the said husband,
or of his ancestors, who, by herself or with any after taken husband;
discontinue, alienate, release, confirm with warranty or, by collusion,
allow any recovery of the same against them or any other seised to their
use, such action shall be void. Then, the person to whom the interest,
title, or inheritance would go after the death of such woman may enter
and possess such premises. This does not affect the common law that a
woman who is single or remarried may give, sell, or make discontinuance
of any lands for the term of her life only.
All deeds of gift of goods and chattels made of trust, to the use of
the giver [grantor and beneficiary of trust], to defraud creditors are
void.
It is a felony to carry off against her will, a woman with lands and
tenements or movable goods, or who is heir-apparent to an ancestor. This
includes taking, procuring, abetting, or knowingly receiving a woman
taken against her will.
A vagabond, idle, or suspected person shall be put in the stocks for
three days with only bread and water, and then be put out of the town.
If he returns, he shall spend six days in the stocks. (A few years later
this was changed to one and three days, respectively.) Every beggar who
is not able to work, shall return to the hundred where he last dwelled,
is best known, or was born and stay there.
No one may take pheasants or partridges by net snares or other devices
from his own warren [breeding ground], upon the freehold of any other
person, or else forfeit 200s., one half to the owner of the land and the
other half to the suer. No one may take eggs of any falcon, hawk, or
swan out of their nest, whether it is on his land or any other man's
land, on pain of imprisonment for one year and fine at the King's will,
one half to the King, and the other half to the holder of the land, or
owner of the swan. No man shall bear any English hawk, but shall have a
certificate for any imported hawk, on pain for forfeiture of such. No
one shall drive falcons or hawks from their customary breeding place to
another place to breed or slay any for hurting him, or else forfeit
200s. after examination by a Justice of the Peace, one half going to the
king and one half to the suer.
Any person without a forest of his own who has a net device with which
to catch deer shall pay 200s. for each month of possession. Anyone
stalking a deer with beasts anywhere not in his own forest shall forfeit
200s. Anyone taking any heron by device other than a hawk or long bow
shall forfeit 6s.8d. No one shall take a young heron from its nest or
pay 10s. for each such heron. Two justices may decide such an issue, and
one tenth of the fine shall go to them.
No man shall shoot a crossbow except in defense of his house, other
than a lord or one having 2,667s. of land because their use had resulted
in too many deer being killed. (The longbow was not forbidden.)
No beasts may be slaughtered or cut up by butchers within the walls of
a town, or pay 12d. for every ox and 8d. for every cow or other beast,
so that people will not be annoyed and distempered by foul air, which
may cause them sickness.
No tanner may be a currier [dressed, dyed, and finished tanned leather]
and no currier may be a tanner. No shoemaker [cordwainer] may be a
currier and no currier may be a shoemaker. No currier shall curry hides
which have not been tanned. No tanner shall sell other than red leather.
No tanner may sell a hide before it is dried. No tanner may tan
sheepskins.
No long bow shall be sold over the price of 3s.4d.
Good wood for making bows may be imported without paying customs.
No grained cloth of the finest making shall be sold for more than 16s.,
nor any other colored cloth for more than 11s. per yard, or else forfeit
40s. for every yard so sold. No hat shall be sold for more than 20d. and
no cap shall be sold for more than 2s.8d., or else forfeit 40s. for each
so sold.
Silver may not be sold or used for any use but goldsmithery or amending
of plate to make it good as sterling, so that there will be enough
silver with which to make coinage.
Each feather bed, bolster, or pillow for sale shall be stuffed with one
type of stuffing, that is, dry pulled feathers or with clean down alone,
and with no sealed feathers nor marsh grass, nor any other corrupt
stuffings. Each quilt, mattress, or cushion for sale shall be stuffed
with one type of stuffing, that is, clean wool, or clean flocks alone,
and with no horsehair, marsh grass, neatshair, deershair, or goatshair,
which is wrought in lime fats and gives off an abominable and contagious
odor when heated by a man's body, on pain of forfeiture of such.
Salmon shall be sold by standard volume butts and barrels. Large salmon
shall be sold without any small fish or broken-bellied salmon and the
small fish shall be packed by themselves only, or else forfeit 6s.8d.
Herring shall be sold at standard volumes. The herring shall be as good
in the middle and in every part of the package as at the ends of the
package, or else forfeit 3s.4d. Eels shall be sold at standard volumes,
and good eels shall not be mixed with lesser quality eels, or else
forfeit 10s. The fish shall be packed in the manner prescribed or else
forfeit 3s.4d. for each vessel.
Fustians shall always be shorn with the long shear, so that it can be
worn for at least two years. If an iron or anything else used to dress
such injures the cloth so that it wears out after four months, 20s.
shall be forfeited for each default, one half to the king and the other
half to the suer.
Pewter and brass ware for sale shall be of the quality of that of
London and marked by its maker, on pain of forfeiture of such, and may
be sold only at open fairs and markets or in the seller's home, or else
forfeit 200s. If such false ware is sold, its maker shall forfeit its
value, one half to the king and one half to the searchers. Anyone using
false weights of such wares shall forfeit 20s., one half to the king and
one half to the suer, or if he cannot pay this fine, to be put in the
stocks until market day and then be put in the pillory all the market
time.
No alien nor denizen [foreigner allowed to reside in the nation with
certain rights and privileges] may carry out of the nation any raw wool
or any woolen cloth which has not been barbed, rowed, and shorn.
Silk ribbons, laces, and girdles of silk may not be imported, since
they can be made in the nation.
No one shall import wine into the nation, but on English ships, or else
forfeit the wine, one half to the king and one half to the seizer of the
wine.
No one may take out of the nation any [male] horse or any mare worth
more than 6s.8s. or under the age of three years, upon pain of
forfeiture of such. However, a denizen may take a horse for his own use
and not to sell. This is to stop losing horses needed for defense of the
nation and to stop the price of a horse from going up.
Freemen of London may go to fairs and markets with wares to sell,
despite the London ordinance to the contrary.
Merchants residing in the nation but outside London shall have free
access to foreign markets without exaction taken of more than 133s.
sterling by the confederacy of London merchants, which have increased
their fee so much, 400s., that merchants not in the confederacy have
been driven to sell their goods in London for less than they would get
at a foreign market. Exacting more is punishable by a fine of 400s. and
damages to the grieved party of ten times the excess amount taken.
For the privilege of selling merchandise, a duty of scavage shall be
taken of merchant aliens, but not of denizens. Any town official who
allows disturbing of a person trying to sell his merchandise because he
has not paid scavage, shall pay a fine of 400s.
Coin clipped or diminished shall not be current in payment, but may be
converted at the King's mint into plate or bullion. Anyone refusing to
take coins with only normal wear may be imprisoned by the mayor,
sheriff, bailiff, constable or other chief officer. New coins, which
have a circle or inscription around the outer edge, will be deemed
clipped if this circle or inscription is interfered with.
The penalty for usury is placement in the pillory, imprisonment for
half a year, and a fine of 400s. (The penalty was later changed to one
half thereof.)
Lawbooks in use at the Inns of Court included "The Books of Magna Carta
with diverse Old Statutes", "Doctor and Student" by St. Germain, "Grand
Abridgment" by Fitzherbert, and "New Natura Brevium" by Lombard.
- Judicial Procedure -
This stastute made changes in the judicial process: The Chancellor,
Treasurer, keeper of the King's privy seal, or two of them, with a
bishop selected by them, and a temporal lord of the King's council
selected by them, and the two Chief Justices of the King's Bench shall
constitute the court of the Star Chamber. It shall have the authority to
call before it by writ or by privy seal anyone accused of "unlawful
maintenances, giving of liveries, signs and tokens, and retainers by
indentures, promises, oaths, writings, or otherwise embraceries of his
subjects" and witnesses, and impose punishment as if convicted under due
process of law. These laws shall now be enforced: If a town does not
punish the murderer of a man murdered in the town, the town shall be
punished. A town shall hold any man who wounds another in peril of
death, until there is perfect knowledge whether the man hurt should live
or die. Upon viewing a dead body, the coroner should inquire of the
killers, their abettors, and anyone present at the killing and certify
these names. In addition, the murderer and accessories indicted shall be
tried at the King's suit within a year of the murder, which trial will
not be delayed until a private suit is taken. If acquitted at the King's
suit, he shall go back to prison or let out with bail for the remainder
of the year, in which time the slain man's wife or next of kin may sue.
For every inquiry made upon viewing a slain body coroners shall be paid
13s.4d. out of the goods of the slayer or from a town not taking a
murderer, but letting him escape. If the coroner does not make inquiry
upon viewing a dead body, he shall be fined 100s. to the King. If a
party fails to appear for trial after a justice has taken bail from him,
a record of such shall be sent to the King.
Henry sat on the Star Chamber Up to 1600, it heard many cases of
forgery, perjury, riot, maintenance, fraud, libel, and conspiracy. It
could mete out any punishment, except death or any dismemberment. This
included life imprisonment, fines, pillory, whipping, branding, and
mutilation. Henry VII sat on it. If a Justice of the Peace does not act
on any person's complaint, that person may take that complaint to
another Justice of the Peace, and if there is no remedy then, he may
take his complaint to a Justice of Assize, and if there is not remedy
then, he may take his complaint to the King or the Chancellor. There
shall then be inquiry into why the other justices did not remedy the
situation. If it is found that they were in default in executing the
laws, they shall forfeit their commissions and be punished according to
their demerits.
Justices of the Peace shall make inquiry of all offenses in unlawful
retaining, examine all suspects, and certify them to the King's Bench
for trial there or in the King's council, and the latter might also
proceed against suspects on its own initiative on information given.
Perjury committed by unlawful maintenance, embracing, or corruption of
officers, or in the Chancery, or before the King's council, shall be
punished in the discretion of the Chancellor, Treasurer, both the Chief
Justices, and the clerk of the rolls.
The Star Chamber, Chancellor, King's Bench and King and council have
the power to examine all defendants, by oath or otherwise, to adjudge
them convicted or attainted. They can also be found guilty by
confession, examination, or otherwise. If a defendant denied doing the
acts of which he is convicted, he was subject to an additional fine to
the king and imprisonment. Violations of statutes may be heard by the
Justices of Assize or the Justices of the Peace, except treason, murder,
and other felony.
Actions on the case shall be treated as expeditiously in the courts of
the King's Bench and Common Pleas as actions of trespass or debt.
Proclamation at four court terms of a levy of a fine shall be a final
end to an issue of land, tenements, or other hereditaments and the
decision shall bind persons and their heirs, whether they have knowledge
or not of the decision, except for women-covert who were not parties,
persons under the age of twenty-one, in prison, out of the nation, or
not of whole mind, who are not parties. These may sue within five years
of losing such condition. Also, anyone not a party may claim a right,
title, claim, or interest in the said lands, tenements, or other
hereditaments at the time of such fine recorded, within five years after
proclamations of the fine.
A defendant who appeals a decision for the purpose of delaying
execution of such shall pay costs and damages to the plaintiff for the
delay.
No sheriff, undersheriff, or county clerk shall enter any complaints in
their books unless the complaining party is present. And no more
complaints than the complaining party knows about shall be entered. The
penalty is 40s. for each such false complaint, one half to the king and
the other half to the suer after examination by a Justice of the Peace.
This is to prevent extortion of defendants by false complaints. The
justice shall certify this examination to the King, on pain of a fine of
40s. A bailiff of a hundred who does not do his duty to summon
defendants shall pay a fine of 40s. for each such default, after
examination by a Justice of the Peace. Sheriffs' records of fines
imposed and bailiffs' records of fines collected may be reviewed by a
Justice of the Peace to examine for deceit.
Any sheriff allowing a prisoner to escape, whether from negligence or
for a bribe, shall be fined, if the prisoner was indicted of high
treason, at least 1,333s. for each escape. However, if the prisoner was
in their keeping because of a suspicion of high treason, the fine shall
be at least 800s.; and if indicted of murder or petite treason, at least
400s.; and if suspected of murder or petite treason, 200s.; and if
suspected of other felonies, 100s. Petite treason was that by a wife to
her husband or a man to his lord.
Any person not responding to a summons for jury service shall be fined
12d. for the first default, and 2s. for the second, and double for each
subsequent default.
A pauper may sue in any court and be assigned a attorney at no cost to
him.
A Justice of the Peace to whom has been reported hunting by persons
disguised with painted faces or visors or otherwise, may issue a warrant
for the sheriff or other county officer to arrest such persons and bring
them before the justice. Such hunting in disguise or hunting at night or
disobeying such warrant is a felony. This is to stop large mobs of
disguised people from hunting together and then causing riots,
robberies, and murders.
Benefit of clergy may be used only once, since this privilege has made
clerics more bold in committing murder, rape, robbery, and theft.
However, there will be no benefit of clergy in the case of murder of
one's immediate lord, master, or sovereign. (This begins the gradual
restriction over many years of benefit of clergy until it disappears.
Also, benefit of clergy was often disregarded in unpeaceful times.)
For an issue of riot or unlawful assembly, the sheriff shall call 24
jurors, each of lands and tenements at least 20s. of charter land or
freehold or 26s.8d. of copyhold or of both. For each default of the
sheriff, he shall pay 400s. And if the jury acquits, then the justice,
sheriff, and under-sheriff shall certify the names of any jurors
maintained or embraced and their misdemeanors, or else forfeit 400s. Any
person proved to be a maintainer or embracer shall forfeit 400s. to the
king and be committed to ward.
The principal leaders of any riot or unlawful assembly shall be
imprisoned and fined and be bound to the peace with sureties at a sum
determined by the Justices of the Peace. If the riot is by forty people
or heinous, the Justices of Peace shall certify such and send the record
of conviction to the King.
The King's steward, Treasurer, and comptroller have authority to
question by twelve discreet persons any servant of the king about making
any confederacies, compassings, conspiracies, or imaginations with any
other person to destroy or murder the king or one of his council or a
lord. Trial shall be by twelve men of the King's household and
punishment as by felony in the common law.
Ohanges in the judicial process other than those made by statute were
made by court decision. For instance, the royal justices decided that
only the king could grant sanctuary for treason and not the church.
After this, the church withdrew the right of sanctuary from second time
offenders.
The King's council has practically limited itself to cases in which the
state has an interest, especially the maintenance of public order.
Chancery became an independent court rather than the arm of the king and
his council. In Chancery and the King's Bench, the intellectual revival
brought by humanism inspires novel procedures to be devised to meet
current problems in disputed titles to land, inheritance, debt, breach
of contract, promises to perform acts or services, deceit, nuisance,
defamation, and the sale of goods.
A new remedy is specific performance, that is, performance of an act
rather than money damages.
Evidence is now taken from witnesses.
Various courts had overlapping jurisdiction. For instance, trespass
could be brought in the Court of Common Pleas because it was a civil
action between two private persons. It could also be brought in the
Court of the King's Bench because it broke the King's peace. It was
advantageous for a party to sue for trespass in the King's court because
there a defendant could be made to pay a fine to the king or be
imprisoned, or declared outlaw if he did not appear at court.
A wrongful step on the defendant's land, a wrongful touch to his person
or chattels could be held to constitute sufficient force and an adequate
breach of the king's peace to sustain a trespass action. A new form of
action is trespass on the case, which did not require the element of
force or of breach of the peace that the trespass offense requires.
Trespass on the case [or "case" for short] expands in usage to cover
many types of situations. Stemming from it is "assumpsit", which
provided damages for breach of an oral agreement and for a written
agreement without a seal.
Parliament's supremacy over all regular courts of law was firmly
established and it was called "the high court of Parliament",
paradoxically, since it rarely came to function as a law court.
When a land holder enfeoffs his land and tenements to people unknown to
the remainderman in [fee] tail, so that he does not know who to sue, he
may sue the receiver of the profits of the land and tenements for a
remedy. And the receivers shall have the same advantages and defenses as
the feoffees or as if they were tenants. And if any deceased person had
the use for himself and his heirs, then any of his heirs shall have the
same advantages and defenses as if his ancestor had died seised of the
land and tenements. And all recoveries shall be good against all
receivers and their heirs, and the feofees and their heirs, and the co-
feoffees of the receivers and their heirs, as though the receivers were
tenants indeed, or feofees to their use, or their heirs of the freehold
of the land and tenements.
If a person feoffs his land to other persons while retaining the use
thereof for himself, it shall be treated as if he were still seised of
the land. Thus, relief and heriot will still be paid for land in socage.
And debts and executions of judgments may be had upon the land and
tenements.
The penalty for not paying customs is double the value of the goods.
The town of London shall have jurisdiction over flooding and unlawful
fishing nets in that part of the Thames River that flows next to it.
The city of London shall have jurisdiction to enforce free passage of
boats on the Thames River in the city, interruption of which carries a
fine of 400s., two-thirds to the king and one third to the suer.
Jurors impaneled in London shall be of lands, tenements, or goods and
chattels, to the value of 133s. And if the case concerns debt or damages
at least 133s, the jurors shall have lands, tenements, goods, or
chattels, to the value of 333s. This is to curtail the perjury that has
gone on with jurors of little substance, discretion, and reputation.
A party grieved by a false verdict of any court in London may appeal to
the Hustings Court of London, which hears common pleas before the mayor
and aldermen. Each of the twelve alderman shall pick from his ward four
jurors of the substance of at least 2,000s. to be impaneled. If
twenty-four of them find that the jurors of the petty jury has given an
untrue verdict, each such juror shall pay a fine of at least 400s. and
imprisonment not more than six months without release on bail or surety.
However, if it is found that the verdict was true, then the grand jury
may inquire if any juror was bribed. If so, such juror bribed and the
defendant who bribed him shall each pay ten times the amount of the
bribe to the plaintiff and be imprisoned not more than six months
without release on bail or surety.
The Bishop's Court in London had nine offenders a week by 1500. Half of
these cases were for adultery and sexual offenses, and the rest were for
slander, blasphemy, missing church services, and breach of faith.
Punishment was penance by walking barefoot before the cross in the
Sunday Procession dressed in a sheet and holding a candle.
- - - Chapter 12 - - -
- The Times: 1509-1558 -
Renaissance humanism came into being in the nation. In this
development, scholars in London, Oxford, and Cambridge emphasized the
value of classical learning, especially Platonism and the study of Greek
literature as the means of better understanding and writing. They
studied the original Greek texts and became disillusioned with the
filtered interpretations of the church, for example of the Bible and
Aristotle. There had long been displeasure with the priests of the
church. They were supposed to preach four times yearly, visit the sick,
say the daily liturgies, and hear confessions at least yearly. But there
were many lapses. Many were not celibate, and some openly lived with a
woman and had children. Complaints about them included not residing
within their parish community, doing other work such as raising crops,
and taking too much in probate, mortuary fees, and marriage fees.
Probate fees had risen from at most 5s. to 60s. in the last hundred
years. Mortuary fees ranged from 1/3 to 1/9 of a deceased person's
goods. Sanctuary was abused. People objected to the right of arrest by
ecclesiastical authorities.
Also, most parish priests did not have a theology degree or even a
Bachelor's degree, as did many laymen. In fact, many laymen were better
educated than the parish priests. No one other than a laborer was
illiterate in the towns.
Humanist grammar [secondary] schools were established in London by
merchants and guilds. In 1510, the founder and dean of St. Paul's School
placed its management in the hands of London "citizens of established
reputation" because he had lost confidence in the good faith of priests
and noblemen. The sons of the nobility, attorneys, and merchants were
starting to go to grammar school now instead of being taught at home by
a tutor. At school, they mingled with sons of yeomen, farmers, and
tradesmen, who were usually poor. The usual age of entry was six or
seven. Classical Latin and Greek were taught and the literature of the
best classical authors was read. Secondary education teachers were
expected to know Latin and have studied the ancient philosophers,
history, and geography. The method of teaching was for the teacher to
read textbooks to the class from a prepared curriculum. The students
were taught in Latin and expected not to speak English in school. They
learned how to read and to write Latin, to develop and amplify a theme
by logical analysis, and to essay on the same subject in the narrative,
persuasive, argumentative, commending, consoling, and inciting styles.
They had horn books with the alphabet and perhaps a Biblical verse on
them. This was a piece of wood with a paper on it held down by a sheet
of transparent horn. They also learned arithmetic (solving arithmetical
problems and casting accounts). Disobedience incurred flogging by
teacher as well as by parents. Spare the rod and spoil the child was the
philosophy. Schools now guarded the morals and behavior of students.
There were two week vacations at Christmas and at Easter. Royal grammar
books for English and Latin were proclaimed by Henry in 1543 to be the
only grammar book authorized for students. In 1545, he proclaimed a
certain primer of prayers in English to be the only one to be used by
students.
The first school of humanist studies arose in Oxford with the
Foundation of Corpus Christi College in 1516 by Bishop Richard Fox. It
had the first permanent Reader or Professor in Greek. The Professor of
Humanity was to extirpate all barbarisms by the study of Cicero,
Sallust, Valerius Maximus, and Quintilian. The Reader of Theology was to
read texts of the Holy Fathers but not those of their commentators.
Oxford University was granted a charter which put the greater part of
the town under control of the Chancellor and scholars. The mayor of
Oxford was required to take an oath at his election to maintain the
privileges and customs of the university. Roman law and other Regius
professorships were founded by the king at Oxford and Cambridge.
Teaching of undergraduates was the responsibility of the university
rather than of the colleges, though some colleges had live-in teachers.
Most colleges were exclusively for graduate fellows, though this was
beginning to change. The university took responsibility for the
student's morals and behavior and tutors sometimes whipped the
undergraduates. For young noblemen, a more important part of their
education than going to university was travel on the continent with a
tutor. This exposure to foreign fields was no longer readily available
through war or pilgrimage. The purpose was practical - to learn about
foreign people and their languages, countries, and courts. Knowledge of
the terrain, resources, prosperity, and stability of their countries was
particularly useful to a future diplomatic or political career.
Understanding of the celestial world began to change. Contemporary
thought was that the nature of all things was to remain at rest, so that
movement and motion had to be explained by causes. The earth was
stationary and the heavens were spherical and revolved around the earth
every twenty-four hours. The universe was finite. The firmament extended
outward in a series of rotating, crystalline, ethereal spheres to which
were attached the various points of celestial geography. First came the
circle of the moon. The sun orbited the earth. The fixed stars rotated
on an outer firmament. Finally, there was the abode of God and his
heavenly hosts. Different principles ruled the celestial world; it was
orderly, stable, ageless, and enduring. But the world of man changed
constantly due to its mixed four elements of air, earth, fire, and water
each trying to disentangle itself from the others and seeking to find
its natural location. The heavenly spheres could affect the destinies of
men, such as through fate, fortune, intelligence, cherubim, seraphim,
angels, and archangels. Astrologers read the celestial signs and
messages.
Then a seed of doubt was cast on this theory by Nicholaus Copernicus, a
timid monk in Poland, who found inconsistencies in Ptolemy's work, but
saw similarity in the movements of the earth and other planets. He
inferred from the "wandering" planetary movements with loops that their
motion could be explained simply if they were revolving in circular
paths around the sun, rather than around the earth. In his book of 1543,
he also expressed his belief that the earth also revolved around the
sun. This idea so shocked the world that the word "revolution" became
associated with radical change. He thought it more likely that the earth
rotated than that the stars moved with great speed in their large
orbits. He proposed that the earth spins on its own axis about once
every twenty-four hours, with a spin axis at about a 23 1/2 degree tilt
from the orbital axis, thus explaining a slow change in the overall
appearances of the fixed stars which had been observed since the time of
Ptolemy. He deduced from astronomical measurements that the correct
order of the planets from the Sun was: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars,
Jupiter, and Saturn. The church considered his ideas heretical because
contradictory to its dogma that man and the earth were the center of the
universe. A central sun evoked images of pagan practices of sun worship.
News of new ideas in science traveled quickly to English scholars and
professionals
The physicians of London were incorporated to oversee and govern the
practice of medicine. A faculty of physicians was established at Oxford
and Cambridge. A Royal College of Physicians was founded in London in
1518 by the King's physician. The College of Physicians taught more
practical medicine and anatomy than the universities. Only graduates of
the College of Physicians or of Oxford or Cambridge were allowed to
practice medicine or surgery.
Medical texts were Hippocrates and Galen. These viewed disease as only
part of the process of nature without anything divine. They stressed
empiricism, experience, collections of facts, evidences of the senses,
and avoidance of philosophical speculations. Some observations of
Hippocrates were: When sleep puts an end to delirium, it is a
hopeful sign. When on a starvation diet, the patient should not
be allowed to become fatigued. Old men usually have less illness
than young ones, but such as they have last, as a rule, till death.
Pleurisy, pneumonia, colds, sore throat, and headache are more likely
to occur during winter seasons. When one oversleeps, or fails to
sleep, the condition suggests disease." Hippocrates had asserted that
madness was simply a disease of the brain and then Galen had agreed and
advocated merciful treatment of the insane. Galen's great remedies were
proper diet, exercise, massage, and bathing. He taught the importance of
a good water supply and good drainage. He advised that baking bread in a
large oven was superior to cooking in a small oven, over ashes, or in a
pan in wholesomeness, digestibility, and flavor. Greek medicinal
doctrines were assumed, such as that preservation of the health of the
body was dependent on air, food, drink, movement and repose, sleeping
and waking, excretion and retention, and the passions.
It was widely known that sleep was restorative and that bad news or
worry could spoil one's digestion. An Italian book of 1507 showed that
post-mortem examinations could show cause of death by gallstones, heart
disease, thrombosis of the veins, or abscesses. In 1540 began the
practice of giving bodies of hanged felons to surgeons to dissect. This
was to deter the commission of felony. There was some feeling that
dissection was a sacrilege, that the practice of medicine was a form of
sorcery, and that illness and disease should be dealt with by prayer
and/or atonement because caused by sin, the wrath of God, or by the
devil. Food that was digested was thought to turn into a vapor which
passed along the veins and was concreted as blood, flesh, and fat. After
1546, there was a book listing hundreds of drugs with preparation
directions, but their use and application was by trial and error.
Flemish physician Andreas Vesalius, secretly dissected human corpses,
finding them hanging on public gibbets or competing with dogs for those
incompletely buried in cemeteries. He begged doctors to allow him to
examine the bodies of their fatal cases. He ingratiated himself with
judges who determined the time and place of execution of criminals. In
1543 he published the first finely detailed description of human
anatomy. In it, there was no missing rib on one side of man, and this
challenged the theory of the woman Eve having been made from a rib of
the man Adam.
In the 1540s, Ambroise Pare from France, a barber-surgeon who was the
son of a servant, was an army surgeon. Wounds at this time were treated
with boiling oil and spurting vessels were closed by being seared with a
red-hot iron. After he ran out of boiling oil, he observed that the
soldiers without this treatment were healing better than those with this
treatment. So he advocated ceasing the practice of cauterizing wounds.
He also began tying arteries with cord to stop their bleeding after
amputation many other surgical techniques.
In Switzerland, Theophrastus Paracelsus, an astrologer and alchemist
who later became a physician, did not believe that humor imbalance
caused disease nor in treatment by bloodletting or purging. He believed
that there were external causes of disease, e.g. toxic matter in food,
contagion, defective physical or mental constitution, cosmic influences
differing with climate and country, or affliction sent Providence. He
urged that wounds be kept clean rather than given poultices. In 1530, he
pioneered the application of chemistry to physiology, pathology, and the
treatment of disease by starting clinical diagnosis and treatment of
disease by highly specific medicines, instead of by cure-alls. For
instance, he used alkalis to treat disease, such as gout, indicated by
certain substances in the urine, which also started urinalysis. He
perceived that syphilis was caused by contagion and used mercury to cure
it. He found curative powers also in opium, sulphur, iron, and arsenic.
Opium was made by drying and cooking the capsule of the poppy and was
one of the few really effective early drugs. Paracelsus urged alchemists
to try to prepare drugs from minerals for the relief of suffering. He
claimed to acquire knowledge of cures through spiritual contacts to
occult wisdom. He believed that a human being has an invisible body as
well as a visible one and that it is closely attuned to imagination and
the spiritual aspect of an individual. He noticed that one's attitudes
and emotions, such as anger, could affect one's health. He sometimes
used suggestion and signs to help a patient form mental images, which
translated into cures. He saw insanity as illness instead of possession
by evil spirits.
Students were beginning to read for the bar by their own study of the
newly available printed texts, treatises, and collections of statute law
and of cases, instead of listening in court and talking with attorneys.
In 1523, Anthony Fitzherbert wrote "Boke of Husbandry", which set forth
the most current methods of arable farming, giving details of tools and
equipment, advice on capital outlay, methods of manuring, draining,
ploughing, and rick-building. It was used by many constantly, and was
often carried around in the pocket. This began a new way to disseminate
new methods in agriculture. He also wrote a "Boke of Surveying", which
relied on the perch rod and compass dial, and gave instruction on how to
set down the results of a survey. In 1533, Gemma Frisius laid down the
principles of topographical survey by triangulation. This improved the
quality of surveys and produced accurate plots.
Geoffrey Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales" was a popular book. Through
Chaucer, London English became a national standard and the notion of
"correct pronunciation" came into being.The discoveries and adventures
of Amerigo Vespucci, a Portuguese explorer, were widely read. The North
and South American continents were named for him.
London merchant guilds began to be identified mainly with hospitality
and benevolence instead of being trading organizations. Twelve great
companies dominated city politics and effectively chose the mayor and
aldermen. They were, in order of precedence, Mercers, Grocers, Drapers,
Fishmongers, Goldsmiths, Skinners, Tailors, Haberdashers, Ironmongers,
Salters, Vintners, and the Clothworkers (composed from leading fullers
and shearmen). The leading men of these guilds were generally aldermen
and the guilds acted like municipal committees of trade and
manufactures. Then they superintended the trade and manufactures of
London much like a government department. They were called Livery
Companies and categorized their memberships in three grades: mere
membership, livery membership, and placement on the governing body.
Livery members were distinguished by having the clothing of the
brotherhood [its livery] and all privileges, and proprietary and
municipal rights, in the fullest degree. They generally had a right to a
place at the Company banquets. They were invited by the governing body,
as a matter of favor, to other entertainments. These liverymen were
usually those who had bought membership and paid higher fees because
they were richer. Their pensions were larger than those of mere members.
Those with mere membership were freemen who had only the simple freedom
of the trade. The masters were usually householders. The journeymen,
yeomanry, bachelors were simple freemen. Most of these companies had
almshouses attached to their halls for the impoverished, disabled, and
elderly members and their widows and children. For instance, many
members of the Goldsmiths had been blinded by the fire and smoke of
quicksilver and some members had been rendered crazed and infirm by
working in that trade. The freedom and rights of citizenship of the city
could only be obtained through membership in a livery company.
A lesser guild, the Leathersellers, absorbed the Glovers, Pursers, and
Pouchmakers, some of whom became wage earners of the Leathersellers. But
others of these craftsmen remained independent. The Whittawyers, who
treated horse, deer, and sheep hides with alum and oil, had become wage
earners for the Skinners.
Londoners went to the fields outside the city for recreation and games.
When farmers enclosed some suburban common fields in 1514, a crowd of
young men marched out to them and, crying "shovels and spades", uprooted
the hedges and filled in the ditches, thus reclaiming the land for their
traditional games. The last major riot in London was aroused by a
speaker on May Day in 1517 when a thousand disorderly young men, mostly
apprentices, defied the curfew and looted shops and houses of aliens. A
duke with two thousand soldiers put it down in mid-afternoon, after
which the king executed fifteen of the rioters.
Many English migrated to London. There were ambitious young men and
women hopeful of betterment through employment, apprenticeship, higher
wages, or successful marriage. On the other hand, there were subsistence
migrants forced to leave their homes for food, work, or somewhere to
live. There was much social mobility. For instance, between 1551 and
1553, of 881 persons admitted as freemen of London, 46 were the sons of
gentlemen, 136 the sons of yeomen, and 289 the sons of farm workers.
London grew in population about twice as fast as the nation.
There are 26 wards of London as of 1550. This is the number for the
next four centuries. Each ward has an alderman, a clerk, and a chief
constable. There are also in each ward about 100 to 300 elected
officials including prickers, benchers, blackbootmen, fewellers [keepers
of greyhounds], scribes, a halter-cutter, introducers, upperspeakers,
under speakers, butlers, porters, inquestmen, scavengers, constables,
watchmen, a beadle, jurymen, and common councilmen. The wardmote had
inquest jurisdiction over immorality or bad behavior such as vagrancy,
delinquency, illegitimacy, and disputes. This contributed greatly to
social stability. In 1546, Henry ordered the London brothels closed. A
small gaol was established in the Clink district of Southwark, giving
the name "clink" to any small gaol. London ordinances required
journeymen to work from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. in winter, with a total of 90
minutes breaks for breakfast, dinner, and an afternoon drink, for 7d. In
the summer they had to work for two hours longer for 8d. At its peak in
the 1540s the court employed about 200 gentlemen, which was about half
the peerage and one-fifth of the greater gentry. Henry issued a
proclamation ordering noblemen and gentlemen in London not employed by
the court to return to their country homes to perform their service to
the king.
Though there was much agreement on the faults of the church and the
need to reform it, there were many disagreements on what philosophy of
life should take the place of church teachings. The humanist Thomas More
was a university trained intellectual. His book "Utopia", idealized an
imaginary society living according to the principles of natural virtue.
In it, everything is owned in common and there is no need for money. All
believe that there is a God who created the world and all good things
and who guides men, and that the soul is immortal. But otherwise people
choose their religious beliefs and their priests. From this perspective,
the practices of other Christians, scholastic theologians, priests and
monks, superstition, and ritual looked absurd. More encouraged a
religious revival. Aristotle's position that virtuous men would rule
best is successfully debated against Plato's position that intellectuals
and philosophers would be the ideal rulers.
More believed the new humanistic studies should be brought to women as
well as to men. He had tutors teach all his children Latin, Greek,
logic, theology, philosophy, mathematics, and astronomy from an early
age. His eldest daughter Margaret became a recognized scholar and
translated his treatise on the lord's prayer. Other high class women
became highly educated. They voiced their opinions on religious matters.
In the 1530s, the Duchess of Suffolk spoke out for reform of the clergy
and against images, relics, shrines, pilgrimages, and services in Latin.
She and the countess of Sussex supported ministers and established
seminaries for the spread of the reformed faith.
More pled for proportion between punishment and crime. He urged that
theft no longer be punished by death because this only encouraged the
thief to murder his victim to eliminate evidence of the theft. He opined
that the purpose of punishment was to reform offenders. He advocated
justice for the poor to the standard of justice received by the rich.
Erasmus, a former monk, visited the nation for a couple of years and
argued that reason should prevail over religious belief. He wrote the
book "In Praise of Folly", which noted man's elaborate pains in
misdirected efforts to gain the wrong thing. For instance, it questioned
what man would stick his head into the halter of marriage if he first
weighed the inconveniences of that life? Or what woman would ever
embrace her husband if she foresaw or considered the dangers of
childbirth and the drudgery of motherhood? Childhood and senility are
the most pleasant stages of life because ignorance is bliss. Old age
forgetfulness washes away the cares of the mind. A foolish and doting
old man is freed from the miseries that torment the wise and has the
chief joy of life: garrulousness. The seekers of wisdom are the farthest
from happiness; they forget the human station to which they were born
and use their arts as engines with which to attack nature. The least
unhappy are those who approximate the naiveness of the beasts and who
never attempt what is beyond men. As an example, is anyone happier than
a moron or fool? Their cheerful confusion of the mind frees the spirit
from care and gives it many-sided delights. Fools are free from the fear
of death and from the pangs of conscience. They are not filled with vain
worries and hopes. They are not troubled by the thousand cares to which
this life is subject. They experience no shame, fear, ambition, envy, or
love. In a world where men are mostly at odds, all agree in their
attitude towards these innocents. They are sought after and sheltered;
everyone permits them to do and say what they wish with impunity.
However, the usual opinion is that nothing is more lamentable than
madness. The Christian religion has some kinship with folly, while it
has none at all with wisdom. For proof of this, notice that children,
old people, women, and fools take more delight than anyone else in holy
and religious things, led no doubt solely by instinct. Next, notice that
the founders of religion have prized simplicity and have been the
bitterest foes of learning. Finally, no people act more foolishly than
those who have been truly possessed with Christian piety. They give away
whatever is theirs; they overlook injuries, allow themselves to be
cheated, make no distinction between friends and enemies, shun pleasure,
and feast on hunger, vigils, tears, labors, and scorn. They disdain
life, and utterly prefer death. In short, they have become altogether
indifferent to ordinary interests, as if their souls lived elsewhere and
not in their bodies. What is this, if not to be mad? The life of
Christians is run over with nonsense. They make elaborate funeral
arrangements, with candles, mourners, singers, and pallbearers. They
must think that their sight will be returned to them after they are
dead, or that their corpses will fall ashamed at not being buried
grandly. Christian theologians, in order to prove a point, will pluck
four or five words out from different places, even falsifying the sense
of them if necessary, and disregard the fact that their context was
relevant or even contradicted their points. They do this with such
brazen skill that our attorneys are often jealous of them.
Attorney Christopher St. German wrote the legal treatise "Doctor and
Student", in which he deems the law of natural reason to be supreme and
eternal. The law of God and the law of man, as enunciated by the church
and royalty, merely supplement the law of natural reason and may change
from time to time. Examples of the law of reason are: It is good to be
loved. Evil is to be avoided. Do onto others as you would have them do
unto you. Do nothing against the truth. Live peacefully with others.
Justice is to be done to every man. No one is to wrong another. A
trespasser should be punished. From these is deduced that a man should
love his benefactor. It is lawful to put away force with force. It is
lawful for every man to defend himself and his goods against an unlawful
power.
Like his father, Henry VIII dominated Parliament. He used this power to
reform the church of England in the 1530's. The Protestant reformation
cause, started in Germany in 1517 by Martin Luther posting his thesis,
had become identified with Henry's efforts to have his marriage of
eighteen years to the virtuous Catherine annulled so he could marry a
much younger woman: Anne and have a son. The end of his six successive
wives was: annulled, beheaded, died; annulled, beheaded, survived. Henry
VIII was egotistical, arrogant, and self- indulgent. This nature allowed
him to declare himself the head of the church of England instead of the
pope.
Henry used and then discarded officers of state. One such was Thomas
Wolsey, the son of a town grazier [one who pastures cattle and rears
them for market] and butcher, who was another supporter of classical
learning. He rose through the church, the gateway to advancement in a
diversity of occupations of clergy such as secretary, librarian,
teacher, attorney, doctor, author, civil servant, diplomat, and
statesman. He was a court priest when he aligned himself with Henry,
both of whom wanted power and glory and dressed extravagantly. But he
was brilliant and more of a strategist than Henry. Wolsey called himself
a reformer and started a purge of criminals, vagrants and prostitutes
within London, bringing many before the council. But most of his
reforming plans were not brought to fruition, but ended after his
campaign resulted in more power for himself. Wolsey rose to be
Chancellor to the King and also Archbishop of York. As the
representative of the pope for England, he exercised almost full papal
authority there. But he controlled the church in England in the King's
interest. He was second only to the King and he strengthened the crown
by consolidating power and income that had been scattered among nobles
and officeholders. He also came to control the many courts. Wolsey
centralized the church in England and dissolved the smaller monasteries,
the proceeds of which he used to build colleges at Oxford and his home
town. He was an impartial and respected justice. When Wolsey was not
able to convince the pope to give Henry an annulment of his marriage,
Henry dismissed him and took his property, shortly after which Wolsey
died on his way to be imprisoned in the Tower to be tried for treason.
Thomas. Cromwell, a top royal official, was a self-taught attorney,
arbitrator, merchant, and accountant. He was the son of a
clothworker/blacksmith/brewer/innkeeper, Like Wolsey, he was a natural
orator. He drafted and had passed legislation that created a new church
of England. He had all men swear an oath to the terms of the succession
statute. Thomas More, the successor Chancelllor to Wolsey, was known for
his honesty and was a highly respected man. More did not yield to
Henry's bullying for support for his statute declaring the succession to
be vested in the children of his second marriage, and his statute
declaring himself the supreme head of the church of England, instead of
the pope. He did not expressly deny this supremacy statute, so was not
guilty of treason under its terms. But silence did not save him. He was
attainted for treason on specious grounds and beheaded. His conviction
rested on the testimony of one perjured witness, who misquoted More as
saying that Parliament did not have the power to require assent to the
supremacy statute because it was repugnant to the common law of
Christendom.
Henry ruled with an iron fist. In 1536, he issued a proclamation that
"any rioters or those in an unlawful assembly shall return to their
houses" or "we will proceed against them with all our royal force and
destroy them and their wives and children." In 1538, he proclaimed that
anyone hurting or maiming an officer while trying to make an arrest
"shall lose and forfeit all their lands, goods, and chattel" and shall
suffer perpetual imprisonment. Moreover, if one murdered such an
officer, he would suffer death without privilege of sanctuary or of
clergy. In 1540, he proclaimed that there would be no shooting by
handgun except on a shooting range. Henry had Parliament pass bills of
attainder against many people. For the first time, harsh treatment of
prisoners in the Tower, such as placement in dungeons with little food,
no bed, and no change of clothes, became almost a matter of policy.
Through his host of spies, Cromwell heard what men said to their closest
friends. Words idly spoken were distorted into treasonable utterances.
Fear spread through the people. Silence was a person's only possibility
of safety.
Cromwell developed a technique for the management of the House of
Commons which lasted for generations. He promulgated books in defense of
royal spiritual authority, which argued that canon law was not divine
but merely human and that clerical authority had no foundation in the
Bible. A reformed English Bible was put in all parish churches.
Reformers were licensed to preach. Cromwell ordered sermons to be said
which proclaimed the supremacy of the King. He instituted registers to
record baptisms, marriages, and burials in every county, for the purpose
of reducing disputes over descent and inheritance. He dissolved all the
lesser monasteries. When Cromwell procured a foreign wife for Henry whom
Henry found unattractive, he was attainted and executed.
Henry now reconstructed his council to have a fixed membership, an
official hierarchy based on rank, a secretariat, an official record, and
formal powers to summon individuals before it by legal process. Because
it met in the King's Privy Lodgings, it was called the "Privy Council".
It met daily instead of just during the terms of the Westminster courts
from late autumn to early summer. It communicated with the king through
intermediaries, of whom the most important was the King's Secretary.
Because it was a court council, part of it traveled with the king, while
the other part conducted London business. When Henry went to war in
France, part of the council went with him, and part of it stayed to
attend the Queen Regent.
Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, wrote the first English
Common Book of Prayer. With its use beginning in 1549, church services
were to be held in English instead of Latin. The celebration of the
Lord's Supper was a communion among the parishioners and minister all
sharing wine and bread. It replaced the mass, in which the priests were
thought to perform a miraculous change of the substance of bread and
wine into the body and blood of Christ, which the priest then offered as
a sacrifice for remission of pain or guilt. This reflected the blood
sacrifice of Christ dying on the cross. In the mass, only the priests
drank the wine. The mass, miracles, the worship of saints, prayers for
souls in purgatory, and pilgrimages to shrines such as that of Thomas
Becket, were all to be discontinued. Imprisonment or exile rather than
death was made the penalty for heresy and blasphemy, and also for
adultery.
After the King dissolved the greater monasteries, he took and sold
their ornaments, silver plate and jewelry, lead from roofs of their
buildings, and finally much of the land itself. Many maps of manors and
lands were made at this time. Three monasteries were converted into the
first three treating hospitals in London, one for the diseased, one for
the poor, and one, Bethlehem (or "Bedlam" for short), for the mentally
ill. But there were still many poor, sick, blind, aged, and impotent
people in the streets since the closure of the monasteries. In 1552,
there were 2,100 people in need of relief, including 300 orphans, 600
sick or aged, 350 poor men overburdened with their children, 650 decayed
householders, and 200 idle vagabonds. The poor often begged at parishes,
where they spread disease. London then set up a poor relief scheme. The
Bridewell was established to set to work the idle, vagabonds, and
prostitutes making feather bed ticks and wool-cards, drawing of wire,
carding, knitting, and winding of silk. Parishes were required to give
money for the poor in 1563. Other towns followed London's lead in
levying a poor rate.
Henry used the proceeds from the sale of the monasteries for building
many new palaces and wood ships for his navy. In war, these navy ships
had heavy guns which could sink other ships. In peace time, these ships
were hired out to traders. Large ships were constructed in docks, made
partly by digging and partly by building walls. In 1545, Henry issued a
proclamation ordering all vagabonds, ruffians, masterless men, and
evil-disposed persons to serve him in his navy.
The former land of the monasteries, about 30% of the country's land,
was sold and resold, usually to great landowners, or leased. Title deeds
became important as attorneys sought the security that title could give.
Some land went to entrepreneurial cloth manufacturers, who converted the
buildings for the manufacture of cloth. They bought the raw wool and
hired craftsmen for every step of the manufacturing process to be done
in one continuous process. This was faster than buying and selling the
wool material between craftsmen who lived in different areas. Also, it
was more efficient because the amount of raw wool bought could be
adjusted to the demand for cloth.
Many landowners now could live in towns exclusively off the rents of
their rural land. Rents were increased so much that tenants could not
pay and were evicted. They usually became beggars or thieves. Much of
their former land was converted from crop raising to pasture for large
herds of sheep. Arable farming required many workers, whereas sheep
farming required only one shepherd and herdsman. There were exceptional
profits made from the export of wool cloth. But much raw wool was still
exported. Its price went up from 6s.8d. per tod [about 28 pounds] in
1340 to 20s.8d. in 1546.
Villeinage was now virtually extinct. But a lord could usually claim a
small money-rent from the freeholder, sometimes a relief when his land
was sold or passed at death, and occasionally a heriot from his heir.
There was steady inflation. Landlords made their leases short term so
that they could raise rents as prices rose. Copyholders gradually
acquired a valuable right in their holdings: their rent became light -
less that a shilling an acre.
The knights had 70% of the land, the nobles 10%, the church 10%, and
king 5%. At least 85% of the population still lived in the country. Rich
traders built town or country houses in which the emphasis was on
comfort and privacy. There was more furniture, bigger windows filled
with glass, thick wallpaper, and formal gardens. Use of thick,
insulating wallpaper rose with the rise of paper mills. It was
stenciled, hand-painted, or printed. Some floors were tiled instead of
stone or wood. They were still strewn with straw. The owners ate in a
private dining room and slept in their own rooms with down quilts. Their
soap was white. They had clothing of white linen and white wool, leather
slippers, and felt hats. Men wore long tunics open at the neck and
filled in with pleated linen and enormous puffed sleeves. The fortunes
of landowners varied; some went into aristocratic debt by ostentatiously
spending on building, clothes, food, and drink, and some became indebted
by inefficient management. Some had to sell their manors and dismiss
their servants.
All people generally had enough food because of the commercialization
of agriculture. Even the standard meal of the peasant was bread, bacon,
cheese, and beer or cider, with beef about twice a week. Also, roads
were good enough for the transport of foodstuffs thereon. Four-wheeled
wagons for carrying people as well as goods. Goods were also transported
by the pulling of barges on the rivers from paths along the river. A
plough with wheels was used as well as those without.
Henry made proclamations reminding people of the apparel laws, but they
were difficult to enforce. Henry also made a proclamation limiting the
consumption of certain meat according to status. Seven dishes were
allowed to bishops, dukes, marquises, and earls; six to other temporal
lords; five to justices, the King's council, sheriffs, and persons with
an income of at least 200 pounds yearly or goods worth 2000 pounds; four
to persons with an income of at least 100 pounds or goods worth 1000
pounds; and three dishes to persons with an income of at least 100
pounds or goods worth 500 pounds. There were limits on types of meat
served, such as a maximum of one dish of great fowl such as crane, swan,
and peacock; eight quail per dish; and twelve larks in a dish. People
used tin or pewter dishes, platters, goblets, saucers, spoons,
saltcellars, pots, and basins. They used soap to wash themselves, their
clothes, and their dishes. A solid, waxy soap was from evaporating a
mixture of goat fat, water, and ash high in potassium carbonate. They
had bedcovers on their beds. Cloth bore the mark of its weaver and came
in many colors. Cloth could be held together with pins that had a shank
with a hook by which they were closed. They burned wood logs in the
fireplaces in their houses. So much wood was used that young trees were
required by statute to be given enough lateral space to spread their
limbs and were not cut down until mature. The organ and the harp,
precursor to the piano, were played.
People went to barbers to cut their hair and to extract teeth. They
went to people experienced with herbs, roots, and waters for treatment
of skin conditions such as sores, cuts, burns, swellings, irritated eyes
or scaly faces. For more complicated ailments, they went to physicians,
who prescribed potions and medicines. They bought potions and medicines
from apothecaries and pharmacists.
The King, earls, who ruled counties, and barons, who had land and a
place in the House of Lords, still lived in the most comfort. The King's
house had courtyards, gardens, orchards, wood-yards, tennis courts, and
bowling alleys.
The walls of the towns were manned by the citizens themselves, with
police and watchmen at their disposal. In inns, travelers slept ten to a
bed and there were many fleas and an occasional rat or mouse running
through the rushes strewn on the floor. The inn provided a bed and ale,
but travelers brought their own food. Each slept with his purse under
his pillow.
In markets, sellers set up booths for their wares. They sold grain for
making oatmeal or for sowing one's own ground. Wine, butter, cheese,
fish, chicken, and candles could also be bought. Butchers bought killed
sheep, lambs, calves, and pigs to cut up for selling. Tanned leather was
sold to girdlemakers and shoemakers. Goods bought in markets were
presumed not to be stolen, so that a purchaser could not be dispossessed
of goods bought unless he had knowledge that they were stolen.
The ruling group of the towns came to be composed mostly of merchants,
manufacturers, attorneys, and physicians. Some townswomen were
independent traders. The governed class contained small master craftsmen
and journeyman artisans, small traders, and dependent servants. The
major streets of London were paved with stone, with a channel in the
middle. More water conduits from hills, heaths, and springs were built
to provide the citizens of London with more water. The sewers carried
only surface water away. Households were forbidden to use the sewers.
Privies emptied into cesspools.
The Merchant Adventurers' Fellowship brought virtually all adventurers
under its control and organized and regulated the national cloth trade.
It had a General Court of the Adventurers sitting in the London Mercers'
Hall. Various companies were granted monopolies for trade in certain
areas of the world such as Turkey, Spain, France, Venice, the Baltic,
and Africa. These were regulated companies. That is they obtained
complete control of a particular foreign market, but any merchant who
cared to join the company, pay its dues, and obey its regulations, might
share in the benefits of its monopoly. The companies generally confined
trade to men who were primarily merchants and not shopkeepers. In 1553
explorer Sebastian Cabot formed the Muscovy Company, which was granted a
monopoly in its charter for trade with north Russia. It was oriented
primarily to export English woolen cloth. It was the first company
trading on a joint stock, which was arranged as a matter of convenience
and safety. The risks were too great for any few individuals. It hired
ships and assigned space to each member to ship his goods at his own
risk. The dividend was returned to the subscribers of the capital they
put in plus an appropriate share of any profits made on the voyage. The
members began leaving their money with the company for the next voyage.
A general stock grew up. In 1568 were the first industrial companies:
Mines Royal, and Mineral and Battery Works. The cloth, mining, iron, and
woodcraft industries employed full-time workers on wages. In the
ironworks and foundries, the furnace blowing engines were worked by
water wheels or by a gear attached to donkeys or horses. The forge
hammers were worked at first by levers and later by water wheels. The
day and night hammering filled the neighborhood with their noise.
Land held in common was partitioned. There were leases of mansion
houses, smaller dwelling houses, houses with a wharf having a crane,
houses with a timber yard, houses with a garden, houses with a shed,
shops, warehouses, cellars, and stables. Lands with a dye-house or a
brew-house were devised by will along with their dying or brewing
implements. There were dairies making butter and cheese.
Citizens paid taxes to the king amounting to one tenth of their annual
income from land or wages. Merchants paid "forced loans" and
benevolences. The national government was much centralized and had
full-time workers on wages. A national commission of sewers continually
surveyed walls, ditches, banks, gutters, sewers, ponds, bridges, rivers,
streams, mills, locks, trenches, fish- breeding ponds, and flood gates.
When low places were threatened with flooding, it hired laborers, bought
timber, and hired carts with horses or oxen for necessary work. Mayors
of cities repaired water conduits and pipes under their cities' ground.
The matchlock musket came into use, but did not replace the bow because
its matchcord didn't remain lit in rainy weather. The matchlock was an
improvement over the former musket because both hands could be used to
hold and aim the matchlock musket because the powder was ignited by a
device that touched a slow-burning cord to the powder when a trigger was
pulled with one finger.
After the break with Rome, cooperation among villagers in church
activities largely ceased. The altars and images previously taken care
of by them disappeared and the paintings on the walls were covered with
white or erased, and scripture texts put in their place. People now read
the new Bible, the "Paraphrases" of Erasmus, Foxe's "Book of Martyrs",
and the works of Bishop Jewel. The Book of Martyrs taught the duty and
splendor of rising above all physical danger or suffering. The canon law
of the church was abolished and its study prohibited. Professorships of
the civil law were founded at the two universities. The Inns of Court
grew. Attorneys had more work with the new laws passed to replace the
church canons of the church. They played an important role in town
government and many became wealthy. They acquired town houses in
addition to their rural estates.
Church reforms included abolishing church sanctuaries. Benefit of
clergy was restricted more. Parsons were allowed to marry. Archbishops
were selected by the king without involvement by the pope. Decisions by
archbishops in testamentary, matrimonial, and marriage annulment matters
were appealable to the Court of Chancery instead of to the pope. The
clergy's canons were subject to the King's approval. The control of the
church added to the powers of the Crown to summon and dissolve
Parliament, coin money, create peers [members of the House of Lords who
received individual writs of summons to Parliament], pardon criminals,
order the arrest of dangerous persons without customary process of law
in times of likely insurrection, tax and call men to arms without the
consent of Parliament if the country were threatened with invasion.
About 1550 there began indictments and executions for witchcraftery
which lasted for about a century. One of the reasons for suspecting a
woman to be a witch was that she lived alone, which was very unusual.
Henry ordered all alien Anabaptists, who denied the validity of infant
baptism, to leave the realm.
- The Law -
Offices may not be bought and sold, but only granted by justices of the
royal courts.
The King's proclamations shall be observed and kept as though they were
acts of Parliament. The penalty shall not be more than that stated in
the proclamation, except for heresy.
A person having land in socage or fee simple may will and devise his
land by will or testament in writing.
A person holding land by knight's service may will and devise by his
last will and testament in writing part of his land to his wife and
other parts of his land to his children, as long as 1/3 of entailed land
is left to the King.
Anyone serving the king in war may alienate his lands for the
performance of his will, and if he dies, his feoffees or executors shall
have the wardship of his heir and land.
A person who leases land for a term of years, even if by indenture or
without a writing, may have a court remedy as do tenants of freehold for
any expulsion by the lessor which is contrary to the lease, covenant, or
agreement. These termers, their executors and assigns, shall hold and
enjoy their terms against the lessors, their heirs and assigns. The
lessor shall have a remedy for rents due or waste by a termer after
recovering the land as well as if he had not recovered the land.
A lord may distrain land within his fee for rents, customs, or services
due without naming the tenant, because of the existence of secret
feoffments and leases made by their tenants to unknown persons.
Anyone seised of land to the use or trust of other persons by reason of
a will or conveyance shall be held to have lawful seisin and possession
of the land, because by common law, land is not devisable by will or
testament, yet land has been so conveyed, which has deprived married men
of their courtesy, women of their dower, the king of the lands of
persons attainted, the king of a year's profits from felons' lands, and
lords of their escheats. (This was difficult to enforce.)
A woman may not have both a jointure [promise of husband to wife of
property or income for life after his death] and dower of her husband's
land. (Persons had purchased land to hold jointly with their wives)
A sale of land must be in writing, sealed, and registered in its county
with the clerk of that county. If the land is worth less than 40s. per
year, the clerk is paid 12d. If the land exceeds 40s. yearly, the clerk
is paid 2s.6d.
An adult may lease his lands or tenements only by a writing under his
seal for a term of years or a term of life, because many people who had
taken leases of lands and tenements for a term of years or a term of
lives had to spend a lot for repair and were then evicted by heirs of
their lessors.
A husband may not lease out his wife's land.
No woman-covert, child, idiot, or person of insane memory may devise
land by will or testament.
The land of tenants-in-common may be partitioned by them so that each
holds a certain part.
No bishop or other official having authority to take probate of
testaments may take a fee for probating a testament where the goods of
the testator are under 100s., except that the scribe writing the probate
of the testament may take 6d., and for the commission of administration
of the goods of any man dying intestate, being up to 100s, may be
charged 6d. Where the goods are over 100s. but up to 800s. sterling,
probate fees may be 3s.6d. at most, whereof the official may take 2s.6d.
at most, with 12d. residue to the scribe for registering the testament.
Where the goods are over 800s. sterling, probate fees may be 5s. at
most, whereof the official may take 2s.6d. at most, with 2s.6d. residue
to the scribe, or the scribe may choose to take 1d. per 10 lines of
writing of the testament. If the deceased had willed by his testament
any land to be sold, the money thereof coming nor the profits of the
land shall not be counted as the goods or chattel of the deceased. Where
probate fees have customarily been less, they shall remain the same. The
official shall approve and seal the testament without delay and deliver
it to the executors named in such testaments for the said sum. If a
person dies intestate or executors refuse to prove the testament, then
the official shall grant the administration of the goods to the widow of
the deceased person, or to the next of kin, or to both, in the
discretion of the official, taking surety of them for the true
administration of the goods, chattels, and debts. Where kin of unequal
degree request the administration, it shall be given to the wife and, at
his discretion, other requestors. The executors or administrators, along
with at least two persons to whom the deceased was indebted, or to whom
legacies were made, or, upon their refusal or absence, two honest
kinsmen, shall make an inventory of the deceased's goods, chattels,
ware, merchandise, as well moveable as not moveable, and take it upon
their oaths to the official.
No parish clergyman or other spiritual person shall take a mortuary fee
or money from a deceased person with movable goods under the value of
133s., a deceased woman-covert, a child, a person keeping no house, or a
traveler. Only one mortuary fee may be taken of each deceased and that
in the place where he most dwelled and lived. Where the deceased's
moveable goods are to the value of 133s. or more, above his debts paid,
and under 600s., a mortuary up to 3s. 4d. may be taken. Where such goods
are 600s. or more and under 800s., mortuary up to 6s.8d. may be taken.
Where such goods are 800s. or above, mortuary up to 10s. may be taken.
But where mortuaries have customarily been less, they shall remain the
same.
Executors of a will declaring land to be sold for the payment of debts,
performance of legacies to wife and children, and charitable deeds for
the health of souls, may sell the land despite the refusal of other
executors to agree to such sale.
A man may not marry his mother, stepmother, sister, niece, aunt, or
daughter.
Any clergy preaching contrary to the King's religious doctrine shall
recant for the first offense. He shall abjure and bear a faggot (a badge
resembling a faggot of wood which would have been used for burning him
as a heretic) for the second offense. If he refuses to abjure or bear a
faggot or offends a third time, he shall be burned and lose all his
goods. If a layperson teaches, defends, or maintains a religious
doctrine other than the King's, he shall recant and be imprisoned for
twenty days for the first offense. He shall abjure and bear a faggot if
he does not recant or offends a second time. He shall forfeit his goods
and suffer perpetual imprisonment if he does not abjure or bear a faggot
or offends a third time.
The entry of an apprentice into a craft shall not cost more than 2s.6d.
After his term, his entry shall not be more than 3s.4d. This replaced
the various fees ranging from this to 40s.
No master of a craft may require his apprentice to make an oath not to
compete with him by setting up a shop after the term of his
apprenticeship.
No alien may take up a craft or occupation in the nation.
No brewer of ale or beer to sell shall make wood vessels or barrels,
and coopers shall use only good and seasonable wood to make barrels and
shall put their mark thereon. Every ale or beer barrel shall contain 32
of the King's standard gallons. The price of beer barrels sold to ale or
beer brewers or others shall be 9d.
An ale-brewer may employ in his service one cooper only to bind, hoop
and pin, but not to make, his master's ale vessels.
No butcher may keep a tanning-house.
Tanned leather shall be sold only in open fairs and markets and after
it is inspected and sealed.
Only people living in designated towns may make cloth to sell, to
prevent the ruin of these towns by people taking up both agriculture and
cloth-making outside these towns. No one making cloth for sale may have
more than one woolen loom or else forfeit 20s. This to protect the
weavers' ability to maintain themselves and their families from rich
clothiers who keep many looms and employ journeymen and unskillful
persons at low wages. No one owning a fulling mill may own a weaving
loom. No weaver may own a fulling mill.
No one shall shoot in or keep in his house any handgun or crossbow
unless he has 2,000s. yearly.
No one may hunt or kill hare in the snow since their killing in great
numbers by men other than the king and noblemen has depleted them.
No one shall take an egg or bird of any falcon or hawk out of its nest
on the King's land. No one may disguise himself with hidden or painted
face to enter a forest or park enclosed with a wall for keeping deer to
steal any deer or hare.
Ducks and geese shall not be taken with any net or device during the
summer, when they haven't enough feathers to fly. But a freeholder of
40s. yearly may hunt and take such with long bow and spaniels.
No one may sell or buy any pheasant except the King's officers may buy
such for the King.
No butcher may kill any calf born in the spring.
No grain, beef, mutton, veal, or pork may be sold outside the nation.
Every person with 36 acres of agricultural land, shall sow one quarter
acre with flax or hemp-feed.
All persons shall kill crows on their land to prevent them from eating
so much grain at sowing and ripening time and destroying hay stacks and
the thatched roofs of houses and barns. They shall assemble yearly to
survey all the land to decide how best to destroy all the young breed of
crows for that year. Every village and town with at least ten households
shall put up and maintain crow nets for the destruction of crows.
No land used for raising crops may be converted to pasture. No woods
may be converted to agriculture or pasture. The efforts to enforce these
proved these prohibitions were not successful.
No one shall cut down or break up dikes holding salt water and fresh
water from flooding houses and pastures.
No one shall dump tin-mining debris, dung, or rubbish into rivers
flowing into ports or take any wood from the walls of the port, so that
ships may always enter at low tide.
A person may lay out a new highway on his land where the old one has
been so damaged by waterways that horses with carriages cannot pass,
with the consent of local officials.
Only poor, aged, and disabled persons may beg. Begging without a
license is punishable by whipping or setting in the stocks 3 days with
only bread and water.
Alien palm readers shall no longer be allowed into the nation, because
they have been committing felonies and robberies.
Butchers may not sell beef, pork, mutton, or veal from carcasses for
more than 1/2 penny and 1/2 farthing [1/4 penny] per pound.
French wines may not sell at retail for more than 8d. per gallon.
A barrel maker or cooper may sell a beer barrel for 10d.
No longer may aliens bring books into the nation to sell because now
there are sufficient printers and bookbinders in the nation.
No one may buy fresh fish other than sturgeon, porpoise, or seal from
an alien to put to sale in the nation.
Every person with an enclosed park where there are deer, shall keep two
tall and strong mares in such park and shall not allow them to be
mounted by any short horse, because the breeding of good, swift, and
strong horses has diminished.
A man may have only as many trotting horses for the saddle as are
appropriate to his degree.
No one may maintain for a living a house for unlawful games such as
bowling, tennis, dice, or cards. No artificer, craftsman, husbandman,
apprentice, laborer, journeyman, mariner, fisherman may play these games
except at Christmas under his master's supervision. Noblemen and others
with a yearly income of at least 2,000s. may allow his servants to play
these games at his house.
Hemp or flax may not be watered in any river or stream where animals
are watered.
No one shall sell merchandise to another and then buy back the same
merchandise within three months at a lower price. No one shall sell
merchandise to be paid for in a year above the sum of 200s. per 2000s.
worth of merchandise. No one shall sell or mortgage any land upon
condition of payment of a sum of money before a certain date above the
sum of 200s. per 2000s. per year.
No one shall commit forgery by counterfeiting a letter made in another
person's name to steal any money, goods, or jewels.
No one shall libel by accusing another of treason in writing and
leaving it in an open place without subscribing his own name to it.
If any servant converts to his own use more than 40s. worth of jewels,
money, or goods from caskets entrusted to him for safekeeping by a
nobleman or other master or mistress, it shall be a felony.
If a person breaks into a dwelling house by night to commit burglary or
murder, is killed by anyone in that house, or a person is killed in
self-defense, the killer shall not forfeit any lands or goods for the
killing.
Killing by poisoning shall be deemed murder and is punishable by death.
A person who has committed a murder, robbery, or other felony he has
committed shall be imprisoned for his natural life and be burned on the
hand, because those who have been exiled have disclosed their knowledge
of the commodities and secrets of this nation and gathered together to
practice archery for the benefit of the foreign realm. If he escapes
such imprisonment, he shall forfeit his life.
A person convicted or outlawed shall be penalized by loss of life, but
not loss of lands or goods, which shall go to his wife as dower and his
heirs.
Buggery may not be committed on any person or beast.
No one shall slander or libel the king by speeches or writing or
printing or painting.
No one shall steal fish from a pond on another's land by using nets or
hooks with bait or by drying up the pond.
The mayor of London shall appoint householders to supervise watermen
rowing people across the Thames River because many people have been
robbed and drowned by these rowers. All such boats must be at least 23
feet long and 5 feet wide.
No man shall take away or marry any maiden under 16 years of age with
an inheritance against the will of her father.
Any marriage solemnized in church and consummated shall be valid
regardless of any prior agreement for marriage.
Sheriffs shall not lose their office because they have not collected
enough money for the Exchequer, but shall have allowances sufficient to
perform their duties.
Butchers, brewers, and bakers shall not conspire together to sell their
victuals only at certain prices. Artificers, workmen and laborers shall
not conspire to work only at a certain rate or only at certain hours of
the day.
No one shall sell any woolen cloth that shrinks when it is wet.
No one shall use a rope or device to stretch cloth for sale so to make
it appear as more in quantity than it is.
No one may sell cloth at retail unless the town where it was dressed,
dyed, and pressed has placed its seal on the cloth. Cloth may not be
pressed with a hot press, but only with a cold press.
Only artificers using the cutting of leather, may buy and sell tanned
leather and only for the purpose of converting it into made wares.
A beggar's child above five years may be taken into service by anyone
that will.
Cattle may be bought only in the open fair or market and only by a
butcher or for a household, team, or dairy, but not for resale live.
Butter and cheese shall not be bought to be sold again except at retail
in open shop, fair, or market.
No man may enter a craft of cloth-making until he has been an
apprentice for seven years or has married a clothiers' wife and
practicing the trade for years with her and her servants sorting the
wool.
No country person shall sell wares such as linen drapery, wool drapery,
hats, or groceries by retail in any incorporated town, but only in open
fairs.
For every 60 sheep there shall be kept one milk cow because of the
scarcity of cattle.
No clothier may keep more than one wool loom in his house, because many
weavers do not have enough work to support their families. No weaver may
have more than two wool looms.
No clothmaker, fuller, shearman, weaver, tailor, or shoemaker shall
retain a journeyman to work by the piece for less than a three month
period. Every craftsman who has three apprentices shall have one
journeyman. Servants in agriculture and bargemen shall serve by the
whole year and not by day wages.
There shall be a sales tax of 12d. per pound of wool cloth goods for
the Crown.
All people shall attend church on Sundays to remember God's benefits
and goodness to all and to give thanks for these with prayers and to
pray to be given daily necessities.
Anyone fighting in church shall be excluded from the fellowship of the
parish community.
No one going from house to house to repair metal goods or sell small
goods he is carrying may do this trade outside the town where he lives.
No one may sell ale or beer without a license, because there have been
too many disorders in common alehouses. Offenders may be put in the town
or county gaol for three days.
Only persons with yearly incomes of 1,333s. or owning goods worth
13,333s. may store wine in his house and only for the use of his
household.
No one may sell forged iron, calling it steel, because the edged tools
and weapons made from it are useless.
Parish communities shall repair the highways for four days each year
using oxen, cart, plough, shovels, and spades.
The children of priests are declared legitimate so they may inherit
their ancestor's lands. The priests may be tenants by courtesy after the
death of their wives of such land and tenements that their wives
happened to be seized of in fee simple or in fee tail, during the
spousals.
As of 1541, it was felony to practice witchcraft, sorcery, enchantment,
or conjuration for the purpose 1) of obtaining money, or 2) to consume
any person in his body, members, or goods, or 3) to provoke any person
to unlawful love or lucre of money, or 4) to declare where stolen goods
be, or 5) to despite Christ, or 6) to pull down any cross.
The Year Books of case decisions ceased in 1535.
- Judicial Procedure -
By royal proclamation of 1546, only those admitted by the Chancellor
and two chief justices may practice as counsel or in legal pleading in
any of the King's courts. Also, such a person must be serjeant-at-law,
reader, utter barrister, or an eight-year fellow of one of the four
houses of court, except in the Court of Common Pleas.
Doctors of the civil law may practice in the church or Chancery courts.
Justices shall tax inhabitants of the county for building gaols
throughout the nation, for imprisonment of felons, to be kept by the
sheriffs and repaired out of the Exchequer.
Piracy at sea or in river or creek or port are adjudicated in counties
because of the difficulty of obtaining witnesses from the ship, who
might be murdered or who are on other voyages on the sea, for
adjudication by the admiral.
Piracy and murder on ships is punishable by death only after confession
or proof by disinterested witnesses.
Land held by tenants in common may be partitioned by court order,
because some of these tenants have cut down all the trees to take the
wood and pulled down the houses to convert the material to their own
use.
Persons worth 800s. a year in goods shall be admitted in trials of
felons in corporate towns although they have no freehold of land.
Each justice of the high courts may employ one chaplain.
The Privy Council took the authority of the star chamber court, which
organized itself as a specialty court. Also, a specific group of
full-time councilors heard pleas of private suitors.
The bishops, nobility, and Justices of the Peace were commanded to
imprison clergy who taught papal authority. Justices of the Peace and
sheriffs were to watch over the bishops. The Justices of Assize were to
assess the effectiveness of the Justices of the Peace as well as enforce
the treason statute on circuit.
The criminal court went outside the common law to prosecute political
enemies, e.g. by dispensing with a jury.
Since the nation was now peaceful, expediency was no longer needed, so
judicial procedures again became lengthy and formal with records.
The Chancery court enforced the obligations known as trusts, in the
name of equity and good conscience. It adopted every analogy that the
common law presented. Its procedure was to force the defendant to answer
on oath the charges that were brought against him. All pleadings and
usually testimony was put into writing. Much evidence consisted of
written affidavits. There was no jury. The Chancery court did not record
its decisions apparently because it did not see itself s bound by
precedents.
Witnesses could be sworn in to state pertinent facts necessary for full
understanding and adjudication of cases, because they are reliable now
that there is no unlicensed livery and maintenance and because jurors no
longer necessarily know all the relevant facts.
When acting as the highest court, the House of Lords was presided over
by the Chancellor, who sat on his prescribed place on the wool sacks. It
had the following jurisdiction: trial of peers for high treason and
serious felony, appeals on writs of error from courts of the common law,
and impeachment. The House of Lords served as judge of impeachment
cases, whereas the House of Commons served as fact finders.
The leet court and sheriff's turn court have much less jurisdiction.
They may dispose of presentments of trespasses and nuisances, but not
felony or question of freehold. Such presentments are made by a set of
at least twelve men, and the presented person is amerced there and then.
The humanist intellectual revival caused the church courts to try to
eliminate contradictions with state law, for instance in debt,
restitution, illegitimacy, and the age of legal majority.
- - - Chapter 13 - - -
- The Times: 1558-1601 -
Queen Elizabeth I was intelligent, educated, and wise about human
nature. When young, she was a brilliant student and studied the Bible,
philosophy, literature, oratory, and Greek and Roman history. She wrote
in English, Latin, French, and Italian. She read Greek, including the
Greek Testament, Greek orators, and Greek dramatists, at age seven, when
the first professorship of Greek was founded at Cambridge University.
Learning from books was one of her highest values throughout her life.
She read so much and was so influenced by Cicero that she acquired his
style of writing. Her Chief Secretary William Cecil was so guided by
Cicero's "Offices" that he carried a copy in his pocket. Cicero opined
that government officials had a duty to make the safety and interest of
citizens its greatest aim and to influence all their thoughts and
endeavors without ever considering personal advantage. Government was
not to serve the interest of any one group to the prejudice or neglect
of the rest, for then discord and sedition would occur. Furthermore, a
ruler should try to become loved and not feared, because men hated those
whom they feared, and wished themdead. Therefore obedience proceeding
from fear could not last, whereas that which was the effect of love
would last forever. An oppressor ruling by terror would be resented by
the citizens, who in secret would choose a worthier person. Then
liberty, having been chained up, would be unleashed more fiercely than
otherwise. To obtain the peoples' love, a ruler should be kind and
bountiful. To obtain the peoples' trust, a ruler should be just, wise,
and faithful. To demonstrate this, a ruler should be eloquent in showing
the people an understanding better than theirs, the wisdom to anticipate
events, and the ability to deal with adverse events. And this
demonstration should be done with modesty. One cannot get the peoples'
trust by vain shows, hypocritical pretenses, composed countenances, and
studied forms of words. The first goal of a ruler is to take care that
each individual is secured in the quiet enjoyment of his own property.
The second goal is to impose taxes that are not burdensome. The third
goal is to furnish the people with necessaries. The law should be
enforced keeping in mind that its fundamental purpose is to keep up
agreement and union among citizens.
Elizabeth cared deeply for the welfare of all citizens of whatever
class. She was sensitive to public opinion and was loved by her people.
She respected truth and was sincere, avoiding guile or fraud. She
claimed that she had never dishonored her tongue with a falsehood to
anyone. She expected that any covert manipulations by monarchs would be
found out and therefore would damage their credibility. "It becometh
therefor all of our rank to deal sincerely; lest if we use it not, when
we do it we be hardly believed."
She was frugal and diplomatically avoided unnecessary wars, saying that
her purse was the pockets of her people. Her credit reputation was so
good that she could always get loans at small rates of interest from
other countries. England was a small Protestant nation threatened by the
larger Catholic nations of France and Spain. When Elizabeth flirted and
talked of marriage with foreign princes, they laid aside any thoughts of
conquering England by war, hoping to obtain it my marriage. Not only did
she not seek to conquer other lands, but she turned down an invitation
to rule the Netherlands.
Elizabeth prayed for divine guidance as in this prayer: "Almighty God
and King of all kings, Lord of heaven and earth, by whose leave earthly
princes rule over mortals, when the most prudent of kings who
administered a kingdom, Solomon, frankly confessed that he was not
capable enough unless Thou broughtst him power and help, how much less
am I, Thy handmaid, in my unwarlike sex and feminine nature, adequate to
administer these Thy kingdoms of England and of Ireland, and to govern
an innumerable and warlike people, or able to bear the immense magnitude
of such a burden, if Thou, most merciful Father didst not provide for me
(undeserving of a kingdom) freely and against the opinion of many men.
Instruct me from heaven, and give help so that I reign by Thy grace,
without which even the wisest among the sons of men can think nothing
rightly. Send therefore, O inexhaustible Fount of all wisdom, from Thy
holy heaven and the most high throne of Thy majesty, Thy wisdom to be
ever with me, that it may keep watch with me in governing the
commonwealth, and that it may take pains, that it may teach me, Thy
handmaid, and may train me that I may be able to distinguish between
good and evil, equity and iniquity, so as rightly to judge Thy people,
justly to impose deserved punishments on those who do harm, mercifully
to protect the innocent, freely to encourage those who are industrious
and useful to the commonwealth. And besides, that I may know what is
acceptable to Thee alone, vouchsafe that I wish, dare, and can perform
it without paying respect to any earthly persons or things. So that when
Thou Thyself, the just Judge, who askest many and great things from
those to whom many and great things are entrusted, when Thou requirest
an exact accounting, charge me not with badly administering my
commonwealth and kingdom. But if by human thoughtlessness or infirmity
Thy handmaid strays from the right in some thing, absolve me of it by
Thy mercy, most high King and most mild Father, for the sake of Thy Son
Jesus Christ; and at the same time grant that after this worldly kingdom
has been exacted of me, I may enjoy with Thee an eternity in Thy
heavenly and unending kingdom, through the same Jesus Christ, Thy Son
and the Assessor of Thy kingdom, our Lord and Mediator. To whom with
Thee and with the Holy Spirit, one everlasting King, immortal,
invisible, only-wise God, be all honor and glory forever and ever,
amen.
Elizabeth promoted commercial speculations, which diffused a vast
increase of wealth among her people. The Elizabethan era was one of
general prosperity. Her good spirits and gayness created a happy mood in
the nation. She loved dancing and madrigal music was popular. She came
to dress elaborately and fancifully. Her dresses were fitted not only at
the waist, but along the torso by a long and pointed bodice stiffened
with wood, steel, or whalebone. Her skirt was held out with a petticoat
with progressively larger hoops. There were two layers of skirt with the
top one parted to show the bottom one. The materials used were silks,
satins, velvets, and brocades. On her dress were quiltings, slashings,
and embroidery. It was covered with gold ornaments, pearls, gems, and
unusual stones from America. She wore decorated gloves. Ladies copied
her and discarded their simple over-tunics for elaborate dresses. The
under-tunic became a petticoat and the over-tunic a dress. Often they
also wore a fan with a mirror, a ball of scent, a miniature portrait of
someone dear to them, and sometimes a watch. Single ladies did not wear
hats, but had long, flowing hair and low cut dresses showing their
bosoms. Married ladies curled their hair and wore it in high masses on
their heads with jewels interwoven into it. Both gentlemen and ladies
wore hats both indoors and outside and large, pleated collars around
their necks (with the newly discovered starch), perfume, rings with
stones or pearls, and high-heeled shoes. Gentlemen's' tight sleeves,
stiffened and fitted doublet with short skirt, and short cloak were
ornamented and their silk or velvet hats flamboyant, with feathers. At
their leather belts they hung pouches and perhaps a watch. They wore
both rapiers [swords with cutting edges] and daggers daily as there were
many quarrels. There were various artistic beard cuts and various
lengths of hair, which was often curled and worn in ringlets. Barbers
sought to give a man a haircut that would favor his appearance, for
instance a long slender beard for a round face to make it seem narrower
and a broad and large cut for a lean and straight face. Men now wore
stuffed breeches and stockings instead of long hosen. Some wore a
jeweled and embroidered codpiece between their legs to emphasize their
virility. Both gentlemen and ladies wore silk stockings and socks over
them and then boots. Coats dipped in boiled linseed oil with resin
served as raincoats. Both men and women wore velvet or wool full length
nightgowns with long sleeves and fur lining and trimming to bed, which
was the custom for the next 150 years. Fashions changed every year due
to the introduction of cheaper, lighter, and less durable cloths by
immigrant craftsmen. When Elizabeth became old, she had a wig made to
match her youthful long red hair. Other ladies then began wearing wigs.
Every few years, Elizabeth issued a proclamation reminding people of
the apparel laws and reiterating certain provisions which had been
disregarded. For instance, only the royal family and dukes and marquises
in mantles [cloaks] of the garter could wear the color purple. One had
to be at least an earl to wear gold or silver or sable. Only dukes,
marquises, earls and their children, barons, and knights of the order
could wear imported wool, velvet, crimson, scarlet, or blue, or certain
furs., except that barons' sons, knights, or men who could dispend at
least 200 pounds yearly could wear velvet in gowns or coats, embroidery,
and furs of leopards. Spurs, swords, rapiers, daggers, and woodknives
were restricted to knights and barons' sons or higher. A man who could
dispend at least 100 pounds per year could wear taffeta, satin, damask,
or cloth made of camels' hair and silk, in his outer garments. One had
to be the son and heir or the daughter of a knight or wife of said son
or a man who could dispend 20 pounds yearly or had 200 pounds worth in
goods to wear silk in one's hat, bonnet, nightcap, girdle, scabbard, or
hose. Yeomen, husbandmen, serving men, and craftsmen were very
restricted in what they could wear. Poor men wore skirted fustian
tunics, loose breeches, and coarse stockings or canvas leggings.
Children wore the same type of apparel as their elders. They were given
milk at meals for good growth. It was recognized that sickness could be
influenced by diet and herbs. Sickness was still viewed as an imperfect
balance of the four humors.
Women spent much of their time doing needlework and embroidery. Since
so many of the women who spent their days spinning were single,
unmarried women became known as "spinsters".
There were many lifestyle possibilities in the nation: gentleman, that
is one who owned land or was in a profession such as a attorney,
physician, priest or who was a university graduate, government official,
or a military officer; employment in agriculture, arts, sciences;
employment in households and offices of noblemen and gentlemen;
self-sufficient farmers with their own farm; fisherman or mariner on the
sea or apprentice of such; employment by carriers of grain into cities,
by market towns, or for digging, seeking, finding, getting, melting,
fining, working, trying, making of any silver, tin, lead, iron, copper,
stone, coal; glassmaker.
Typical wages in the country were: field-workers 2-3d. a day, ploughmen
1s. a week with board, shepherd 6d. a week and board, his boy 2 1/2 d.,
hedgers 6d. a day, threshers 3-7d. depending on the grain, thatching for
five days 2d., master mason or carpenter or joiner 4d. a day and food or
8d. without food, a smith 2d. a day with food, a bricklayer 2 1/2 d. a
day with food, a shoemaker 2d. a day with food. These people lived
primarily on food from their own ground.
There was typical work for each month of the year in the country:
January - ditching and hedging after the frost broke, February - catch
moles in the meadows, March - protect the sheep from prowling dogs,
April - put up hop poles, sell bark to the tanner before the timber is
felled, fell elm and ash for carts and ploughs, fell hazel for forks,
fell sallow for rakes, fell horn for flails, May - weed and hire
children to pick up stones from the fallow land, June - wash and shear
the sheep, July - hay harvest, August - wheat harvest, September and
October - gather the fruit, sell the wool from the summer shearing,
stack logs for winter, buy salt fish for Lent in the town and lay it up
to dry, November - have the chimneys swept before winter, thresh grain
in the barn, December - grind tools, repair yokes, forks, and farm
implements, cover strawberry and flower beds with straw to protect them
from the cold, split kindling wood with beetle and wedge, tan their
leather, make leather jugs, make baskets for catching fish, and carve
wood spoons, plates, and bowls.
There was a wave of building and renovation activity in town and
country. Housing is now, for the first time, purely for dwelling and not
for defense. Houses were designed symmetrically with decorative features
instead of a haphazard addition of rooms. Windows were large and put on
the outer walls instead of just inside the courtyard. A scarcity of
timber caused proportionally more stone to be used for dwelling houses
and proportionately more brick to be used for royal palaces and
mansions. The rest of the house was plaster painted white interspersed
with vertical, horizontal, and sloping timber, usually oak, painted
black. There were locks and bolts for protection from intruders. The
hall was still the main room, and usually extended up to the roof.
Richly carved screens separated the hall from the kitchen. The floors
were stone or wood, and sometimes tile. They were often covered with
rushes or plaited rush mats, on which incomers could remove the mud from
their boots. Some private rooms had carpets on the floor. Walls were
smoothly plastered or had carved wood paneling to control drafts.
Painted cloths replaced tapestries on walls. Family portraits decorated
some walls, usually in the dining room. Iron stands with candles were
hung from the ceiling and used on tables. Plastered ceilings and a
lavish use of glass made rooms lighter and cozy. Broad and gracious open
stairways with carved wood banisters replaced the narrow winding stone
steps of a circular stairwell. Most houses had several ornamented brick
chimneys and clear, but uneven, glass in the windows. There were
fireplaces in living rooms, dining rooms, kitchen, and bedrooms, as well
as in the hall and great chamber. Parlors were used for eating and
sitting only, but not for sleeping. Closets were rooms off bedrooms in
which one could read and write on a writing table, and store one's
books, papers, maps, calendar, medals, collections, rarities, and
oddities. Sometimes there was a study room or breakfast room as well. A
gentleman used his study not only to read and to write, but to hold
collections of early chronicles, charters, deeds, copied manuscripts,
and coins that reflected the budding interest in antiquarianism; and to
study his family genealogy, for which he had hired someone to make an
elaborate diagram. He was inclined to have a few classical, religious,
medical, legal, and political books there. Rooms were more spacious than
before and contained oak furniture such as enclosed cupboards; cabinets;
buffets from which food could be served; tables, chairs and benches with
backs and cushions, and sometimes with arms; lidded chests for storing
clothes and linens, and occasionally chests of drawers or wardrobes,
either hanging or with shelves, for clothes. Chests of drawers developed
from a drawer at the bottom of a wardrobe. Carpeting covered tables,
chests, and beds. Great houses had a wardrobe chamber with a fireplace
in front of which the yeoman of the wardrobe and his assistants could
repair clothes and hangings. Separate bedchambers replaced bed-sitting
rooms. Bedrooms all led out of each other. The lady's chamber was next
to her lord's chamber, and her ladies' chambers were close to her
chamber. But curtains on the four-poster beds with tops provided privacy
and warmth. Beds had elaborately carved bedsteads, sheets, and a feather
cover as well as a feather mattress. Often family members, servants, and
friends shared the same bed for warmth or convenience. Each bedroom
typically had a cabinet with a mirror, e.g. of burnished metal or
crystal, and comb on top. One brushed his teeth with tooth soap and a
linen cloth, as physicians advised. Each bedroom had a pitcher and water
bowl, usually silver or pewter, for washing in the morning, and a
chamber pot or a stool with a hole over a bucket for nighttime use, and
also fragrant flowers to override the unpleasant odors. The chamber pots
and buckets were emptied into cesspits. A large set of lodgings had
attached to it latrines consisting of a small cell in which a seat with
a hole was placed over a shaft which connected to a pit or a drain. The
servants slept in turrets or attics. Elizabeth had a room just for her
bath.
Breakfast was substantial, with meat, and usually eaten in one's
bedroom. The great hall, often hung around with bows, pikes, swords, and
guns, was not abandoned, but the family took meals there only on rare
occasions. Instead they withdrew to a parlor, for domestic use, or the
great chamber, for entertaining. Parlors were situated on the ground
floor: the family lived and relaxed there, and had informal meals in a
dining parlor.
More than medieval castles and manor houses, mansions were designed
with privacy in mind. The formal or "state" rooms were on the first
floor above the ground floor, usually comprising a great chamber, a
withdrawing chamber, one or more bedchambers, and a long gallery. Each
room had carved chairs and cabinets. Taking a meal in the great chamber
involved the same ceremonial ritual as in the manorial great chamber
dating from the 1400s. The table was covered with a linen cloth. The
lady of the house sat in a chair at the upper end of the table and was
served first. People of high rank sat at her end of the table "above"
the fancy silver salt cellar and pepper. People of low rank sat "below"
it near the other end of the table. Grace was said before the meal. Noon
dinner and supper were served by cupbearer, sewer, carver, and
assistants. Fine clear Italian glass drinking vessels replaced even gold
and silver goblets. Food was eaten from silver dishes with silver
spoons. Some gentry used two-pronged forks. Meats were plentiful and
varied: e.g. beef, mutton, veal, lamb, kid, pork, hare, capon, red deer,
fish and wild fowl as well as the traditional venison and brawn [boar].
Kitchen gardens and orchards supplied apricots, almonds, gooseberries,
raspberries, melons, currants, oranges, and lemons as well as the
traditional apples, pears, plums, mulberries, quinces, pomegranates,
figs, cherries, walnuts, chestnuts, hazel nuts, filberts, almonds,
strawberries, blackberries, dewberries, blueberries, and peaches. Also
grown were sweet potatoes, artichokes, cabbages, turnips, broad beans,
peas, pumpkins, cucumbers, radishes, carrots, celery, parsnips, onions,
garlic, leeks, endive, capers, spinach, sorrel, lettuce, parsley,
mustard, cress, sage, tarragon, fennel, thyme, mint, savory, rhubarb,
and medicinal herbs. The well-to-do started to grow apricots, peaches,
and oranges under glass. Sugar was used to make sweet dishes. Toothpicks
made of brass or silver or merely a stiff quill were used. After the
meal, some men and women were invited for conversation in a withdrawing
or drawing chamber. Some might take a walk in the gardens. After the
upper table was served, the food was sent to the great hall to the
steward and high household officers at the high table and other
servants: serving men and women, bakers, brewers, cooks, pot cleaners,
laundresses, shepherds, hogherds, dairy maids, falconers, huntsmen, and
stable men. What was left was given to the poor at the gates of the
house. Great chambers were used primarily for meals, but also for music;
dancing; plays; masques; playing cards, dice, backgammon, or chess; and
daily prayers if there was no chapel.
Without the necessity of fortifications, the estate of a noble or
gentleman could spread out to include not only a garden for the kitchen,
but extensive orchards and beautiful formal gardens of flowers and
scrubs, sometimes with fountains and maybe a maze of hedges. Trees were
planted, pruned, and grafted onto each other.
Householders had the responsibility to teach their family and servants
religion and morals, and often read from the Bible to them. Many thought
that the writers of the Bible wrote down the exact words of God, so the
passages of the Bible should be taken literally. A noble lord made
written rules with penalties for his country household, which numbered
about a hundred, including family, retainers, and servants. He enforced
them by fines, flogging, and threats of dismissal. The lady of the house
saw that the household held together as an economic and social unit. The
noble's family, retainers, guests, and the head servants, such as
chaplain and children's tutor, and possibly a musician, dined together
at one table. The family included step children and married sons and
daughters with their spouses. Young couples often lived with the parents
of one of them. Chandeliers of candles lit rooms. There were sandglass
clocks. Popular home activities included reading, conversation,
gardening, and music-making. Smoking tobacco from a clay pipe and taking
snuff became popular with men. For amusement, one of the lord's
household would take his place in managing the estate for twelve days.
He was called the "lord of misrule", and mimicked his lord, and issued
comic orders. Clothes were washed in rivers and wells. At spring
cleanings, windows were opened, every washable surface washed, and
feather beds and pillows exposed to the sun.
Most dwellings were of brick and stone. Only a few were of wood or mud
and straw. The average house was now four rooms instead of three. Yeomen
might have six rooms. A weaver's house had a hall, two bedrooms, and a
kitchen besides the shop. Farmers might have two instead of one room. A
joiner had a one-room house with a feather bed and bolster. Even
craftsmen, artificers and simple farmers slept on feather beds on bed
frames with pillows, sheets, blankets, and coverlets. Loom tapestry and
painted cloth was hung to keep out the cold in their single story homes.
They also had pewter spoons and plates, instead of just wood or
earthenware ones. Even the poorer class had glass drinking vessels,
though of a coarse grade. The poor still used wooden plates and spoons.
Laborers had canvas sheets. Richer farmers would build a chamber above
the hall, replacing the open hearth with a fireplace and chimney at a
wall. Poorer people favored ground floor extensions, adding a kitchen or
second bedchamber to their cottages. Kitchens were often separate
buildings to reduce the risk of fire. Roasting was done on a spit and
baking in irons boxes placed in the fire or in a brick oven at the side
of the fireplace. Sometimes dogs were used to turn a spit by continual
running in a treadmill. Some people lived in hovels due to the custom in
many places that a person could live in a home he built on village waste
land if he could build it in one night.
Yeomen farmers still worked from dawn to dusk. Mixed farming began. In
this, some of the arable land produced food for man and the rest
produced food for sheep, cattle, pigs, and poultry. This was made
possible by the introduction of clover, artificial grasses, and turnip
and other root crops for the animals. Since the sheep ate these crops in
the field, they provided manure to maintain the fertility of the soil.
This meant that many animals could be maintained throughout the winter
instead of being slaughtered and salted. So salted meat and salted fish
were no longer the staple food of the poorer people during the winter.
Farm laborers ate soup, porridge, milk, cheese, bacon, and beer or mead
(depending on the district), and dark barley or rye bread, which often
served as his plate. Gentlemen ate wheat bread. There was a scarcity of
fruits and vegetables that adversely affected the health of the affluent
as well as of the poor due to the overall decline in farming. During
winter, there were many red noses and coughing. Farmers' wives used
looms as well as spinning wheels with foot treadles.
The value of grain and meat rose compared to wool. Grain became six
times its value in the previous reign. Wool fell from 20s.8d. per tod to
16s. So sheep farming, which had taken about 5% of the arable land, was
supplanted somewhat by crop raising, and the rural population could be
employed for agriculture. In some places, the threefold system of
rotation was replaced by alternating land used for crops with that used
for pasture. The necessity of manuring and the rotation of crops and
grasses such as clover for enrichment of the soil were recognized.
Wheat, rye, barley, peas, and beans were raised. There was much
appropriation of common land by individual owners by sale or force. Many
farms were enclosed by fences or hedges so that each holder could be
independent of his neighbors. Red and black currants, rhubarb, apricots,
and oranges were now grown. These independent farmers could sell wool to
clothiers, and butter, cheese, and meat to the towns. They also often
did smithwork and ironwork, making nails, horseshoes, keys, locks, and
agricultural implements to sell. A laborer could earn 6d. a day in
winter and 7d. a day in summer. Unfree villeinage ceased on the royal
estates. But most land was still farmed in common and worked in strips
without enclosure. Elizabeth made several proclamations ordering the
enclosure of certain enclosed land to be destroyed and the land returned
to tillage. Windmills now had vanes replacing manual labor to change the
position of their sails when the wind direction changed. Prosperous
traders and farmers who owned their own land assumed local offices as
established members of the community.
The population of the nation was about five million. Population
expansion had allowed landlords to insist on shorter leases and higher
rents, instead of having to choose between accepting a long lease and
good rent or allowing their estates to pass out of cultivation. Over 50%
of the population were on the margin of subsistence. 90% of the
population lived in the countryside and 5% in the London and 5% in the
other towns. Life expectancy was about 40 years of age. Over 50% were
under the age of 23, while only about 9% were over 60. Fluctuations in
rates of population growth were traceable back to bad harvests and to
epidemics and the two were still closely related to each other: "first
dirth and then plague".
Most of London was confined within the city wall. There were orchards
and gardens both inside and outside the walls, and fields outside.
Flower gardens and nurseries came into existence. No part of the city
was more than a ten minute walk to the fields. Some wealthy merchants
had four story mansions or country houses outside the city walls. The
suburbs of the City of London grew in a long line along the river; on
the west side were noblemen's houses on both sides of the Strand. East
of the Tower was a seafaring and industrial population. Goldsmiths' Row
was replete with four story houses. A few wealthy merchants became
money- lenders for interest, despite the law against usury. The mayor of
London was typically a rich merchant prince. Each trade occupied its own
section of the town and every shop had its own signboard, for instance,
hat and cap sellers, cloth sellers, grocers, butchers, cooks, taverns,
and booksellers. Many of the London wards were associated with a craft,
such as Candlewick Ward, Bread St. Ward, Vintry Ward, and Cordwainer
Ward. Some wards were associated with their location in the city, such
as Bridge Ward, Tower Ward, Aldgate Ward, Queenhithe Ward, and
Billingsgate Ward. People lived at the back or on the second floor of
their shops. In the back yard, they grew vegetables such as melons,
carrots, turnips, cabbages, pumpkins, parsnips, and cucumbers; herbs;
and kept a pig. The pigs could still wander through the streets. Hyde
Park was the Queen's hunting ground. London had a small zoo of ten
animals, including a lion, tiger, lynx, and wolf.
London was England's greatest manufacturing city. By 1600 the greatest
trading companies in London ceased to be associated only with their
traditional goods and were dominated by merchants whose main interest
was in the cloth trade. Ambitious merchants joined a livery company to
become freemen of the city and for the status and social benefits of
membership. The companies still made charitable endowments, had funeral
feasts, cared for the welfare of guild members, and made lavish displays
of pageantry. They were intimately involved with the government of the
city. They supplied members for the Court of Aldermen, which relied on
the companies to maintain the City's emergency grain stores, to assess
and collect taxes, to provide loans to the Crown, to control prices and
markets, to provide armed men when trouble was expected, and to raise
armies for the Crown at times of rebellion, war, or visits from foreign
monarchs. From about 1540 to 1700, there were 23% involved in cloth or
clothing industries such as weavers, tailors, hosiers, haberdashers, and
cappers. 9% were leatherworkers such as skinners; tanners; those in the
heavy leather crafts such as shoemakers, saddlers, and cobblers; and
those in the light leather crafts such as glovers and pursers. Another
9% worked in metals, such as the armorers, smiths, cutlers, locksmiths,
and coppersmiths. 8% worked in the building trades. The victualing
trades, such as bakers, brewers, butchers, costermongers [sold fruit and
vegetables from a cart or street stand], millers, fishmongers,
oystermen, and tapsters [bartender], grew from 9% before 1600 to 16% by
1700. Of London's workforce, 60% were involved in production; 13% were
merchants before 1600; 7% were merchants by 1700; 7% were transport
workers such as watermen, sailors, porters, coachmen, and shipwrights;
and 5-9% were professionals and officials (this number declining). Life
in London was lived in the open air in the streets. The merchant
transacted business agreements and the attorney saw his clients in the
street or at certain pillars at St. Paul's Church, where there was a
market for all kinds of goods and services, including gentlemen's
valets, groceries, spirits, books, and loans, which continued even
during the daily service. Some gentlemen had offices distant from their
dwelling houses such as attorneys, who had a good income from trade
disputes and claims to land, which often changed hands. Plays and
recreation also occurred in the streets, such as performances by
dancers, musicians, jugglers, clowns, tumblers, magicians, and men who
swallowed fire. The churches were continuously open and used by trades
and peddlers, including tailors and letter-writers. Water carriers
carried water in wood vessels on their shoulders from the Thames River
or its conduits to the inhabitants three gallons at a time. A gentleman
concocted an engine to convey Thames water by lead pipes up into men's
houses in a certain section of the city. In 1581, a man took out a lease
on one of the arches of London Bridge. There he built a waterwheel from
which he pumped water to residents who lived beside the bridge.
Soldiers, adventurers, physicians, apprentices, prostitutes, and cooks
were all distinguishable by their appearances. An ordinance required
apprentices to wear long blue gowns and white breeches with stockings,
with no ornamentation of silk, lace, gold or silver and no jewelry. They
could wear a meat knife, but not a sword or dagger. Apprentices lived
with their masters and worked from 6 or 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. Some people
knitted wool caps as they walked to later sell. There were sections of
town for booksellers, butchers, brewers, hosiers, shoemakers, curriers,
cooks, poulters, bow makers, textwriters, pattenmakers, and horse and
oxen sellers. Large merchant companies had great halls for trade, such
as the mercers, grocers, drapers, fishmongers, and goldsmiths. The other
great guilds were the skinners, merchant tailers, salters, haberdashers,
ironmongers, vintners, and clothworkers. Smaller guilds were those of
the bakers, weavers, fruiterers, dyers, Thames watermen and lightermen,
carpenters, joiners, turners, and parish clerks. The guilds insured
quality by inspecting goods for a fee.
About 1571, mercer and Merchant Adventurer Thomas Gresham established
the Royal Exchange as a place for merchants and brokers to meet for
business purposes. It became the center of London's business life. Its
great bell rang at midday and at 6 p.m. Its courtyard was lined with
shops that rented at 50s. yearly and became a popular social and
recreational area. Gresham formulated his law that when two kinds of
money of equal denomination but unequal intrinsic value are in
circulation at the same time, the one of greater value will tend to be
hoarded or exported, i.e. bad money will drive good money out of
circulation.
The work-saving knitting frame was invented in 1589 by minister William
Lee; it knit crosswise loops using one continuous yarn and was operated
by hand. The stocking knitters, who knitted by hand, put up a bitter
struggle against its use and chased Lee out of the country. But it did
come into use. Some framework stocking knitters paid frame rent for the
use of their knitting frames. Frame knitting became a scattered
industry.
By 1600 basement services were frequently found in town houses built on
restricted sites in London. Lastly, provision of water supplies and
improved sanitary arrangements reflected concern with private and public
health. There was virtually no drainage. In the case of town houses,
some owners would go to considerable effort to solve drainage problems,
often paying cash to the civic authorities, but sometimes performing
some service for the town at Court or at Westminster, in return for
unlimited water or some drainage. Most affluent households, including
the Queen's, moved from house to house, so their cesspits could be
cleaned out and the vacated buildings aired after use. A few cesspits
were made air tight. Otherwise, there was extensive burning of incense.
Refuse was emptied out of front doors and shoveled into heaps on street
corners. It was then dumped into the Thames or along the highways
leading out of town. People put on perfume to avoid the stench. By 1600,
the first toilet and water closet, where water flushed away the waste,
was built. This provided a clean toilet area all year round. But these
toilets were not much used because of sewer smells coming from them. The
sky above London was darkened somewhat by the burning of coal in houses.
Taverns served meals as well as ale. They were popular meeting places
for both men and women of all backgrounds to met their friends. Men went
to taverns for camaraderie and to conduct business. Women usually went
to taverns with each other. Two taverns in particular were popular with
the intelligentsia. Music was usually played in the background and games
were sometimes played. Beer made with hops and malt was introduced and
soon there were beer drinking contests. Drunkenness became a problem.
At night, the gates of the city were closed and citizens were expected
to hang out lanterns. The constable and his watchmen carried lanterns
and patrolled the streets asking anyone they saw why they were out so
late at night. Crime was rampant in the streets and criminals were
executed near to the crime scene.
There were a few horse-drawn coaches with leather flaps or curtains in
the unglazed windows to keep out the weather. The main thoroughfare in
London was still the Thames River. Nobles, peers, and dignitaries living
on the Thames had their own boats and landings. Also at the banks,
merchants of all nations had landing places where ships unloaded,
warehouses, and cellars for goods and merchandise. Swans swam in the
clear bright water. Watermen rowed people across the Thames for a fee.
In Southwark were theaters, outlaws, cutpurses, prostitutes, and
prisons. In 1550 Southwark became the 26th and last ward of London. In
the summer, people ate supper outside in public.
As of old times, brokers approved by the Mayor and aldermen made
contracts with merchants concerning their wares. Some contracts included
holding wares as security. Some craftsmen and manual workers extended
this idea to used garments and household articles, which they took as
pawns, or security for money loaned. This began pawn brokerage, which
was lucrative. The problem was that many of the items pawned had been
stolen.
Elizabeth had good judgment in selecting her ministers and advisors for
her Privy Council, which was organized like Henry VIII's Privy Council.
The Queen's Privy Council of about twelve ministers handled foreign
affairs, drafted official communiques, issued proclamations, supervised
the county offices: the 1500 Justices of the Peace, chief constables,
sheriffs, lord lieutenants, and the county militias. It fixed wages and
prices in London, advised Justices of the Peace on wages elsewhere, and
controlled exports of grain to keep prices down and supplies ample. It
banned the eating of meat two days a week so that the fishing industry
and port towns would prosper. When grain was scarce in 1596, Elizabeth
made a proclamation against those ingrossers, forestallers, and
ingraters of grain who increased its price by spreading false rumors
that it was scarce because much of it was being exported, which was
forbidden. There were labor strikes in some towns for higher wages after
periods of inflation. In 1591, London authorities rounded up the sturdy
vagabonds and set them to work cleaning out the city ditches for 4d. per
day.
Elizabeth did not allow any gentleman to live in London purely for
pleasure, but sent those not employed by the Court back to their country
manors to take care of and feed the poor of their parishes. Her
proclamation stated that "sundry persons of ability that had intended to
save their charges by living privately in London or towns corporate,
thereby leaving their hospitality and the relief of their poor
neighbors, are charged not to break up their households; and all others
that have of late time broken up their households to return to their
houses again without delay." She never issued a license for more than
100 retainers. She was partially successful in stopping Justices of the
Peace and sheriffs from wearing the liveries of great men. She continued
the policy of Henry VII to replace the rule of force by the rule of law.
Service of the crown and influence at court became a better route to
power and fortune than individual factions based on local power
structures. At the lowest level, bribery became more effective than
bullying. The qualities of the courtier, such as wit, and the lawyer
became more fashionable than the qualities of the soldier.
Most of the men in Elizabeth's court had attended a university, such as
Francis Bacon, son of the Lord Keeper, who became a writer, attorney,
member of the Commons, and experimental philosopher; and Walter Ralegh,
the writer and sea fighter, who had a humble origin. Many wives and
daughters of Privy Councilors attended the Queen in her privy chamber.
Most of the knights or gentlemen of the royal household were also
members of Parliament or Justices of the Peace for certain districts in
the counties. Instead of the office of Chancellor, which was the highest
legal office, Elizabeth appointed a man of common birth to be Lord
Keeper of the Great Seal; she never made a Lord Keeper a peer. Elizabeth
encouraged her lords to frankly make known their views to her, in public
or in private, before she decided on a course of action. She had
affectionate nicknames for her closest courtiers, and liked to make
puns. The rooms of the Queen were arranged as they had been under Henry
VIII: the great hall was the main dining room where the servants ate and
which Elizabeth attended on high days and holidays; the great chamber
was the main reception room, where her gentlemen and yeomen of the guard
waited; the presence chamber was where she received important visitors;
beyond lay her privy chamber and her bedchamber. She ate her meals in
the privy chamber attended only by her ladies. She believed that a light
supper was conducive to good health. The Lord Chamberlain attended the
Queen's person and managed her privy chamber and her well-born grooms
and yeomen and ladies-in-waiting. The Lord Steward managed the domestic
servants below the stairs, from the Lord Treasurer to the cooks and
grooms of the stable. The court did not travel as much as in the past,
but became associated with London. Elizabeth took her entire court on
summer visits to the country houses of leading nobility and gentry.
Courtiers adopted symbolic "devices" as statements of their reaction to
life or events, e.g. a cupid firing arrows at a unicorn signified
chastity under attack by sexual desire. They carried them enameled on
jewels, had them painted in the background of their portraits, and
sometimes had them expressed on furniture, plate, buildings, or food.
The authority of the Queen was the authority of the state. Elizabeth's
experience led her to believe that it was most important for a monarch
to have justice, temperance, magnanimity, and judgment. She claimed that
she never set one person before another, but upon just cause, and had
never preferred anyone to office for the preferrer's sake, but only when
she believed the person worthy and fit for the office. She never blamed
those who did their best and never discharged anyone form office except
for cause. Further, she had never been partial or prejudiced nor had
listened to any person contrary to law to pervert her verdicts. She
never credited a tale that was first told to her and never corrupted her
judgment with a censure before she had heard the cause. She did not
think that the glory of the title of monarch made all she did lawful. To
her, clemency was as eminent in supreme authority as justice and
severity.
Secular education and especially the profession of law was now the
route for an able but poor person to rise to power, rather than as
formerly through military service or through the church.
The first stage of education was primary education, which was devoted
to learning to read and write in English. This was carried out at
endowed schools or at home by one's mother or a tutor. The children of
the gentry were usually taught in their homes by private teachers of
small classes. Many of the poor became literate enough to read the Bible
and to write letters. However, most agricultural workers and laborers
remained illiterate. They signed with an "x", which represented the
Christian cross and signified its solemnity. Children of the poor were
expected to work from the age of 6 or 7.
The next stage of education was grammar [secondary] school or a private
tutor. A student was taught rhetoric (e.g. poetry, history, precepts of
rhetoric, and classical oratory), some logic, and Latin and Greek
grammar. English grammar was learned through Latin grammar and English
style through translation from Latin. As a result, they wrote English in
a Latin style. Literary criticism was learned through rhetoric. There
were disputations on philosophical questions such as how many angels
could sit on a pin's point, and at some schools, orations. The students
sat in groups around the hall for their lessons. The boys and some girls
were also taught hawking, hunting and archery. There were no
playgrounds. The grammar student and the undergraduate were tested for
proficiency by written themes and oral disputations, both in Latin. The
middle classes from the squire to the petty tradesman were brought into
contact with the works of the best Greek and Roman writers. The best
schools and many others had the students read Cicero - the "De
Officiis", the epistles and orations; and some of Ovid, Terence,
Sallust, Virgil, some medieval Latin works, the "Distichs" of Cato, and
sometimes Erasmus and Sir Thomas More. The students also had to repeat
prayers, recite the Lord's Prayer and the Ten Commandments, and to
memorize catechisms. Because the students came from the various social
classes such as gentlemen, parsons, yeomen, mercers, and masons, they
learned to be on friendly and natural terms with other classes. A
typical school-day lasted from 7:00 AM to 5:00 PM. There were so many
grammar schools founded and financed by merchants and guilds such as the
Mercers and Fishmongers that every incorporated town had at least one.
Grammar schools were headed by schoolmasters, who were licensed by the
bishop and paid by the town. Flogging with a birch rod was used for
discipline. However, the grammar schools did not become the breeding
grounds for humanist ideas because the sovereigns were faced with
religious atomism and political unrest, so used the grammar schools to
maintain public order and achieve political and religious conformity.
Many grammar schools had preparatory classes called "petties" for boys
and girls who could not read and write to learn to do so. The girls did
not usually stay beyond the age of nine. This was done by a
schoolmaster's assistant, a parish clerk, or some older boys.
Some founders of grammar schools linked their schools with particular
colleges in the universities following the example of Winchester being
associated with New College, Oxford; and Eton with King's College,
Cambridge. The new charter of Westminster in 1560 associated the school
with Christ Church, Oxford and Trinity College, Cambridge.
The government of Oxford University, which had been Catholic, was taken
from the resident teachers and put into the hands of the
Vice-Chancellor, Doctors, Heads of Colleges, and Proctors. Cambridge
already had a strong reformed element from Erasmus' influence. Oxford
University and Cambridge University were incorporated to have a
perpetual existence for the virtuous education of youth and maintenance
of good literature. The Chancellors, masters, and scholars had a common
seal. Oxford was authorized to and did acquire its own printing press.
Undergraduate students entered about age 16 and resided in rooms in
colleges rather than in scattered lodgings. The graduate fellows of the
college who were M.A.s of under three years standing had the
responsibility, instead of the university, for teaching the
undergraduates. This led many to regard their fellowship as a position
for life rather than until they completed their post-graduate studies.
But they were still required to resign on marrying or taking up an
ecclesiastical benefice. The undergraduates were fee-paying members of
the college or poor scholars. Some of the fee-paying members or
gentlemen-commoners or fellow-commoners were the sons of the nobility
and gentry and even shared the fellows' table. The undergraduate
students were required to have a particular tutors, who were responsible
for their moral behavior as well as their academic studies. It was
through the tutors that modern studies fit for the education of a
Renaissance gentleman became the norm. Those students not seeking a
degree could devise their own courses of study with their tutors
permission. Less than about 40% stayed long enough to get a degree. Many
students who were working on the seven year program for a Master's
Degree went out of residence at college after the four year's "bachelor"
course. Students had text books to read rather than simply listening to
a teacher read books to them.
In addition to the lecturing of the M.A.s and the endowed university
lectureships, the university held exercises every Monday, Wednesday, and
Friday in which the student was meant through disputation, to apply the
formal precepts in logic and rhetoric to the practical business of
public speaking and debate. Final examinations were still by
disputation. The students came to learn to read Latin easily. Students
acted in Latin plays. If a student went to a tavern, he could be
flogged. For too elaborate clothing, he could be fined. Fines for
absence from class were imposed. However, from this time until 1945, a
young man's university days were regarded as a period for the "sowing of
wild oats".
All students had to reside in a college or hall, subscribe to the 39
articles of the university, the Queen's supremacy, and the prayer book.
Meals were taken together in the college halls. The universities were
divided into three tables: a fellows' table of earls, barons, gentlemen,
and doctors; a second table of masters of arts, bachelors, and eminent
citizens, and a third table of people of low condition. Professors,
doctors, masters of arts and students were all distinguishable by their
gowns.
Undergraduate education was considered to be for the purpose of good
living as well as good learning. It was to affect the body, mind,
manners, sentiment, and business, instead of just leading to becoming a
better disputant. The emphasis on manners came mostly from an Italian
influence. The university curriculum included Latin and Greek languages
and was for four years. The student spent at least one year on logic
(syllogizing, induction, deduction, fallacies, and the application of
logic to other studies), at least one year on rhetoric, and at least one
year on philosophy. The latter included physics, metaphysics, history,
law, moral and political philosophy, modern languages, and ethics
(domestic principles of government, military history, diplomatic
history, and public principles of government), and mathematics
(arithmetic, geometry, algebra, music, optics, astronomy). The astronomy
taught was that of Ptolemy, whose view was that the celestial bodies
revolved around a spherical earth, on which he had laid out lines of
longitude and latitude. There were lectures on Greek and Latin
literature, including Aristotle, Plato, and Cicero. There were no
courses on English history in the universities.
About 1564, the curriculum was changed to two terms of grammar, four
terms of rhetoric, five terms of dialectic (examining ideas and opinions
logically, e.g. ascertaining truth by analyzing words in their context
and equivocations), three terms of arithmetic, and two terms of music.
There were now negative numbers, irrational numbers such as square roots
of non-integers, and imaginary numbers such as square roots of negative
numbers. The circumference and area of a circle could be computed from
its radius, and the Pythagorean theorem related the three sides of a
right triangle. Also available were astrology, alchemy (making various
substances such as acids and alcohols), cultivation of gardens, and
breeding of stock, especially dogs and horses. Astronomy, geometry,
natural and moral philosophy, and metaphysics were necessary for a
master's degree. The university libraries of theological manuscripts in
Latin were supplemented with many non-religious books.
There were graduate studies in theology, medicine, music, and law,
which was a merging of civil and canon law together with preparatory
work for studying common law at the Inns of Court in London.
In London, legal training was given at the four Inns of Court. Students
were called to dinner by a horn. Only young gentry were admitted there.
A year's residence there after university gave a gentleman's son enough
law to decide disputes of tenants on family estates or to act as Justice
of the Peace in his home county. A full legal education gave him the
ability to handle all family legal matters, including property matters.
Many later became Justices of the Peace or members of Parliament.
Students spent two years in the clerks' commons, and two in the masters'
commons. Besides reading textbooks in Latin, the students observed at
court and did work for practicing attorneys. After about four more
years' apprenticeship, a student could be called to the outer bar. There
was a real bar of iron or wood separating the justices from the
attorneys and litigants. As "Utter Barrister" or attorney, he would
swear to "do no falsehood in the court, increase no fees but be
contented with the old fees accustomed, delay no man for lucre or
malice, but use myself in the office of an Attorney within the Court
according to my learning and discretion, so help me God, Amen". Students
often also studied and attended lectures on astronomy, geography,
history, mathematics, theology, music, navigation, foreign languages,
and lectures on anatomy and medicine sponsored by the College of
Physicians. A tour of the continent became a part of every gentleman's
education. After about eight years' experience, attorneys could become
Readers, who gave lecturess; or Benchers, who made the rules. Benchers,
who were elected by other Benchers, were entrusted with the government
of their Inn of Court, and usually were King's counsel. Five to ten
years later, a few of these were picked by the Queen for Serjeant at
Law, and therefore eligible to plead at the bar of common pleas.
Justices were chosen from the Serjeants at Law.
Gresham left the Royal exchange to the city and the Mercer's Company on
condition that they use some of its profits to appoint and pay seven
lecturers in law, rhetoric, divinity, music, physics, geometry, and
astronomy to teach at his mansion, which was called Gresham College.
They were installed in 1598 according to his Will. Their lectures were
free, open to all, and often in English. They embraced mathematics and
new scientific ideas and emphasized their practical applications. A
tradition of research and teaching was established in mathematics and
astronomy.
There were language schools teaching French, Italian, and Spanish to the
aspiring merchant and to gentlemen's sons and daughters.
Many people kept diaries. Letter writing was frequent at court. Most
forms of English literature were now available in print. Many ladies
read aloud to each other in reading circles and to their households.
Some wrote poetry and did translations. Correctness of spelling was
beginning to be developed. Printers tended to standardize it. There was
much reading of romances, jest books, histories, plays, prayer
collections, and encyclopedias, as well as the Bible. In schools and
gentry households, favorite reading was Edmund Spenser's "Faerie Queen"
about moral virtues and the faults and errors which beset them; Erasmus'
New Testament, "Paraphrases", "Colloquies", and "Adages"; Sir Thomas
North's edition of Plutarch's "Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans";
Elyot's "The Book Named the Governor"; and Hoby's translation of "The
Courtier". Gentlemen read books on the ideals of gentlemanly conduct,
such as "Institucion of a Gentleman" (1555), and Laurence Humphrey's
"The Nobles: or of Nobilites". Francis Bacon's "Essays or Counsels Civil
and Moral" were popular for their wisdom. In them he commented on many
subjects from marriage to atheism. He cautioned against unworthy
authority, mass opinion, custom, and ostentation of apparent wisdom. He
urged the use of words with their correct meaning.
At a more popular level were Caxton's "The Golden Legend", Baldwin's
"Mirror for Magistrates", Foxe's "Book of Martyrs" about English
Protestant who suffered at the stake, sensational stories and pamphlets,
printed sermons (including those of Switzerland's Calvin), chronicles,
travel books, almanacs, herbals, and medical works. English fiction
began and was read. There were some books for children. Books were
copyrighted, although non-gentlemen writers needed a patron. At the
lowest level of literacy were ballads. Next to sermons, the printing
press was kept busiest with rhymed ballads about current events. Printed
broadsheets on political issues could be distributed quickly. In London,
news was brought to the Governor of the News Staple, who classified it
as authentic, apocryphal, barber's news, tailor's news, etc. and stamped
it. Books were also censored for matter against the state church. This
was carried out through the Stationers' Company. This company was now,
by charter, the official authority over the entire book trade, with
almost sole rights of printing. (Schools had rights of printing). It
could burn other books and imprison their printers.
Italian business techniques were set forth in textbooks for merchants,
using Italian terms of business: debit (debito), credit (credito),
inventory (inventorio), journal (giornal), and cash (cassa). The
arithmetic of accounting operations, including multiplication, was
described in "An Introduction for to Lerne to Reckonwith the Penne or
Counters" in 1537. Accounting advice was extended to farmers as well as
merchants in the 1569 "The Pathway to Perfectness in the Accomptes of
Debitor and Creditor" by James Peele, a salter of London. It repeated
the age-old maxim: ...receive before you write, and write before you
pay, So shall no part of your accompt in any wise decay. The 1589
"Marchants Avizo" by Johne Browne, merchant of Bristol, gave information
on foreign currencies and keeping of accounts, and included specimens of
various business documents such as insurance policies, and bills of
exchange. It also advised: Take heed of using a false balance or
measure...covet not over familiarity amongst men it maketh thee spend
much loss of time. Be not hasty in giving credit to every man, but take
heed to a man that is full of words, that hath red eyes, that goeth much
to law, and that is suspected to live unchaste ... When thou promiseth
anything be not stuck to perform it, for he that giveth quickly giveth
double ... Fear God...know thy Prince...love thy parents ...give
reverence to thy betters ...be courteous and lowly to all men... be not
wise in thine own conceit. The old prohibitions of the now declining
canon law were still observed. That is, one should not seek wealth for
its own sake or beyond what was requisite for a livelihood in one's
station, exploit a customer's difficulties to extract an extravagant
price, charge excessive interest, or engross to "corner the market".
The printing press had made possible the methodizing of knowledge and
its dissemination to a lay public. Knowledge associated with the various
professions, occupations, and trades was no longer secret or guarded as
a mystery, to be passed on only to a chosen few. The sharing of
knowledge was to benefit the community at large. Reading became an
out-of-school activity, for instruction as well as for pleasure.
In 1565, graphite was discovered in England, and gave rise to the
pencil. Surveying accuracy was improved with the new theodolite, which
determined directions and measured angles and used a telescope that
pivoted horizontally and vertically. Scientists had the use of an air
thermometer, in which a column of air in a glass tube sitting in a dish
of water contracted or expanded with changes in the temperature, causing
the water to move up or down the tube.
William Shakespeare, a glovemaker's son, wrote plays about historical
events and plays which portrayed various human personalities and their
interactions with each other. They were enjoyed by all classes of
people. His histories were especially popular. The Queen and various
earls each employed players and actors, who went on tour as a troupe and
performed on a round open-air stage, with people standing around to
watch. In London, theaters such as the Globe were built specifically for
the performance of plays, which before had been performed at inns. The
audience applauded and hissed. There were costumes, but no sets.
Ordinary admission was 2d. Before being performed, a play had to be
licensed by the Master of the Revels to make sure that there was nothing
detrimental to the peace and public order. Elizabeth issued a
proclamation forbidding unlicensed interludes or plays, especially
concerning religion or government policy on pain of imprisonment for at
least fourteen days. The common people still went to morality plays, but
also to plays in which historical personages were portrayed, such as
Richard II, Henry IV, and Henry V. Some plays were on contemporary
issues. Musicians played together as orchestras. Music with singing was
a popular pastime after supper; everyone was expected to participate.
Dancing was popular with all classes. Gentlemen played cards, dice,
chess, billiards, and tennis. They fenced and had games on horseback.
Their deer-hunting diminished as forests were cut down for agriculture
and the deer were viewed as an enemy eating crops. Falconry diminished
as hedges and enclosures displaced the broad expanses of land.
Country people enjoyed music, dancing, pantomime shows with masks,
hurling, running, swimming, leap frog, blind man's buff, shovelboard
played with the hands, and football between villages with the goal to
get the ball into one's own village. Football and shin-kicking matches
often resulted in injuries. They bought ballads from traveling peddlers.
Early morning dew gathered in May and early June was thought to have
special curative powers. There were many tales involving fairies,
witches, devils, ghosts, evil spirits, angels, and monsters which were
enjoyed by adults as well as children. Many people still believed in
charms, curses, divination, omens, fate, and advice from astrologers.
The ghosts of the earth walked the earth, usually because of some foul
play to be disclosed, wrong to be set right, to warn those dear to them
of peril, or to watch over hidden treasure. Good witches cured and
healed. Fairies blessed homes, rewarded minor virtues, and punished mild
wrongdoing. When fairies were unhappy, the weather was bad. There were
parties for children.
The merry guild feast was no longer a feature of village life. There
were fewer holydays and festivals. The most prosperous period of the
laborer was closing. An agricultural laborer's yearly wage was about
154s., but his cost of living, which now included house rent, was about
160s. a year. In 1533, daily wages in the summer for an agricultural
laborer were about 4d. and for an artisan 6d. In 1563 in the county of
Rutland, daily wages for laborers were 7d. in summer and 6d. in winter;
and for artisans were 9d. in summer and 8d. in winter. Unemployment was
widespread.
There were endowed hospitals in London for the sick and infirm. There
were others for orphans, for derelict children, and for the destitute.
They worked at jobs in the hospital according to their abilities. There
was also a house of correction for discipline of the idle and vicious by
productive work. Elizabeth continued the practice of touching people to
cure scrofula, although she could not bring herself to fully believe in
the reality of such cures, contrary to her chaplain and her physician.
In the towns, shop shutters were let down to form a counter at the
front of the shop. Goods were made and/or stored inside the shop. Towns
held a market once a week. Fairs occurred once or twice a year. At given
times in the towns, everyone was to throw buckets of water onto the
street to cleanse it. During epidemics in towns, there was quarantine of
those affected to stay in their houses unless going out on business.
Their houses were marked and they had to carry a white rod when outside.
The quarantine of a person lasted for forty days. The straw in his house
was burned and his clothes treated. People who died had to be buried
under six feet of ground. There was an outbreak of plague in London
roughly every ten years.
There was a pity for the distressed that resulted in towns voting money
for a people of a village that had burned down or been decimated by the
plague.
Communities were taxed for the upkeep and relief of the prisoners in
the gaols in their communities.
Queen Elizabeth was puzzling over the proper relationship between the
crown and the church when Richard Hooker, a humble scholar, theologian,
and clergyman, attempted to find a justification in reason for the
establishment of the Church of England as an official part of the
governing apparatus of the nation. His thinking was a turning point from
the medieval notion that God ordered society, including the designation
of its monarch and its natural laws, and the belief in a divine
structure with a great chain of being, beginning with God and working
down through the hierarchy of angels and saints to men, beasts, and
vegetables, which structure fostered order in society. Hooker restated
the concept of Aristotle that the purpose of society is to enable men to
live well. He wrote that although the monarch was head of state and head
of religion, the highest authority in civil affairs was Parliament, and
in religion, the Convocation. The monarch had to maintain divine law,
but could not make it. From this later came the idea that the state
derives its authority from the will of the people and the consent of the
governed.
Protestant women had more freedom in marriage and were allowed to
participate in more church activities compared to Catholic women, but
they were not generally allowed to become pastors. Due to sensitivities
on the part of both Catholics and Protestants about a female being the
head of the church, Elizabeth was given the title of "Supreme Governor"
of the church instead of "Supreme Head". Elizabeth was not doctrinaire
in religious matters, but pragmatic. She always looked for ways to
accommodate all views on what religious aspects to adopt or decline.
Images, relics, pilgrimages, and rosaries were discouraged. But the
Catholic practice of kneeling at prayer, and bowing and doffing caps at
the name of Jesus were retained. Also retained was the place of the
altar or communion table at the east end of churches, special communion
wafers instead of common bread, and elaborate clergy vestments. The
communion prayer contained words expressing both the Catholic view that
the wafer and wine contained the real presence of the body and blood of
Christ, and the Protestant view that they were commemorative only.
Communion was celebrated only at Easter and other great festivals.
Church services included a sermon and were in accordance with a reformed
prayer book and in English, as was the Bible. Care was even taken not to
use words that would offend the Scots, Lutherans, Calvinists, or
Huguenots. People could hold what religious beliefs they would, even
atheism, as long as they maintained an outward conformity. Attendance at
state church services on Sunday mornings and evenings and Holydays was
enforced by a fine of 12d. imposed by the church wardens. Babies were to
be baptized before they were one month old or the parents would be
punished.
The new religion had to be protected. Members of the House of Commons,
lawyers, schoolmasters were to take the oath of supremacy or be
imprisoned and make a forfeiture; a second refusal brought death. When
numerous Anabaptists came from the continent to live in the port towns,
the Queen issued a proclamation ordering them to leave the realm because
their pernicious opinions could corrupt the church. The new church still
accepted the theory of the devil causing storms, but opposed ringing the
holy church bells to attempt to drive him away. The sins of people were
also thought to cause storms, and also plagues.
In 1562, the Church of England wrote down its Christian Protestant
beliefs in thirty-nine Articles of Religion, which specifically excluded
certain Catholic beliefs. They were incorporated into statute in 1571
establishing them as the tenets of the official religion of England. The
first eighteen endorsed the ideas of one God, Christ as the son of God
who was sacrificed for all the sins of men, the resurrection of Christ
from the dead and ascension into heaven, the Holy Ghost proceeding from
the father and the son, the books of the Bible, the original sin of Adam
and his offspring, justification of man by faith in Christ rather than
by good works, goods works as the inspired fruit and proof of faith in
Christ, Christ in the flesh as like man except for the absence of sin,
the chance for sinners who have been Baptised to be forgiven if they
truly repent and amend their lives, the predestination of some to be
brought by Christ to eternal salvation and their minds to be drawn up to
high and heavenly things, and salvation only by the name of Christ and
not by a sect. Other tenets described the proper functions of the
church, distinguishing them from Roman Catholic practice. Specifically,
the church was not to expound one place of scripture so that it was
inconsistent with another place of scripture. Because man can err, the
church was not to ordain or enforce anything to be believed for
necessity of salvation. Explicitly renounced were the Romish doctrine
concerning purgatory, pardons, worshipping, adoration of images or
relics, invocation of saints, and the use in church of any language,
such as Latin, not understood by the people. Only the sacraments of
Baptism and the Lord's Supper were recognized. The Lord's Supper was to
be a sign of the love that Christians ought to have among themselves and
a sacrament of redemption by Christ's death. The wine in the cup of
blessing as well as the bread of the Lord's Supper was to be taken by
lay- people and to be a partaking of Christ; there was no Romish mass.
Excommunication was limited to those who openly denounced the church.
Anyone openly breaking the traditions or ceremonies of the church which
were approved by common authority were to be rebuked. Elizabeth told the
bishops that she wished certain homilies to be read in church, which
encouraged good works such as fasting, prayer, alms-giving, Christian
behavior, repentance, and which discouraged idolatry, gluttony,
drunkenness, excess of apparel, idleness, rebellion, and wife-beating,
however provoked. She considered homilies more instructive and learned
than ministers' sermons, which were often influenced by various
gentlemen and were inconsistent with each other. Consecration of bishops
and ministers was regulated. They were allowed to marry. The standard
prayer was designated thus: "Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be
Thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, on earth as it is in
heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our offenses as
we forgive those who have offended against us. And lead us not into
temptation, but deliver us from evil. For Thine is the kingdom, the
power, and the glory forever and ever, amen."
There was difficulty persuading educated and moral men to be church
ministers, even though Elizabeth expressed to the bishops her preference
for ministers who were honest and wise instead of learned in religious
matters. The Bible was read at home and familiar to everyone. This led
to the growth of the Puritan movement. The Puritans believed in the
right of the individual Christian to interpret the Scriptures for
himself by spiritual illumination. They opposed the mystical
interpretation of the Communion service. The Puritans complained that
the church exerted insufficient control over the morals of the
congregation. Their ideas of morality were very strict and even plays
were thought to be immoral. The Independent Puritans were those
Protestants who had fled from Mary's Catholic reign to the continent,
where they were persuaded to the ideas of John Calvin of Geneva. He
stressed the old idea of predestination in the salvation of souls, which
had in the past been accepted by nearly all English Christian leaders,
thinkers, and teachers, but not stressed. The act of conversion was a
common experience among the early Puritans. The concomitant hatred of
past sins and love of God which was felt in thankfulness for mercy were
proof of selection for salvation. The good works that followed were
merely an obligation showing that one's faith was real, but not a way to
salvation.
The puritans also accepted Calvin's idea of independent church
government. They therefore thought that ministers and lay elders of each
parish should regulate religious affairs and that the bishops, who were
"petty popes", should be reduced to an equality with the rest of the
clergy, since they did not rule by divine right. The office of
archbishop should be eliminated and the head of state should not
necessarily be governor of the church. These ideas were widely
disseminated in books and pamphlets. The puritans disrupted the
established church's Sunday services, tearing the surplice off the
minister's back and the wafers and wine from the altar rail. The
puritans arranged "lectures" on Sunday afternoons and on weekdays. These
were given gratuitously or funded by boroughs. They were strict about
not working on the Sabbath, which day they gave to spiritual exercises,
meditations, and works of mercy. The only work allowed was preparing
meals for themselves, caring for their animals, and milking the cows.
They enforced a strict moral discipline on themselves. The puritans
formed a party in the House of Commons.
The puritan movement included William Brewster, an assistant to a court
official who was disciplined for delivering, upon pressure from the
council, the Queen's signed execution order for Mary of Scotland after
the Queen had told him to hold it until she directed otherwise. After
exhausting every other alternative, the Queen had reluctantly agreed
with her Privy Council on the execution in 1572 of Mary, Queen of Scots,
who had been involved in a plot to assassinate her and claim the throne
of England. Elizabeths Council had persuaded her that it was
impossible for her to live in safety otherwise.
The debased coinage was replaced by a recoinage of newly minted coins
with a true silver weight.
Goldsmiths, who also worked silver, often acted as guardians of
clients' wealth. They began to borrow at interest at one rate in order
to lend out to traders at a higher rate. This began banking.
Patents were begun to encourage the new merchant lords to develop local
manufactures or to expand import and export trade. Patents were for a
new manufacture or an improved older one and determined the wages of its
trades. There was chartering of merchant companies and granting of
exclusive rights to new industries as monopolies. Some monopolies or
licenses were patents or copyrights of inventors. Others established
trading companies for trade to certain foreign lands and supporting
consular services. People holding monopolies were accountable to the
government. There were monopolies on certain smoked fish, fish oil, seal
oil, oil of blubber, vinegar, salt, currants, aniseed, juniper berry
liquor, bottles, glasses, brushes, pots, bags, cloth, starch, steel,
tin, iron, cards, horn, ox shinbones, ashes, leather pieces, earth coal,
calamite stone, powder, saltpeter, and lead manufacturing by-products.
For far-flung enterprises and those where special arrangements with
foreign countries was required, there was sharing of stock of companies,
usually by merchants of the same type of goods. In joint-stock companies
each member took a certain number of shares and all the selling of the
goods of each merchant was carried on by the officials of the company.
The device of joint stock might take the form of a fully incorporated
body or of a less formal and unincorporated syndicate. The greatest
joint-stock company was East India Company, chartered in 1600 to trade
there in competition with the Dutch East India Company. It was given a
fifteen year monopoly on trade east of the southern tip of Africa.
Unlike the Muscovy Company, and Merchants of the Staple, individual
members could not trade on their own account, but only through the
corporate body on its voyages. Each particular voyage was regulated and
assisted by the Crown and Privy Council, for instance when further
subscriptions were needed, or when carpenters were needed to be pressed
into service for fitting out ships, or to deal with an unsuccessful
captain. Its charter retained many of the aspects of the medieval trade
guild: power to purchase lands, to sue and be sued, to make by-laws, and
to punish offenders by fine or imprisonment. Admission was by purchase
of a share in a voyage, redemption, presentation, patrimony (adult sons
of members), and apprenticeship. Purchase of a share in a voyage was the
most common method. A share for the first ship cost one hundred pounds.
Cash payments for less than the price of a share could be invested for
ultimate redemption. Occasionally presentation or a faculty "for the
making of a freeman" was granted to some nobleman or powerful member.
Members' liability was limited to their individual subscriptions. Each
voyage had 1) a Royal Commission authorizing the Company to undertake
the expedition and vesting in its commanders powers for punishing
offenses during the voyage, and quenching any mutiny, quarrels, or
dissension that might arise; 2) a code of instructions from the Company
to the Admiral and to commanders of ships setting forth in great detail
the scope and objects of the voyage together with minute regulations for
its conduct and trade; 3) authorization for coinage of money or export
of specie (gold or silver); and 4) letters missive from the sovereign to
foreign rulers at whose ports the ships were to trade. The first voyage
brought back spices that were sold at auction in London for ten times
their price in the Indies and brought to shareholders a profit
equivalent to 9 1/2% yearly for the ten years when the going interest
rate was 8% a year.
Town government was often controlled by a few merchant wholesalers. The
entire trade of a town might be controlled by its drapers or by a
company of the Merchant Adventurers of London. The charter of the latter
as of 1564 allowed a common seal, perpetual existence, liberty to
purchase lands, and liberty to exercise their government in any part of
the nation. It was controlled by a group of rich Londoners, no more than
50, who owned the bulk of the cloth exported. There were policies of
insurance given by groups of people for losses of ships and their goods.
Marine insurance was regulated.
New companies were incorporated for many trades. They were associations
of employers rather than the old guilds which were associations of
actual workers. The ostensible reason was the supervision of the quality
of the wares produced in that trade, though shoemakers, haberdashers,
saddlers, and curriers exercised close supervision over these
wares.Companies paid heavily for their patents or charters.
There was no sharp line between craftsman and shopkeeper or between
shopkeeper and wholesale merchant. In London, an enterprising citizen
could pass freely from one occupation to another. Borrowing money for a
new enterprise was common. Industrial suburbs grew up around London and
some towns became known as specialists in certain industries. The
building crafts in the towns often joined together into one company,
e.g. wrights, carpenters, slaters, and sawyers, or joiners, turners,
carvers, bricklayers, tilers, wallers, plasterers, and paviors. These
companies included small contractors, independent masters, and
journeymen. The master craftsman often was a tradesman as well, who
supplied timber, bricks, or lime for the building being constructed. The
company of painters was chartered with a provision prohibiting painting
by persons not apprenticed for seven years.
The prosperous merchants began to form a capitalistic class as
capitalism grew. Competition for renting farm land, previously unknown,
caused these rents to rise. The price of wheat rose to an average of
14s. per quarter, thereby encouraging tillage once more. There was
steady inflation.
With enclosure of agricultural land there could be more innovation and
more efficiency, e.g. the time for sowing could be chosen. It was easier
to prevent over-grazing and half-starved animals as a result. The
complications of the open system with its endless quarrels and lawsuits
were avoided. Now noblemen talked about manure and drainage, rotation of
crops, clover, and turnips instead of hunting, horses, and dogs. The
breed of horses and cattle was improved. There were specializations such
as the hunting horse and the coach horse. By royal proclamation of 1562,
there were requirements for the keeping of certain horses. For instance,
everyone with lands of at least 1,000 pounds had to keep six horses or
geldings able for demi-lances [rider bearing a light lance] and ten
horses or geldings for light horsemen [rode to battle, but fought on
foot]. One with under 100 pounds but over 100 marks yearly had to keep
one gelding for a light horseman. Dogs had been bred into various types
of hounds for hunting, water and land spaniels for falconry, and other
dogs as house dogs or toy dogs. There were no longer any wild boar or
wild cattle. The turkey joined the cocks, hens, geese, ducks, pigeons,
and peacocks in the farmyard. Manure and dressings were used to
fertilize the soil. Hay became a major crop because it could be grown on
grazing lands and required little care.
There are new and bigger industries such as glassware, iron,
brasswares, alum and coppers, gunpowder, paper, coal, and sugar. The
coal trade was given a monopoly. Coal was used for fuel as well as wood,
which was becoming scarce. Iron smelters increasingly used coal instead
of charcoal, which was limited. Iron was used for firebacks, pots, and
boilers. Good quality steel was first produced in 1565 with the help of
German craftsmen, and a slitting mill was opened in 1588. Small metal
goods, especially cutlery, were made, as well as nails, bolts, hinges,
locks, ploughing and harrowing equipment, rakes, pitch forks, shovels,
spades, and sickles. Lead was used for windows and roofs. Copper and
brass were used to make pots and pans. Pewter was used for plates,
drinking vessels, and candlesticks. Competition was the mainspring of
trade and therefore of town life.
The mode of travel of the gentry was riding horses, but most people
traveled by walking. People carried passes for travel that certified
they were of good conduct and not a vagrant or sturdy rogue. Bands of
roving vagabonds terrorized the countryside. After a land survey
completed in 1579 there arose travel books with maps, itineraries, and
mileage between towns in England and Wales. Also, the Queen sent her
official mail by four royal postal routes along high roads from London
to various corners of the nation. Horses are posted along the way for
the mail-deliverer's use. However, private mail still goes by packman or
common carrier. The nation's inland trade developed a lot. There were
many more wayfaring traders operating from town inns. In 1564, the first
canal was built with locks at Exeter. More locks and canals facilitated
river travel. At London Bridge, waterwheels and pumps were installed.
New sea navigation techniques improved voyages. Seamen learned to fix
their positions, using an astrolabe or quadrant to take the altitude of
the sun and stars and to reckon by the north star. They used a
nocturnal, which was read by touch, to help keep time at night by taking
the altitude of the stars. They calculated tides. To measure distances,
they invented the traverse board, which was bored with holes upon lines,
showing the points of the compass; by means of pegs, the steersman kept
an account of the course steered. A log tied to a rope with knots at
equal intervals was used to measure speed. There were compasses with a
bearing dial on a circular plate with degrees up to 360 noted thereon.
Seamen had access to compilations of Arab mathematicians and astronomers
and to navigational manuals and technical works on the science of
navigation and the instruments necessary for precision sailing. For
merchants there were maps, books about maps, cosmographical surveys, and
books on the newly discovered lands. In 1569 John Mercator produced a
map taking into account the converging of the meridians towards the
pole. On this chart, a straight line course would correspond to a
mariner's actual course through the water on the earth's sphere, instead
of having the inaccuracies of a straight line on a map which suggested
that the world was flat. It was in use by 1600.
In 1600 William Gilbert, son of a gentleman, and physician to Queen
Elizabeth, wrote a book on the magnetic properties of the earth. He
cultivated the method of experiment and of inductive reasoning from
observation and insisted on the need for a search for knowledge not in
books but in things themselves. He showed that the earth was a great
magnet with a north pole and a south pole, by comparing it to lodestones
made into spheres in which a north and south pole could be found by
intersecting lines of magnetism indicated by a needle on the stone. The
vertical dip of the needle was explained by the magnetic attraction of
the north pole. He showed how a lodestone's declination could be used to
determine latitude at sea. He showed how the charge of a body could be
retained for a period of time by covering the body with some
non-conducting substance, such as silk. He distinguished magnetism from
electricity, giving the latter its name. He discovered that atmospheric
conditions affected the production of electricity, dryness decreasing
it, and moisture increasing it. He expounded the idea of Copernicus that
the earth revolves around the sun in a solar system. However, the
prevailing belief was still that the earth was at the center of the
universe.
Christmas was an especially festive time of good fellowship. People
greeted each other with "Good cheer", "God be with you", or "Against the
new year". Carols were often sung and musicians played many tunes. There
was dancing and gambling. There were big dinners with many kinds of meat
and drink. A hearty fire heated all the house. Many alms were given to
beggars.
Parliament enacted laws and voted taxes. The Queen, House of Lords, and
House of Commons cooperated together. There was relatively little
dissension or debating. Bills in the House of Lords were read, voted on,
discussed, and passed with the lords, peers, bishops, and justices
sitting in their places according to their degree. The justices sat on
the wool sacks. A bar separated this area from the rest of the room,
where the members of the commons stood. There were many bills concerning
personal, local, or sectional interests, but priority consideration was
given to public measures. The House of Lords still had 55 members. The
Queen appointed and paid the Speaker, Clerk, and Sergeant at Arms of the
Commons. The knights in the Commons were almost invariably from the
county's leading families and chosen by consensus of knights with free
land of at least 40s. in the county court. In the towns, the electors
might be the town corporation, holders of certain properties, all the
freemen, all the rate-payers, or all the male inhabitants. Disputed
elections were not usually concerned with political issues, but were
rivalries for power. The Commons gradually won for its members freedom
from arrest without its permission and the right of punishing and
expelling members for crimes committed. Tax on land remained at 10% of
its estimated yearly income. The Queen deferred to the church
convocation to define Christian faith and religion, thus separating
church and state functions.
The Treasury sought to keep a balanced budget by selling royal land and
keeping Crown expenditures down. The Crown carried a slight debt
incurred before the Queen's accession.
Violence was still a part of the texture of everyday life. Private
armories and armed gangs were not uncommon. Agricultural laborers kept
sword and bow in a corner of their fields. Non-political brutal crime
and homicides were commonplace. There were frequent local riots and
disturbances, in the country and in the towns. Occasionally there were
large-scale rebellions. But the rebellion of the Earl of Essex in 1601
had no aftermath in violence. In 1590, the Queen issued a proclamation
enforcing curfew for London apprentices, who had been misruly. The Queen
issued proclamations to certain counties to place vagrant soldiers or
vagrants under martial law because of numerous robberies. She ordered
the deportation of vagrant Irishmen in 1594.
Theft and robbery were so usual that there were names for various
techniques used. A Ruffler went with a weapon to seek service, saying
that he was a servitor in the wars, but his chief "trade" was to rob
poor wayfaring men and market women. A Prigman went with a stick in his
hand like an idle person, but stole clothes off hedges. A Whipjack
begged like a mariner, but with a counterfeit license (called a "gibe");
he mostly robbed booths in fairs or pilfered ware from stalls, which was
called "heaving of the booth". A Frater had a counterfeit license to beg
for some hospital, but preyed upon poor women coming and going to
market. A Quire Bird was a person recently let out of prison, and was
commonly a horse stealer. An Upright Man carried a truncheon of a staff
and called others to account to him and give him a share or "snap" of
all that they had gained in one month, and he often beat them. He took
the chief place at any market walk and other assemblies. Workers at inns
often teamed up with robbers, telling them of wares or money travelers
were carrying so the robber could profitably rob them after they left
the inn.
Francis Drake sailed around the world from 1577 to 1580. Walter Ralegh
made an expedition to North America in 1584 with the Queen's authority
to "discover barbarous countries, not actually possessed of any
Christian prince and inhabited by Christian people, to occupy and
enjoy". He found and named the land of Virginia in honor of the Queen,
who was a virgin, and started a colony on Roanoke Island there. Drake
and Ralegh plundered Spanish ships for cargo such as American gold and
silver, much of which was used to pay for the war with Spain and much
going to investors. Seamen on navy and pirate ships raided captured
vessels to seize personal possessions of the Spanish on board. The
experience fighting Spanish ships led to improvements in ship design;
building ships was no longer merely by copying another ship or a small
model. When the seas were unsafe because of the war with Spain, the
export of English wool was disturbed and later replaced by trading from
world ports. Many London merchants grew rich from using their ships for
pirating.
In 1588, a Spanish Armada came to invade England, return it to
Catholicism, and stop the pirating of Spanish ships. In that battle off
England's shores, Drake and other experienced sea fighters led two
hundred English ships, of which about 20 were built to sink other ships
rather than to board and capture them. These new English ships were
longer and narrower and did away with the towering superstructures at
bow and stern. This made them more maneuverable and easier to sail.
Also, the English guns were lighter, more numerous, and outranged the
Spanish guns. So the smaller English ships were able to get close enough
to fire broadside after broadside against the big Spanish
troop-transport galleons, without being fired upon. The English sent
fire ships into the Spanish fleet when it was anchored, causing it's
ships to disperse in a panic. Then the direction of the wind forced the
Spanish galleons northward, where most of them were destroyed by storms.
The English seamen had been arbitrarily pressed into this service.
A royal proclamation of 1601 offered a reward of 100 pounds for
information on libels against the Queen. There had been mounting
demonstrations against her monopolies, which mostly affected household
items. There had been abuses of monopolies, such as the steel monopoly
had been sold for 12 pounds 10s., but steel was then sold at 5d. per
pound instead of the former 2 1/2 d. per pound. Further the steel was
mixed and of a lesser quality. This so damaged the knife and sword
industry that about 2000 workers lost their jobs from it and became
beggars. Monopoly was a severe burden to the middle and poorer classes.
Also, the power of patent holders to arrest and imprison persons charged
with infringing upon their rights was extended to any disliked person.
When the House of Commons protested against monopolies in 1601,
Elizabeth reduced them. She addressed her Council and the Commons saying
that "Mr. Speaker, you give me thanks, but I doubt me that I have more
cause to thank you all than you me; and I charge you to thank them of
the Lower House from me. For had I not received a knowledge from you, I
might have fallen into the lapse of an error only for lack of true
information. Since I was queen yet did I never put my pen to any grant
but that upon pretext and semblance made unto me, it was both good and
beneficial to the subject in general, though a private profit to some of
my ancient servants who had deserved well. But the contrary being found
by experience, I am exceedingly beholding to such subjects as would move
the same at the first. And I am not so simple to suppose but that there
be some of the Lower House whom these grievances never touched; and for
them I think they speak out of zeal to their countries and not out of
spleen or malevolent affection, as being parties grieved. And I take it
exceedingly gratefully from them, because it gives us to know that no
respects or interests had moved them other than the minds they bear to
suffer no diminution of our honor and our subjects' love unto us, the
zeal of which affection tending to ease my people and knit their hearts
unto me, I embrace with a princely care. For above all earthly treasures
I esteem my people's love, more than which I desire not to merit. That
my grants should be grievous unto my people and oppressions to be
privileged under color of our patents, our kingly dignity shall not
suffer it. Yea, when I heard it I could give no rest unto my thoughts
until I had reformed it. Shall they (think you) escape unpunished that
have thus oppressed you, and I have been respectless of their duty and
regardless of our honor? No, no, Mr. Speaker, I assure you, were it not
more for conscience' sake than for any glory or increase of love that I
desire, these errors, troubles, vexations, and oppressions done by these
varlets and low persons (not worthy the name of subjects) should not
escape without condign punishment. But I perceive they dealt with me
like physicians who, ministering a drug, make it more acceptable by
giving it a good aromatical savor; or when they give pills, do gild them
all over. I have ever used to set the Last Judgment day before my eyes
and so to rule as I shall be judged, to answer before a higher judge. To
whose judgment seat I do appeal that never thought was cherished in my
heart that tended not unto my people's good. And now if my kingly
bounties have been abused and my grants turned to the hurts of my
people, contrary to my will and meaning, or if any in authority under me
have neglected or perverted what I have committed to them, I hope Good
will not lay their culps [sins] and offenses to my charge. Who, though
there were danger in repealing our grants, yet what danger would I not
rather incur for your good than I would suffer them still to continue? I
know the title of a king is a glorious title, but assure yourself that
the shining glory of princely authority hath not so dazzled the eyes of
our understanding but that we well know and remember that we also are to
yield an account of our actions before the great Judge. To be a king and
wear a crown is a thing more glorious to them that see it than it is
pleasant to them that bear it. For myself, I was never so much enticed
with the glorious name of a king or royal authority of a queen as
delighted that God hath made me His instrument to maintain His truth and
glory, and to defend this kingdom from peril, dishonor, tyranny, and
oppression. There will never queen sit in my seat with more zeal to my
country, care to my subjects, and that will sooner with willingness
venture her life for your good and safety, than myself. For it is not my
desire to live or reign longer than my life and reign shall be for your
good. And though you have had and may have many princes more mighty and
wise sitting in this seat, yet you never had or shall have any that will
be more careful and loving."
About 1584, Richard Hakluyt, a Bristol clergyman, wrote "A Particular
Discourse concerning Western Discoveries". This was to become the
classic statement of the case for English colonization. It held out hope
that the English would find needed timber for masts, pitch, tar, and
ashes for soap.
In Rome in 1600, Giordano Bruno, an Italian monk and priest, was burned
alive at the stake by a court of the inquisition for not recanting,
although tortured, his heretical and blasphemous philosophy. He had
opined that Christianity was irrational and had no scientific basis. He
declared that Christ was only a skillful magician, that the Bible could
not be taken literally, that God and nature were not separate as taught
by Genesis, that the Catholic Church encouraged ignorance from the
instinct of self-preservation, and that the earth and planets revolved
around the sun, as did other planets around the "fixed" stars and other
suns.
The Jesuits, a new Catholic order brimming with zeal, sent missionaries
to England to secretly convert people to Catholicism. The practice of
Catholicism had gone underground in England, and some Catholic
householders maintained Catholic priests in hidden places in their
homes.
Although estate tails (estates descendible only to the heirs of the body
of the original feofee) by law could not be sold or given away, this was
circumvented by the fraudulent use of a "straw man". In collaboration
with the possessor of the property, this straw man sued the possessor
asserting that the property had been wrongfully taken from the straw
man. The possessor pleaded that the crier of the court who had warranted
the title should be called to defend the action. He failed to appear
until after judgment had been given to the straw man. Then the straw man
conveyed it to the possessor or his nominee in fee simple.
- The Law -
The following statute of artificers regulated labor for the next two
centuries: No master or mistress may employ a servant for a term less
than one year in the crafts of clothiers, woolen cloth weavers, tuckers,
fullers, clothworkers, shearmen, dyers, hosiers, tailors, shoemakers,
glovemakers, tanners, pewterers, bakers, brewers, cutlers, smith,
farriers, curriers, saddlers, spurriers, turners, cappers, hatmakers,
feltmakers, bow-makers, arrow-makers, arrowhead-makers, butchers, cooks,
or millers. Also, every craftsman unmarried or under age 30 who is not
working must accept employment by any person needing the craft work.
Also, any common person between 12 and 60 who is not working must accept
employment in agriculture. And, unmarried women between 12 and 40 may be
required by town officials to work by the year, the week, or day for
wages they determine.
All artificers and laborers hired by the day or week shall work from 5
am to 7 PM. All artificers must labor at agriculture at haytime and
harvest to avoid the loss of grain or hay. Every householder who raises
crops may receive as an apprentice a child between 10 and 18 to serve in
agriculture until he is age 21. A householder in a town may receive a
child as an apprentice for 7 years, but merchants may only take as
apprentices children of parents with 40s. freehold.
No one may be a craftsman until he has served seven years as an
apprentice. These artificers may have children as apprentices: smith,
wheelmaker, ploughmaker, millmaker, miller, carpenter, rough mason,
plasterer, a timber sawer, an ore burner, a lime burner, brickmaker,
bricklayer, tilemaker, tiler, layer of slate roofs, layer of wood
shingle roofs, layer of straw roofs, cooper, earthen potter, linen
weaver, housewife who weaves wool for sale or for household use.
Purposes of the statute of artificiers were to advance agriculture,
diminish idleness, and inhibit migration to the towns. It excluded three
fourths of the rural population.)
Troops of vagabonds with weapons in the highways who pretend to be
soldiers or mariners have committed robberies and murders. So all
vagabonds shall settle down in some service or labor or trade.
A vagabond or mighty strong beggar [able to work] shall be whipped.
Incorrigible and dangerous rogues shall be branded with an "R" mark on
the left shoulder and be put to labor, because banishment did not work
as they came back undetected. If one is caught again begging, he shall
be deemed a felon.
If a person marries a second time while the first spouse is still
living, it shall be a felony and thus punishable by death.
No attainder shall result in the forfeiture of dower by the offender's
wife nor disinheritance of his heirs.
No one shall forge a deed of land, charter, sealed writing, court roll
or will.
No one shall libel or slander so as to cause a rebellion.
Embezzlement or theft by a servant of his master's goods of 40s. or
more is a felony.
Cut-purses and pick-purses shall not have benefit of clergy.
A person robbing a house of 5s. by day when no one is there shall not
have benefit of clergy, because too many poor persons who cannot hire a
servant to look after their house when they go to work have been robbed.
Benefit of clergy may not be had for stabbing a person who has no
weapon drawn, if he dies within six months.
Fraudulent and secret conveyances made to retain the use of one's land
when one sells the land to a bona fide purchaser for value in fee
simple, fee tail, for life, for lives, or for years are void.
Crown officials such as treasurers, receivers, accountants, and revenue
collectors shall not embezzle Crown funds and shall be personally liable
for arrears.
Persons forcibly taking others across county lines to hold them for
ransom and those taking or giving blackmail money and those who burn
barns or stacks of grain shall be declared felons and shall suffer
death, without any benefit of clergy or sanctuary.
Any person killing any pheasant, partridge, dove, pigeon, duck or the
like with any gun, crossbow, stonebow, or longbow, or with dogs and nets
or snares, or taking the eggs of such from their nests, or tracing or
taking hares in the snow shall be imprisoned for three months unless he
pays 20s. per head or, after one month's imprisonment, have two sureties
bound for 400s. This is because the past penalty of payment hasn't
deterred offenders, who frequently cannot pay.
Persons affected by the plague may not leave their houses or be deemed
felons and suffer death. This is to avoid further infection. The towns
may tax their inhabitants for the relief of infected persons.
Devising or speaking seditious rumors are penalized by the pillory and
loss of both ears for the first offense; and 200 pounds and six months
imprisonment for the second offense. Slandering the Queen is penalized
by the pillory and loss of one ear, or by [1,333s.] 100 marks and three
months imprisonment, at the choice of the offender. The second offense
is a felony. Printing, writing, or publishing seditious books is a
felony without benefit of clergy. Wishing the Queen dead, prophesying
when she would die, or who would succeed her to the Crown is a felony
without benefit of clergy. Attainders for these felonies shall not work
corruption of the blood [heirs may inherit the property of the felon].
A debtor may not engage in a fraudulent collusion to sell his land and
goods in order to avoid his creditors. This was designed to remedy the
following problem:
A native or denizen merchant in wholesale or retail goods who leaves
the nation to defraud his creditors shall be declared a bankrupt. The
Chancellor may conduct an investigation to ascertain his land, house,
and goods, no matter who may hold them. They shall be appraised and sold
to satisfy his debts.
Lands, tenements, goods and chattels of accountants teller, or receiver
who are in debt may be obtained by court order to satisfy the debt by
garnishing the heir of the debtor after the heir has reached 21 and for
the 8 years next ensuing.
Loan contracts for money lent may not be for more than 200s. for each
2000s. yearly (i.e. 10% interest). All loans of money or forbearing of
money in sales of goods not meeting this requirement shall be punishable
by forfeit of the interest only.
Pawn brokers accepting stolen goods shall forfeit twice their value to
the owner from whom stolen.
When the hue and cry is raised for a robbery in a hundred, and other
hundreds have been negligent, faulty, or defective in pursuit of the
robber, then they must pay half the damages to the person robbed, while
the hundred in which the robbery occurred pays the other half. Robbers
shall be pursued by horse and by foot.
The mother and reputed father of any bastard who has been left to be
kept at the parish where born must pay weekly for the upkeep and relief
of such child, so that the true aged and disabled of the parish get
their relief and to punish the lewd life.
Any innkeeper, victualer, or alehouse keeper who allows drinking by
persons other than those invited by a traveler who accompanies him
during his necessary abode there or other than laborers and
handicraftsmen in towns upon the usual working days for one hour at
dinner time to take their diet in an alehouse or other than laborers and
workmen following their work to any given town to sojourn, lodge, or
victual in any inn, alehouse or victualing house shall forfeit 10s. for
each offense. This is because the use of inns, alehouses, and victualing
houses was intended for relief and lodgings of traveling people and
people not able to provide their own victuals, but not for entertainment
and harboring of lewd and idle people who become drunk.
No butcher may cut any hide or any ox, bull, steer, or cow so that it
is impaired or may kill any calf under five weeks old. No butcher may be
a tanner. No one may be a tanner unless that person has apprenticed as
such for seven years, or is the son or wife of a tanner who has tanned
for four years, or is a son or daughter of a tanner who inherits his
tanhouse. Tanners may not be shoemakers, curriers, butchers, or
leatherworkers. Only tanners may buy raw hides. Only leatherworkers may
buy leather. Only sufficiently strong and substantial leather may be
used for sole-leather. Curriers may not be tanners. Curriers may not
refuse to curry leather. London searchers shall inspect leather, seal
and mark that which is sufficient, and seize any that is insufficiently
tanned, curried, wrought, or used.
The incorporated company of ship masters may erect beacons and marks on
the seashores and hills above, because certain steeples and other marks
used for navigation have fallen down and ships therefore have been lost
in the sea.
There shall be one sheriff per county, because now there are enough
able men to supply one per county.
No one shall bribe an elector to vote for a certain person for fellow,
scholar, or officer of a college, school, or hall or hospital so that
the fittest persons will be elected, though lacking in money or friends,
and learning will therefore be advanced.
No master at a university may lease any land unless 1/3 of it is
retained for raising crops to supply the colleges and halls for food for
their scholars.
Fish, but no meat, may be eaten on Wednesdays so that there will be
more fishermen and mariners and repair of ports. (This was done because
fishing had declined since the dissolution of the monasteries, where
fissh was eaten eveery Friday. Eating fish instead of meat in Lent in
the springtime remained a tradition.)
Every person over 6 years of age shall wear on Sundays a wool knitted
cap made by the cappers, except for maidens, ladies, gentlewomen, noble
persons, and every lord, knight, and gentlemen with 2,667s. of land,
since the practice of not wearing caps has damaged the capping industry.
This employed cappers and poor people they had employed and the decrepit
and lame as carders, spinners, knitters, parters, forsers, thickers,
dressers, dyers, battelers, shearers, pressers, edgers, liners, and
bandmakers.
No man under the degree of knight may wear a hat or cap of velvet. Caps
may not be made of felt, but only knit wool. Only hats may be made of
felt. This is to assist the craft of making wool caps.
No one may make any hat unless he has served as apprentice for at least
seven years. This is to prevent false and deceitful hat- making by
unskillful persons.
No one shall make false linen by stretching it and adding little pieces
of wood, which is so weak that it comes apart after five washings.
Timber shall not be felled to make logs for fires for the making of
iron.
No one may take small fish to feed to dogs and pigs. Only nets with
mesh leaving three inches spaces may be used to catch fish.
Cottage and dwelling houses for workmen or laborers in mineral works,
coal mines, or quarries of stone or slate for the making of brick, tile,
lime, or coals shall be built only within a mile from such works.
Dwelling houses beyond this must be supported by four acres of land to
be continually occupied and manured as long as the dwelling house is
inhabited or else forfeit 40s. per month to the Queen. Cottages and
dwelling houses for sailors or laborers working on ships for the sea
shall be built only within a mile of the sea. A cottage may be built in
a forest or park for a game keeper of the deer. A cottage may be built
for a herdman or shepherd for the keeping of cattle or sheep of the
town. A cottage may be built for a poor, lame, sick, aged, or disabled
person on waste or common land. More families than one may not be placed
in one cottage or dwelling house. (This is a zoning law.)
Any person with land in fee-simple may establish a hospital, abiding
place, or house of correction to have continuance forever as a
corporation for the sustenance and relief of the maimed, poor, or
disabled people as to set the poor to work. The net income shall not
exceed 40,000s. yearly.
No new iron mills or furnaces for making or working of any iron or iron
metal shall be established in the country around London and the owners
of carriages of coals, mines and iron which have impaired or destroyed
the highways shall also carry coal ashes, gravel, or stone to repair
these highways or else make a payment of 2s.6d. for each cart load not
carried.
For repairing of highways, the supervisors may take the rubbish or
smallest stones of any quarry along the road in their precinct.
Persons with 100s. in goods or 40s. in lands shall find two able men in
their parish community to repair the highways yearly.
Landowners of Oxford shall be taxed for the repair of the highway and
bridge there.
The price of barrels shall be set by mayors of the towns where they are
sold.
Rugs shall weigh 44 pounds at least and be 35 yards at least in length
and at most 3/4 yard wide.
No cattle may be put in any enclosed woods that have been growing less
than five years. At the end of five years growth, calves may be put in.
At the end of six years growth, cattle may be put in.
Woods around London shall not be felled to be converted to coals for
iron-works because London needs the wood to make buildings and for
fireplaces.
Every melter and maker of wax from honeycombs shall put his mark on
every piece of his wax to be sold. Wrought wax such as in lights,
staff-torches, red wax or sealing wax, book candles, or searing candles
shall bear its maker's mark. All barrels of honey shall bear the mark of
the honeymaker.
Wool cloth, cotton cloth, flannel cloth, hose-yarn, hats, and caps
shall be dyed black only with dye from the woad plant and not with any
false black dye.
No one shall take or kill any pheasants with nets or devices at
nighttime because such have become scarce.
Pontage [toll for upkeep and repair of bridges] shall be taken at
certain bridges: carts 2d., horse and pack 1d., a flock of sheep 2d.
No bishop may lease land for more than twenty-one years or longer than
the lives of three designated persons.
No bishop may alienate any possession of their sees to the crown. Such
are void.
Watermen transporting people on the Thames River shall have served as
apprentice to a waterman for five years or have been the son of a
waterman. This is to prevent the loss of lives and goods by
inexperienced watermen.
Spices and potions, including pepper, cloves, mace, nutmeg, cinnamon,
ginger, almonds, and dates, which have usually been garbled [cleaned or
sorted by sifting] shall be garbled, cleaned, sorted, and sealed by the
Garbler before sale. This is to prevent mingled, corrupt, and unclean
spices and potions from being sold.
Plasterers shall cease painting because it has intruded upon the
livelihoods of painters who have been apprenticed as such.
Fishermen and their guides may continue to use the coastland for their
fishing activities despite the trespass to landowners.
Since sails for ships in recent years have been made in the realm
instead of imported, none shall make such cloth unless he has been
apprenticed in such or brought up in the trade for seven years. This is
to stop the badness of such cloth.
Tonnage and poundage on goods exported and imported shall be taken to
provide safeguard of the seas for such goods.
All persons must go to the established church on Sundays and holy days.
The penalty was at first forfeiture 12d. along with church punishment,
and later, 20 pounds per month and being bound by two sureties for 200
pounds for good behavior, and if the 20 pounds is not paid, then
forfeiture of all goods to be applied to the amount due and two-thirds
of one's land.
These laws were directed against Catholicism, but were laxly enforced
as long as worship was not open and no one wore priestly clothes:
1) The writing, preaching, or maintaining of any foreign spiritual
jurisdiction shall be punished by forfeiture of goods or, if the goods
are not worth 20 pounds, one year imprisonment, for the first offense;
forfeiture of goods and lands and the King's protection, for the second
offense; and the penalty for high treason for the third offense.
2) Any person leading others to the Romish [Catholic] religion is guilty
of high treason. The penalty for saying mass is [2,667s.] 200 marks and
one year's imprisonment. The penalty for hearing mass is [1,333s.] 100
marks and one year's imprisonment. If one is suspected of being a Jesuit
or priest giving mass, one must answer questions on examination or be
imprisoned.
3) Papists [those who in conscience refused to take the oath of
supremacy of the Crown over the church] must stay in their place of
abode and not go five miles from it, unless licensed to do so for
business, or else forfeit one's goods and profits of land for life. If a
copyholder, land is forfeited to one's lord. But if the goods are not
worth 800s. or the land is not worth at least 267s., the realm must be
abjured. Otherwise, the papist is declared a felon without benefit of
clergy.
4) If a child is sent to a foreign land for Catholic education, he
cannot inherit lands or goods or money, unless he conforms to the
established church on his return. There is also a 100 pound penalty for
the persons who sent him.
- Judicial Procedure -
Trials of noblemen for treason shall be by their peers.
Stewards of leet and baron courts may no longer receive, in their own
names, profits of the court over 12d. since they have vexed subjects
with grievous fines and amercements so that profits of justice have
grown much
Jurors shall be selected from those people who have at least 80s.
annual income instead of 40s. because sheriffs have been taking bribes
by the most able and sufficient freeholders to be spared at home and the
poorer and simpler people, who are least able to discern the causes in
question, and most unable to bear the charges of appearance and
attendance in such cases have been the jurors. Also there had been
inflation.
Defendants sued or informed against upon penal statutes may appear by
attorney so that they may avoid the inconvenience of traveling a long
distance to attend and put to bail.
Not only sheriffs, but their employees who impanel juries or execute
process in the courts shall take an oath of office.
A hundred shall answer for any robbery therein only if there has been
negligence or fault in pursuit of the robber after a hue and cry is made
because the past law has been too harsh and required payment for
offenses from people unable to pay who have done everything reasonable
to catch the robber.
The Star Chamber became the central criminal court after 1560, and
punished perjury, corruption, malfeasance throughout the legal system
such as jury corruption and judicial bribery, rioting, slander, and
libel. Its procedure was inquisitory rather than accusative. It heard
witnesses in camera [not in the presence of the suspected]. Trial was by
systematic interrogation of the suspected on oath, with torture if
necessary in treason cases. Silence could be taken for a confession of
guilt. There was no jury. Queen Elizabeth chose not to sit on this
court. Punishments were imprisonment, fines, the pillory, ear cropping
or tacking, whipping, stigmata on the face, but not death or any
dismemberment except for the ears. (The gentry was exempt from
whipping.)
Because the publication of many books and pamphlets against the
government, especially the church, had led to discontents with the
established church and to the spreading of sects and schisms, the Star
Chamber in 1585 held that the printing trade was to be confined to
London, except for one press at Oxford and one at Cambridge. No book or
pamphlet could be printed unless the text was first seen, examined, and
allowed by the Archbishop of Canterbury or the Bishop of London. Book
publishers in violation were to be imprisoned for six months and banned
from printing; their equipment was to be destroyed. Wardens were
authorized to search wherever "they shall have reasonable cause of
suspicion", and to seize all such books and pamphlets printed. But
printers continued to print unlicensed material.
The Ecclesiastical High Commission [later called the Court of High
Commission or High Court of Ecclesiastical Causes] took over criminal
cases formerly heard by the church courts. It also heard matters of
domestic morals. It was led by bishops and Privy Council members who in
1559 were authorized by a statute of Parliament to keep order within the
church, discipline the clergy, and punish such lay offenses as were
included in the ecclesiastical jurisdiction. Obstinate heresy is still a
capital crime, but practically the bishops have little power of forcing
heretics to stand trial. If anyone maintains papal authority, he
forfeits his goods; on a third conviction, he is a traitor. The
clergyman who adopts a prayer book other that the prescribed one commits
a crime. Excommunication has imprisonment behind it. Elizabeth gave this
court the power to fine and imprison, which the former church courts had
not had. At first, the chief work was depriving papists of their
benefices.
Suits on titles to land were restricted to the common law courts and no
longer to be heard in the Star Chamber, Chancery Court, or in the Court
of Requests (equity for poor people).
The Queen's Privy Council investigated sedition and treason, security
of the regime, major economic offenses, international problems, civil
commotion, officials abusing their positions, and persons perverting the
course of justice. It frequently issued orders to Justices of the Peace,
for instance to investigate riots and crimes, to enforce the statutes
against vagrancy and illegal games, to regulate alehouses, to ensure
that butchers, innkeepers, and victualers did not sell meat on fish
days, and to gather information needed from the counties. The Justices
of the Peace decided misdemeanors such as abduction of heiresses,
illegal entry, petty thievery, damage to crops, fence-breaking,
brawling, personal feuds, drunken pranks, swearing, profanation of the
Sabbath, alehouse nuisances, drunkenness, perjury, and malfeasance by
officials. They held petty and quarter sessions. The Justices of the
Peace had administrative duties in control of vagrancy, upkeep of roads
and bridges, and arbitration of lawsuits referred to them by courts.
They listed the poor in each parish community, assessed rates for their
maintenance, and appointed overseers to administer the welfare system,
deploying surplus funds to provide houses of correction for vagrants.
Raw materials such as wool, flax, hemp, and iron were bought upon which
the able-bodied unemployed could be set to work at the parochial level.
They determined wages in their districts, with no statutory ceiling on
them, for all laborers, weavers, spinsters, workmen and workwomen
working by the day, week, month, or year, or taking any work at any
person's hand. There were about 50 Justices of the Peace per county. All
were unpaid. They performed these duties for the next 200 years.
The Justices of Assize rode on circuit twice a year to enforce the
criminal law and reported their assessment of the work of the Justices
of the Peace back to the Privy Council.
The duty to hear and determine felonies was taken from Justices of the
Peace by 1590. The Justices of Assize did this work. Accused people
could wait for years in gaol before their case was heard. Felonies
included breach of prison, hunting by night with painted faces, taking
horses to Scotland, stealing of hawks' eggs, stealing cattle, highway
robbery, robbing on the sea, robbing houses, letting out of ponds,
cutting of purses, deer-stealing at night, conjuring and witchcraft,
diminution of coin, counterfeiting of coins, and impenitent roguery and
idleness. The penalty was death. Many people were hanged for the felony
of theft over 12d. Some bold men accused of felony refused to plead so
that they could not be tried and found guilty. They died of heavy
weights being placed on their bodies. But then their property could go
to their heirs.
The Court of Queen's Bench and Exchequer indirectly expanded their
jurisdiction to include suits between citizens, formerly heard only the
Court of Common Pleas or Chancery. Chancery interrogated defendants.
Chancery often issued injunctions against suits in the common law
courts. Trial by combat was very rare.
Pleadings had to be in writing and oral testimony was given by sworn
witnesses. Case decisions are in books compiled by various reporters who
sit in on court hearings rather than in year books.
In the common law, trespass has given rise to the offshoot branch of
"ejectment", which becomes the common means of recovering possession of
land, no matter what kind of title the claimant asserts. Trespass on the
case has given rise to the offshoot branch of "trover" [finding
another's goods and converting them to one's own use]. The use of the
action of trover gradually supplants the action of detinue, which
involves compurgation.
In the common law courts, the action of assumpsit for enforcing certain
promises is used more than the action of debt in those cases where there
is a debt based on an agreement. The essential nature of "consideration"
in contract is evolving from the procedural requirements for the action
of assumpsit. Consideration may consist in mutual promises, a precedent
debt, or a detriment incurred by one who has simultaneously received a
promise related to the detrimental action. Consideration must be
something, an act, or forbearance of an act that is of value. For
instance, forbearance to sue a worthless claim is not consideration.
The abstract concept of contract as an agreement between two parties
which is supported by consideration is developing as the number of
various agreements that are court enforceable expands. For instance the
word "consideration" is used in Hayward's Case in 1595 in the Court of
Wards on the construction of a deed. Sir Rowland Hayward was seised in
fee of the Doddington manor and other lands and tenements, whereof part
was in demesne, part in lease for years with rents reserved, and part in
copyhold, by indenture, "in consideration of a certain sum of money"
paid to him by Richard Warren and others, to whom he demised, granted,
bargained and sold the said manor, lands and tenements, and the
reversions and remainders of them, with all the rents reserved upon any
demise, to have and to hold to them and their assigns, presently after
the decease of Sir Rowland, for the term of 17 years. It was held that
the grantees could elect to take by bargain and sale or by demise, each
of which had different consequences.
In another case, A delivered 400s. to B to the use of C, a woman, to be
delivered to her on the day of her marriage. Before this day, A
countermanded it, and called home the money. It was held in the Chancery
Court that C could not recover because "there is no consideration why
she should have it".
In a case concerning a deed, A sold land to B for 400s., with
confidence, that it would be to the use of A. This bargain "hath a
consideration in itself ... and such a consideration is an indenture of
bargain and sale". It was held that the transaction was not examinable
except for fraud and that A was therefore estopped.
A court reporter at the King's Bench formulated two principles on
consideration of the case of Wilkes against Leuson as: "The heir is
estopped from falsifying the consideration acknowledged in the deed of
feoffment of his ancestor. Where a tenant in capite made a feoffment
without consideration, but falsely alleged one in the deed on an office
finding his dying seised, the master of the wards cannot remove the
feoffees on examining into the consideration, and retain the land until
&c. and though the heir tended, still if he do not prosecute his livery,
the Queen must admit the feoffees to their traverse, and to have the
farm, &c." The court reporter summarized this case as follows: Wilkes,
who was merchant of the staple, who died in February last past, made a
feoffment in the August before his death to one Leuson, a knight, and
his brother, and another, of the manor of Hodnel in the county of
Warwick; and the deed, (seen) for seven thousand pounds [140,000s.] to
him paid by the feoffees, of which sum he made acquittance in the same
deed (although in fact and in truth not a half-penny was paid), gave,
granted, and confirmed &c "habendum eir et hoeredibus suis in perpetuum,
ad proprium opus et usum ipsorum A. B. et C. in perpetuum," and not
"hoeredum suorum," together with a clause of warranty to them, their
heirs and assigns, in forma proedicta: and notwithstanding this
feoffment he occupied the land with sheep, and took other profits during
his life; and afterwards his death was found on a diem clausit extremum
by office, that he died seised of the said manor in fee, and one I.
Wilkes his brother of full age found his next heir, and a tenure in
capite found, and now within the three months the said feoffees sued in
the court of wards to be admitted to their traverse, and also to have
the manor in farm until &c. And although the said I. Wilkes the brother
had tendered a livery, yet he had not hitherto prosecuted it, but for
cause had discontinued. And whether now the master of the wards at his
discretion could remove the feoffees by injunction out of possession
upon examination of the said consideration of the said feoffment which
was false, and none such in truth, and retain it in the hands of the
Queen donec et quousque &c. was a great question. And by the opinion of
the learned counsel of that court he cannot do it, but the Queen is
bound in justice to give livery to him who is found heir by the office,
or if he will not proceed with that, to grant to the tenderers the
traverse, and to have the farm, &c. the request above mentioned. And
this by the statutes ... And note, that no averment can be allowed to
the heir, that the said consideration was false against the deed and
acknowledgment of his ancestor, for that would be to admit an
inconvenience. And note the limitation of the use above, for divers
doubted whether the feoffees shall have a fee-simple in the sue, because
the use is not expressed, except only "to themselves (by their names)
for ever;" but if those words had been wanting, it would have been clear
enough that the consideration of seven thousand pounds had been
sufficient, &c. for the law intends a sufficient consideration by reason
of the said sum; but when the use is expressed otherwise by the party
himself, it is otherwise. And also the warranty in the deed was "to
them, their heirs, and assigns, in form aforesaid," which is a
declaration of the intent of Wilkes, that the feoffees shall not have
the use in fee simple; and it may be that the use, during their three
lives, is worth seven thousand pounds, and more &c. And suppose that the
feoffment had been "to have to them and their heirs to the proper use
and behoof of them the feoffees for the term of their lives for ever for
seven thousand pounds," would they have any other estate than for the
term of their lives in the use? I believe not; and so in the other case.
A last example of a case concerning consideration is that of Assaby and
Others against Lady Anne Manners and Others. The court reporter
characterized the principle of the case as: "A. in consideration of his
daughter's marriage covenants to stand seised to his own use for life,
and that at his death she and her husband shall have the land in [fee]
tail, and that all persons should stand seised to those uses, and also
for further assurance. After the marriage he bargains and sell with fine
and recovery to one with full notice of the covenants and use; this is
of no avail, but on the death of A. the daughter and her husband may
enter." The court reporter summarized this case as follows: A. was
seised of land in fee, and in consideration of a marriage to be had
between his daughter and heir apparent, and B. son and heir apparent of
C. he covenanted and agreed by indenture with C. that he himself would
have, hold, and retain the land to himself, and the profits of during
his life, and that after his decease the said son and daughter should
have the land to them and to the heirs of their two bodies lawfully
begotten, and that all persons then or afterwards seised of the land
should stand and be seised immediately after the marriage solemnized to
the use of the said A. for the term of his life, and after his death to
the use of the said son and daughter in tail as above, and covenanted
further to make an assurance of the land before a certain day
accordingly &c. and then the marriage took effect; and afterwards A.
bargained and sold the land for two hundred marks [2,667s.](of which not
a penny is paid) to a stranger, who had notice of the first agreements,
covenants, and use, and enfeoffed divers persons to this last use,
against whom a common recovery was had to his last use; and also A.
levied a fine to the recoverers before any execution had, and
notwithstanding all these things A. continued possession in taking the
profits during his life; and afterwards died; and the son and daughter
entered, and made a feoffment to their first use. And all this matter
was found in assize by Assaby and others against Lady Anne Manners and
others. And judgment was given that the entry and feoffment were good
and lawful, and the use changed by the first indenture and agreement.
Yet error was alleged. The judgment in the assize is affirmed.
The famous Shelley's Case stands for the principle that where in any
instrument an estate for life is given to the ancestor, and afterwards
by the same instrument, the inheritance is limited whether mediately, or
immediately, to his heirs, or heirs of his body, as a class to take in
succession as heirs to him, the word "heirs" is a word of limitation,
and the ancestor takes the whole estate. For example, where property
goes to A for life and the remainder goes to A's heirs, A's life estate
and the remainder merge into a fee in A. A can sell or devise this
interest.
Edward Shelley was a tenant in fee tail general. He had two sons. The
older son predeceased his father, leaving a daughter and his wife
pregnant with a son. Edward had a common recovery (the premises being in
lease for years) to the use of himself for term of his life, after his
decease to the use of the male heirs of his body, and of the male heirs
of the body of such heirs, remainder over. After judgment and the
awarding of the writ of seisin, but before its execution, Edward died.
After his death, and before the birth of his older son's son, the writ
of seisin was executed. The younger son entered the land and leased it
to a third party. Afterwards, the son of the older son was born. He
entered the land and ejected the third party. It was held that the
younger son had taken quasi by descent until the birth of the older
son's son. The entry by the older son's son was lawful. The third party
was lawfully ejected. (Shelley's Case, King's Bench, 1581, English
Reports - Full Reprint, Vol. 76, Page 206.)
About 1567, London authorities punished Nicholas Jennings alias Blunt
for using elaborate disguises to present himself as an epileptic to beg
for handouts from the public. He was pilloried, whipped, and pulled
behind a cart through the streets. He was kept at the Bridewell and was
set to work at a mill.
- - - Chapter 14 - - -
- The Times: 1601-1625 -
Due in part to increasing population, the prices of foodstuffs had
risen sixfold from the later 1400s, during which it had been stable.
This inflation gradually impoverished those living on fixed wages.
Landlords could insist on even shorter leases and higher rents. London
quadrupled in population. Many lands that were in scattered strips,
pasture lands, waste lands, and lands gained from drainage and
disafforestation were enclosed for the introduction of convertible
agriculture (e.g. market-oriented specialization) and only sometimes for
sheep. The accompanying extinguishment of common rights was devastating
to small tenants and cottagers. Gentry and yeomen benefited greatly.
There was a gradual consolidation of the land into fewer hands and
demise of the small family farm. In towns, the mass of poor, unskilled
workers with irregular work grew. Prices finally flattened out in the
1620s.
Society became polarized with a wealthy few growing wealthier and a
mass of poor growing poorer. This social stratification became a
permanent fixture of English society. Poverty was no longer due to death
of a spouse or parent, sickness or injury, or a phase in the life cycle
such as youth or old age. Many full-time wage earners were in constant
danger of destitution. More subdivided land holdings in the country made
holdings of cottagers minuscule. But these were eligible for parish
relief under the poor laws. Beside them were substantial numbers of
rogues and vagabonds wandering the roads. These vagrants were usually
young unmarried men. There were no more licensed liveries of lords.
During the time 1580 to 1680, there were distinct social classes in
England which determined dress, convention in comportment which
determined face-to-face contacts between superiors and inferiors, order
of seating in church, place arrangement at tables, and rank order in
public processions. It was influenced by power, wealth, life-style,
educational level, and birth. The various classes lived in separate
worlds; their paths did not cross each other. People moved only within
their own class. Each class had a separate existence as well as a
different life style from the other classes. So each class developed a
wariness of other classes. However, there was much social mobility
between adjacent classes.
At the top were the gentry, about 2% of the population. Theirs was a
landed wealth with large estate mansions. They employed many servants
and could live a life of leisure. Their lady wives often managed the
household with many servants and freely visited friends and went out
shopping, riding, or walking. They conversed with neighbors and made
merry with them at childbirths, christenings, churchings, and funerals.
Gentlemen usually had positions of responsibility such as lords of
manors and leaders in their parishes. These families often sent the
oldest son to university to become a Justice of the Peace and then a
member of Parliament. They also served as county officers such as High
Constable of their hundred and grand jury member. Their social,
economic, and family ties were at least countywide. They composed about
700 gentle families, including the peers, who had even more landed
wealth, which was geographically dispersed. After the peers were:
baronets (created in 1611), knights, esquires, and then ordinary
gentlemen. These titles were acquired by being the son of such or by
purchase. Most gentry had a house in London, where they spent most of
their time, as well as country mansions. About 4/5 of the land was in
the hands of 7,000 of the nobility and landed gentry due in part to
estate tails constructed by attorneys to favor hereditary interests. The
gentry had also profited by commerce and possessions in the colonies.
The country life of a country squire or gentleman dealt with all the
daily affairs of a farm. He had men plough, sow, and reap. He takes part
in the haying and getting cut grass under cover when a rain came. His
sow farrows; his horse is gelded; a first lamb is born. He drags his
pond and takes out great carps. His horses stray and he finds them in
the pound. Boys are bound to him for service. He hires servants, and
some work out their time and some run away. Knaves steal his sheep. His
hog is stabbed. He and a neighbor argue about the setting up of a
cottage. He borrows money for a daughter's dowry. He holds a leet court.
He attends church on Sunday and reads the lesson when called upon. He
visits the local tavern to hear from his neighbors. Country folk brawl.
Wenches get pregnant. Men commit suicide, usually by hanging. Many
gentlemen spent their fortunes and died poor. New gentlemen from the
lower classes took their places.
The second class included the wealthier merchants and professional men
of the towns. These men were prominent in town government. They usually
had close family ties with the gentry, especially as sons. When wealthy
enough, they often bought a country estate. The professional men
included military officers, civil service officials, attorneys, some
physicians, and a few clergymen. The instabilities of trade, high
mortality rates in the towns, and high turnover rate among the leading
urban families prevented any separate urban interest group arising that
would be opposed to the landed gentry. Also included in this second
group were the most prosperous yeomanry of the countryside.
The third class was the yeomanry at large, which included many more
than the initial group who possessed land in freehold of at least 40s.,
partly due to inflation. Freehold was the superior form of holding land
because one was free to sell, exchange, or devise the land and had a
political right to vote in Parliamentary elections. Other yeomen were
those who possessed enough land, as copyholder or leaseholder, to be
protected from fluctuations in the amount of the annual harvest, that
is, at least 50 acres. A copyholder rented land from a lord for a period
of years or lives, usually three lives including that of the widow, and
paid a substantial amount whenever the copyhold came up for renewal. The
copyholder and leaseholder were distinguished from the mere
tenant-at-will, whose only right was to gather his growing crop when his
landlord decided to terminate his tenancy. The average yeoman had a one
and a half story house, with a milkhouse, a malthouse, and other small
buildings attached to the dwelling. The house would contain a main
living room, a parlor, where there would be one or more beds, and
several other rooms with beds. No longer was there a central great hall.
Cooking was done in a kitchen or over the open fire in the fireplace of
the main room. Furniture included large oak tables, stools, long
bencches with or without backs, chests, cupboards, and a few hard-backed
simple chairs. Dishware was wood or pewter. The yeomen often became
sureties for recognizances, witnesses to wills, parish managers,
churchwardens, vestrymen, the chief civil officers of parishes and
towns, overseers of the poor, surveyors of bridges and highways, jurymen
and constables for the Justices of the Peace, and sheriffs' bailiffs.
The families and servants of these yeomen ate meat, fish, wheaten bread,
beer, cheese, milk, butter, and fruit. Their wives were responsible for
the dairy, poultry, orchard, garden, and perhaps pigs. They smoked and
cured hams and bacon, salted fish, dried herbs for the kitchen or
lavender and pot-pourri for sweetening the linen, and arranged apples
and roots in lofts or long garrets under the roof to last the winter.
They preserved fruits candied or in syrup. They preserved wines; made
perfumes, washes for preserving the hair and complexion, rosemary to
cleanse the hair, and elder-flower water for sunburn; distilled
beverages; ordered wool hemp, and flax to spin for cloth (the weaving
was usually done in the village); fashioned and sewed clothes and house
linens; embroidered; dyed; malted oats; brewed; baked; and extracted
oils. Many prepared herb medicines and treated injuries, such as
dressing wounds, binding arteries, and setting broken bones. Wives also
ploughed and sowed, weeded the crops, and sheared sheep. They sometimes
cared for the poor and sold produce at the market. Some yeomen were also
tanners, painters, carpenters, or blacksmiths; and as such they were
frequently brought before the Justices of the Peace for exercising a
craft without having served an apprenticeship. The third class also
included the freemen of the towns, who could engage independently in
trade and had political rights. These freemen were about one-third of
the male population of the town.
The fourth class included the ordinary farmer leasing by copyhold, for
usually 21 years, five to fifty acres. From this class were drawn
sidesmen [assistants to churchwardens] and constables. They had neither
voice nor authority in government. Their daily diet was bacon, beer,
bread, and cheese. Also in this class were the independent urban
craftsmen who were not town freemen. Their only voice in government was
at the parish level.
The fifth and lowest class included the laborers and cottagers, who
were usually tenants at will. They were dependent on day labor. They
started work at dawn, had breakfast for half an hour at six, worked
until dinner, and then until supper at about six; in the summer they
would then do chores around the barns until eight or nine. Some were
hedgers, ditchers, ploughmen, reapers, shepherds, and herdsmen. The
cottagers' typical earnings of about 1s. a day amounted to about 200
shillings a year, which was almost subsistence level. Accordingly they
also farmed a little on their four acres of land with garden. Some also
had a few animals. They lived in one or two room cottages of clay and
branches of trees or wood, sometimes with a brick fireplace and chimney,
and few windows. They ate bread, cheese, lard, soup, and greens. If a
laborer was unmarried, he lived with the farmer. Theirs was a constant
battle for survival. They often moved, because of deprivation, to seek
opportunity elsewhere. The town wage-earning laborers ranged from
journeymen craftsmen to poor casual laborers. The mass of workers in
London were not members of guilds, and the crime rate was high.
The last three classes also contained rural craftsmen and tradesmen,
who also farmed. The variety of trades became very large, e.g.
tinsmiths, chain smiths, pewterers, violin makers, and glass painters.
The curriers, who prepared hides for shoemakers, coachmakers, saddlers,
and bookbinders, were incorporated.
The fourth and fifth classes comprised about three fourths of the
population.
Then there were the maritime groups: traders, ship owners, master and
seamen, and the fishers.
Over one fourth of all households had servants. They were the social
equals of day laborers, but materially better off with food and clothing
plus an allowance of money of two pounds [40s.] a year. Those who sewed
got additional pay for this work. There was no great chasm between the
family and the servants. They did not segregate into a parlor class and
a kitchen class. The top servants were as educated as their masters and
ate at the same table. Great households had a chaplain and a steward to
oversee the other servants. There was usually a cook. Lower servants ate
together. Servants were disciplined by cuffs and slaps and by the rod by
master or mistress. Maids wore short gowns, a large apron, and a gypsy
hat tied down over a cap. Chamber maids helped to dress their
mistresses. Servants might sleep on trundle beds stored under their
master's or mistress's bed, in a separate room, or on the straw loft
over the stables. A footman wore a blue tunic or skirted coat with
corded loop fasteners, knee-britches, and white stockings. He walked or
ran on foot by the side of his master or mistress when they rode out on
horseback or in a carriage and ran errands for him, such as leading a
lame horse home or running messages. A good footman is described in this
reference letter: "Sir, - You wrote me lately for a footman, and I think
this bearer will fit you: I know he can run well, for he has run away
twice from me, but he knew the way back again: yet, though he has a
running head as well as running heels (and who will expect a footman to
be a stayed man) I would not part with him were I not to go post to the
North. There be some things in him that answer for his waggeries: he
will come when you call him, go when you bid him, and shut the door
after him; he is faithful and stout, and a lover of his master. He is a
great enemy to all dogs, if they bark at him in his running; for I have
seen him confront a huge mastiff, and knock him down. When you go a
country journey, or have him run with you a-hunting, you must spirit him
with liquor; you must allow him also something extraordinary for socks,
else you must not have him wait at your table; when his grease melts in
running hard, it is subject to fall into his toes. I send him to you but
for trial, if he be not for your turn, turn him over to me again when I
come back..."
Dress was not as elaborate as in Elizabethan times. For instance, fewer
jewels were worn. Ladies typically wore a brooch, earrings, and pearl
necklaces. Men also wore earrings. Watches with elaborate cases were
common. Women's dresses were of satin, taffeta, and velvet, and were
made by dressmakers. Pockets were carried in the hand, fastened to the
waist by a ribbon, or sewn in petticoats and accessible by a placket
opening. The corset was greatly reduced. Women's hair was in little
natural-looking curls, a few small tendrils on the forehead with soft
ringlets behind the ears, and the back coiled into a simple knot. Men
also wore their hair in ringlets. They had pockets in their trousers,
first as a cloth pouch inserted into an opening in the side seam, and
later sewn into the side seam. The bereaved wore black, and widows wore
a black veil over their head until they remarried or died. Rouge was
worn by lower class women. Toothbrushes, made with horsehair, were a new
and costly luxury. The law dictating what classes could wear what
clothes was difficult to enforce and the last such law was in 1597.
Merchants who had become rich by pirating could now afford to extend
their trading ventures well beyond the Atlantic sea. Cotton chintzes,
calicoes, taffetas, muslins, and ginghams from India now became
fashionable as dress fabrics. Simple cotton replaced linen as the norm
for napkins, tablecloths, bed sheets, and underwear. Then it became the
fashion to use calicoes for curtains, cushions, chairs, and beds. Its
inexpensiveness made these items affordable for many. There was a
cotton-weaving industry in England from about 1621, established by
cotton workmen who fled to England in 1585 from Antwerp, which had been
captured. By 1616, there were automatic weaving looms in London which
could be operated by a novice.
Even large houses now tended to do without a courtyard and became
compacted into one soaring and stately whole. A typical country house
had deep-set windows of glass looking into a walled green court with a
sundial in it and fringed around with small trees. The gables roofs were
steep and full of crooks and angles, and covered with rough slate if
there was a source for such nearby. There was an extensive use of red
tile, either rectangular or other shapes and with design such as
fishscales. The rooms are broad and spacious and include hall, great
parlor, little parlor, matted chamber, and study. In the hall was still
the great, heavy table. Dining tables were covered with cloth, carpet,
or printed leather. Meals were increasingly eaten in a parlor. Noble men
now preferred to be waited upon by pages and grooms instead of by their
social equals as before. After dinner, they deserted the parlor to
retire into drawing rooms for conversation and desserts of sweet wine
and spiced delicacies supplemented by fruit. Afterward, there might be
dancing and then supper. In smaller parlors, there was increasing use of
oval oak tables with folding leaves. Chests of drawers richly carved or
inlaid and with brass handles were coming into increased use. Walls were
lined with panels and had pictures or were hung with tapestry. Carpets,
rugs, and curtains kept people warm. There were many stools to sit on,
and some arm chairs. Wide and handsome open staircases separated the
floors. Upstairs, the sitting and bedrooms open into each other with
broad, heavy doors. Bedrooms had four-post beds and wardrobes with
shelves and pegs. Under the roof are garrets, apple-lofts, and
root-chambers. Underneath is a cellar. Outside is a farmyard with
outbuildings such as bake house, dairy, cheese-press house, brewery,
stilling house, malt house, fowl house, dove cot, pig stye,
slaughter-house, wood house, barns, stable, and sometimes a mill. There
were stew-ponds for fish and a park with a decoy for wild fowl. There
was also a laundry, carpenter's bench, blacksmith's forge, and pots and
equipment of a house painter.
In the 1600s, towns were fortified by walled ditches instead of relying
on castles, which couldn't contain enough men to protect the
townspeople. Also in towns, water was supplied by local pumps and wells.
In 1613, a thirty-eight-mile aqueduct brought spring water into London.
In the country, floors were of polished wood or stone and strewn with
rushes. A ladies' attendant might sleep the same bedroom on a bed which
slid under the ladies' bed. Apprentices and shop boys had to sleep under
the counter. Country laborers slept in a loft on straw. Bread was made
in each household. There were bedroom chairs with enclosed chamber pots.
Wood fires were the usual type. Coal was coming into use in the towns
and near coal mines. Charcoal was also used. Food was roasted on a spit
over a fire, baked, or broiled. People still licked their fingers at
meals. The well-to-do had wax candles. Tallow dips were used by the poor
and for the kitchen. People drank cordials and homemade wines made with
grapes, currants, oranges, or ginger. Some mead was also drunk.
Tobacco, potatoes, tea, asparagus, kidney beans, scarlet runners,
cardoons (similar to artichokes), horseradish, sugarcane, and turkeys
for Christmas, were introduced from the New World, China, and India. Tea
was a rare and expensive luxury. Coffee was a new drink. With the cane
sugar was made sweetened puddings, pies, and drinks. The potato caused
the advent of distillation of concentrated alcohol from fermented potato
mashes. There was a distiller's company by 1638. Distilleries' drinks
had higher alcoholic content than wine or beer.
The Merchant Adventurers sold in town stores silks, satins, diamonds,
pearls, silver, and gold. There were women peddlers selling hats and
hosiery from door to door and women shopkeepers, booksellers, alehouse
keepers, linen drapers, brewers, and ale- wives. London had polluted air
and water, industrial noise, and traffic congestion.
Work on farms was still year-round. In January and February, fields
were ploughed and harrowed and the manure spread. Also, trees and hedges
were set, fruit trees pruned, and timber lopped. In March and April, the
fields were stirred again and the wheat and rye sown. In May gardens
were planted, hop vines trained to poles, ditches scoured, lambs weaned,
and sheep watched for "rot". In June sheep were washed and sheared, and
fields were spread with lime and clay, and manured. In July hay was cut,
dried, and stacked. In August crops were harvested, which called for
extra help from neighbors and townsmen who took holidays at harvesting.
Then there was threshing, and the sowing of winter wheat and rye. In the
autumn, cider from apples and perry from pears might be made. By
November the fall planting was finished and the time had come for the
killing of cattle and hanging up their salted carcasses for winter meat.
Straw would be laid down with dung, to be spread next spring on the
fields. Stock that could not live outdoors in winter were brought into
barns.
Government regulated the economy. In times of dearth, it ordered
Justices of the Peace to buy grain and sell it below cost. It forbade
employers to lay off workers whose products they could not sell. It used
the Star Chamber Court to enforce economic regulations.
Enclosures of land were made to carry on improved methods of tillage,
which yielded more grain and more sheep fleece. Drainage of extensive
marsh land created more land for agriculture. Waste land was used to
breed game and "fowling" contributed to farmers' and laborers'
livelihoods. Killing game was not the exclusive right of landowners, but
was a common privilege. The agricultural laborer, who worked for wages
and composed most of the wage- earning population, found it hard to make
ends meet.
There were food riots usually during years of harvest failure, in which
organized groups seized foodstuffs being transported or in markets.
Also, there were enclosure riots, in which organized groups destroyed
hedges and fences erected in agrarian reorganization to restrict access
to or to subdivide former common pasture land. These self- help riots
were last resorts to appeals. They were relatively orderly and did not
expand into random violence. The rioters were seldom punished more than
a fining or whipping of the leaders and action was taken to satisfy
their legitimate grievances.
The poor came to resent the rich and there was a rise in crime among
the poor. Penal laws were frequently updated in an effort to bring more
order.
In 1610, weekly wages for a mason were 8s. or 5s., for a laborer were
6s. or 4s., for a carpenter 8s. or 6s. An unskilled laborer received 1s.
a day.
There were conventions of paternalism and deference between neighbors
of unequal social status. A social superior often protected his lessers
from impoverishment For instance, the landlord lessened rents in times
of harvest failure. A social superior would help find employment for a
lesser person or his children, stand surety for a recognizance,
intervene in a court case, or have his wife tend a sick member of his
lesser's family. A social obligation was felt by most of the rich, the
landlords, the yeomen farmers, and the clergy. This system of
paternalism and social deference was expressed and reinforced at
commonly attended village sports and games, dances, wakes and "ales"
(the proceeds of which went to the relief of a certain person in
distress), "rush-bearings", parish feasts, weddings, christenings,
"churchings" to give thanks for births, and funerals. Even the poor were
buried in coffins. Also there was social interaction at the local
alehouse, where neighbors drank, talked, sang, and played at bowls or
"shove goat" together.
Quarrelling was commonplace. For instance, borough authorities would
squabble over the choice of a schoolmaster; the parson would carry on a
long fight with parishioners over tithe hens and pigs; two country
gentlemen would continue a vendetta started by their great-grandfathers
over a ditch or hunting rights; the parishioners would wrangle with the
churchwardens over the allocation of pews. The position of one's pew
reflected social position. Men tried to keep the pews of their ancestors
and the newly prosperous wanted the recognition in the better pews, for
which they had to pay a higher amount. But, on the other hand, farmers
were full of good will toward their neighbors. They lent farm and
kitchen equipment, helped raise timbers for a neighbor's new barn, sent
food and cooked dishes to those providing a funeral feast and to the
sick and incurable.
Village standards of behavior required that a person not to drink to
excess, quarrel, argue, profane, gossip, cause a nuisance, abuse wife or
children, or harbor suspicious strangers, and to pay scot and bear lot
as he was asked. Neighbors generally got along well and frequently
borrowed and loaned small sums of money to each other without interest
for needs that suddenly arose. Bad behavior was addressed by the church
by mediation and, if this failed, by exclusion from holy communion.
There was also whipping and the stocks.
Marital sex was thought to be good for the health and happiness of the
husband and enjoyable by wives. The possibility of female orgasm was
encouraged. Both women and men were thought to have "seed" and drank
certain potions to cause pregnancy or to prevent birth. Some argued that
orgasm of both partners was necessary for the "seed" of the male and
female to mix to produce pregnancy. Most women were in a virtual state
of perpetual pregnancy. Both Catholics and Protestants thought that God
wanted them to multiply and cover the earth. Catholics thought that the
only goal of sex was procreation. Men were considered ready for marriage
only when they could support a family, which was usually at about age
30. Brides were normally virgins, but there was bridal pregnancy of
about 20%. Women usually married at about age 25. Marriages were usually
within one's own class and religion. The aristocracy often initiated
matches of their children for the sake of continuity in the family
estates and tried to obtain the consent of their children for the match
in mind. The age of consent to marry was 14 for boys and 12 for girls.
Girls in arranged marriages often married at 13, and boys before they
went to university. But the girls usually stayed with their parents for
a couple of years before living with their husbands. If married before
puberty, consummation of the marriage waited for such time. In other
classes, the initiative was usually taken by the child. Dowries and
marriage portions usually were given by the parents of the bride.
Wet-nurses frequently were used, even by Puritans. There were no baby
bottles. Many babies died, causing their parents much grief. About 1/4
of women's deaths occurred during childbirth. A child was deemed to be
the husband's if he was within the four seas, i.e. not in foreign lands,
for an agreed length of time. Illegitimacy was infrequent, and punished
by church-mandated public penance by the mother and lesser penance and
maintenance by the father. The church court punished adultery and
defamation for improper sexual conduct.
The established church still taught that the husband was to be the
authority in marriage and had the duty to provide for, protect, and
maintain his wife. Wives were to obey their husbands, but could also
admonish and advise their husbands without reproach. In literature,
women were portrayed as inferior to men intellectually and morally as
well as physically. In reality wives did not fit the image of women
portrayed by the church and literature. Quarrels between husband and
wife were not uncommon and were not stopped by a husband's assertion of
authority. Wives were very active in the harvesting and did casual labor
of washing, weeding, and stone-picking. Farmers' and tradesmen's wives
kept accounts, looked after the garden, orchard, pigs, and poultry;
brewed beer; spun wool and flax; and acted as agents in business
affairs. Wives of craftsmen and tradesmen participated actively in their
husbands' shops. Wives of weavers spun for their husband's employers.
Wives of the gentry ran their households with their husbands. The lady
of a large mansion superintended the household, ordering and looking
after the servants, and seeing to the education of her children. Mothers
handed down their recipes to their daughters. Women still did much
needlework and embroidering for clothing and house, such as cushions,
screens, bed curtains, window curtains, hangings, footstools, book
covers, and small chests of drawers for valuables. Liking simplicity,
Puritan women did less of this work.
Naming one's wife as executor of one's will was the norm. Jointures
[property for a widow] were negotiated at the betrothal of ladies.
Widows of manorial tenants were guaranteed by law one-third of family
real property, despite creditors. But most testators went beyond this
and gave a life interest in the farm or family house. So it was
customary for a widow to remain in occupation of the land until her
death or remarriage. Few widows or widowers lived with one of their
children. Widows usually had their husband's guild rights and privileges
conferred upon them, e.g. to receive apprentices. In London, custom gave
1/3 of a deceased husband's estate to his wife on his death, but 2/3 if
there were no children. The other part went according to his will. If a
widow did not remarry in memory of her husband, she was esteemed. But
remarriage was common because the life expectancy after birth was about
35 years.
Sons of the well-to-do went into law, the Church, the army, or the
navy. If not fit for such, they usually went into a trade, apprenticing,
for instance, with a draper, silk merchant, or goldsmith. Sometimes a
son was sent to the house of a great man as a page or esquire to learn
the ways of courtiers and perhaps become a diplomat.
The guild with its master and their employees was being replaced by a
company of masters.
James I ruled over both England and Scotland. He had come from
Scotland, so was unfamiliar with English love of their rights, passion
for liberty and justice, and extensive discussing of religion and
quoting scripture. When he came to the throne, he had a conference with
a group of Puritans who asked for certain reforms: ceremonies such as
the cross in baptism and the ring in marriage should not be used, only
educated men competent to preach should be made ministers, bishops
should not be allowed to hold benefices that they did not administer,
and minor officials should not excommunicate for trifles and
twelve-penny matters. He not only denied their requests, but had the
English Bible revised into the King James version, which was published
in 1611. This was to replace the popular Geneva Bible written by English
Protestant refugees from Catholic Queen Mary's reign, which he did not
like because some of its commentary was not highly favorable to kings.
James didn't believe a king had to live by the law; he hadn't as king of
Scotland. He tried to imbue into England the idea of a divine right of
kings to rule that he had held in Scotland. The established church
quickly endorsed and preached this idea.
The selection of the clergy of the parish churches was now often in the
hands of the parishioners, having been sold to them by the patron lord
of the manor. Some patrons sold the right of selection to a tradesman or
yeoman who wished to select his son or a relative. Some rights of
selection were in the hands of bishops, the colleges, and the Crown. The
parish clergyman was appointed for life and removed only for grave
cause. Most parishioners wanted a sermon created by their minister
instead of repetitious homilies and constant prayer. They thought that
the object of worship in church was to rouse men to think and act about
the problems of the world.
In 1622, the King mandated that clergymen quote scripture only in
context of the Book of Articles of Religion of 1562 or the two Books of
Homilies and not preach any sermon on Sunday afternoon except on some
part of the Catechism or some text out of the Creed, Ten Commandments,
or the Lord's Prayer.
The Puritan movement grew. About 5% of the Protestants were Puritans.
These included country gentlemen and wealthier traders. They dressed
simply in gray or other drab colors and wore their hair short to protest
the fashion of long curls. They lived simply and disapproved of dancing
because it induced lasciviousness and of theater because of its
lewdness. Theaters and brothels still shared the same neighborhoods, the
same customers, and sometimes the same employees. Prostitutes went to
plays to find customers; men shouldered and shoved each other in
competing to sit next to attractive women to get to know them. The
Puritans also disapproved of cock fights because they led to gambling
and disorder, and Maypole celebrations because of their paganism. There
was less humor. Many became stoics. The Puritan church ceremonies were
plain, with no ornamentation. Puritans prayed several times a day and
read the Bible to each other in family groups to look for guidance in
their conduct and life. They asked for God to intervene in personal
matters and looked for signs of his pleasure or displeasure in
happenings such as a tree falling close but not touching him, or his
horse throwing him without injury to him. When there was an illness in
the family or misfortune, they examined their past life for sins and
tried to correct shortcomings. They circulated records of puritan lives
including spiritual diaries. They believed in the equality of men and
that a good man was better than a bad peer, bishop, or king. Puritan
influence made families closer and not merely dependent on the will of
the husband or father. There was a sense of spiritual fellowship among
family members as individuals. They emphasized the real need of a
lasting love relationship between husband and wife, so a mutual liking
that could develop into love between a young couple in an arranged match
was essential.
Most Puritans felt that the bishops were as tyrannical as the pope had
been and that more reform was needed. They favored the Presbyterian form
of church government developed by John Calvin in Switzerland. The
presbyter was the position below bishop. Parishes were governed by
boards consisting of a minister and lay elders elected by the
parishioners. These boards sent elected representatives to councils. All
lay elders and ministers had equal rank with each other. The Calvinist
God preordained salvation only for the elect and damnation and
everlasting punishment for the rest of humanity, but the Puritans had an
optimism about avoiding this damnation. They believed that at his
conversion a person received grace, which was a sign that he was
predestined for salvation. They rejected all ecclesiastical institutions
except as established by each parish over its own elected pastor and
members. They rejected the established church's control from the top by
bishops. They believed in negotiating directly with God for the welfare
of the soul without the priest or church organization.
The fear of witchcraft grew with Puritanism. Poor decrepit old
defenseless women, often deformed and feeble-minded, were thought to be
witches. Their warts and tumors were thought to be teats for the devil
to suck or the devil's mark. Cursing or ill-tempers, probably from old
age pains, or having cats were further indications of witchery.
When the king learned in 1618 that the English Puritans had prevented
certain recreations after the Sunday service, he proclaimed that the
people should not be restrained from lawful recreations and exercise
such as dancing, May-games, Whitsunales, Morris-dances, May-pole sports,
archery for men, leaping, and vaulting. Also women could carry rushes to
decorate the church as they had done in the past. His stated purpose was
to prevent people such as Catholics from being deterred from conversion,
to promote physical fitness for war, and to keep people from drinking
and making discontented speeches in their ale houses. Still unlawful on
Sunday were bear and bull baitings and bowlings.
Besides the Puritans, there were other Independent sects, such as the
Congregationalists, whose churches gathered together by the inspiration
of Jesus. This sect was started by English merchants residing in Holland
who set up congregations of Englishmen under their patronage there; they
kept minister and elders well under their control. The Baptists emerged
out of the Independents. They believed that only adults, who were
capable of full belief, and not children, could be baptized. They also
believed that it was the right of any man to seek God's truth for
himself in the scriptures and that obedience to the state should not
extend beyond personal conscience.
One fourth of all children born did not live to the age of ten, most
dying in their first year. Babies had close caps over their head, a
rattle, and slept in a sturdy wood cradle that rocked on the floor,
usually near the hearth. Babies of wealthier families had nurses. The
babies of ladies were suckled by wet nurses. Parents raised children
with affection and tried to prepare them to become independent
self-sustaining adults. There was less severity than in Tudor times,
although the maxim "spare the rod and spoil the child" was generally
believed, especially by Puritans, and applied to even very young
children. In disciplining a child, an admonition was first used, and the
rod as a last resort, with an explanation of the reasons for its use.
There were nursery rhymes and stories such as "Little Bo-Peep", "Jack
and the Beanstalk", "Tom Thumb", "Chicken Little", and Robin Hood and
King Arthur tales, and probably also "Puss in Boots", "Red Ridinghood",
"Cinderella", "Beauty and the Beast", "Bluebeard" and Aesop's Fables.
"Little Jack Horner" who sat in a corner was a satire on the Puritan
aversion to Christmas pudding and sense of conscious virtue. Toys
included dolls, balls, drums, and hobby horses. Children played "hide
and seek", "here we go around the Mulberry bush", and other group games.
School children were taught by "horn books". This was a piece of paper
with the alphabet and perhaps a religious verse, such as the Paternoster
prayer, that was mounted on wood and covered with thin horn to prevent
tearing. Little girls cross-stitched the alphabet and numerals on
samplers. Block alphabets were coming into use. Most market towns had a
grammar school which would qualify a student for university. They were
attended by sons of noblemen, country squires [poor gentlemen],
merchants, and substantial yeomen, and in some free schools, the poor.
School hours were from 6:00 a.m. to noon or later. Multiplication was
taught. If affordable, families had their children involved in education
after they were small until they left home at about fifteen for
apprenticeship or service. Otherwise, children worked with their
families from the age of seven, e.g. carding and spinning wool, until
leaving home at about fifteen.
There were boarding schools such as Winchester, Eton, Westminster, St.
Paul's, and Merchant Taylors'. There, senior boys selected for conduct
and ability supervised younger boys. They thereby got experience for a
future in public life. The system was also a check on bullying of the
weak by the strong. The curriculum included Lilly's "Grammar"; Aesop;
Terence's Roman comic plays; Virgil's "Aeneid", the national epic of
Rome; Cicero's "Letters" reflecting Roman life; Sallust's histories
showing people and their motives; Caesar's "Commentaries" on the Gallic
and civil wars; Horace's "Epistles" about life and poetry; poet Ovid's
"Metamorphoses" on adventures and love affairs of deities and heroes,
"Fasti" on Roman religious festivals and customs; Donatus' grammar book;
and other ancient Latin authors. Football, with hog bladders, and tennis
were played. These schools were self-supporting and did their own
farming.
Private schools for girls were founded in and around London. They were
attended by daughters of the well-to-do merchant class, nobility, and
gentry. They were taught singing, playing of instruments, dancing,
French, fine sewing, embroidery, and sometimes arithmetic. There were
not many girls' boarding schools. Fewer served in the house of some
noble lady as before. Most commonly, the sons and daughters of gentlemen
and nobles were taught by private tutors. A tutor in the house educated
the girls to the same extent as the boys. Frequently, the mother
educated her daughters. A considerable number of girls of other
backgrounds such as the yeomanry and the town citizenry somehow learned
to read and write.
Boys began at university usually from age 14 to 18, but sometimes as
young as 12. The universities provided a broad-based education in the
classics, logic and rhetoric, history, theology, and modern languages
for gentlemen and gave a homogenous national culture to the ruling
class. There was a humanist ideal of a gentleman scholar. The method of
study was based largely on lectures and disputations. Each fellow had
about five students to tutor. In many cases, he took charge of the
finances of his students, paying his bills to tradesmen and the college.
His reimbursement by the students' fathers put them into friendly
contact with the family. The students slept in trundle beds around his
bed and had an adjacent room for study. Aristotle, whose authority was
paramount, remained the lynch pin of university studies, especially for
logic and dialectic. The study of rhetoric was based on Quintilian, the
Latin writer, and the Greek treatise of Hermogenes of Tarsus. Also
studied was Cicero's orations as models of style. Examination for
degrees was by disputation over a thesis of the student. The B.A. degree
was given after four years of study, and the M.A. after three more.
There were advanced degrees in civil law, which required seven more
years of study, medicine, seven years, divinity, more than seven years,
and music. Many of the men who continued for advanced degrees became
fellows and took part in the teaching. Most fellowships were restricted
to clerics. Oxford and Cambridge Universities operated under a tutorial
system. Access to grammar schools and universities was closed to girls
of whatever class. Oxford University now had the Bodleian Library. In
the universities, there were three types of students: poor scholars, who
received scholarships and also performed various kinds of service such
as kitchen work and did errands for fellows such as carrying water and
waiting on tables; commoners, who paid low fees and were often the sons
of economical gentlemen or businessmen; and the Fellow Commoners, a
privileged and well-to-do minority, usually sons of noblemen or great
country gentlemen. The Fellow Commoners paid high fees, had large rooms,
sometimes had a personal tutor or servant, and had the right to eat with
the Fellows at High Table. Here, gentlemen made friends with their
social equals from all over the country. Students wore new- fashioned
gowns of many colors and colored stockings. They put on stage plays in
Latin and English. The students played at running, jumping, and pitching
the bar, and at the forbidden swimming and football. They were not to
have irreligious books or dogs. Cards and dice could be played only at
Christmas time. Students still drank, swore, and rioted, but they were
disallowed from going into town without special permission. Those below
a B.A. had to be accompanied by a tutor or an M.A. They were forbidden
from taverns, boxing matches, dances, cock fights, and loitering in the
street or market. Sometimes a disputation between two colleges turned
into a street brawl. Punishment was by flogging. Each university had a
chancellor, usually a great nobleman or statesman, who represented the
university in dealings with the government and initiated policies. The
vice-chancellor was appointed for a year from the group of heads of
college. He looked out for the government of halls, enforced the rules
of the university, kept its courts, licensed wine shops, and shared
control of the town with the mayor.
Tutors were common. They resided at the boy's house or took boys to
board with them at their houses in England or on the continent. The
tutor sometimes accompanied his student to grammar school or university.
Puritans frequently sent their sons to board in the house of some
Frenchman or Swiss Protestant to learn the Calvinist doctrines or on
tour with a tutor. Certain halls in the universities were predominately
Puritan. Catholics were required to have their children taught in a home
of a Protestant, a relative if possible.
The Inns of Court were known as "the third university". It served the
profession of law, and was a training ground for the sons of nobility
and the gentry and for those entering the service of the commonwealth.
The Inns were self-governing and ruled by custom. Students were to live
within the Inn, two to a room, but often there were not enough rooms, so
some students lived outside the quadrangles. Every student was supposed
to partake of Commons or meals for a certain fraction of the year - from
eight weeks to three months and there to argue issues in cases brought
up by their seniors. In hall the students were not allowed to wear hats,
though caps were permitted, nor were they to appear booted or spurred or
carrying swords. For the first two years, they would read and talk much
of the law, and were called Clerks Commoners. After two years they
became Mootmen or Inner Barristers. In five or six years they might be
selected to be called to the bar as Utter Barristers, whose number was
fixed. There was no formal examination. The Utter Barrister spent at
least three more years performing exercises and assisting in directing
the studies of the younger men. After this time, he could plead in the
general courts at Westminster, but usually carried on law work in the
offices of other men and prepared cases for them. Participating in moots
(practice courts) was an important part of their education. Lectures on
statutes and their histories were given by Readers.
Physicians were licensed by universities, by the local bishop, or in
London, by the College of Physicians and Surgeons. Most were university
graduates, and because of the expense of the education, from well-to-do
families. For the B.A., they emphasized Greek. For the M.A., they
studied the works of Greek physicians Galen and Hippocrates, Roman
physician Claudius, and perhaps some medieval authorities. After the
M.A., they listened to lectures by the Regius Professor of Medicine and
saw a few dissections. Three years of study gave them a M.B., and four
more years beyond this the M.D. degree. A physician's examination of a
patient cost 10s. The physician asked about his symptoms and feelings of
pain, looked at his eyes, looked at his body for spots indicative of
certain diseases, guessed whether he had a fever, felt his pulse, and
examined his urine and stool. There were no laboratory tests. Smallpox
was quickly recognized. Wrapping red cloth around the person and
covering the windows with red cloth being promoted healing without
scarring. Gout was frequent. Syphilis was common in London and other
large centers, especially in Court circles. It was ameliorated by
mercury. An imbalance of the four humors: blood, phlegm, choler, bile
was redressed by bloodletting, searing, draining, and/or purging. Heart
trouble was not easily diagnosed and cancer was not recognized as a
life-threatening disease. Childbirth was attended by physicians if the
patient was well-to-do or the case was serious. Otherwise women were
attended only by midwives. They often died in childbirth, many in their
twenties.
A visit by a physician cost 13s.4d. Melancholia, which made one always
fearful and full of dread, and mania, which made one think he could do
supernatural things, were considered to be types of madness different
from infirmities of the body. Despite a belief held by some that
anatomical investigation of the human body was a sin against the holy
ghost, physicians were allowed to dissect corpses. So there were anatomy
textbooks and anatomy was related to surgery. Barber-surgeons extracted
teeth and performed surgery. The white and red striped barber pole
initially indicated a place of surgery; The red represented blood and
the white bandages.
The theory of nutrition was still based on the four humors and
deficiency diseases were not understood as such. Physician William
Harvey, son of a yeoman, discovered the circulation of the blood from
heart to lungs to heart to body about 1617. He had studied anatomy at
Padua on the continent and received an M.D. there and later at
Cambridge. Then he accepted a position at the hospital of St.
Bartholomew to treat the poor who came there at least once a week for a
year. He agreed to give the poor full benefit of his knowledge, to
prescribe only such medicines as should do the poor good without regard
to the pecuniary interest of the apothecary accompanying him, to take no
reward from patients, and to render account for any negligence on his
part. He also dissected animals. One day he noted when stroking downward
on the back of one hand with the finger of the other, that a vein seemed
to disappear, but that it reappeared when he released his finger. He
surmised that there was a valve preventing the bloods immediate
return to the vein. Then he ascertained that the heart was a pump that
caused pulses, which had been thought to be caused by throbbing of the
veins. He tied the arteries and found that the arterial blood flowed
away from the heart. He tied the veins and found that venal blood flowed
into the heart. He found that the blood flowed from the lungs to the
left side of the heart, and from thence was pumped out to the body.
Blood also flowed from the body to the right side of the heart, from
which it was pumped to the lungs. The two contractions closely followed
one another, rather than occurring at the same time. The valves in the
veins prevented backflow. It was now clear why all the blood could be
drained away by a single opening in a vein. It was also clear why a
tight ligature, which blocked the arteries, made a limb bloodless and
pale and why a looser ligature, which pressed only on the veins, made a
limb swell turgid with blood. Multiplying an estimate of the amount of
blood per beat with the number of beats, he concluded that the amount of
blood did not change as it circulated. He concluded that the only
purpose of the heart was to circulate the blood. This diminished the
religious concept that the heart was the seat of the soul and that blood
had a spiritual significance and was sacred.
The physicians turned surgery over to the surgeons, who received a
charter in 1605 by which barbers were excluded from all surgical work
except bloodletting and the drawing of teeth. Surgeons dealt with skin
disease, ulcers, hernia, bladder stones, and broken bones, which they
had some skill in setting. They performed amputations, which were
without antiseptics or anesthesia. Internal operations usually resulted
in death. Caesarian section was attempted, but did not save the life of
the mother. Apprenticeship was the route to becoming a surgeon. A
College of Surgeons was founded. Students learned anatomy, for which
they received the corpses of four executed felons a year.
The apothecaries and grocers received a charter in 1607, but in 1618,
the apothecaries were given the sole right to purchase and sell potions,
and to search the shops of grocers and stop the sale by them of any
potions. In London, the apothecaries were looked over by the College of
Physicians to see that they were not selling evil potions or poisons. In
1618 was the first pharmacy book.
There were three hospitals in London, two for the poor, and Bedlam
[Bethlehem] Hospital for the insane. Others were treated at home or in
the physician's home.
Theaters were shut down in times of plague to prevent spread of disease
there. Towndwellers who could afford it left to live in the country.
Shakespeare wrote most of his plays in this period. Most popular
reading was still Bibles, prayer books, psalm books, and devotional
works. Also popular were almanacs, which started with a single sheet of
paper. An almanac usually had a calendar; information on fairs, roads,
and posts; farming hints; popularized scientific knowledge; historical
information; sensational news; astrological predictions; and later,
social, political, and religious comment. Many households had an
almanac. Books tried to reconcile religion and science as well as
religion and passion or sensuality. Walter Ralegh's "History of the
World", written while he was in prison, was popular. Ben Johnson wrote
poetry and satiric comedies. Gentlemen read books of manners such as
James Cleland's "Institution of a Young Noble Man" (1607). In 1622, the
first regular weekly newspaper was started.
Although there was a large advance in the quality of boys' education
and in literacy, the great majority of the people were unable to read
fluently. Since writing was taught after one could read fluently,
literacy was indicated by the ability to sign one's name. Almost all
gentlemen and professional men were literate. About half the yeomen and
tradesmen and craftsmen were. Only about 15% of husbandmen, laborers,
servants, and women were literate.
The Elizabethan love of madrigal playing gradually gave way to a taste
for instrumental music, including organs and flutes. The violin was
introduced and popular with all classes. Ballads were sung, such as
"Barbary Allen", about a young man who died for love of her, after which
she died of sorrow. When they were buried next to each other, a rose
from his grave grew around a briar from her grave. The ballad "Geordie"
relates a story of a man hanged for stealing and selling sixteen of the
king's royal deer. The ballad "Matty Groves" is about a great Lord's
fair young bride seducing a lad, who was then killed by the Lord. In the
ballad "Henry Martin", the youngest man of three brothers is chosen by
lot to turn pirate to support his brothers. When his pirate ship tries
to take a merchant ship, there is sea fight in which the merchant ship
sinks and her men drown. The ballad "The Trees They Do Grow High" tells
of an arranged marriage between a 24 year old woman and the 14 year old
son of a great lord. She tied blue ribbons on his head when he went to
college to let the maidens know that he was married. But he died at age
16, after having sired a son.
May Day was a holiday with dancing around a Maypole and people dressed
up as characters such as Queen of the May, Robin Hood, Little John,
Friar Tuck, Maid Marion, the fool, and the piper. New Year's Day was
changed to January 1st.
Golf was played in Scotland, and James introduced it into England.
James I was the last monarch to engage in falconry.
Francis Bacon wrote the "Advancement of Learning" and "Novum Organum"
(New Learning) in which he encouraged the use of the inductive method to
find out scientific truths and also truths in general, that is reasoning
from a sample to the whole. According to him, the only way to arrive at
the truth was to observe and determine the correlations of facts. He
advocated a process of elimination of hypothesized ideas. First,
experiments were made, then general conclusions were drawn from them,
and then these generalizations were tested in further experiments. His
"New Learning" showed the way out of the scholastic method and reverence
for dogma into the experimental method. He wrote "Natural and
Experimental History". He studied the effect of cold in preventing
animal putrefaction.
By this time, what was known about mathematics included fractional
exponents, trigonometry in terms of arcs of angles, long division,
square root symbol, decimal fractions, methods for solving cubic
equations, trigonometry in terms of ratios of sides of a right triangle,
equal sign, plus and minus signs, and a consistent theory of imaginary
numbers.
John Napier, a large Calvinist landholder in Scotland who had built his
own castle, did mathematics in his older years. He explored imaginary
numbers, which involve square roots of negative numbers. By 1614, he had
started and developed the theory of logarithms: the relationships among
positive and negative exponents of numbers. This simplified calculations
because the multiplication and division of numbers with a common base
could be done by addition and subtraction of their exponents. His table
of logarithms, which took him twenty years to compile, was used in
trigonometry, navigation, and astronomy. It reduced the enormous labor
involved in trigonometric calculations. In 1622, Willliam Oughtred
invented the slide rule for calculations.
Galileo Galilei was a professor of mathematics at the University of
Padua in Italy and was later a protege of the powerful Medici family. He
conducted experiments, e.g. throwing objects off the tower of Pisa in
1590 to show that all, whether light or heavy, fall at the same rate.
This disproved the widely held belief that heavier objects fall faster
than light objects. He reasoned by induction from experiments that the
force of gravity has the same effect on all objects regardless of their
size or weight. His law stated that the speed of their descent increases
uniformly with the time of the fall, i.e. speed [velocity] = gravity's
acceleration multiplied by time. This was a pioneering mathematization
of a physical phenomenon.
From his observation that an object sliding along a plane travels
increasingly farther and slows down at a decreasing rate as the surfaces
become smoother and more lubricated, he opined that the natural state of
a body in motion is to stay in motion, and that it is slowed down by a
resistant force, which he called friction. He conceived of the air
giving a frictional force to an object moving through the air. From his
experiments showing that a rolling ball rolls up a plane farther the
lesser the slope of the plane, he intuited that if the plane were
horizontal, the ball would never stop rolling except for friction. He
opined that bodies that are at rest stay at rest and bodies that are in
motion stay in uniform motion (inertia), unless and until acted
upon by some force. This was a radical departure from Aristotle's theory
that any horizontal motion requires a prime mover. Galileo drew a graph
of distance versus time for the rolling ball, which indicated that the
distance traveled was proportional to the square of the time elapsed.
He put his ideas of vertical and horizontal motion together to explain
the movement of projectiles, which travel horizontally, but also fall
downward vertically. He realized that the movement of a projectile
involved a horizontal impetus of projection and a vertical force of
gravity, each being independent of the other, but acting simultaneously,
instead of sequentially. He demonstrated that a projectile follows the
path of a parabola, instead of a straight line, and that it descends a
vertical distance which is proportional to the square of the time taken
to fall. That is, a thrown object will strike the ground in the same
amount of time as an object simply dropped from the same height. This
suggested that gravity was a constant force.
Galilieo described mathematically the motion of a lever such as a
seesaw in which the weight on one side multiplied by its distance from
the fulcrum is equal to the weight on the other side multiplied by its
distance from the fulcrum.
Galileo determined that a pendulum, such as a hanging lamp, swings back
and forth in equal intervals of time. He measured this time with water
running through a tube; the weight of the water was proportional to the
time elapsed. Also, pendulums with equal cord length swing at the same
rate, regardless of the substance, weight, or shape of the material at
the end. So a pendulum could be a mechanical clock. Galileo knew that
ice floated on water because ice is less dense and therefore lighter
than water. It had formerly been thought that ice was heavier than
water, but floated on water because of its shape, especially broad,
flat-bottomed pieces of ice.
The telescope was invented in 1608. The next year, Galileo built a
greatly improved telescope to observe bodies in the skies. He observed
that the spots on the moon had shifting illumination and that the moon's
perimeter had a jagged outline. From this he deduced that the surface of
the moon had mountains, valleys, and craters much like the earth, and
was illuminated by reflected light. He noticed that the planet Jupiter
had moons orbiting it in a manner similar to the orbit of the Earth's
moon. He observed that when the planet Venus was very small it had a
round shape and when it was very large, and therefore nearer the earth,
it had a crescent shape. Also, Venus progressed through periodic phases
of increasingly wide crescent shapes in a manner similar to the phases
of crescent shapes of the Earth's moon. He realized that these features
of Venus could be explained only if Venus revolved around the sun,
rather than around the earth. This finding added credence to the
Copernican theory that the earth and all planets revolve around the sun.
But church doctrine that the sun revolved around the earth was supported
by the Biblical story of God making the sun stand still to give
additional sunlight on a certain day so a certain task could be
completed that day. Galileo argued against a literal interpretation of
the Bible, so he was denounced by the church. His finding of sunspots on
the sun conflicted with church doctrine that the celestial bodies such
as the sun were perfect and unblemished. His observation that certain
sun spots were on certain locations of the sun, but changed location
over time, suggested that the sun might be rotating. He observed that
when air was withdrawn by a suction pump from the top of a long glass
tube whose lower open end was submerged in a pan of water, the water
rose to a height of 34 feet and no higher. This result indicated that
the evacuated space above the water was a vacuum: an empty space. The
notion of a vacuum, a space where there is nothing or void, was
difficult for philosophers to accept. They believed that nature abhored
a vacuum and would prevent it. About 1600, Galileo invented the first
thermometer by heating air at the top of a tube whose open end was in a
bowl of water; as the top end cooled, the air contracted and water rose
part way up the tube; the column of water rose or fell with every change
of temperature. Galileo invented the compound refracting microscope,
which used more than one lens, about 1612.
Galileo's book on the arguments for and against the Copernican theory
was unexpectedly popular when published in 1632. The general public was
so persuaded by the arguments that the earth revolved around the sun
that Papal authority felt threatened. So Galileo was tried and convicted
of heresy and sentenced to house arrest as an example to others who
might question church doctrine, even though the seventy year old Galileo
recanted and some of the inquisition judges who convicted him believed
the Copernican theory and their decision did not assert the contrary.
Johannes Kepler was a mathematician from Germany who made his living as
an astrologer. He was in contact with Galileo by letter, as most
scientists of Europe were with each other. Kepler was fascinated with
perfect geometric shapes, which he tried to relate to celestial
phenomenon. He discerned that the orbit of Mars was not perfectly
circular. He knew that the apparent path of the sun with respect to the
constellation of fixed stars differed in speed at different times of the
year. He opined that this showed that the speed of the earth revolving
around the sun varied according to the time of year. Then he measured
the angles between the earth and the sun and the earth and Mars as they
changed through the Martian year. He noted when the earth, Mars, and the
Sun were on the same straight line. Then he deduced the earth's true
orbit, and from this the true orbits of the other planets. Then by trial
and error, he attempted to match this empirical data with regular
mathematically defined shapes, until he discovered in 1609 that these
paths were elliptical. Also, the planets each move faster when they are
nearer the sun and more slowly when they are farther from the sun so
that in equal time intervals, a line from the planet to the sun will
sweep out equal areas. This observation led him to opine that there is a
force between the sun and each planet, and that this force is the same
as that which keeps the moon in its orbit around the earth. Thirdly, in
1619, he found that the square of the time for each planet's orbit about
the sun is proportional to the cube of that planet's mean distance from
the sun, so that the farther planets orbit at a slower speed. He
connected the earth's tides with the gravitational pull of the moon.
Kepler also confirmed that the paths of comets were governed by a law
and were farther from the earth than the moon. This contradicted the
church's explanation that what lies within the moon's orbit pertains to
the earth and is essentially transitory and evil, while what lies beyond
belongs to the heavens and is permanent and pure.
Renee Descartes, a French mathematician, scientist, and philosopher,
had a revelation that the structure of the universe was mathematical and
that nature obeyed mathematical rules. In 1637, he invented analytic
[Cartesian] geometry, in which lines and geometric shapes can be
described by algebraic equations and vice-versa. All conic sections:
circles, ellipses, parabolas, and hyperbolas, could be represented by
equations with two unknowns, or variables, on a coordinate system in
which each point is represented by a pair of numbers representing
distances from the two axis lines. An algebraic equation with two
unknowns, could be represented as a shape thereon. An algebraic equation
with one unknown represented a straight line thereon. The points of
intersection geometrically were equivalent to the common solution of the
associated algebraic equations. He started the convention of
representing unknown quantities by x, y, and z and known quantities by
a, b, and c. So, for instance, a circle with center at point 2,3 and a
radius of 4 was represented by the equation: (x-2) squared + (y-3)
squared = 4. He pioneered the standard exponential notation for cubes
and higher powers of numbers. Analytic geometry aided in making good
lenses for eyeglasses. The glass was first manufactured with attention
to quality. Then, after it cooled and solidified, the clearest pieces
were picked and their surfaces ground into the proper curvature.
Descartes formulated the law of refraction of light, which deduces the
angle of refraction [deflection] of light through a medium from the
lights' angle of incidence and the speed of light in each media in which
the light passes. This explained why a rainbow is circular. In 1644, he
described the universe in terms of matter and motion and suggested that
there were universal laws and an evolutionary explanation for such. He
opined that all effects in nature could be explained by spatial
extension and motion laws that 1) each part of matter retains the shape,
size, motion, or rest unless collision with another part occurs; 2) one
part of matter can only gain as much motion through collision as is lost
by the part colliding with it; and 3) motion tends to be in a straight
line. Descartes feared persecution by the church because his ideas did
not correlate with the Biblical notion of God's creation of the universe
in the order of light, then sky and oceans and dry land, then plants,
then seasons and the sun and moon and stars, then fish and birds, then
all animals, and finally man. Descartes believed in a good and perfect
God, and thought of the world as divided into matter and spirit. The
human mind was spirit and could exist outside the human body. Without
the mind, human body was a machine. The human mind had knowledge without
sense experience, e.g. the truths of mathematics and physics. Ideas and
imagination were innate. His observation that sensory appearances are
often misleading, such as in dreams or hallucinations, led him to the
conclusion that he could only conclude that: "I think, therefore I am."
He rejected the doctrine that things had a proper behavior according to
their natures, e.g. the nature of acorns is to develop into oak trees.
As an example of erroneous forming of conceptions of substance with our
senses alone, he pointed out that honeycomb has a certain taste, scent,
and texture, but if exposed to fire, it loses all these forms and
assumes others. He considered to be erroneous the belief that there are
no bodies around us except those perceivable by our senses. He was a
strong proponent of the deductive method of finding truths, e.g. arguing
logically from a very few self- evident principles, known by intuition,
to determine the nature of the universe.
Christian Huygens, a Dutch physicist, used the melting and the boiling
point of water as fixed points in a scale of measurements, which first
gave definiteness to thermometric tests.
There was much mining of coal, tin, copper, lead, and iron in the
1600s. Coal was transported from the coal pits down to the rivers to be
loaded onto ships on coal wagons riding on wooden rails. The full coal
cars could then be sent down by gravity and the empty wagons pulled up
by horses. Sheet metal, e.g. lead, was used for roofing. Coal was much
used for heating houses, and for laundry, cooking, and industrial use,
such as extraction of salt, soap boilers, and manufacture of glass,
bricks and tiles for buildings, anchors for ships, and tobacco pipes. It
was used in the trades: bakers, confectioners, brewers, dyers, sugar
refiners, coopers, starch makers, copper workers, alum makers, and iron
workers.
In 1604 the Haberdashers, who sold imported felt for hats, got a
charter of incorporation.
A tapestry factory was established in 1619.
Flax-working machines came into existence.
The royal postal system carried private as well as royal letters, to
increase income to the Crown. Postmasters got regular pay for handling
without charge the mail of letters that came from or went to the letter
office in London. The postmaster kept horses which he let, with horn and
guide, to persons riding "in post" at 3d. per mile. The post was to
travel 7 mph in summer and 5 mph in winter and sound his horn four times
in every mile or whenever he met travelers.
Wool and animals for butchering were sold in London with the sellers'
agent in London taking the proceeds and paying out to their order, the
origin of check writing.
Scriveners drew up legal documents, arranged mortgages, handled
property transactions, and put borrowers in touch with lenders. They and
the goldsmiths and merchants developed promissory notes, checks, and
private paper money.
The influx of silver from the New World was a major factor in the
second great inflation in England and in the devaluation of money to
about one third of what it had been. Also contributing to the inflation
was an outracing of demand over supply, and a debasement of the coinage.
This inflation benefited tenants to the detriment of their lords because
their rents could not be adjusted upward.
There was an increase in bankruptcies. Houses of Correction were built.
As Attorney General, Edward Coke was impassioned and melodramatic. He
once described the parts of the penalty of treason as follows: being
drawn to the place of execution reflected the person's not being worthy
any more to tread upon the face of the earth; being drawn backward at a
horse tail was due to his retrograde nature; being drawn head downward
on the ground indicated that he was unfit to breathe the common air;
being hanged by the neck between heaven and earth indicated that he was
unworthy of either; being cut down alive and his privy parts cut off and
burnt before his face indicated he was unworthily begotten and unfit to
leave any generation after him; having his bowels and inners taken out
and burnt indicated he had inwardly conceived and harbored such horrible
treason; his head cut off, which had imagined the treason, and his body
to be quartered and the quarters set up to the view and detestation of
men a prey for the fowls of the air. Coke was subsequently elevated to
the position of Chief of Common Pleas and then to Chief of the King's
Bench. But there Coke propounded a doctrine of the supremacy of the law
over the king as well as over Parliament. For instance, Coke would not
agree to stay any case in which the king had a concern in power or
profit, to consult with him. But the other eleven justices did agree.
Since James I believed in the divine right of kings, he therefore
dismissed Coke from his position as Chief Justice of the King's Bench.
James even believed that he could suspend any law for reasons known only
to him and issue proclamations that were not limited to the
reinforcement of old laws, but made new offenses with punishment of fine
and/or imprisonment.
The old writ of habeas corpus [produce the body] had been just to bring
to court those persons needed for proceedings, but Coke in 1614 had
cited the writ with a new meaning "to have the body together with the
cause of detention".
Coke then became a member of Parliament and led the Commons, where he
exalted the authority of Parliament vis a vis the king; that is, the
king could not make any changes in law, religion, or taxation without
consent of Parliament. James arrested Coke and two other members of the
Commons and put its leader John Pym under house arrest for their
outspoken opinions against the King's intended alliance with Catholic
Spain and intended taking of a Spanish wife. Because of the deadlock
that developed between the king and Parliament, certain matters could
not be addressed by legislation and were left to be decided judicially.
This made judicial review of disputes important.
James vastly increased the number of peerages, selling many, for
example for 10,000 pounds. Since there was a tacit understanding that
members of Parliament would not accept remuneration, this restricted
eligibility for membership to the rich. The House of Commons was
composed mostly of attorneys, merchants from the large towns, and
country gentlemen. The gentry members had 600 pounds [12,000s] annual
income from land and the burgess members had 300 pounds [6,000s.]. There
were two knights from every county, elected by men holding at least
forty-shilling freeholds; four representatives from London, and one or
two from every other borough, generally elected by the top business
families; and a representative from each of the two universities. For
Speaker, they always chose someone suggested to them by the Crown. He
decided who would talk and could hasten or delay bills, usually for the
benefit of the Crown. The Clerk, a lifetime appointment of the Crown,
wrote out the bills and their amendments and kept track of proceedings.
Many in the Commons were Puritan in sympathy. In 1607, the House of
Commons developed a committee system to avoid being presided over by the
royally designated speaker. A committee could consist of all the members
of the House of Commons with an elected chairman. An increasing number
of issues were discussed in committee before coming to the Commons and
the Commons came to ratify readily what had been done in committee.
By 1610, there had developed in the House of Commons an opposition to
feudal tenures, purveyance, wardships, and impositions (special import
and export duties on aliens set by the king without the consent of
Parliament that were supposed to be for the purpose of regulating trade
instead of for revenue). There was also a call for free speech and an
end to the King's habit at the end of Parliament of imprisoning for a
time those who had been too outspoken. The Commons also asserted itself
into foreign affairs by expressing an opinion against a treaty proposed
by the king on which war could ensue. The treaty was abandoned. In
London, organized groups such as the apothecaries, the skinners, and the
grocers, were circulating printed statements of their cases to members
of committees of the House of Commons rather than just seeking out a
friendly Privy Council member. In 1621, the protests made to
committeemen about monopolies sold by James frightened him into
canceling many of them. He had made many grants against competition in
violation of law. The right of the Commons to expel a member was
asserted by the expulsion of a monopolist. By 1629, the speeches of
prominent members and the course of proceedings were copied by
stationers and sold in a weekly news report.
The King's Privy Council dealt constantly with foreign affairs, and
also with the great companies, and problems arising such as gold leaving
the country, the Dutch ships increased efficiency in transporting goods,
the declining market for English cloth, strikes in the mining industry,
decaying harbor works, the quality of food and drink, the wrongs done to
the poor, and above all, the general peace and order. They formed
commissions to study situations and sent orders to Justices of the Peace
on methods to address certain problems and to Sheriffs to carry out
certain acts. About 1618, a group within the Privy Council began to
concentrate on foreign affairs, especially "cabinet counsels", that is,
with secret matters. James sold high offices of state to supplement his
income. His income from customs had increased so much that it was now
three times that from Crown lands.
The Sheriff looked after Crown lands and revenues in his county. He
gathered the rents, the annuities, the stray animals, the deodands, the
fees due to the King, the goods of felons and traitors. He was still a
means of communication between the Privy Council and the county. He
announced new statutes of Parliament and proclamations by the king at
the county courts and in the markets. He used posse comitatus to
disperse riots. He was the functionary of the assize court, impaneling
its juries, bringing accused men before it, and carrying out its
penalties. He carried out elections of members of the House of Commons.
There were two high constables for each hundred. They were chosen by
the Justices of the Peace at quarter sessions, and were usually small
gentry or well-to-do yeomen. They were the intermediaries between the
justices and the petty constables. The petty constable was the executive
official of the village. He was usually elected by the suitors to the
leet court of the manor for a year. He might be a farmer, an artisan, a
carpenter, a shoemaker, or many times a tradesman, a butcher, or baker.
He often visited the alehouse to learn of any trouble in the making. He
would intervene in quarrels and riots and tell the participants to
desist in the King's name. If they didn't, he could call on all
bystanders to help him "force a quiet". He had to lead the rioters and
causers of injuries to others, hold them there until he could bring him
before the nearest justice. He would inform the justice of plots to
trespass or forcibly enter land to take possession. He saw to it that no
new cottages were built in the villages without due authority. He
supervised markets and inns. He reported lapses of care for apprentices
by their masters to the justice. At harvest time, he called upon all
able bodied persons to assist and punished those who didn't respond by
putting them in the stocks or fining them forty shillings. He arrested
and whipped vagrants and sturdy rogues and sent them back to their place
of birth through constables on the way. If a horse was stolen, he raised
the hue and cry to all neighboring constables. He made inquiry into the
paternity of the coming child of an unmarried pregnant girl to make him
take responsibility for the child and pay her 8d. a week lest it fall
into the responsibility of the village. In a town, he might have
watchmen to help him see that the streets were peaceful at night. The
constable assisted the Justice of the Peace, the high constable, and the
Sheriff. He pressed men into military service. He collected taxes for
the Sheriff and collected the money for purveyance, the money for the
poor, maimed soldiers, and various kinds of prisoners, which the parish
had to pay. He was often the spokesman for the village in village
concerns, such as too many alehouses, brought to the attention of
justices at quarter sessions. The constable and churchwardens together
collected money for the parish, looked after the needy, and kept in
close touch with the overseers of the poor, who cared for the sick and
old, found work for the idle, took charge of bastards, apprenticed
orphan children, and provided supplies for the workhouse.
In 1609 the East India Company was given a monopoly by the Crown that
was indefinitely long as long as it was profitable to the realm in the
King's opinion. Interlopers were to forfeit their ships and goods,
one-half to the Company and one-half to the Crown. Monopoly status made
the Company competitive with the Dutch and Portuguese monopoly
companies. The Crown received a gift or a loan from the Company in
return. At first, the Company raised capital for each separate voyage.
But voyages tried to undercut each other and rival factions squabbled
over cargoes. So the company then raised a "terminable joint-stock" for
a period of years. The first of these was issued in 1613-16 and financed
a fleet every year for four years. Subscriptions were called in by
yearly installments and dividends paid out yearly. The voyage of 1613
brought shareholders a profit equivalent to about 11% a year. By 1620,
the Company operated thirty to forty "tall ships", many built in its own
dockyards. These dockyards were so technologically advanced that they
were daily viewed by visitors and ambassadors. Here, besides wet and dry
docks, there were timber yards, a foundry and cordage works for
supplying the ships' hardware and a bakery and saltings for their
provisioning. More than 200 craftsmen were directly employed in the
yard. Overall the company was one of London' largest employers.
In 1607, the Muscovy Company, hired Henry Hudson to find a northwest
passage through North America to the Pacific Ocean.
I n 1606, the first charter of the Virginia Company was issued for
trading purposes. It gave the settlers "all liberties, franchises, and
immunities" they had in England. To oversee this colony, the Crown
appointed a council. Virginia established the Episcopal Church by law.
Virginia became a joint-stock company in 1609. But exports were few
(timber, soap ashes, pitch, tar, and dyes) for several years, and then
tobacco emerged as a source of profit. King James imposed a heavy duties
on imported tobacco because it corrupted man's breath with a stinking
smoke.
Life was difficult for Puritan Separatists, who wanted to separate from
the established church. They were imprisoned and their houses were
watched day and night for illegal meetings. In 1620, after trying
Holland and when there was a depression in England, a few Puritan
Separatists, along with other pilgrims, left for Virginia in the
Mayflower, but landed in New England and founded Plymouth Colony. They
were led by William Bradford and William Brewster, their spiritual
leader. They planted fields and made friends with the Indians. In 1621,
they secured a patent to the merchants and planters together for a
voluntary joint-stock company in New England. Later, it became the
self-governing Massachusetts Bay Colony.
The canons of the church of 1604 provided for excommunication for
anyone who propounded that the king did not have the same authority in
ecclesiastical matters as the godly kings among the Jews and Christian
emperors in the primitive church, that the Church of England was not a
true and apostolic church, that worship according the Book of Common
prayer and administration of sacraments was corrupt or superstitious, or
that other methods of the church were wicked, unchristian, or
superstitious.
Church sanctuary was abolished for those accused of criminal offenses
because it had been abused by thieves paying their rent by thieving at
night. It remained available to those accused of civil offenses.
About 5% of the population was Catholic, although it was against the
law to practice this religion. Indeed it long been the practice to
sequester their lands, punish them for going to mass, fine them for not
attending the established church, banish their priests, and imprison
those who aided priests. There was a Catholic plot in 1605 to blow up
Parliament and the king with gunpowder and to restore Catholicism as the
state religion with a Catholic king. It was discovered and the
conspirators were executed. Then there was a crackdown on Catholics,
with houses being searched for hiding places for priests. Also,
legislation was passed barring Catholics from many offices.
- The Law -
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 else forfeit 20s. per
month. Two Justices of the Peace may commit to gaol 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 house.
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 common rogues or vagabonds subject to imprisonment and
punishment.
A seminal patent-protection law was passed in 1624. It stated that all
monopolies to any person or persons, bodies politic or corporate for the
sole buying, selling, making, working, or using of anything within the
realm are void. This does not include London or towns. Parties aggrieved
by such may recover treble damages in the superior courts, with double
costs. Excepted are existing patents, for 21 years or less, for new
inventions and for future patents for 14 years or less. Excepted also
are patents for printing or making saltpeter, gunpowder, shot or
ordinance, etc.; patents concerning allum mines or Newcastle coal or
glass making or export of calves' skins or making smalts [deep-blue
pigment or glass] or melting iron ore; grants of office; and licenses
for taverns.
Persons stealing crops from lands or fruit from trees shall be whipped.
Every person shall receive the holy communion in church at least once a
year or else forfeit 20 pounds for the first year and 40 pounds for the
second year, and threescore pounds for every year after until he takes
the said sacrament.
Every person convicted of drunkenness shall be penalized 5s. or else
placed in the stocks for six hours, because the loathsome and odious sin
of drunkenness has grown into common use lately and it is the root of
many other sins, such as bloodshed, stabbings, murder, swearing,
fornication, and adultery, and is detrimental to the arts and manual
trades and diverse workmen, who become impoverished. Offenders convicted
a second time shall be bound with two sureties to the sum of 200s.
Lewd women, having bastards, chargeable to the parish, shall be
committed to the house of correction to be punished and set to work for
one year.
Mothers concealing the death of a bastard baby shall suffer as for
murder, unless one witness proves the child was born dead.
Persons deserting their families shall be deemed incorrigible rogues
and punished as such.
Persons such as sorters who purloin or embezzle wool or yarn delivered
to them by clothiers and the receivers thereof, knowing the same, shall
recompense the party grieved or else be whipped and set in the stocks.
Because benefit of clergy is not allowed to women convicted of felony
by reason whereof many women suffer death for small causes, any woman
convicted for the felonious taking of any money, goods or chattels
greater than 12d. and less than 10s. other than burglary or robbery on
the highway or from the person of any man or woman without their
knowledge, shall be branded and marked in the hand upon the brawne of
the left thumb with a "T" and imprisonment, whipping, stocking, or
sending to the house of correction for a year or less.
Actors profaning God, Jesus, or the Holy Ghost on stage are to be
penalized 200s.
In 1604 it was decided that it was not necessary to prove that
witchcraft caused the death of a person for there to be punishment for
the witchcraftery. All that was necessary now was the practice of
witchcraft. The punishment was death by hanging. Also, consulting or
feeding an evil spirit was felony.
Sheriffs summoning defendants without a writ shall pay 200s. and
damages to the defendant, and 400s. to the King.
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.
No merchant may dress black rabbit skins, nor export them, unless
dressed by skinners and bought from them because the skinners have been
thus deprived of their livelihoods to their impoverishment throughout
the realm.
Beer may be exported when malt is at 16s. per quarter because exporting
beer instead of barley and malt will (1) increase the export tax to the
King, (2) increase income for coopers and brewers, and (3) provide more
jobs in transporting beer, which is more voluminous, to the great
comfort of the port towns.
Fish which are spawning and growing in harbors may not be taken by any
net or weirs because this practice has hurt fishermen and the realm.
No one shall sell beer or ale to an unlicensed alehousekeeper because
abuses there have become intolerable.
No person at least 18 years of age may be naturalized or restored in
blood after being attainted unless he takes the sacrament and the Oath
of Supremacy [of the king over the church of England], and Oath of
Allegiance [to the king].
Money given by will for the apprenticeship of poor children shall be
managed by incorporated towns and unincorporated parishes. Masters
receiving such apprentices shall become bound with sufficient sureties.
Houses of correction shall be built in every county.
London may make a trench to bring water to the north part of the city
and shall compensate the owners of lands by agreement with them of an
amount or an amount determined by commissioners.
All hospitals and abiding places for the poor, lame, maimed, and
impotent persons or for houses of correction founded according to the
statute of Elizabeth shall be incorporated and have perpetual
succession.
Only lands and hereditaments paying rents to the Crown within the last
sixty years shall be claimed by the Crown; the title of all persons and
corporation who have enjoyed uninterruptedly against the Crown for the
last sixty years are confirmed against the Crown.
No one may take more than 8% interest on loans because 10% has caused
many, including gentry, merchant, farmer, and tradesman, to sell their
land and forsake their trade to pay their debts.
As Attorney General, Edward Coke introduced the crime of "seditious
libel" in a case before the Star Chamber in 1606. These written slanders
or libels were viewed as incitements to disorder and private vengeance.
Because the tendency to cause quarrels was the essence of the crime, the
truth of the libel was not a defense, but might be an aggravation of
criminality.
Edward Coke, former Chief Justice of both the Court of Common Pleas and
Court of the Queen's Bench, wrote his Reports on court cases of all
kinds through forty years and his Institutes on the law, in which he
explained and systematized the common law and which was suitable for
students. This included a commentary and update of Littleton, published
in 1627; old and current statutes; a description of the criminal law;
and lastly an explanation of the court system, the last two published in
1644. Coke declared that "a man's house is his castle".
Coke waged a long battle with his wife over her extensive property and
the selection of a husband for their daughter. In his institutes, he
described the doctrine of coverture as "With respect to such part of the
wife's personality as is not in her possession, as money owing or
bequeathed to her, or accrued to her in case of intestacy, or contingent
interests, these are a qualified gift by law to the husband, on
condition that he reduce them into possession during the coverture, for
if he happen to die, in the lifetime of his wife, without reducing such
property into possession, she and not his representative will be
entitled to it. His disposing of it to another is the same as reducing
it into his own possession." He further states that "The interest of the
husband in, and his authority over, the personal estate of the wife, is,
however, considerably modified by equity, in some particular
circumstances. A settlement made upon the wife in contemplation of
marriage, and in consideration of her fortune, will entitle the
representatives of the husband, though he die before his wife, to the
whole of her goods and chattels, whether reduced into possession or not
during the coverture. ... A settlement made after marriage will entitle
the representative of the husband to such an estate in preference to the
wife. ... A court of equity will not interfere with the husband's right
to receive the income during the coverture, though the wife resist the
application."
No person convicted of Catholicism may practice the common law as a
counsellor, clerk, attorney, or solicitor, nor may practice civil law as
advocate, or proctor, nor shall be justice, minister, clerk, or steward
in any court, nor practice medicine, nor perform as apothecary, nor be
officer in a town, in the army, or navy, or forfeit 100 pounds as
punishment. Nor may they be administrators of estates, or have custody
of any child as guardian. Nor may they possess any armor, gunpowder, or
arms. Nor may anyone print or import Popish books rosaries, or else
forfeit 40s
Papists running a school must forfeit 40s. a day for such. Anyone
conveying a child beyond the seas to be educated in popery may not sue
in the courts, may not hold any office, and shall forfeit 100 pounds and
all lands. But the child returning may have his family lands restored to
him if he receives the sacrament of the lord's supper in the established
church after reaching 18 years of age.
- Judicial Procedure -
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.
In 1619, by the writ of quo warranto, a government office or official
could be made to explain by what right he performed certain acts.
James I asserted an authority to determine the jurisdiction between the
various courts.
The Court of High Commission heard mostly matrimonial cases, but also
moral offenses both of clergy and laity, and simony [buying or selling
ecclesiastical preferment, eclectically pardons, or other things
regarded as sacred or spirtual], plurality, drunkenness, and other
clerical irregularities.
The Star Chamber Court still was primarily directed against force and
fraud and defended the common people from over-mighty lords and
over-pliable Justices of the Peace, for instance by deterring enclosure.
It also enforced monopolies. However, there was a growing tendency for
King James, who sat on it, to abuse its power with high fines. For
instance, a lord accused with foul language by a huntsman of following
hounds of a chase too closely threatened to use his horse whip on the
huntsman's master when the huntsman threatened to complain to his
master. The lord was fined 10,000 pounds. James' council used torture to
obtain information from accused felons about possible conspiracies
against him.
The ordinary administrative court of first instance is formed by the
single Justices of the Peace, who issue orders regarding public safety,
order, public morals, health, the poor, highways, water, fields,
forests, fisheries, trade, building, and fire, and particularly begging
and vagrancy as well as regulations of wages, servants, apprentices, and
day laborers. For more important resolutions, the special sessions of
the Justices of the Peace of a hundred for a court of intermediate
instance and appointed overseers of the poor. All Justices of the Peace
were present at the quarter sessions, which were held at least four
times a year, and were primarily a court of appeal from penal sentences,
but also make the county rate, appoint county treasurers and county
prison and house of correction governors, regulate prices and wages,
settle fees of county officials, grant licenses for powder mills, and
register dissenting chapels. It heard appeals expressly allowed by
statute. The central courts also heard appeals by writ of certiorari as
to whether an administrative act was in accordance with existing law,
whether the court is competent, and whether the administrative law has
been rightly interpreted. This writ of certiorari ceased in the 1700s.
Justices of the Peace who have the power to give restitution of
possession to tenants of any freehold estate of their lands or tenements
which have been forcibly entered and withheld, shall have like power for
tenants for term of years, tenants by copy of court roll, guardians by
knight service, and tenants by elegit statute merchant and staple of
lands or tenements [tenant-plaintiffs holding property to receive income
therefrom for satisfaction of a debt of defendants].
The Justices of the Peace were chosen by the Crown, usually by the
Chancellor. The qualifications were residence in the county, suitability
of moral character, religious uniformity, and the possession of lands or
tenements with twenty pounds a year. They were almost exclusively
country gentlemen, except in the towns. In the corporate towns, the
mayor, bailiff, recorder, and senior aldermen were ex officio [by virtue
of the office] Justices of the Peace. Their main duty was to keep the
peace. If a justice heard of a riot in the making, he could compel
individuals at the place to give bonds of good-a-bearing and cause
a proclamation to be made in the King's name for them to disperse. Two
justices or more had the authority to arrest the rioters and send a
record of it to the assizes and to the Privy Council. If the riot had
taken place before their arrival, they could make an inquiry by a jury
and certify the results to the King and his Council. The justices had
men brought before them on many kinds of charges, on their own summons,
or on initiative of the petty constable. They tried to draw these men
into confession by questioning. After indictment, a person had the
choice of a petty jury trial or paying a fine. The Justices of the Peace
could insist upon presentment juries or surveys of offenses by local
officers, but, without the institution of policemen, not many crimes
were prosecuted because victims were unwilling or could not afford to
initiate judicial action. Their unwillingness was partly due to the
severity of penalties, e.g. death for the theft of over 12s. and
whippings and fines for misdemeanors. Further, the offender was
frequently a neighbor with whom one would have to live. Mediation by the
local constable often took place. When there an outbreak of lawlessness
in an area, a commission might be set up especially for that area to
enforce the law.
Assault cases were common in courts of assize and courts of quarter
sessions. The quarter sessions were those of a number of Justices of the
Peace held for a couple of days four times a year for the more important
cases in the jurisdiction of the Justices of the Peace. Assault was
violence or threat of imminent violence. Fines were graduated according
to the means of the offender, who was usually bound over to keep the
peace. Most involved offenders and victims who were neighbors and
included people of substantial standing in the village. Also, a sizable
minority were directed against local officers such as constables,
bailiffs, or tax- collectors.
Three-fourths of all assize indictments and many quarter-sessions
indictments were for various types of theft, including petty larceny,
grand larceny, housebreaking, burglary, sheep stealing, and robbery.
These offenses were mostly opportunistic rather than planned, except for
London's underworld of professional thieves and the cutpurses of country
markets and highway robbers on lonely roads. There were substantial
peaks in theft in periods of harvest failure and industrial depression,
especially by vagrants. But most of the poor never stole.
The Justices of the Peace usually deferred to the learned Justices of
Assize for cases of felony, murder, rape, highway robbery, and
witchcraft. Most homicides were the result of an impassioned argument
leading to blows inflicted by nearby commonplace items picked up and
used as weapons. Only 18% of homicides were within the family. Men were
still declared outlaw if they failed to come to court after repeated
summons.
The Lord Keeper regularly advised the assize justices, before each
circuit departure, to relieve the poor, supply the markets, maintain the
roads (which were frequently impassable in winter for wagons or
coaches), enforce church attendance, suppress superfluous and disorderly
alehouses, and put down riots, robberies, and vagrancy, and in times of
dearth, to suppress speculation in foodstuffs, prevent famine, and
preserve order. In fact, the justices were most attentive to offenses
which affected them as rate payers for the poor. These were offenses
against cottaging laws (e.g. erection of cottages which lacked the
statutory four acres of land), harboring of "inmates", disputes of
settlement of paupers, bastardy, vagrancy, church nonattendance, and
above all, disorderly alehouses. Alehousing had been a well- established
means of poor employment since the 1200s, so it was hard to enforce
licensing laws. Further, alehouses were the centers of social life for
the common people; both women and men met their friends there. If an
attorney or solicitor delays his client's suits to work his own gain or
over charges his client, the client can recover his costs and treble
damages and the attorney and solicitor shall be disbarred. None may be
admitted to any court of the king but such as have been brought up in
the same court or is otherwise well-practiced in soliciting of causes
and has been found by their dealings to be skillful and honest. An
attorney who allows another to use his name shall forfeit 400 shillings
and be disbarred.
Offenders shall pay the charge of their own conveyance to gaol or the
sum shall be levied by sale of their goods so that the King's subjects
will no longer be burdened thereby.
Plaintiffs' costs shall be paid by the defendants only where there is a
judgment against the defendant in all actions in which the plaintiff is
entitled to costs on judgment for him, to discourage frivolous and
unjust suits.
By 1616, Chancery could order injunctions to stop activities.
In Slade's case of 1602, the Court of the Queen's Bench held that
assumpsit may be brought in place of the action of debt. So assumpsit
supplants debt for recovering liquidated sums and is then called
"indebitatus assumpsit".
The trial of Sir Walter Ralegh in 1603 began a call by people for a
right to confront and question one's accusers. Before trial, privy
counselors who in theory sat as impartial justices, cross-examined
Ralegh in prison. With a carefully selected jury present, the trial
began with reading of the indictment, which Ralegh had not yet seen. He
was charged with treason in plotting with Catholic Spain to put Arabella
Stuart on the throne. Arabella was to write to Spain promising peace,
toleration of Catholics in England, and direction by Spain in her
marriage choice. He pled not guilty and took no exception to any jurors,
stating that he knew them all to be honest men. Next, Attorney General
Edward Coke, his enemy and rival, and he engaged in a debate about who
was right, with Coke outright bullying him. Coke then produced a signed
confession by Lord Cobham that implicated him in the alleged conspiracy
and accepting 10,000 crowns for his part. Ralegh was given permission to
speak. He said that Cobham had retracted his confession. He ridiculed
the idea that he would betray England to Spain for gold after fighting
against Spain, including risking his life three times, and spending
4,000 pounds for the defeat of Spain. He pointed to a treatise he had
written to the king on the present state of Spain and reasons against
peace. Then there was a discussion on the validity of Cobham's
confession. Cecil gave an oration of Ralegh. Coke gave a speech. Ralegh
asked to have his accuser brought before him face to face. He cited law
that two witnesses were necessary for a conviction for treason. Chief
Justice Popham replied that only one witness was necessary under common
law, which applied to his case, and that the trial was properly
conducted by examination of the defendant. Coke added that it would be
improper to call Cobham because he was a party. Then Coke surprised
Ralegh with a letter from Cobham stating that Ralegh had asked Cobham to
procure him an annual pension of 1500 pounds from Spain for disclosing
intelligence. Ralegh acknowledged that a pension was offered, but denied
that he had ever intended to accept it. He admitted that it was a fault
not to inform authorities of this offer. The jury deliberated for
fifteen minutes and returned with a verdict of guilty. The Chief Justice
delivered the sentence for treason: drawing, hanging, disemboweling,
beheading, and quartering. The whole trial was not so much to access
guilt, but to show the general public that the person was guilty.
Church courts were revived after a period of disuse. They could annul
an unconsummated or legally invalid marriage (e.g. consanguinity,
impotence, a witnessed precontract to marry) and order judicial
separations in case of adultery, cruelty, or apostasy. Annuled marriages
made a person's children illegitimate. An action at common law for
"criminal conversation" [adultery] with the plaintiff's spouse or for
assault and battery could result in an order for separation. But only a
private statute of Parliament could grant a divorce, which allowed
remarriage. It was granted in only a few cases and only to the very
wealthy. Church officials spied upon people's conduct to draw them into
their courts and gain more money from the profits of justice.
In 1610, Edward Coke, Chief Justice of the Court of Common Pleas,
decided that the statute giving the Royal College of Physicians power to
imprison and fine those practicing without a license was invalid and
unenforceable because it gave the college half of each fine awarded,
which was a conflict of interest with its role as an adjudicator. Coke
said that a maxim of the common law was that no man ought to be judge in
his own cause. By this decision, he asserted a court supremacy over
Parliament with respect to the validity of statutes. He opined that the
courts should not only be independent of the Crown, but should act as
arbiter of the Constitution to decide all disputed questions. In his
words, "When an Act of Parliament is against common right and reason,
the common law will control it and adjudge such Act to be void."
Justices still explained and in some degree interpreted legislative
acts of Parliament as they had since the 1500s, but their right to do so
was coming into question and was slowly lost.
Female scolds were still dunked into water as punishment.
Only barristers, who were called to the bar after being in long
residence in one of the Inns of Court, could practice before the King's
court. Attorneys and solicitors prepared cases for barristers and
practiced before minor courts.
The king appointed the justices, with the advice of the Chancellor.
James I often intimidated the justices to see things his way.
The oath of a justice was: "Well and truly ye shall serve the King and
his people. And ye shall take no fee or livery of none but the King, nor
gift or reward of none that hath a do before you except it shall be meat
or drink of small value, as long as the plea hangs before you. And ye
shall do equal law and execution of Right to all the King's subjects
rich and poor, without regard to any person. Ye shall counsel our
Sovereign Lord the King in his need. And ye shall not delay any person
of common right for the letters of the King or of any person or for any
other cause ... So help you God."
The courts of King's Bench and Common Pleas, and the Chancery all met
simultaneously in Westminster Hall. Throngs passed up and down the
middle aisles between the courts, including booksellers, stationers,
scriveners, and vendors of bread and hot meat. The hall was so cold that
people kept on their coats and hats.
The last court case concerning villeinage was in 1618.
- - - Chapter 15 - - -
- The Times: 1625-1642 -
The entourage of Charles I came to be called "Cavaliers". They were
named by their opponents for the Spanish caballero who was a Catholic
who prosecuted Protestants. Their hair had long, curled, and flowing
locks. They wore a broad-rimmed decorated hat. Their fancy jackets and
breeches were loose. Boots were wide and folded over at the top. Young
men wore earrings and painted their faces. A lady wore her hair in
ringlets on each side of her face. Her dress was fitted at the waist,
with a peaked bodice. It was low at the shoulders with a scoop neckline
in front. She often wore much lace, especially at the neck down to the
bust line. Her outer dress and under-skirt that was revealed in front,
were full and made of satin and stiff silk or velvet. Only hose of silk
were worn at court.
A majority of prosperous industrial towns and fee farmers, led
sometimes by lords or old landed gentry, were Puritans. They dressed
plainly and in somber colors such as black, grey, and buff, with no
ornamentation except plain white collars and cuffs of linen rather than
of lace. Wool replaced silk and velvet. No jewelry was worn. The Puritan
women also wore long white aprons. The Puritan women smoothed their hair
back into little knobs and covered their hair and head with a white
covering. Both Puritan men and women wore broad-rimed hats and plain
shoes. The ordinary country man wore a felt hat, broadcloth coat, woolen
trousers, hand-knitted worsted stockings, and plain, strong shoes. The
Puritan men for a time had short-cut hair. The Puritan- Parliamentarians
were given the name "Roundheads" after the crop- headed London
apprentices whose rioting had marked every stage of the conflict between
king and Parliament.
Religion was a favorite and serious topic of discussion, even among the
illiterate. Nine-tenths of the people were Protestant. On the whole,
they were more inclined to salvation by grace than to salvation by good
works. Popular reading included guides for good manners such as "The
Rich Cabinet" by Thomas Gainsford, and "Youths Behavior" translated from
the French by Francis Hawkins. It advised not to sit with one leg on the
other, but with the feet even; not to spit on one's fingers; and not to
sniffle in the sight of others. Books for ladies such as "Delights for
Ladies" by Hugh Platt told them how to adorn themselves, tables,
closets, and rooms with beautiful objects, perfumes, and waters. It
taught preserving and the making of candy preserved by sugar, cooking,
and housewifery. Gervase Markham wrote advice for men in "Hobsons
Horse-load of Letters", which addressed serious negotiations, private
businesses, amorous accomplishment, wanton merriment, and the defense of
honor and reputation. "A Helpe to Discourse" primed a man to meet
company with suggested questions and answers, epigrams, riddles, and
jests. In Henry Peacham's "The Compleat Gentleman" (1622), the model
Cavalier is portrayed in terms of horsemanship, tilting, sports, choice
of companions, reserved and dignified conduct, good scholarship, and
responsibility. This popular book was a guide to university, where there
was a seven year course of classroom lectures. It advised conversation
with men of the soundest reputation for religion, life, and learning,
but recreation with those of the same rank and quality. First place was
to be given to religion, so that the foundation of all studies would be
the service of God. Following in importance were: speaking and writing
in English or Latin (grammar, syntax, and rhetoric), astronomy,
astrology, geography (whose authorities were Pliny, Strabo, and the
pagan writers of the first century), chorography [map-making],
mathematics (including arithmetic and geometry), poetry, (reading,
writing, and criticizing), music (including part-music), drawing,
limning [putting drawings in books], painting, art history, exercise
(riding, running, leaping, tilting, throwing, wrestling, swimming,
shooting, and falconry), logic and disputation (if related to one's
intended profession such as the law), philosophy (Plato and Aristotle),
and some medicine and botany.
Richard Brathwaite's "The English Gentleman" portrays the somber
Puritan who accepts the gospel of work. He is a staid and serious
businessman. "Matrimonial Honour" by Daniel Rogers opined that for
success, a marriage must be godly, with the parties equally religious,
worshipping together in private and in public. A hasty or worldly
marriage would bring repentance. The spouses should agree, but keep to
their spheres. Children should not be spoiled.
Large households were more or less self-supporting and were managed by
their ladies. Work included ordering wool, hemp, and flax; making cloth
and dying it; dairy work; brewing; malting; baking; preserving wines;
extracting oils; distilling perfume; and putting on banquets. Couches
were coming into use in parlors.
The king and his court entourage settled for most of the year in
Whitehall instead of traveling around the country. The king let the
public into Hyde Park, the kings private hunting park, for
recreation. The City of London and Westminster were still separate, but
a mass of hovels was springing up in between them. In certain areas
there were houses crowded with those wanted for minor offenses, small
thefts, and debt. Bailiffs did not dare venture into these areas because
the inhabitants hid and defended each other unless the offense was a
major one. The penalty for stealing even small sums was still death. The
water carrier was still active and the night transport of sewage
necessary.
Inigo Jones was the first architect of consequence. He had studied in
Italy and designed and built the Banqueting House at Whitehall, near
Westminster, in London in 1622. It had classical proportions and nice
shaping and dressing in stone. He was now an arbiter of taste for the
King Charles and his Queen and built many structures for them, including
the Queen's Chapel at St. James Palace and her bedroom in the Queen's
Hose in Greenwich. All over London and the country he and his pupils
built many classical buildings, including houses, churches, stables,
lodgings, out-buildings, staircases, galleries, watergates, and
archways. They stood in stark contrast to the Tudor buildings around
them. In the 1632, Jones started town planning in London with Covent
Garden fruit and vegetable market and terraced houses around a central
piazza surrounded by open arcades with a Tuscan church at one end. In
1634, a man from the suburb of Hackney introduced a line of coaches
rented at 1s. per hour. They soon became very popular.
The Flemish Johann Baptista van Helmont demonstrated that metals
dissolved in acid can be recovered through chemical means and enunciated
the doctrine that each thing in nature has its own specific
organization.
A large part of England was rebuilt as yeomen expanded their houses and
others lower in rank replaced mud and wood hovels with brick and stone
cottages. A separate kitchen appeared. The ground floors are boarded
over to create bedrooms. Permanent stairs replace ladders. Glass appears
in windows. Glass and crockery replace wood and pewter, Chairs replace
benches. Knives and forks become common.
About 1640 began travel between towns by covered wagons called stage
coaches. They carried passengers and goods and stopped at inns for
stabling and repairs.
Work was begun in 1630 to make canals that would make marsh waters run
to the sea. Barges on canals were the most efficient mode of
transportation. A barge could carry 50 tons on a canal and only 30 tons
on a river. A single horse could haul an 8-ton wagon on iron rails or on
a soft road, but only 1/8 of a ton on his back.
A new trend of spring-sown crops led to better crop balance and reduced
the risks of scarcity in a bad year. But the economy was still volatile.
There were riots in London in 1640-1 from a complete breakdown in
political consensus, the factions being the Royalist City elite versus
the middling and lesser merchants and craftsmen.
In 1631, the clock makers broke away from the control of the
Blacksmiths. The gunmakers also broke away from the Blacksmiths. The
tinplate workers broke away from the Ironmongers.
"Searching" for bad cloth became more difficult as the industry became
more diversified. For instance, a new machine called a gig- mill did the
work of many hand finishers. In 1633, Charles issued a commission for
the reformation of the cloth industry with minute directions for the
manufacture of cloth. But there were many disagreements over the details
of manufacture and reform was difficult to enforce.
By the 1630s, many parishes had a resident intellectual for the first
time. The parish priests came from gentry, upper yeomanry, urban
tradesmen and clerical families. They were educated and highly learned.
They had libraries and were in touch with contemporary religious
debates. They saw their role primarily as pastoral care. Many wanted to
improve the religious knowledge and moral conduct of their parishioners.
Puritan influence deepened as they forbade dancing, games, minstrels,
and festivals. They punished superstitious conduct. They initiated
prosecutions in church courts for sexual lapses and drunkenness. The
church court had little coercive power and its punishments were
restricted to penance or excommunication. Many Puritan sects espoused
equality for women. By the 1640s women were preachers, e.g. in the
Baptist and Anabaptist religions and, until 1660, prophetesses. These
sects were mostly composed of the lower echelons of society.
Poor people did not respond to sermons as did the well-to-do. Nor were
they as involved in church activity, attending church only for
marriages, baptisms, and funerals.
Charles I not only believed in the divine right of kings and was
authoritarian; he was the ultimate autocrat. He had an unalterable
conviction that he was superior to other men, who were insignificant and
privileged to revolve around him. He issued directives to reverse jury
verdicts. Parliamentarians Oliver Cromwell and other educated men
opposed this view. The Commons voted not to grant Charles the usual
custom-dues for life, making it instead renewable each year, conditioned
on the king's behavior. Charles dissolved Parliament before this passed.
He continued to take tonnage and poundage.
Charles wanted money for war so he imposed many taxes, but without the
consent of Parliament. They included many of which had fallen into
disuse. He imposed a compulsory "loan" on private individuals, which the
courts held was illegal, and imprisoned those who refused. Bail was
denied to these men. Simpler people who refused were threatened with
impressment into the Navy, which included being landed on shore to fight
as marines and soldiers. They sought to revive the old writ of habeas
corpus to get released, but to no avail. Charles billeted unpaid and
unruly soldiers in private homes, which they plundered. It was customary
to quarter them in inns and public houses at royal expense. Martial law
was declared and soldiers were executed. But the citizens did not want
martial law either.
The Magna Carta was now seen as a protector of basic liberties, instead
of a restoration of certain past rights.. Both attorneys and laymen read
"The Pastyme of People" written by John Rastell in 1529, which described
the history of the Magna Carta from 1215 to 1225. Also read was the
"Great Abridgment" of the English law written by Rastell in 1527, and
Coke's volume of his Institutes which dealt with the Magna Carta, which
the Crown took to prevent being published until 1642, when Parliament
allowed it. Broad-scale pamphleteering turned England into a school of
political discussion. Oxford University favored the established church
and Cambridge University was Puritan.
The House of Commons asserted a preeminence to the House of Lords for
the following reasons: The estates of the members of the House of
Commons were three times the extent of the members' of the House of
Lords. Bishops' estates had diminished considerably because of
secularization. The members of the House of Commons were elected
[chosen] by the people.
The House of Commons drew up a Petition of Right in 1627, which
expanded upon the principles of Magna Carta and sought to fix definite
bounds between royal power and the power of the law. It protested the
loans compelled under pain of imprisonment and stated that no tax or the
like should be exacted without the common consent of Parliament. It
quoted previous law that "...no freeman may be taken or imprisoned, or
be disseised of his freeholds or liberties, or his free customs, or be
outlawed or exiled; or in any manner destroyed, but by the lawful
judgment of his peers, or by the law of the land" and that "...no man of
what estate or condition that he be, should be put out of his land or
tenements, nor taken, nor imprisoned nor disinherited, nor put to death
without being brought to answer by due process of law". It continued
that "... divers of your subjects have of late been imprisoned without
any cause showed; and when for their deliverance they were brought
before your Justices by your Majesty's writs of Habeas Corpus, there to
undergo and receive as the court should order, and their keepers
commanded to certify the causes of their detainer, no cause was
certified, but that they were detained by your Majesty's special
command, signified by the Lords of your Privy Council, and yet were
returned back to several prisons, without being charged with anything to
which they might make answer according to the law." It also protested
the billeting of soldiers in private houses and martial law trying
soldiers and sailors. If these terms were agreed to by the King, he was
to be given a good sum of money. Since he needed the money, he yielded.
He expected tonnage and poundage for the Navy for life, as was the
custom. But he got it only for one year, to be renewable yearly. The
King agreed to the petition, quietly putting his narrow interpretation
on it, and it was put into the statute book.
In 1629 Parliament distinguished between treason to the king and
treason to the Commonwealth.
The Chief Justice held in 1638 that acts of Parliament to take away the
King's royal power in the defense of his kingdom were void; the king may
command his subjects, their persons, their goods, and their money and
acts of Parliament make no difference. But the people refused to pay
these taxes.
Charles thought of more ways to obtain money and disregarded his
agreement to the Petition of Right.
Without the consent of Parliament, Charles extended ship money to all
the kingdom instead of just the ports. It was used to outfit ships for
the protection of the coasts. Hampden refused to pay it on principle and
the courts ruled against him in the case of King v. John Hampden and he
was sent to prison. When distraints were tried, the common people used
violence to prevent them. The bailiffs were pelted with rocks when they
came to distrain property. One man used his pitchfork to take back his
steer being taken by the bailiff. If a distraint was successful, people
would refuse to buy the distrained property of their neighbors.
Charles revived the right of the Crown to force knighthood on the
landed gentry for a fee.
Charles sold monopolies in such goods as soap, leather, salt, wine,
coal, and linen rags although they had been abolished in the last
Parliament of James. This made employment uncertain for workers and
prices high for the public, and put masters in danger of loss of
capital.
Fines were levied on people for the redress of defects in their title
deeds. Crown forest boundaries were arbitrarily extended and landowners
near Crown forests were heavily fined for their encroachments on them.
Money was extorted from London by an illegal proclamation by which every
house had to pay three years' rental to the Crown to save itself from
demolition.
But what incensed the people more than the money issue were the changes
in the established church. High churchmen, called Ritualists, enforced
ceremonies offensive to Puritan feeling in every parish. The centrally
placed communion tables were to be placed at the east end within
railings and called "altars", or "mercy seats" as if for mass. They were
to be ornamented with crucifixes, images, pretty trifles, books, candles
and rich tapestries. Bowing was to be done when approaching them.
Clergymen were to be called "priests" and their authority treated as
divine. Worship was to be done in accordance with the prescribed forms
of Romish Breviars, Rituals, and Mass-books. Its ritual was to have pomp
and ceremony, including kneeling for communion. Rings were to be used in
marriages and crosses used in baptisms. Churches, fonts, tables,
pulpits, chalices and the like were to be consecrated, thereby putting
holiness in them. Churches that did not do this but used unconsecrated
or "polluted" articles were closed by interdiction [a Catholic censure
withdrawing most sacraments and Christian burial]. Days, postures,
meats, and vestments were to be regarded. The clergy was to wear
supplices [white linen vestments flowing to the foot with lawn sleeves]
and embroidered copes [vestment over the head]. A Bishop wore a
four-cornered cap, cope and surplice with lawn-sleeves, tippet (long,
black scarf), hood, and canonical coat. Churchwardens were to take oaths
to inform against any who disobeyed. The law still required that all
attend Sunday sermons. But parishes had some control over who was their
preacher, even though a minister could be assigned to a parish by the
bishops without the consent of the patron of the church or parish
people. By increasing the meager pay of a parish clergyman, they could
choose one with a compatible theology or employ a lecturer from outside.
The Ritualists scolded clergymen for "gospel preaching" and suppressed
Puritan preaching in public meetings. Preaching or printing matter
concerning the controversy of free will versus predestination was
forbidden. Geneva Bibles, which were popular among laymen, were
prohibited from being imported. Many were excommunicated for sitting
instead of kneeling at communion. The clergy prohibited marriage if they
liked by withholding their license, and they licensed marriages without
banns. The Ritualists encouraged certain sports to be played after
church on Sunday. The Puritans protested vehemently to this because they
wanted to strictly observe the Sabbath. The Puritans saw the high
churchmen as wanting to return to the doctrine and customs they thought
to be Papist. The Ritualists were absolutists in their political views
and accepted the King's intervention in church matters. The
ecclesiastical Court of High Commission enforced the edicts of the
church, excommunicating those who did not conform and expelling
clergymen who, for instance, did not bow at the name of Jesus or wear
the surplice. It was used against the Puritans and imposed high fines
and imprisonment for religious eccentricity and Puritan preaching.
Charles supported the established church in this endeavor because it
agreed that he had a divine right to rule.
The universities and high churchmen were beginning to adopt the
doctrine of free will over predestination. Parliamentarian and Puritan
Oliver Cromwell and others feared this presaged a return to
justification by works and the popish faith. In Parliament, he spoke out
against the tyranny of the bishops, whose offices he wanted abolished,
and the elaborateness of church services.
To avoid persecution, many Puritans emigrated to Virginia and New
England. They were led by magistrates, country gentlemen, prominent
businessmen, attorneys, and other professionals. In 1629, the
Massachusetts Bay Colony was chartered at the instigation of John
Winthrop as a Puritan refuge. Its leaders led a migration of Puritans
organized to include five each of armorers, bakers, blacksmiths,
carpenters, shoemakers, merchants; three each of clothiers, chandlers,
coopers, military officers, physicians, and tailors; two each of
fishermen, herdsmen, and masons; on tanner, and one weaver. The fare was
five pounds and an applicant was interviewed to make sure he was a
Puritan. He got 50 acres, or more for a larger family. But if he paid 50
pounds into the common stock he received 200 acres of land, plus 50 more
for each dependent. Maryland was founded in 1632 as a haven for
Catholics, but its charter precluded a government-established religion.
It was granted to Lord Baltimore to hold in free socage and was named
after Charles wife, who was Catholic. Catholics in England could
practice their religion only in their homes and could not carry arms.
As hostility grew, censorship of books and plays accelerated and the
number of authorized printers was reduced in 1637 by decree of the Star
Chamber. In 1640s effective government control of the press collapsed.
Then there were many pamphlets and newspapers with all variety of
interpretation of the Bible and all sorts of political opinion, such as
on taxation; law and the liberties of the subject; religion; land and
trade; and authority and property. Twenty-two pamphlets were published
in 1640 and 1,996 in 1642.
In 1640 the canons of the church included a requirement for parsons to
exclaim divine right of kings every year. The Commons soon resolved that
this was contrary to the fundamental laws and liberties of the realm.
The Short Parliament of 1640 was dissolved soon because the Commons
demanded redress of its grievances. The Long Parliament of 1640-1653
requested by the House of Lords was agreed to by Charles because he
still wanted money. In election of members to the Long Parliament,
voters wanted to know where contenders stood on certain political
issues. In this Parliament, the Commons ceased to agree on all issues
and started to rely on majority rule.
The House of Commons was led by John Pym, a middle class landholder
with extensive commercial interests. The Commons treated the King's
refusal to act with them as a relinquishment of his power to Parliament.
When it met at the Long Parliament, Pym expressed the grievances of the
King's actions against the privileges of Parliament, against religion,
and against the liberties of the subjects. Specifically, he decried the
disregard of free speech and of freedom from prosecution afterward, and
the arbitrary dissolution of Parliament. Secondly, he alleged popery had
been encouraged and the ecclesiastical jurisdiction enlarged. Thirdly,
he protested the patent monopolies given to favorites to the detriment
of the buying public, the imposition of ship money levies beyond the
need of national defense and without the consent of Parliament, the
revival of the feudal practice of imposing a fine for refusal to accept
a knighthood with its attendant obligations, the enlargement of the
King's forests and driving out from hence tenants with lucrative
holdings, extra judicial declarations of justices without hearing of
counsel or argument in many criminal matters, and the abuses of the
prerogative courts in defending monopolies. Parliament's assertion into
religious matters and foreign affairs was unprecedented, those areas
having been exclusively in the power of the King.
The Long Parliament begun in 1640 removed many of the King's ministers
and forbade clergy from sitting in Parliament or exercising any temporal
authority. It passed measures which were not agreed to by the King. It
undid the lawless acts of the King and the court decision in the case of
King v. Hampden. Ship money was declared illegal. The new concept that
the present Parliament should not be dissolved but by its own consent
was adopted. The Star Chamber and Court of High Commission were
abolished. The oath ex officio, an oath to answer all questions, was
originally meant for facts at issue, but had been extended by these
courts to opinions, beliefs, and religion and had led to abuses. The
Star Chamber had been the only court which punished infractions of the
Kings' edicts, so now his proclamations were unenforceable. Protection
against self-incrimination was given by the provision that no person be
forced "to confess or accuse him or herself of crime, offense,
delinquency, or misdemeanor, or any neglect... or thing whereby, or by
reason whereof, he or she shall or may be liable or exposed to any
censure, pain, penalty, or punishment whatsoever, as had been the
practice in the Star Chamber and the Court of High Commission.
These measures were also adopted: No one may be compelled to take
knighthood nor undergo any fine for not so doing. The forest boundaries
are returned to their former place. All subjects may now import
gunpowder; they may also make and sell gunpowder and import saltpeter.
The Root and Branch Petition of 1640 to abolish episcopacy roots and
branches complained about pressure on ministers by bishops on threat of
dismissal not to preach about predestination, free grace, perseverance,
original sin remaining after baptism, the Sabbath, doctrine against
universal grace, election for faith foreseen, free-will against
anti-Christ, non- residents, nor human inventions in God's worship. It
also complained about the great increase of idle, lewd, and dissolute,
ignorant and erroneous men in the ministry who wanted only to wear a
canonical coat, a surplice, and a hood, bow at the name of Jesus, and be
zealous of superstitious ceremonies. It also complained about the
swarming of lascivious, idle, and unprofitable books, pamphlets,
play-books, and ballads, such as Ovid's "Fits of Love", "The Parliament
of Women", Barn's "Poems", and Parker's "Ballads". Further it opposed
the restraint of reprinting books formerly licensed without relicensing.
It protested the growth of popery and increase of priests and Jesuits,
the strict observance of saints' days whereby large fines were imposed
on people working on them, the increase of whoredoms and adulteries
because of the bishops' corrupt administration of justice and taking of
bribes, and the practice of excommunicating for trivial matters such as
working on a holy day or not paying a fee. It further protested the
fining and imprisoning of many people; breaking up men's houses and
studies; taking away men's books, letters, and writings; seizing upon
their estates; removing them from their callings; and separating them
from their wives, to the utter infringement of the laws and of people's
liberties. It complained that these practices caused many clothiers,
merchants, and others to flee to Holland, thus undermining the wool
industry. It finally complained of the multitude of monopolies and
patents, large increase of customs, and ship-money. Many Londoners
signed this petition.
The House of Commons decided to forbid bowing at the name of Jesus.
When the House of Lords disagreed with this, the House of Commons
claimed that it represented all the people and didn't need the
concurrence of the House of Lords. The House of Commons ordered that all
communion tables be removed from the east end of churches, that the
railings be taken away, and all candles and basins be removed from it.
Further, all crucifixes, images of the Virgin Mary, and pictures of any
of the Trinity were to be demolished, including those in markets and
streets. Further, all bowing at the name of Jesus or toward the east end
of the church or toward the communion table was forbidden. All dancing
or other sports on Sunday was forbidden. Enforcement was to be done by
Justices of the Peace and Mayors. But these orders never became
statutes.
Enforcement of the law for not coming to church was not now regularly
enforced, so Catholics had a respite.
Rebellion of Irish Catholics against England and English Protestants
broke out in Ireland in 1641. Parliament didn't trust the King with an
army that he could use against themselves so it passed the following two
measures expanding the Navy and calling out the militia and naming
certain persons to be Lieutenants of each county.
The Admiral shall impress as many seamen as necessary for the defense
of the realm. This includes mariners, sailors, watermen, ship
carpenters, but no one over the age of 50 or masters or masters' mates.
If one hides, he shall be imprisoned for three months without bail.
Justices of the Peace shall impress as many soldiers as the king may
order for war in Ireland. This is despite the right of a citizen to be
free from being compelled to go out of his county to be a soldier
because the danger from Ireland is imminent. Excluded are clergymen,
scholars, students, those rated at a subsidy of land of three pounds or
goods of five pounds, esquires or above, the sons of such or their
widows, those under eighteen or over sixty years of age, mariners,
seamen, and fishermen. The penalty for disobeying is imprisonment,
without bail or misprise, and a fine of ten pounds. If an offender can't
pay the fine, he shall be imprisoned a year more, without bail or
misprise.
The right to call out the county militia had been a prerogative of the
Crown, so the King issued a Proclamation ordering the soldiers to ignore
this order and obey him. So Parliament declared this Proclamation void.
The King accused five leaders of Parliament, including Pym, of trying
to subvert the government of the kingdom, to deprive the King of his
regal power, to alienate the affections of the people toward their King,
forcing the Parliament to their ends by foul aspersions, and inviting
the Scots to invade England. In 1642, the King entered Parliament with
300 soldiers to arrest these five. They had flown, but Parliament was
shocked that the King had threatened the liberties of Parliament with
military force. The citizens of London, in their fear of popery, rose in
arms against the King, who left the city. Both sides raised big armies.
The goal of the Parliamentarians was to capture the King alive and force
him to concessions.
When the Parliamentarians took Oxford in 1648, they purged its faculty
of royalists.
- The Law -
Real wages, which had been falling, reached their low point and the gap
between the poor and others widened. There were depressions from 1629-32
and from 1636 to about 1640, which called for Royal proclamations for
the relief and distress, especially among the poor. The Book of Orders,
for the relief of distress in earlier reigns, was to be reissued. The
assize of beer and bread maintaining quality, prices, weights, and
measures, was to be duly kept. Hoarding of foodstuffs was to be
punished. Fish days and lent were to be observed to maintain the
fishers. Abstaining from suppers on Fridays and on the eves of feasts
was ordered in all taverns and commended to private families. City
corporations were to give up their usual feasts and half the charge
given to the poor. Foreign ships were not to be supplied with food for
long voyages. The revised Book of Orders also covered the regulation of
beggary, the binding of apprentices, and the general relief of the poor.
All magistrates were to enforce the rules and raise special rates from
all parishes, the richer of these to help the poorer.
From 1625 to 1627 these statutes were passed:
No one shall engage in sports or any pastimes outside his own parish or
bearbaiting, bullbaiting, interludes, plays or other unlawful pastimes
inside his parish on Sundays because such has led to quarrels and
bloodshed and nonattendance at church. The fine is 3s.4d. or if the
offender does not have the money or goods to sell to pay, he shall be
set in the public stocks for three hours.
No carrier with any horse or wagon or cart or drover with cattle may
travel on Sunday or else forfeit 20s.
No butcher may kill or sell any victual on Sunday or else forfeit 6s.8d.
Every innkeeper, alehousekeeper, and other victualer permitting a patron
who is not an inhabitant of the area to become drunk shall forfeit 5s.
or be place in the stocks for six hours. Offenders convicted a second
time shall be bound by two sureties to the sum of 200s.
As of 1627, a parent sending a child out of the country to go to a
Catholic school was to forfeit 100 pounds, one half to the informer and
one half to the king.
The Petition of Right herebefore described was passed as a statute in
1627.
- Judicial Procedure -
The Star Chamber decided cases as diverse as a case of subordination of
witnesses, cases of counterfeiters of farthing tokens, and cases of
apothecaries compounding ill medicines. It tried to keep down the prices
of foodstuffs for the benefit of the poor; it repressed extortion and
false accusations, and disbarred an attorney for sharp practices; it
punished defamation, fraud, riots, forgery of wills; it forbade duels. A
special virtue of its position was that it could handle without fear
matters in which men of social or local influence might intimidate or
overawe juries or even country justices. It punished a lord who caused
records to be forged, unlawfully entered lands, and seized tithes. It
disciplined a nobleman for drawing a sword on a lord hunting hare.
In one of its cases, Sir Edward Bullock, a knight wanting to enclose a
common of a thousand acres threatened his neighbor Blackhall when he
would not sell his lands and rights. The knight hired a man to break
down the hedges and open a gate that had been staked up, so that his
neighbor's cattle would stray. He sued his neighbor three times for
trespass, lost his cases, and threatened revenge on all the witnesses
who testified against him. He had the house of one pulled down. The
pregnant wife and a naked child were turned out and had to lie in the
streets because no one dared to take them in, even when a justice so
directed. The witness, his wife, and family took refuge in an unheated
outbuilding in the winter. He and his wife and one child died there. The
knight had another witness cudgeled so that she was black and blue from
the waist up, and could not put on her clothes for a month. The knight
threatened to set fire to the house of another witness, and sent his men
to pull him out of doors and keep him prisoner for some hours. The Star
Chamber imprisoned the knight and his men. The knight was fined 1,000
pounds and the men 50 pounds each. The knight also had to pay one
witness 100 pounds in reparation to the surviving children of the family
whose house had been pulled down.
But the power of the Star Chamber was abused by King Charles I. For
instance, one lord was accused by another of calling him a base lord.
The evidence was paltry. But he was fined 8,000 pounds, one-half going
to the King. A lord who was accused of converting agricultural land to
pasture was fined 4,000 pounds. A person who exported fuller's earth,
contrary to the King's proclamation, was pilloried and fined 2,000
pounds. A man who defaced a stained-glass window in a church was fined
500 pounds and ordered to pay for a plain glass replacement. A man who
became sheriff of a county and had taken the oath which bound him to
remain in the county was elected to Parliament and stood in opposition
to the king on many matters. He was imprisoned for many years until he
made a humble submission and had to pay a heavy fine. A London importer
who was alleged to have said "That the Merchants are in no part of the
world so screwed and wrung as in England; That in Turkey they have more
encouragement" was fined 2,000 pounds for seditious and slanderous words
against his majesty's happy government. A Scottish minister circulated a
book appealing to Parliament to turn out the bishops and to resist its
own dissolution by the King. In it he called the bishops men of blood,
anti-Christian, satanical, ravens, and magpies, preying on the state. He
was against kneeling at the sacrament and denounced the Queen for her
Catholic religion. He blamed the state for the death of citizens of a
certain town by famine. For as he did "scandalize his Majesties Sacred
Person, his Religious, Wise, and just Government, the Person of his
Royal Consort the Queen, the Persons of the Lords and Peers of this
realm, especially the Reverend Bishops", he was fined 10,000 pounds, was
to be unfrocked (which was done by the Court of High Commission), and
was whipped, pilloried, one ear nailed to the pillory and cut off, his
cheek branded, and his nose slit. Then he was imprisoned for life, but
only served ten years, being released by a statute of the Long
Parliament. A Puritan writer Pyrnne wrote a book that included a
condemnation of masks and plays, and all who took part, and all who
looked on as sinful, pernicious, and unlawful. It opined that Nero had
attended plays and deserved to be murdered. Since Charles had attended
plays and the Queen had taken part in a mask, it was inferred that
Pyrnne meant them harm. His indictment alleged that "he hath presumed to
cast aspersions upon the King, the Queen, and the Commonwealth, and
endeavored to infuse an opinion onto the people that it is lawful to lay
violent hands upon Princes that are either actors, favorers, or
spectators of stage plays". The justices saw in the book an attempt to
undermine authority. The Chief Justice called the book a most wicked,
infamous, scandalous, and seditious libel. Pyrnne was sentenced to be
degraded by Oxford and disbarred by Lincoln's Inn, to be fined 5,000
pounds, to be pilloried and to have his ears cut off, and then to be
imprisoned for life. Three men who wrote attacks on the bishops and
ecclesiastical courts, such as alleging that the bishops suppression of
fasts and preaching had brought the pestilence upon the people and that
the bishops had dishonored God and exercised papal jurisdiction in their
own names, were each sentenced to 5,000 fine, the pillory, where their
ears were cut off, and to life imprisonment. One, who had been convicted
for libel before, was branded on both cheeks: "S.L." for Seditious
Libeller. Others printed similar material. In vain the Star Chamber
limited the number of London printers to twenty, and made licensing
stricter. These prisoners were set free by the Long Parliament.
Charles I intimidated justices to obey him in decision-making even more
than James I.
Charles I so abused the power of the Star Chamber court that it was
abolished by the Long Parliament and with it, the involvement of the
King's Council in civil and criminal cases.
The regular church courts punished people for heresy, non- attendance
at church, sexual immorality, working on the Sabbath or a holy day,
non-payment of tithes, and lending money at interest. The special
ecclesiastical court, the Court of High Commission, was composed of
clerics appointed by the king and decided cases of marriage annulment,
alimony, adultery, married couples living separately, cruelty of
husbands to wives, and habitual drunkenness. But it also took on cases
of schismatics and extended its power over them to include staid and
solid Puritans, who uniformly believed that salvation was the only
worthy earthly aim. Acting on information attained through secret
channels or from visitations, it would summon the accused, who was
required to give, under oath, "full, true, and perfect" answers to broad
and undetailed charges made by secret informants. Refusal to take the
oath resulted in commitment for contempt of court. If he denied the
charges and fled, the court could hold the hearing without him. Many
fled out of the country or went into hiding in it. If the accused went
to the hearing, he could not take an attorney with him. Most of the
issues involved clergy refusing to use the litany, to make the sign of
the cross in baptism, to wear the surplice, or to publish the Book of
Sports, and insistence on extempore prayer and preaching. Other issues
were clergy who, from the pulpit, inveighed against ship-money and
unjust taxes, and spoke rudely against the bishops and tyrannical
princes. One case is that of Samuel Ward, the town preacher of a large
town, heard in 1635. He neglected bowing or kneeling on coming to his
seat in church and preached against the Book of Sports. He did not read
the set prayers from the official book, but said prayers he had himself
conceived. To this he replied that a parrot could be taught to repeat
forms and an ape to imitate gestures. But his most serious offenses had
to do with his utterances from the pulpit derogatory to the tenets and
discipline of the church. He was accused of saying that he believed that
congregations still had the right of election of all officers, including
ministers. Also, he allegedly said that in preaching on the Christmas
holidays he told his people "that in the following days they might do
their ordinary business, intending to cross that vulgar superstitious
belief, that whoever works on any of those twelve days shall be lousy".
He allegedly warned his people to beware of a relapse into popery. Ward
was convicted of depraving the liturgy, tending toward schism,
frightening the people, and encouraging the overthrow of all manner of
government. He was removed from his position, deprived of his
ministerial function, suspended and silenced during the King's pleasure.
He was ordered to make submission and recantation both in court and in
his church and to give bond for 200 pounds. When he did not do this, he
was sent to prison and lay there nearly four years, and died a few
months later. In another case, a Mrs. Traske was imprisoned for at least
eleven years for keeping Saturday as her Sabbath. Many people were
excommunicated and books censored for essentially political reasons.
In 1637, the king proclaimed that the common law courts could not
intervene in ecclesiastical courts.
The Court of High Commission was abolished by the Long Parliament.
Justices of the Peace had general and quarter sessions, the latter of
which were held four times a year with all Justices of the Peace
attending. It was primarily a court of appeal from penal sentences. But
it was also an administrative body to determine taxes and make
appointments of officials and grant licenses for businesses.
In 1638, in distributing a deceased person's estate, the Chancery court
upheld a trust designed to hold the property for an heiress so that it
did not become her husband's property.
At the request of Parliament, the King had all justices serve during
their good behavior instead of serving at the King's will, which had
been the practice for ages. This increased the independence of the
judiciary.
The rack was used for the last time in 1640 before the Long Parliament
met. It was used to torture a rioter before hanging.
Men were still pressed to death for failure to plead, pickpockets still
executed for the first offense, and husband murderers still burned.
- - - Chapter 16 - - -
- The Times: 1642-1660 -
For four years, there was civil war between the King, backed generally
by the upper class, the established church, and most of the gentry,
against the Parliamentarians, backed generally by middle class yeomen,
town dwellers, some of the gentry, most of the great corporations, the
City of London, the ports, the seamen, and the Navy. Oxford University
was royalist, and Cambridge University was Puritan in sympathy. Archery
was not used in the war, having become just sport by 1633. Flint-lock
pistols, which relied on flint striking steel to ignite the powder, as
well as swords were used by horsemen in the civil war. Footmen were
musketeers using a match lock with a cord boiled in vinegar as the
match, and dressed in leather doublets and an iron-pot headpiece; or
pikemen with long wooden poles with spearheads of iron or steel and
short swords, and dressed in armor. This was the last time armor was
used. The Parliamentarians wore orange scarves to distinguish themselves
from their enemy. Cromwell, who had a natural aptitude for military
matters, selected for his troops, Puritan zealots with a Puritan code of
behavior which included no drinking or swearing. He selected horsemen
based on ability rather than social class. He was regarded as one of the
leaders of the Independents, who wanted total abolition of the monarchy
and of the aristocracy. When made a leader of the New Model Army,
Cromwell dressed all his foot men in red with only the facings being
regimental colors. The New Model Army had been assembled because there
had been disagreement about policy among the members of Parliament who
held commissions. Almost all members gave up their commissions. For
their continued support, many wives and also prostitutes put on men's
clothing and followed the troops. They nursed the wounded. Those many
wives who stayed at home pleaded and answered in court; petitioned to
the House of Commons, e.g. for release of debtors from prison, high
taxes, lack of work, and arbitrary government; and made other public
appearances. Puritan and royalist newspapers printed the news at least
once weekly. Poet John Milton pled for civil and religious freedom,
freedom of social life, and freedom of the press. He stated: "Give me
the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely, according to
conscience, above all liberties."
The Mayor and citizens of London were given authority in 1642 to
fortify all highways leading to the city and levy a tax on inhabitants
for this purpose. When London was deprived of coal during the war, trees
and flowers again flourished there.
Officers and seamen in navy ships were authorized in 1642 to take
one-third of all prize goods captured, the other two-thirds going to the
state.
Parliament approved certain persons to set forth ships at their own
expense to defend the realm in 1643. They were allowed to keep any
ships, goods, ammunition, or moneys they seized.
Saltpeter men were appointed by Parliament in 1643 and later times to
search and dig for saltpeter in pigeon houses, stables, and outhouses,
but not dwelling, shops, or milkhouses. They had to repair any damage
done to the contentment of the owners.
Complaints were made to Parliament that there were scandalous and
ill-affected fomenters of the civil war and disobeyers of the ordinaries
of Parliament and deserters of their ordinary places of residence. These
complaints were made by members of the University of Cambridge,
students, clergy in surrounding counties, and schoolmasters. So a
committee was established in 1643 to investigate and sequester their
lands and goods, excepting one- fifth of the estate for the wife and
children.
When Charles was captured in 1646, the episcopacy of the bishops was
abolished. When Parliament was about to reinstate Charles as king with
weakened powers and establish a Presbyterian state church, the soldiers,
who were religious Independents and who still had not been fully paid
(the infantry pay was 18 weeks in arrears and the cavalry 43 weeks)
despite plans to disband them, spontaneously took the King by force.
They demanded liberty of conscience to practice their own religion and
their pay. Cromwell sided with the army and then became leader of the
House of Commons. Charles dissembled in his negotiations with the army
generals. He felt freed from his promises as soon as the pressure was
removed. The army could not forgive Charles' duplicity and deceitfulness
and insisted upon his death as the only way to bring peace. Cromwell
gave up hope on negotiations with Charles when he intercepted a letter
by Charles to his Queen decreeing the final doom of the army adherents
in favor of the Scottish Presbyterians. During protracted negotiations
over months between the army and Parliament over a new constitution, a
renewed support for the King, which was inspired by him, necessitated a
second civil war to put down this revolt and subdue its Scot supporters.
Eventually the army took control of Parliament by force, only allowing
the few members who agreed with them on the trial of the King into
Parliamentary meetings. So Charles was tried in 1649, found guilty of
"an unlimited and tyrannical power to rule according to his will, and to
overthrow the rights and liberties of the people ... which by the
fundamental constitutions of this kingdom were reserved on the peoples'
behalf in the right and power of frequent and successive parliaments or
national meetings in council", and maintaining a war against his
subjects, which amounted to treason. To prevent his adherents from
trying to reinstate him, he was condemned to death and beheaded in
January 1649.
To pay for the civil war, an assessment tax on the yearly value of
rents, annuities, and offices was often levied. The main burden of this
tax fell on the gentry rather than the merchants and smaller men of
property, as previous taxes had. An excise tax, a tax on consumption,
was begun on ale and beer and then extended to meat, salt, starch, soap,
and paper. It was gradually extended to many goods. The excise taxes
were paid, as was the customs tax, by manufacturers on goods made in
England and by foreign manufacturers on goods at the ports.
Parishes had to give maintenance to maimed soldiers and provision for
the livelihood to the wives and children of killed soldiers. Masters of
apprentices who became soldiers had to take them back as apprentices
without loss for their absence in defense of the Commonwealth. Masters
who received considerable loss by the absence of their apprentices
received reasonable satisfaction from the public stock.
From 1640-60, Royalists were purged from Oxford and a group of
Baconians moved into the university behind Parliamentary armies. At the
two universities, books were no longer chained to the bookcases. The
universities were freed from taxation.
After the civil wars, Cromwell led the country. He was a military,
political, and religious leader. He had become a Puritan zealot after a
youth of gambling, drinking, debauchery, and rioting. He believed that
military success was a reflection of divine favor and he regarded
himself as one the few elect preordained for salvation. Those in power
in the new Commonwealth tended to explain their regime in terms of
popular consent, and the takeover from Charles I as due to his breaking
of a contract with the people.
Most people dressed in Puritan fashion. A Puritan's favorite readings
were the Old Testament, Epistles of St. Paul, and writings of John
Calvin.
Wealth and prosperity steadily increased in spite of the civil wars.
During Cromwell's tenure, there was a marked revival of economic
prosperity. By the mid-1600s, landlords had been able to shorten their
leases so that a lease of twenty-one years was the predominant form of
landholding.
Patent protection was given in 1642 for seven years to the inventors of
a device for salvaging ships' goods and cannons from the seas. With it
they could convert to their own use one half of the items retrieved, the
other half going to the Navy and Parliament. Patent protection was given
in 1650 to George Manby on his new invention for boiling liquors and
making salt with less coal and wood and iron, lead, and copper for
fourteen years. Patent protection was given in 1651 for fourteen years
to Jeromy Buck for melting iron, lead, tin, copper, brass, and other
metals with coal without burning charcoal.
The Merchant Adventurers were incorporated again in 1643 to have a
monopoly. It was required to admit into membership for 100 pounds anyone
free of London and bred as a merchant, and for 50 pounds any
non-inhabitant of London. The penalty for trading for one who was not
free of the corporation was forfeiture of his goods.
In 1648, the House of Commons abolished the monarchy and in 1649 the
House of Lords. Also in 1649 it declared that England "should
thenceforth be governed as a commonwealth and free state by the supreme
authority of this nation, the representatives of the people in
Parliament." It made a new constitution.
John Milton defended the Commonwealth as superior to the monarchy
because it could not deteriorate into tyranny in his books: "First
Defense of the People of England" in 1651, and "Second Defense" in 1654.
He lauded Cromwell as great in war and great in peace, and exemplifying
the principle that "nature appoints that wise men should govern fools".
Thomas Hobbes, the son of a clergyman, and tutor to students, wrote
"Leviathan" in 1651 on his theory of sovereignty. Hobbes thought that
states are formed as the only alternative to anarchy, barbarism, and
war, so that supremacy and unity of a sovereign power is essential to a
civilized life and the protection of the citizenry. A sovereign may be a
man or body of men as long as his or its authority is generally
recognized. There must be a social contract among the citizenry to obey
a certain sovereign. To avoid religious conflict, there must be a
complete subordination of the church to the state and the religion of a
state must be dependent upon its secular sovereign. Hobbes thought that
knowledge of the world came through experience and not reason alone.
Only matter exists, and everything that happens can be predicted in
accordance with exact, scientific laws. He regarded human societies as
purely mechanical systems set in motion by human desires. He saw self
interest as the mainspring of moral law. Conflicting self interests
transformed into a lawful system of agreements. Hobbes opined that all
power really originated in the people and that the end of all power was
for the people's good.
On the other hand, James Harrington, who wrote "The Commonwealth of
Oceana" in 1656, opined that a stable society depended on a direct
relationship between the distribution of property and political power;
no one with property worth more than 2,000 pounds should be allowed to
acquire more and property should be divided among children. A senate of
mature property owners were to make and debate the laws while an
assembly elected by universal suffrage was to vote on them because "a
popular assembly without a senate cannot be wise and a senate without a
popular assembly will not be honest". A third of the Senate would turn
over every year. John Milton defended the execution of the King in "The
Tenure of Kings and Magistrates" in which he maintained that the people
may "as often as they shall judge it for the best either to choose him
or reject him or depose him, though no tyrant, merely by the liberty and
right of freeborn men to be governed as seems to the best". He also
wrote in favor of liberty of the press. Ordinary speech found its way
into prose writing.
Lands of more than 700 Royalists, including church lands, were
confiscated and sold or leased by county committees. Many Royalists put
their lands into trusts or turned them over to relatives or sold them
outright to prevent confiscation. It was an upheaval comparable to the
dissolution of the monasteries. Also, specified Papists who had taken up
arms against the realm lost their lands, goods, money, rents, and
two-thirds of their personal estates. But allowance was made for the
maintenance of their wives and children.
The Book of Common Prayer was abolished because of its burdensome
ceremonies. It was replaced by a Directory for Public Worship. According
to this, the Sunday service was to include reading of the Scriptures,
prayer, and a sermon, ordinarily on some text of scripture which would
be explained with reasons therefore and applied to peoples' lives so
they could see if they had sinned or not. The ending of episcopal
patronage gave some parishes the right to elect their own ministers.
All festivals and holy days were abolished, e.g. Christmas, Easter,
Whitsuntide. Instead, scholars, apprentices, and servants were to have
recreation and stores were to be closed every second Tuesday of the
month. The usual merry-making, music, dancing, and sports after the
Sunday service were discontinued.
A day for fasting: the last Wednesday of every month, was declared by
statute. This day was to be "kept with the more solemn humiliation,
because it may call to remembrance our sins, and the sins of our
forefathers, who have turned this Feast, pretending the memory of Christ
into an extreme forgetfulness of him, by giving liberty to carnal and
sensual delights, being contrary to the life which Christ himself led
here upon earth, ...". This statute lasted for only five years from 1644
because observance of it was not consistent throughout the country.
Educational opportunities such as in grammar schools were more
widespread and stronger than ever before or since until the 1800s. About
78% of men in London were literate, and 30% of men nationwide. About
half the women in London were literate by 1700.
In 1645, the marshalls of the admiralty and five major ports were
ordered to search all ships for stolen children since it had been a
problem in London.
The elderships of the church were given power in 1645 to suspend from
the sacrament of the Lord's Supper all ignorant and scandalous persons.
Ignorance was lack of knowledge that there is a God and this is the one
true God we worship, that this God is one, yet three persons: Father,
Son, and Holy Ghost, that God created man in his own image, that all
have sinned and therefore shall die, that there is one mediator between
God and man: Jesus Christ, who died on the cross to save men from their
sins, that he rose from the dead, ascended into heaven, sits at the
right hand of God, and intercedes for us, that Christ and his benefits
are applied only by faith, that the souls of the faithful live with
Christ in blessedness, that non-believers and non-repenters shall perish
eternally, that the sacraments are baptism and communion, and that there
is a judgment day on which the righteous will be given life eternal and
the wicked shall receive everlasting punishment. Scandalous persons are
those who blasphemously speak or write anything of God, his holy work or
the sacraments; an incestuous person; an adulterer; a fornicator; a
drunkard; a profane swearer or cursor; a murderer; a worshipper of
images, crosses, crucifixes, relics, saints, or angels; makers of images
of the trinity; one who professes not to be in charity with his
neighbor; any challenging another to fight or accepting such challenge;
on the Lord's day, dancing, dicing, cards, masking, wake, shooting,
bowling, football, wrestling, plays, interludes, fencing, bullbaiting,
bearbaiting, hawking, hunting, coursing [hunting with hounds], fishing,
fowling, selling wares, travel without reasonable cause; a brothel-house
keeper; one who solicits the chastity of another; one who marries a
Papist or consents to the marriage of his child to a Papist; own who
goes for advice to a witch, wizard, or fortune-teller; one who assaults
his parents, or any magistrate, minister, or elder in the execution of
his office; and one attainted of barratry [purchase or sale of office or
preferment], forgery, extortion, or bribery. If such a person persists,
he shall be excommunicated.
Cromwell did not disapprove of activities prohibited because of the
recreation they provided, but thought that they had become too central
to people's lives. He did not close the taverns or ale houses.
In 1653 it was required that public preachers be approved by a
commission nominated by the Lord Protector and Parliament because there
had been too many "weak, scandalous, popish, and ill- affected" ones. In
1654 named persons were ejected as scandalous, ignorant and insufficient
ministers and schoolmasters.
Because the poorer parishes of London were having problems supporting
their poor, a Corporation for the poor of London was established in 1647
with authority to erect workhouses and houses of correction.
Imprisoned debtors who had less than five pounds and less that five
pounds worth of trade tools and clothing and bedding for his family were
ordered released in 1649.
Wardship was abolished. Military tenures were abolished. Feudal tenures
were converted into freehold in 1646.
In 1653 those living in Crown forest land were given free socage in
that land. The game laws were not enforced, so people could eat deer.
Enclosures were increasing and Parliament was disinclined to protect
copyholders against enclosures, favoring those with rights of ownership.
Enclosure was no longer deterred especially after abolition of the Star
Chamber. The legal device of "strict settlement" evolved to prevent
heirs from breaking up estates enabled families to concentrate land and
capital into large units. The oldest son inherited the land and the
younger sons now received money. Clover seed was sold in London by 1650.
It revolutionized the cultivation of barren land. England began to
export instead of import grain. But vagrancy increased from people
dispossessed of land. And the village artisan, when deprived of his
field and of his rights of common, could not continue to work at home,
but had to accept the wages offered to him in an employer's workshop.
Employers and entrepreneurs were now free from control by the Crown.
There were no more attempts to supervise quality of manufactures or to
fix prices or regulate wages. There was greater freedom established in
relations between employers and workers. The government no longer tried
to compel employers to keep employees in times of economic slump. The
requirement of seven year apprenticeships and being the son of a
freeholder to be an apprentice were not enforced.
The economy was still volatile due ostensibly to variable harvests,
amount of gold and money in circulation, and balances of trade, and to
periods of plague. Wages rose steadily. The rise in prices ended about
1650, and prices remained stable until about 1775. There was more
mobility of people. Taxation became regular and it was controlled by
representatives of the taxpayers. Population growth gradually
stabilized.
Capitalism was coming into being. For instance, the clothier was now a
manufacturer. He had become a contractor, taking wool to the specialist
spinner, the yarn to the specialist weaver, the rough cloth to be washed
and stretched, and finally to the dyer. This cloth was sold at retail by
the drapers. Tin on the surface was exhausted, so capital was used to
drive deep shafts in tin mines. No longer did a single man with a single
ship sail around until he found a market, but companies trading overseas
had their ships, wharves, and depots furnished by men's savings put into
a common stock. The first major capitalist industries were coal mining,
iron mining, and foreign trade because they all needed large
investments, and thus joint-stock company organization.
Cromwell reconstituted the East India Company on a wider and more
permanent basis. He gave it a new charter in 1657 which included
authority to make stock permanent, thus ensuring a continuity of
capital. This solved the problem of the competition of overlapping
voyages which still occurred despite their terms of several years. The
company became one of the first permanent joint-stock companies. Now the
stock was never wound up. The Company had permanent capital which could
grow. The absence of competition among voyages made the Company stronger
in the face of a common enemy, such as a rival trading country or Indian
groups. The charter also authorized the company to fortify and colonize
any of its establishments and to transport to them settlers, stores, and
ammunition.
Later in 1657, the Company threw open the freedom of the Company to the
public for a nominal sum of five pounds. Now the Merchant Adventurers
and private traders could participate. It provided that dividends were
to be paid only in cash and not in kind (goods). It also provided for
appraisals of the Company's property to be made every three years, so
any shareholders could redeem their shares proportionately. His shares
would then be resold. People began to buy and sell their shares among
each other. The Company made the minimum subscription 100 pounds. Each
person holding 500 pounds worth of shares had one vote. Holding 1,000
pounds worth of shares qualified one for election to the committee of
twenty-four. The seats of the members of this committee and of the
Governor and Deputy Governor could no longer be permanent, but had
limited and staggered terms. The continuity of capital took the place of
the permanence of the governing body in providing stability. There was a
regular scale of salaries for employees, and rules of conduct such as
the one disallowing any clerk of the India House from going to play
houses, dancing schools, or taverns. The Company established almshouses
for its widows and orphans.
In 1657 the Muscovy Company, renewed its charter for trade in Russia
and established a New General Stock. If a man bought a share, he bought
freedom of the company. An annual dividend was declared from the annual
profits.
Commercial men regularly kept accounts with bankers. Merchants used
division to apportion profits or losses to the parties whose capital was
involved. Simple and compound interest were used. The concept of
contract became a familiar one.
Regular private bankers of London emerged from the Goldsmiths from 1640
to 1675. They issued bank notes and paid checks.
Cromwell increased trade by seizing territories, establishing colonies,
and warring with competitors for master of the seas and trade. In 1649
it was provided that no one who paid his assessment for soldiers' pay
would have to quarter any of them.
Authority was given in 1649 to impress seamen: mariners, sailors,
watermen, surgeons, gunners, ship carpenters, caukers, coopers, whoymen,
and carmen for carriage of victuals.
English ships were embellished with decoration. Their sail area was
increased by triangular fore and aft sails. The Navy increased from 39
to 80 vessels.
After serving in foreign wars, ex-soldiers were allowed in 1654 to
practice any trade without serving a seven year apprenticeship.
Colonies New Hampshire and Maine were established in 1635, Connecticut
in 1636, and Rhode Island in 1638, as offshoots from other colonies.
In 1649 a corporation was established to teach the Gospel of Jesus
Christ in New England to Indians.
About 1650, steel was hardened by repeated quenchings and temperings
when the steel had reached certain colors. Brass was made from copper
and zinc alloyed together.
There were power-driven rolls for the coinage from 1657. Strips of
silver were passed between engraved rolls. Then coins were punched out
and their edges serrated.
In the 1650s, Huygens made the first pendulum that worked practically
in a mechanical clock. This new clock increased the accuracy of
time-keeping tenfold. He also introduced the concept of mathematical
expectation into probability theory.
There was a thermometer which used liquid such as water or alcohol in a
glass tube instead of air.
Dutchman Stevinus showed that the pressure at the bottom of a column of
liquid is proportional to the height of the column, and not to its bulk,
about 1634. He also studied oblique forces, and the balancing of such
that could bring about "stable equilibrium".
Evangelista Torricelli, an Italian student of Galileo, discovered in
1643 that any fluid will be supported at a definite height, according to
its relative weight, as compared with air. He realized that a mercury
column, 30 inches in height, in a long glass tube inverted in a cup of
mercury, was being supported by air pressure exerted on the mercury in
the cup. When he observed that this height changed with the weather, he
had invented the mercury barometer. In his work, he created and used
vacuums.
Blaise Pascal, a French mathematician, physicist, and religious
philosopher, was a child prodigy. At the age of 12, he proved Euclid's
32nd theorem that the sum of the angles of a triangle is equal to two
right angles. Before age 16, he wrote a book on conic sections. He is
famous for his theorem that a hexagon inscribed in a conic section has
the property that the three meeting points of the opposed sides are
always in a straight line. He constructed a calculator, which could
handle nine-digit numbers, in 1644 to assist his father, also a gifted
mathematician, in tax computations he did as a local government
official. He had Torricelli's mercury barometer carried up a mountain
and found that the height of the column dropped as altitude increased,
and thus that air pressure decreased with altitude. This showed that the
attribution of these effects to nature's abhorrence of a vacuum were due
instead solely to the weight and pressure of air. He determined that the
height to which the mercury rose was the same regardless of the shape of
the vessel containing it. Around 1646, he did experiments with double
vacuums and on the results formulated his principle that pressure
applied to a confined liquid is transmitted undiminished through the
liquid in all directions regardless of the area to which the pressure is
applied. Around 1653, he laid the foundations for the theory of
probabilities after being asked by a gambling friend why, in playing
dice, some frequencies came up more often than others. He developed a
means of calculating probabilities with his "Pascal's Triangle" of
coefficients of (a+b) raised to the nth power. Each row represents the
coefficients of a power one greater than the power of the previous row.
Each number is the sum of the nearest two numbers in the row above it.
He and lawyer and mathematician Pierre Fermat invented the theory of
probabilities.
Fermat also proved that the law for refraction (bending) of light
results from light's following the path that takes the shortest time. He
founded number theory, the study of properties of whole numbers, in
1640. Fermat formulated the notion of a line tangent to a curve and
started the development of differential calculus, in which a rate of
change is expressed as a function of time in equation form and also as a
tangent to the curve associated with that equation. This work helped lay
the foundation for the mathematics field of analysis. He and German
Gottfried Leibniz formulated the principle that an equation with two
unknown quantities can represent a curve. Leibnitz believed that man's
mind can arrive at truths about entities by pure thought.
Jean Ray from France concluded from his experiments that every piece of
material has a given weight, including air and fire. Otto von Guericke
from Germany discovered that, in a vacuum, sound does not travel, fire
is extinguished, and animals stop breathing.
At a time when mathematics was only a business of traders, merchants,
seamen, carpenters, and surveyors, mathematician John Wallis, the son of
a minister, studied sections of cones [circles, ellipses, parabola, and
hyperbolas] as curves of the second algebraic degree, i.e. with an
exponent of two, i.e. y = (a (x squared)) + b. He also worked with
negative and fractional exponents. Around 1655 he invented the infinite
arithmetic and introduced the symbol for infinity. He determined that
the area under any curve defined by the equation y = (x to the nth
power), was x to the (n+1)th power divided by n+1. He introduced the
concept of the limit of a string of numbers. He wrote a treatise on
algebra which was historical as well as practical. He also decoded enemy
cyphers for the sovereign.
Some English gentlemen interested in the new scientific methods
originated by Galileo had meetings beginning about 1645 to discuss
scientific topics. One group met at Gresham College and was headed by
Wallis. Another group was led by Robert Boyle, a philosopher, physicist,
and chemist. They wrote in English instead of Latin. These meetings
later gave rise to the Royal Society for science.
Since the Puritans forbade music in churches, but enjoyed it in
domestic circumstances, much secular music was composed, published, and
played. There were many musical clubs. The violin became very popular.
Solo songs were much sung. The first English opera: "The Siege of
Rhodes" was written and performed with women on stage. Writers of the
time included John Milton, political philosopher James Harrington, poet
Edmund Waller, Thomas Fuller, poet Abraham Cowley, and biographer Issak
Walton. John Aubrey wrote anecdotes about famous men. Jeremy Taylor,
chaplain to Charles I, wrote on theology. People still read French
romances translated into English. Dancing was still popular. Coffee
houses came into prominence as places of social discourse. The first
coffee house was established in London in 1652; ten years later, there
were 82 coffee houses in the City. There were elegant pleasure gardens,
with a fee for access. They were used for promenades and picnics. Ladies
and their gallants rendezvoused there. Cromwell introduced the habit of
port drinking to England.
In 1657, one general Post Offices was established with one Postmaster
General for all of England. No other person could have the horsing of
the through-posts. It cost 2d. for a letter to or from 80 miles of
London and 3d. for one outside 80 miles of London.
The Society of Friends was founded by the son of a weaver. They greeted
everyone as "friend" and did not bow; remove their hat, as was the
custom when before the king or an earl; or otherwise show any reverence
to anyone. From 1650, they were called Quakers because they trembled
when religiously stirred. They reverted to the ancient "thou" and "thee"
appellations. Their dress was particularly simple, with no buttons,
lace, ruffles, or embroidery. They hated ritual so much that they
rejected baptism and communion. They did not observe the Sabbath as a
special day different from other days. They derided the holiness of
churches. No clergy were admitted into their sect. When they met for
divine worship, each rose to deliver extemporaneous inspirations of the
Holy Ghost. Women were admitted to teach the brethren and were
considered proper vehicles to convey the dictates of the spirit. Quakers
believed that every man, in his own life, could be fully victorious over
sin. They denied any clerical authority and all texts. They believed in
the separation of church and state. They refused to swear to any oath,
e.g. in court, or to participate in war. They refused to take off their
hats to anyone but God. It was their practice to turn the other cheek
when one cheek had been struck. If asked for his cloak, a Quaker would
give it. He never asked more for his wares than the precise sum which he
was determined to accept. The Quakers encouraged widows and widowers to
provide for children from a first spouse when remarrying. They carefully
selected masters and mistresses who wanted to take on child apprentices
for their suitability for such responsibility. The education of Quaker
women did not decline, as it did for other women. From the fervor of
their zeal, the Quakers broke into churches, disturbed public worship,
and harassed the clergyman and audience with railing and reproaches.
When brought before a magistrate, they show no reverence but treated him
as an equal. Sometimes they were thrown into mad house or prisons and
sometimes whipped or pilloried. They endured stoically under this
suffering. Mary Fisher from Yorkshire introduced Quakerism to colonial
New England.
In 1653 there were separation agreements between spouses as to
property, e.g. support and maintenance.
Cromwell had bad experiences with Parliaments. The Rump Parliament was
a remnant of the Long Parliament. The army and then Cromwell, although a
member, came to believe that its members were self- interested,
preoccupied with perpetuating themselves in seats of power, and corrupt.
They thought that their own hopes of reform in the law, in the church,
and in public finances were being deliberately frustrated. Cromwell came
to doubt that it would ever give the people adequate government and
protection. He started to believe that one man as chief executive could
do this better. Cromwell dismissed the Rump Parliament in 1653. A new
constitution created a Puritan "Parliament of Saints". These men were
nominated in various ways, such as by church parishes, and selected by
Cromwell. This one-house Parliament of Saints in 1653 made Cromwell Lord
Protector for life with executive power of the state, with
responsibility for making peace and establishing order after a decade of
civil strife and political chaos. He was to administer the government
and be the chief magistrate. It also provided for triennial Parliaments
consisting of one house, and religious freedom for all except Roman
Catholics and adherents of the formerly established Church of England.
Cromwell did not tolerate the ritual of the formerly established English
church nor allow any of its adherents to have any office under him. His
was a purely Puritan government. He did not sell offices. The Parliament
of Saints challenged many vested interests in property such as sales of
delinquents' and Papists' lands. It clashed severely over the
continuation of tithes to the church. It became disorderly when some
declared the Parliament dissolved and left. Others remained in their
seats. To avoid a Parliamentary crisis, Cromwell had soldiers close the
Parliament of Saints and lock its doors. The people supported this
action because they were dissatisfied with the state of public affairs.
The next Parliament that was tried was elected on a new constitutional
basis of men with 200 pounds, but these men voted to make Parliament
sovereign without a chief executive, thereby abolishing the
protectorate. Cromwell was distressed that this Parliament had also
voted themselves to be the sole determinors of atheism and blasphemy
instead of advancing liberty of religious conscience and religious
toleration as Cromwell had advocated. He dissolved this Parliament,
declaring that it was not acting for the public good. A last Parliament
was also dissolved by Cromwell for tending to loosen the bonds of
government and thereby threatening the peace of the nation.
Cromwell had first ruled as a democratic leader who did not believe in
force, but preferred to persuade with reason. He initially believed that
people would do the right thing according to their consciences, but was
disillusioned and then became autocratic. He came to rule as a military
dictator. Payment of taxes was enforced by distraint. After 1654, he
issued about 100 proclamations covering public amusements, roads,
finances, the condition of prisons, the imprisonment of debtors, banning
of dueling and cockfighting, law reform, control of religion and
education, and reorganization of the army. The singing of ballads was
banned. The Court of Chancery was reformed by proclamation. The
established church was reformed and the power to interfere with
different faiths was denied to it. Each parish could choose its form of
service, whether Presbyterian, Congregational, Baptist, or any other
seen as fundamental by the Puritans. No one was compelled to attend any
particular church or to accept the discipline of any particular
minister. But the Book of Common Prayer was forbidden. There was freedom
of worship for Presbyterians, Independents, Baptists, Quakers,
Catholics, and Jews who had secretly migrated to England to avoid
persecution on the continent, but not Prelatists , who favored
government of the church by bishops).
In 1655, Cromwell placed major generals in charge of eleven newly-
established provinces. As their Governors, they had authority to levy
troops, exact taxes imposed by the Protector, disarm Royalists and
Catholics, examine into the conduct of the clergy and schoolmasters,
arrest dangerous and suspicious persons, prevent unlawful assemblies,
and to enforce the existing laws against immorality and blasphemy. The
only appeal was to the Protector. Since they were Puritans, they ordered
public ale houses to close as dusk, banned idlers, minstrels, and
actors, forbade exercising of horses on Sunday and the holding of
markets on Saturday as well as Sunday, censored the press, and
proscribed newspapers. Horse races, which meetings were used for
seditious purposes, were closed. Theaters were closed. Dancing was
discontinued. Organs and choirs in churches were prohibited. Court masks
continued because they provided soothing music. After a year, Cromwell
withdrew the major-generals. From this time, men of property hated the
idea of a standing army.
In 1657, the officers of a new Parliament modified the constitution and
Cromwell approved it. It was to secure liberties of the people as they
never before had. Under the modified constitution, there were again two
houses. The Commons regained its old right of exclusively deciding on
the qualification of its members. Parliamentary restrictions were
imposed on the choice of members of the Council, officers of state, and
officers of the army. A fixed revenue was voted to the Protector. No
moneys were to be raised except by consent of Parliament. Liberty of
worship was guaranteed to all except Papists; Prelatists; Socinians, who
denied the divinity of Jesus; for those who denied the inspiration of
the Scriptures. Liberty of conscience was secured for all. In 1658,
Cromwell tried another Parliament, but dissolved it because it wrangled
without resolution.
There was continual problem with Catholics. Mayors, Justices and
capital burgesses of towns where Papists or others had caused rebellion
and insurrection and plundered, robbed, pillaged, murdered and raped,
were given the power in 1642 to call, assemble, train, and arm soldiers
for defense. The Committee of the Militia of London was given authority
in 1647 to search all houses and places for Papists and to search for
and seize any arms, ammunition, and war materials in custody of such
persons. In 1648, all Papists and soldiers of fortune who had borne arms
against Parliament were ordered to depart from within twenty miles of
London and Westminster or be imprisoned as traitors. In 1657 convicted
Papists and people marrying convicted Papists were required to take an
oath renouncing the pope and Catholic Church or lose two-thirds of their
lands and estate, retaining their house on the remaining one-third. If
one went to mass in an ambassador's house, the fine was 100 pounds and
imprisonment for six months, one half going to the informer. In 1659 all
householders in London and Westminster had to give a list of persons
lodging in their house, and the horses and arms there. But the laws
against Catholics practicing their religion were not rigorously
enforced, nor were those against adherents of the formerly established
Church of England.
After Cromwell died, the people demanded the return of a genuine and
free Parliament. The old constitution was restored and a new House of
Commons was elected. It called Charles II to return to be king if he
promised religious freedom and backpay to the army, which had not
recently been paid. When Cromwell's Puritan soldiers were disbanded,
they did not drift into thievery as royalists soldiers had before, but
took up honest work such as baker, mason, brewer, baker, or haberdasher.
Puritanism now made itself felt not by the sword, but in literature and
politics. It affected the character of the English, who tend to be
stoics, and imbued capitalists with a hard-working attitude.
- The Law -
After the civil wars, the law against enclosure was not enforced.
What was passed in Parliament in Cromwell's time were called statutes,
but after Cromwell's time, these statutes were not recognized as
legitimate.
"whereas Public Sports do not well agree with Public Calamities, not
Public Stage-plays with the Seasons of Humiliation, this being an
Exercise of sad and pious Solemnity, and the other being Spectacles of
Pleasure, too commonly expressing lascivious Mirth and Levity ... Public
Stage Plays shall cease, and be forborne instead of which are
recommended to the People of this Land the profitable and seasonable
considerations of Repentance, Reconciliation, and Peace with God, ..."
No book or pamphlet may be printed, bound, stitched, or sold or
imported unless licensed and entered into the Register Book of the
Company of Stationers. Officials of this company and of Parliament may
search all places which they shall think meet for all unlicensed
printing presses and all suspected printing houses, warehouses, and
shops and other places for unlicensed books and pamphlets and papers and
seize them and apprehend all authors, printers, and other involved
people and bring them before Parliament or the Committee on Examinations
for punishment. Justices of the Peace and other officers may order doors
and locks broken for this purpose. The fine is ten pounds for authors,
five pounds for printers, two pounds for booksellers, and one pound for
buyers who conceal a book bought. One half of each fine shall go to the
person who discovers and prosecutes the offender, and the other half
shall go to the poor. This law suppressed royalist newspapers but was
enforced only with great difficulty.
All shall observe Sunday and days of Thanksgiving in their "duties of
Piety and true Religion publicly and privately" and none may sell wares
or goods, including fruit or herbs upon pain of forfeiture of such. None
may, without reasonable cause, travel, carry burdens, or do any worldly
labors or work whatsoever or pay a fine of 10s. This work shall include
grinding grain, fulling in mills, burning turf or earth, gathering
taxes, melting wax for candles, brewing, baking, butchering cattle,
tailors fitting or carrying clothes, barbers trimming hair, being
present at fairs or markets, or washing, whiting, or drying clothes. Nor
may any one maintain or be present at wrestlings, shooting, bowling,
ringing of bells for pleasure or pastime, masks, wake, church-ale,
dancing, games, sport or, for those over 14, forfeit 5s., and for those
having care or education of a child under 14, 12d. Maypoles, a
"Heathenish vanity, generally abused to superstition and wickedness",
shall be taken down by officers or else forfeit 5s. per week. If any
offender can't pay his fine, he shall be put in the stocks for three
hours. However meat maybe dressed in private families, and victual sold
in inns and victualing houses in a moderate way, and milk sold before
9a.m. or after 4p.m.
Persons of the trinity, angels, or saints shall be demolished. Altar
and communion tables must not be raised but leveled. There may be no
copes, surplices, superstitious vestments, or holy water fonts. There
may be no crosses, crucifixes, pictures of the trinity, angels or saints
on plates. All organs must be taken away.
The fine for using the Book of Common Prayer is five pounds for the
first offense, ten pounds for the second offense, and one year
imprisonment without bail for the third offense. The penalty for writing
or preaching against the Directory for Public Worship is five to fifty
pounds.
Blasphemies and heresies such as teaching or writing or printing that
there is no God, that God is not almighty, that Jesus was not divine,
that the resurrection of Jesus did not occur, that the Bible is not the
word of God, or that there is no judgment day after death, are felony
without benefit of clergy. If such an offender recants, he shall stay in
gaol until he obtains two sureties. If he offends again after
recantation, it is felony without benefit of clergy.
In 1650 adultery was declared to be a felony, except for a wife whose
husband had been beyond the seas for three years or had been reputed to
be dead. Incest was also declared to be a felony. It was defined as
marrying or having carnal knowledge of one's grandparent, parent,
sibling, mother's brother or sister, father's wife, mother's husband,
son's wife, daughter's husband, wife's mother or daughter, or husband's
father or son. Fornication was given a punishment of three months
imprisonment and until security was obtained for one year for good
behavior. It was defined as carnal knowledge of a virgin, unmarried
woman, or widow. A common bawd or one keeping a brothel or bawdy house
was to be whipped, set in the pillory, marked in the forehead by a hot
iron with the letter: B, and then imprisoned for three years without
bail and until there were sureties for good behavior for life. The
second offense was felony without benefit of clergy. There was to be no
corruption of the blood. However, juries were reluctant to convict for
adultery and incest.
There shall be no profane swearing or cursing of forfeit by a lord
30s., a baronet or knight 20s., an esquire 10s., a gentleman 6s.8d., and
all others 3s.4d. There is a double fine for the second offense. For the
tenth offense, the offender shall be bound by sureties for good behavior
for three years.
A person equating himself or another with God or not believing in God
shall be imprisoned for six months without bail. For the second offense,
he shall be banished from the nation.
No longer shall people be punished for nonattendance at church on
Sunday or days of Thanksgiving, but may be at some other place of
prayer, preaching, reading, or the scriptures.
Hawkers and ballad singers have been libelous, so are to be whipped as
common rogues and then dismissed. Also, their ballads and pamphlets are
to be confiscated. Vagrant, idle, loose, dissolute and disorderly
persons and fiddlers in inns, alehouses, and taverns are to be punished
as rogues, vagabonds, and sturdy beggars, that is, whipped.
In 1649, treason against Parliament was defined as writing, printing,
or declaring that the government is tyrannical, usurped, or unlawful; or
that Parliament is not the supreme authority of the nation; or plot,
contrive, or endeavor to stir up or raise force against the government.
Attainder for such would not work corruption of the blood.
Treason to the Protector was defined the same as it was to the King.
Army deserters are to be corporally punished or executed.
Fellable wood and underwood, but no timber trees, may be cut within 60
miles of London because fuel is needed, especially by the poor. This
will be supervised by overseers appointed by Parliament.
No one may import foreign hats or hatbands to relieve that industry in
England.
As of 1656, certain food could not be exported when the prices of such
exceeded a stated amount. For instance, 5 pounds for a 36 gallon barrel
of beef, 6d. for a pound of bacon, 4 pounds and 10s. for a 224 gallon
barrel of butter, and 24s. for 64 pounds of rye, pease, or beans. The
customs for such items was more for foreigners than for natives, for
instance 3s. for natives and 5s. for foreigners for a barrel of beef.
Butter for sale must not be corrupt and be properly weighed.
One must obtain a license to buy wheat or other grain and put it to
sale in meal or flour or else forfeit three times the value.
All books of the law, writs, pleadings, and patents shall be in English
or else forfeit 20 pounds.
No deer may be killed or else forfeit 15 pounds, half to the informer
and half to the poor.
Interest may not exceed 6 pounds for a loan of 100 pounds yearly as of
1651.
No goods are to be imported from America, Asia, or Africa except in
English ships or else forfeit all goods and the ship, one half of which
goes to the one who seizes the goods and prosecutes. None may be
imported from Europe except in English ships or ships from the country
of origin of the goods. No salt fish may be imported or exported but in
English vessels.
There is a 10 pound reward for discovery of highwaymen and burglars or
persons who break and enter into houses and there use violence.
No cart or wagon or carriage on the road may be drawn by more than five
horses or six oxen and a horse except for military vehicles.
Notice of intended marriages shall be published once a week for three
weeks in a public meeting place called church or a public market place
next to church. Exceptions to the marriage shall be noted by the
Register and considered by the Justice of the Peace before the marriage
is performed. The words used shall be: "...promise to be unto thee a
loving and faithful husband..." and "promise to be unto thee a loving,
faithful, and obedient wife...".
There shall be no cock-fighting because it disturbs the peace and
usually is accompanied by gaming, drinking, swearing, and quarreling.
Anyone challenging or accepting a challenge to duel shall be imprisoned
for six months without bail, and must acquire two sureties for a year.
Anyone fighting a duel in which death ensues, shall be banished for
life.
Horse races were forbidden in 1654 for six months to discourage
mischievous plots and designs by enemies of the state. The penalty was
forfeiting the horse. Attendees were to be brought to justice.
As of 1657, a house or building built within ten miles of the walls of
the City of London not having at least four acres had to pay a fine of
one year's rent. All houses within London or Westminster or the suburbs
must be brick or stone, and built straight up without protruding into
the street or else forfeit 100 pounds.
As of 1657 persons living extravagantly without visible estate or
calling may be made by Justices of the Peace to acquire sureties for
good behavior or go to gaol. They would also be sent to the house of
correction to work for three months for the first offense and for a time
specified by the Justice of the Peace for the second offense.
Anyone winning at betting or playing at cards, dice, tennis, and horse
races shall forfeit double his winnings.
Excluded from pardon were buggery with man [sodomy] or animal
[bestiality], carnal ravishment of women, and bigamy.
Husbands were responsible for their wives' oaths and fathers for their
daughters'.
Drunkenness was much punished.
- Judicial Procedure -
The Protector is the supreme magistrate of the Commonwealth, with power
to pardon all crimes, except murder and treason.
Parliament was no longer a court.
Use of the torture was proscribed in 1649.
In 1652, the justices were given a salary of 1,000 pounds and forbidden
to take fees or rewards. They also got tenure, thus freeing them from
government pressure. Now civil justice was honestly dispensed and
justices were learned and honest.
The jurisdiction of Admiralty court was defined to include: ships and
vessels with tackle, apparel and furniture thereof; repairing,
victualing, and furnishing provisions of ships and vessels for sea; all
cases of bottomry [ship-owner indemnified if the vessel were lost, but
paid over a substantial share of the profits if it reached its
destination safely], contracts beyond the seas concerning shipping or
navigation; charter, parties, contracts for freight; bills of lading;
mariners wages; damage of goods on board ships; and damage by one ship
to another including by anchors or want of laying buoys. It did not
include contracts between merchants.
- - - Chapter 17 - - -
- Times: 1660-1702 -
The monarchy was restored and Charles II came to the throne. The
episcopacy of the bishops and the Book of Common Prayer were restored.
This book retained all its ceremonies, despite opposition by the
Presbyterians. The confiscated Royalist, church, and Crown lands were
ordered to be restored, and most were. Charles II was presented with the
traditional rights of choosing his own Privy Council, ministers of
state, and justices; making foreign policy; controlling the armed
forces; and approving statutes. He was also presented with the power to
call and dismiss Parliament, but later, in 1694, a statute required that
Parliament be held at least once every three years, to avoid royal
schemes of non-parliamentary government. The House of Lords was
reestablished and there were again bishops in it, though fewer than
before - about 1/8 instead of about 1/3. There were 160 peers for the
next century. The House of Commons was elected in the usual way, but
without a king's writ. The Commons was composed mostly of royalist
established church members. Its leaders were important members of the
King's Privy Council.
The feudal tenures of the crown, such as knights' service, were
converted into free socage. They were discharged of homage, reliefs,
escuage, and aids. Charles relinquished purveyance, wardships, and
forfeitures of marriage. In return, Parliament granted him a fixed
yearly income of 100,000 pounds from excise tax on beer, cider, and tea.
Several hundreds of dissenter ministers and school teachers were
ejected from their positions, but later those who were not Baptists were
returned by statute of Parliament because Baptists did not believe in an
established church.
Charles II was an easygoing and kindly man and hard to ruffle. He had a
weariness in the folly of men and a cynical disbelief in human virtue.
His wit and great sense of humor softened many a potentially tense
situation. His restoration to the throne brought in a time of enjoyment
of life in reaction to the Puritanism of before. At his succession, the
elected Parliament was oriented toward royalty and the established
church. He was voted an income of 1,200,000 pounds a year. He also sold
many of the last crown lands. But he always had great debts, which he
described as a "desperate but not serious" situation. This was in part
due to his generous maintenance of several successive mistresses and
more than about a dozen illegitimate children. His entourage also
included physicians, surgeons, a librarian, a poet laureate, chaplains,
painters, an historiographer, musicians, a royal composer, and an
astronomer. Charles even joked on his deathbed that "I am sorry
gentlemen, for being such an unconscionable time a-dying."
The day of Charles II's restoration and birthday was designated as a
day of thanksgiving when all were to participate in prayers and the
singing of psalms at some church or other suitable public place.
Charles initiated the return of Sunday afternoon wrestling, archery,
music, and dancing. Theaters reopened with actresses playing women's
parts, an audience only in front of the stage instead of around it, a
drop curtain, and painted two-dimensional scenery. Actresses were
allowed pursuant to royal proclamation so that plays should become
"useful and instructive representations of human life" rather than
"harmless delights". Charles went to plays regularly. Actresses were
assumed to be mistresses of patrons in return for their jobs, but one
fourth were actually chaste women married to actors. Comedies were the
preferred plays. Courtesans were sympathetically and even admirably
treated in plays, which mocked all restraints and glorified immorality
with the exception of pornography, which was banned. Bad actors were
hissed off the stage. Henry Purcell wrote religious music for churches,
ceremonial music for the English court, and theater music for English
opera. Opera made music a vehicle for human emotions. The gentry sang to
the lute and danced to string instruments. Many owned and played musical
instruments. Humble people had folksongs and instruments like the pipe
and tabor for dancing. Singing in parts was popular in town and country.
In 1672 John Banister started the first regular series of public
concerts in his house. There were lovely formal gardens in which to
walk, to see fireworks, and to buy the new ice cream. Charles did much
garden and park planning and let the public enjoy the royal St. James
Park. He loved hunting too and had the royal forests replenished with
deer after poaching during the Cromwell era had greatly reduced their
numbers.
Charles II introduced sailing and yacht racing for pleasure. He also
participated in and promoted horse racing. The breeding of thoroughbred
horses began with breeding to Arab mares. Gelding horses were now
preferred over stallions. There were trotters, cart horses, and some
"fast" race horses. Boxing (with no gloves nor ring) was a national
sport. Ice skating with iron blades was popular. Valentine's day was
celebrated. Italian puppet shows played in London.
Dress returned to elaborateness. Gentlemen wore Cavalier-style long
wigs with curls, despite the church's dislike of wigs. This could hide
the short hair of a former Puritan Roundhead. In 1666, Charles
introduced a new mode of inexpensive court dress which was made entirely
from English textiles. This gave rise to gentlemen's weskits to below
the knee with a coat of the same length and full sleeves. Stockings and
shoes replaced the long fitted boots. Charles set a court tradition of
men wearing a scarf tied around the neck. Ladies often wore their hair
in masses of ringlets with little corkscrew curls on each side of their
heads, and later piled their hair up elaborately on their heads. They
wore satin or silk dresses fitted at the waist with a pointed bodice,
and full skirt. The shoulder line was low and the sleeves full and open
at the front with fastenings of jeweled clasps. The only fast colors
were reds, blues, purple, and yellow, but not green. They kept their
hands warm in muffs. Women wore perfume, rouge, and face patches. Some
women put on a lot of make-up. Many men dressed effeminately with rouge,
face patches, heavily scented clothing, muffs, and many ribbons of many
colors. The facial beauty patches were in shapes such as stars, crescent
moons, and hearts; they diverted attention from the common smallpox
scars. There were Oxford shoes, which laced up the front through
eyelets. The members of the House of Commons dressed like the gentry and
assumed their manners. There was exaggeration in all complimentary and
ceremonial language.
The gentry were beginning to be thought of as a "squirearchy". They
owned about half the land of the country.
The population according to class was as follows:
Number of Social Ranks, Household
Household
Households Degrees, Titles size
yearly
income
in pounds
160 Temporal lords
40 3,200
26 Spiritual lords
20 1,300
800 Baronets
16 880
600 Knights
13 650
3,000 Esquires
10 450
12,000 Gentlemen
8 280
5,000 Persons in greater offices and places 8
240
5,000 Persons in lesser offices and places 6
120
2,000 Eminent merchants and traders by sea 8
400
8,000 Lesser merchants and traders by sea 6
198
10,000 Persons in the law
7 154
2,000 Eminent clergymen 6
72
8,000 Lesser clergymen
5 50
40,000 Freeholders of the better sort 7
91
120,000 Freeholders of the lesser sort 5.5
55
150,000 Farmers
5 42.5
15,000 Persons in liberal arts and sciences 5
60
50,000 Shopkeepers and tradesmen 4.5
45
60,000 Artisans and handicrafts 4
38
5,000 Naval officers
4 80
4,000 Military officers
4 60
50,000 Common seamen 3
20
364,000 Laboring people and out-servants 3.5
15
400,000 Cottagers and paupers
3.25 6.5
35,000 Common soldiers
2 14
25,000 Vagrants, as gypsies, thieves, beggar
As can be seen, agriculture is still the most common occupation.
Great houses now had a central dining chamber for dining, with sets of
suites, usually for couples, around it. Each suite had an ante-chamber
and/or drawing room, and then a bedchamber, off of which there was a
servant's room and a closet [cabinet]. No longer did personal servants
bed down in the drawing room or outside their master's door or in a
truckle bed at his feet. The servant's room was connected to a back
staircase for use by servants. Secret guests also used it. The csbinet
room was the innermost sanctum for privacy and gave its name to the
later cabinet of the government.
There were fewer servants and they were of a lower social status than
before. They were often sons of merchants, clergymen, and army officers.
Gentlemen no longer advanced by service to a great man, but instead
through grammar school and university education, commerce, the law, or
the armed services. This change came about because the state now
maintained reasonable law and order. There were more female servants,
who were paid less to cook and to clean as well as do laundry and
nursing. Servants were kept more in the background, preferably out of
sight. The elaborate ceremonial ritual with sewer, carver, and cupbearer
was gone. A butler replaced the yeomen of the buttery, ewery, and
pantry, and footmen began to wait on the table at which the lord, his
lady, and other couples sat. Servants no longer had meals in the hall,
which now had a grand staircase up to the dining chamber. The highest
servants, the officers: clerk of the kitchen, clerk of the check
[comptroller], head cook, butler, and groom of the chambers, and female
housekeeper ate in the gentleman-of the-horse's room, although at a
separate table. The kitchen staff ate in the kitchen. The footmen,
underbutler, porters, coachmen, grooms, stable-boys, gardeners, maids
ate in a servants room. The steward was no longer the chief household
officer, but had a room near the kitchen. The bulk of the servants slept
in the basement or subordinate wings of the house.
Great houses of nobles had more rooms, such as a chapel, library,
parlors, dressings rooms, and galleries; there was a variety of
architectural floor plans. The structure of a noble household of an earl
was as follows: The chief official was the receiver general. He had
financial responsibility for the household and prepared accounts for the
household and for the tenants' estates. These were checked by an
auditor. The receiver general was often the son of a country gentleman
and had a salary of 50 pounds raised to 100 pounds with longevity. He
had a servant and an assistant. If married, he had a house on the
property. There was perhaps an attorney on retainer who were paid for a
certain number of hours per week or month. The gentleman of the privy
purse kept the accounts of the family and bought them apparel and
toiletries. He was in close personal attendance upon the earl. His
salary was 20 pounds a year. Besides the receiver general and the
gentleman of the chamber, the tutor and chaplain had the closest
personal contact with the family. The lady had a gentlewoman with a maid
servant. The receiver general supervised most of the staff. There was a
steward of 40 pounds a year. He supervised a clerk of the kitchen and a
house bailiff of 20 pounds a year. The bailiff had responsibility for
the produce of the estate, e.g. the gardens, the deer park, and the fish
ponds. Under the clerk of the kitchen was the cook man and kitchen boys,
the latter of whom were clothed and fed, but not paid. The steward also
supervised the 4 pound yearly porters, who kept the gates; the watchmen
outside; and the head housekeeper, usually a woman of 2 to 6 pounds
yearly. She supervised the laundry maid and general maids, who spent
much of their time sewing. The steward was also responsible for the wine
cellar. A dozen footmen belonged partly to the house and partly to the
stables and received 2 to 6 pounds yearly. They waited on the lord and
lady in the house and accompanied them in travels and did errands for
them. The gentleman of the horse supervised the stables, coach, dogs,
kennels, and 16 pound yearly huntsman. Boy pages also worked partly in
the house and partly in the stables. They were clothed and fed, but not
paid. The head gardener received 80 pounds for tending the flowers,
vegetables, and fruit trees. He had casual workers as needed to assist
him. The steward was also responsible for the London house. Here there
was a housekeeper, a watchman, and a 40 pound a year gardener, all there
permanently. When the lord was there, bargemen were employed for his
barge. The salaries for the family estate totaled about 600 pounds a
year. Sometimes married sons' or daughters' families stayed for months
at the family estate; then they would pay for their part of the food.
Well-to-do people drank imported tea and coffee, sometimes from
porcelain ware, and usually after dinner or supper. Most tea leaves were
brewed first for the family and guests and a second time for the
servants; then they were given to the servants' relatives or friends.
Queen Mary encouraged the fashion of collecting Chinese porcelain. The
rich had red or black and gilt lacquered cabinets and cupboards. Oak
gave way to walnut, with its variegated surfaces. There were grandfather
clocks. Some fireplaces now had cast-iron firebacks. Stuffing began to
be upholstered to woodwork benches. Chairs were taller in the back.
Ladies did needlework to cover them and also made patchwork quilts. Cane
seats came into fashion.
From the spring of 1665 to the end of 1666 there was a Great Plague,
mostly in London. It was the last and worst plague since the Black Death
of 1348. It lasted over a year and about one-third died from it.
Households with a plague victim were walled up with its residents inside
to reduce contagion, and then marked with a red cross. Church bells
tolling their requiems clanged in ceaseless discord. The mournful cry
"bring out your dead" echoed in deserted streets. At night groups of
people shoveled the corpses into open graves. To prepare for this
revolting task, they often first became drunk out of their senses.
People acquired wild beliefs in hope of avoiding the plague. For
instance, at one time it was thought that syphilis would prevent it, so
maddened hordes stormed the brothels. At another time, it was rumored
that the plague could be burned out of the air, and all one day bonfires
blazed outside every door and people sweltered in the heat. Other
localities posted sentries on the road to keep Londoners out of their
areas to prevent the plague from spreading there. Since sneezing was
thought to be the first sign of a person getting the plague, it became
common to ask God to bless a person who sneezed. In London, statistics
were collected on the number of plague victims and their places of death
to try to determine the cause of the plague by correlation, a new
method. This was a natural sequent to merchant John Gaunt's 1662 book
"Natural and Political Observations Made upon the Bills of Mortality",
which compiled yearly vital statistics from which to analyze, for
instance, causes of death due to particular diseases. It reached
conclusions such as that fall was the most unhealthy season; females had
longer life spans than males; and infant mortality was very high.
In 1666 a fire destroyed three-fourths of the City of London. The
blazing buildings were so hot that people with leather buckets of water,
hand squirts, and manually operated water-pumping machines could not get
near them. There was a lot of noise from falling buildings. Panic and
desperation were widespread. There was a lot of crying out and running
about distractedly. People saved some of their possessions by burying
them or removing them from the fire's path as they moved to different
lodgings. The streets were full of carts piled high with furniture and
merchandise. The Thames River was thick with heavily laden barges.
Melting lead from St. Paul's church ran down the streets in a stream.
The Tower of London, upwind of the fire, was saved by blowing up
surrounding buildings. Eventually the wind abated and the fire was put
out. A Fire Court with royal justices was created to offer settlement
terms about property that were free, fair, fast, and final. Army tents
and supplies, and soup kitchens sustained the citizens in the fields.
After the fire, buildings had to be brick or stone rather than wood,
except for doors and windows. Also, more plaster and tile was used. All
roofs had to be of tile or slate, rather than thatch. There was a
general use of tile for roofing. About 1714, came slate for roofings.
All buildings had to be at least two stories high, with flat facades
rather than overhanging upper floors. They had to have wide brick walls
around them to avoid the spread of fires. Many streets, squares, and
alleys were professionally planned, after the example of Inigo Jones,
who had continued his town planning with Lincoln's Inn field's open
square surrounded by houses with iron balconies. Another example was
Leiscester Square. Main streets had to be wide enough to stop a fire.
The street selling that had caused so much congestion was removed to new
market places. The massive rebuilding of London ended the monopoly of
the building trade claimed by the Mason's Company. Astronomer and
geometrician Christopher Wren designed and built a new St. Paul's
Cathedral and many churches in London, thus becoming England's first
architect. He worked up from a square base through all sorts of shapes
to a circular double dome on top. The fire put an end to Whitehall as a
royal residence and St. James Palace was used instead. But at least one
fire hazard remained: the practice of lighting new fires by taking
buckets of hot coals from one room or house to another. This was faster
than the several minutes it took to use a tinder box to start a flame,
i.e. striking a piece of flint upon a piece of steel making a spark
which was dropped onto tinder and then blown upon. Matches were invented
in this period, but expensive and unsafe.
Nicholas Barbon began fire insurance in the 1670s. If fire broke out on
an insured premises, the insurance company's firemen would come with
leather buckets and grappling irons, and later small hand pumps. Barbon
also redeveloped many districts in London, tearing down old buildings
without hesitation. He started the system of selling off leases to
individual builders, who hoped to recover their building costs by
selling their houses before they were completed and before substantial
payments on the lease became due. Entrepreneurial master-builders
subcontracted work to craftsmen and took a large profit or a large loss
and debt. Aristocrats bought large parcels of land on which they built
their own mansions surrounded by lots to be rented to building
contractors and speculators like Barbon. The houses built on these lots
were sold and the underlying land rented. These rentals of land made the
mansions self-supporting. Barbon built rows of identical townhouses.
Sometimes houses were built on all the lots around a square, which had
gardens reserved for the use of those who lived on the square. Most of
the new building was beyond the old City walls. Marine insurance for
storms, shipwreck, piracy, mutiny, and enemy action was also initiated.
Before the fire, e.g. in Tudor times, the writing of risks had been
carried on as a sideline by merchants, bankers, and even money lenders
in their private offices and was a private transaction between
individuals.
London was residential and commercial. Around the outside were
tenements of the poor. From 1520 to 1690, London's population had risen
tenfold, while the nation's had only doubled. London went from 2% to 11%
of the nation's population. In 1690, London's population was about half
a million. After 1690, London's population grew at the same rate as the
nation's. The first directory of addresses in London was published in
1677. Business began to follow the clock more strictly and many people
thought of their watches as a necessity.
London coffee houses, which also sold wine, liquors, and meals, became
specialty meeting places. They were quieter and cheaper than taverns;
for a penny, one could sip a cup of coffee by the fire, read the
newspapers, and engage in conversation. Merchants, stock jobbers,
politician groups, soldiers, doctors and clergymen, scholars, and
literary men all had special coffee house meeting places. Notices and
letters of general interest were posted therein. Many merchants,
brokers, and underwriters, especially those whose houses had been burned
in the fire, conducted their business at their coffee house and used it
as their business address. Men in marine insurance and shipping met at
Lloyd's Coffeehouse, which was run by Edward Lloyd who established it
for this purpose in 1687. Lloyd provided reliable shipping news with a
network of correspondents in the principal ports at home and on the
continent and circulated a handwritten sheet of lists of vessels and
their latest movements at his coffeehouse. The patrons cheered safe
arrivals and shared their grief over ships lost. They insured their own
risks at one moment and underwrote those of their friends the next.
Auctions of goods and of ships and ship materials which had been
advertised in the newspapers were conducted from a pulpit in the
coffeehouse.
French wine was consumed less because of heavy taxation and spirits and
beer were consumed more. The streets were alive with taverns, coffee
houses, eating houses, and hackney coaches past 9 p.m. at night. Coffee
houses were suppressed by royal proclamation in 1675 because "malicious
and scandalous reports" defaming his majesty's government were spread
there, which disturbed the peace and quiet of the realm. But this
provoked such an uproar that it was reduced to a responsibility of the
owner to prevent scandalous papers and libels from being read and
hindering any declarations any false and scandalous reports against the
government or its ministers.
London air was filthy with smoke from coal burning. In 1684 the streets
were lit with improved lights which combined oil lamps with lenses and
reflectors. Groups of householders combined to hire lighting contractors
to fulfill their statutory responsibility to hang candles or lights in
some part of their houses near the street to light it for passengers
until 9:00 p.m., and later to midnight. In 1694 a monopoly was sold to
one lighting company. In 1663 a body of paid watchmen was established in
London. An office of magistrate was created and filled with tradesmen
and craftsmen, who could make a living from the fines and fees. This was
to supplement the unpaid Justices of the Peace. The public was
encouraged to assist in crime prevention, such as being witnesses, but
most policing was left to the parishes. Crowds punished those who
transgressed community moral standards, threatened their economic or
social interests, or offended their religious or patriotic beliefs.
Often a crowd would react before the call of "stop thief" or the hue and
cry from the local constable. Pickpockets would be drenched under a
pump. Cheats would be beaten up. Dishonest shops and brothels would be
ransacked or destroyed. The most common targets were promiscuous women
and pregnant servants.
There were many highway robberies and mob actions in London. Mobs in
the thousands would turn out against the Catholics, especially at times
of unemployment and trade depression. Working people still saw
demonstrations and violence as the best way to achieve their economic
goals, since strikes didn't work. For example, the silk workers used
street violence to get protective legislation against imports and
mechanization in 1675. The manufacture of silk material had been brought
to England by French workers driven from France. In 1697, three thousand
London silk weavers demonstrated outside the Commons and East India
House against the importation of raw silks by the East India Co., and a
couple months later, they attacked a house in the city owned by a
gentleman of the company. In 1701, heavy duties were imposed on the
import of Indian silks and wearing of Indian silks was prohibited by
statute. Sometimes mobs would break open the prisons to release fellow
rioters or take action against strike breakers or informers. Parish
constables elected by their neighbors could not control the mobs and
stayed within their parishes. Dueling was still prevalent, even though
against the law.
In London and Westminster, it was hard to enforce the requirement that
inhabitants keep the street in front of their house clean and store the
filth until the daily raker or scavenger came with cart and dung pot. So
a commission was made responsible for paving and keeping clean the
streets, making and repairing vaults, sewers, drains, and gutters, and
removing encroachments. It compensated those with encroachments of over
30 years. It assessed inhabitants of such streets 16d. per square yard
from the front of their building to the center of the street. Women
continued to empty their pails and pans outside their doors and did
their washing on stools in the streets. There was a penalty of 5d. for
throwing filth in front of one's house, and 20d. for throwing it
elsewhere in the streets. Scavengers and rakers could lodge their coal
ashes, dust, dirt, and other filth in such vacant public places as the
commission deemed convenient for accommodating country carts returning
otherwise empty after their loads were sold.
However, this system did not work because people would not pay their
assessments. So there was a return to the former system of requiring
citizens to sweep and clean the streets in front of their buildings
twice a week and keep the filth until a scavenger or raker came. The
penalty for not doing so was 3s.4d., later raised to 10s. Any one
throwing coal ashes, dust, dirt, rubbish, or dung onto the streets or
lanes incurred a fine of 5s. There was a fine of 20s. for hooping or
washing any pipes or barrels in any lane or open passage or repairing
coaches, sawing wood, or chiseling stones in the streets. Pigs kept in
or about one's house had to be forfeited.
One way that people traveled was to be carried in sedan chairs held up
by two horizontal poles with one man at the front ends and another man
in back. There were so many sedan chairs and coaches for hire in London
that the watermen lost business. All hackney coaches in London or
Westminster were required to be licensed and marked with their owner's
distinctive mark so that complaints could be made. Their maximum rate
was 10s. for a 12 hour day, and 18d. for the first hour and 12d. for
every hour thereafter. Licensed coachmen were not allowed to practice
any other trade. The coaches paid the commission 5 pounds yearly. Hay
sold along the road brought 6d. per load, and straw 2d. per load, to the
commission. There had to by paid 3d. for every cart load of hay sold at
the hay market and 1d. for every cart of straw, to go towards paving and
repairing the hay market street.
Overall, agriculture improved. Fields that would have been left fallow
were planted with new crops which restored indispensable chemical
elements to the soil. At the same time, they supplied winter food for
stock. The size and weight of animals for slaughter grew. There was so
much stock breeding that it was more economical for a family to buy
meat, milk, and eggs, than to maintain its own animals. There was an
explosion in the growing of beans, peas, lettuce, asparagus, artichokes,
and clover. The demand for food in London and other urban areas made
enclosure for crop cultivation even more profitable than for sheep
grazing. The government made no more attempts to curtail the enclosure
of farm lands. The number of enclosures grew because copyholders were
not successful in obtaining the legal security of tenure. But most land
was not enclosed.
In 1661 in the county of Essex, the wages for mowing one acre of grass
were 1s.10d.; for reaping, shearing, binding one acre of wheat 4s.; and
for threshing a quarter of wheat or rye 1s.
Wives participated with their husbands in general agricultural chores
and did the dairy work including making cheese. Every householder kept
chickens because egg production was cheap, their market price being only
1s. for a hundred. Wives also took care of the gardening work and
traditionally kept for their own the cash that came in from garden,
dairy, and poultry products. A wife made jellies and preserves when the
fruit trees, bushes, and vines were bearing. Imported sugar enabled
fruit to be preserved as jam in jars sealed with a layer of mutton fat
to make them airtight. She was likely to concoct medications from her
herbs. Meat had to be smoked or salted when there was not enough fodder
to keep animals alive through the winter. She saw to it that the soap
was boiled and the candles molded. She cooked the daily meals, did the
washing, produced cloth for the family's use, and sewed the family's
clothing.
Women had less work and lower pay than men. Since most cottages had a
spinning wheel, spinning work was readily available to wives. In the
1670s, a female weaver or spinner was paid 2-4d. per day. A domestic
servant, who was usually female, was paid 40-80s. a year. Men in the
trades objected to competition from lower-paid women. Aristocratic
ladies actively managed their family's household and estates. The only
work available to a high middle- class woman who was waiting to get
married was to be a governess in another household or a lady-in-waiting
to a gentlewoman. Children often worked; this was recommended so that
they were under the direct supervision of their parents rather than
getting into mischief in the village. The mother typically mingled
severity with gentleness, but the father did not dare to err on the side
of leniency. Discipline was by whipping. Children were treated as little
adults. The lack of a conception of childhood innocence even extended to
the practice of adults to tell bawdy jokes in their presence or play
with their children's genitals.
About 1660, the Royal Society of London for the Promotion of Natural
Knowledge was founded by Charles II, who became its patron. It was
formed from discussion groups of the new experimental philosophy. It
included the Baconians formerly at Oxford and Cambridge, who were
ejected at the Restoration, and a group of Gresham professors of
geometry and astronomy. The Royal Society met at Gresham College. Its
goal was to compare ideas in mathematics and science and identify
specific aims of science. It published scientific reports to make its
findings generally known. This was a great improvement over the private
correspondence among scientists, which was limited by the use of various
languages. Charles himself had his own laboratory and dabbled in
chemistry and anatomy. Similar societies were formed in many places in
the world. Theologicians warned that scientific research was dangerous.
But it's advances improved agriculture, manufactures, medicine, surgery,
navigation, naval architecture, gunnery, and engineering.
Issac Newton was a genius, who in his childhood designed and built
model windmills, water wheels, water clocks, sundials, and kites. He
came from a family which had risen from the yeomen ranks to the gentry.
For a few years after graduating from Cambridge University in 1665, he
secluded himself in the countryside to study. Here, using the work of
John Wallis, he formulated the binomial theorem that expands (A+B)
raised to the nth exponent power, where n is an integer. He also worked
with numbers that had exponents that were fractions, unending decimals,
or negative numbers. Certain patterns of numbers, such as the sum of
doubling each number in a series as in: 1+2+4+8+...never terminates; the
series is infinite. He then developed the notion of a number being the
limit of the summation of an infinite converging series of a pattern of
numbers, such as the limit of 1+(1/2)+(1/4)+(1/8)...= 2. By
considering the state of motion of a mass-point in an infinitely short
time under the influence of an external force, he developed rules for
finding areas under algebraic curves [integration], such as the
hyperbola, and finding tangents to algebraic curves [differentiation],
which he recognized as inverse processes. That is, differentiating the
integral of a function results in a return to that function.
Newton discovered that colors arose from the separation, rather than a
modification, of white light, that is natural sunlight. He did this
using a prism to dissect the white light into its spectrum of
constituent colors and then using a prism and lens to recombine the
colors to reconstitute white light. The spectrum was the same as that of
a rainbow. He determined the angle of refraction of each color by
beaming white light through a prism, and then through a hole in a board
which isolated one color, to another prism. When he discovered that all
colors reflect from a mirror at the same angle, he invented and built
the reflecting telescope, which used a parabolic concave mirror and a
flat mirror instead of a convex lens, thereby eliminating the
distortions and rainbow coloring around the edges that resulted from the
refraction of different colors at different angles. He deemed a ray of
light to consist of a rapidly moving stream of atomic particles, rather
than Robert Hooke's pulses or Christian Huygens' waves, because shadows
showed a sharp boundary between the light and the absence of light. He
reasoned that if light was made up of pulses or waves, it could spread
around obstacles or corners as sound seemed to do. He approximated the
speed of sound by timing echoes in corridors of various lengths.
Newton was methodical and combined the inductive and deductive methods
of inquiry, first making observations, and then generalizing them into a
theory, and finally deducing consequences from the theory which could be
tested by observation. He carried mathematization of data from
experiments as far as possible.
Newton theorized that the same gravity force that pulled an apple down
from a tree extended out to the moon to hold it in its orbit around the
earth. He saw a connection between these movements by imagining a cannon
on a mountain shooting a series of cannonballs parallel to the earth's
surface. The first shot has only a tiny charge of explosive, and the
cannonball barely makes it out of the muzzle before falling to the
ground. The second shot is propelled by a larger charge, and follows a
parabolic arc as it falls. The next shots, fired with increasingly more
propellant, eventually disappear over the horizon as they fall. Lastly,
with enough gunpowder, a speeding cannonball would completely circle the
earth without hitting it. By extrapolating from these ever faster
projectiles, he opined that the moon was held in its orbit by the same
earth force that operated on the projectiles. He correlated the moon's
orbit with the measured acceleration of gravity on the surface of the
earth. He put various substances with different masses and weights into
the shell of a pendulum and observed that the pendulum had the same
period [time for one oscillation] and fell at the same rate as
free-falling objects. Then he formulated the idea that the ultimate
agent of nature was a force acting between bodies rather than a moving
body itself. Gravity did not act in proportion to the surfaces of
bodies, but in proportion to quantity of matter. Gravity penetrated to
the very center of all bodies without diminution by the body. Gravity's
force extended to immense distances and decreased in exact proportion to
the square of the distance.
Newton opined that an object moves because of external forces on it
rather than by forces internal to the object. These are his three laws
of motion. 1) He connected the concepts of force and acceleration with a
new concept, that of mass. Mass is a quantity intrinsic to an object
that determines how it responds to forces, such as the force of gravity.
The greater the mass of a body, the stronger the force of gravity on it,
and the more difficult it is to get it moving. He found that the
acceleration of a body by a force is inversely proportional to its mass,
and formulated the equation that force equals mass multiplied by
acceleration. So if a force acts on a planet, it produces a change in
velocity that is proportional to the force and in the same direction as
the force.2) His law of inertia is that any body, persists in its state
of rest or of uniform motion in a straight line, unless affected by an
outside force. 3) His next law is that when a body A exerts a force on a
body B, then B also exerts a force on A which is equal in amount but
opposite in direction. This means that forces that operate between
different parts of a planet produce no net force upon the whole planet,
so that the mass of a planet can be treated as if it is concentrated at
a point.
His law of gravitation explains how the whole universe is held
together. This law holds that every object in the universe attracts
every other object with a single gravitational force that is directly
proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional
to the square of the distance between their centers. Newton had at first
accepted the Cartesian system of celestial vortices of aether that
swirled the planets and comets around their orbits. He determined that
Kepler's law that areas were swept out in equal times implied that
gravity acts in the direction of a line between the planet and the sun.
The gross features of the universe and Kepler's observations led to his
recognition that the attraction between two bodies decreases inversely
in proportion to the square of the distance between them. Only one kind
of force would satisfy Kepler's requirement that the sun was a focus of
an ellipse and still be consistent with Kepler's law that the square of
a planet's period was proportional to the cube of its mean distance from
the sun; that was the inverse square law. Then he came to accept Robert
Hooke's hypothesis that planets are kept in their orbits by the
combination of an attractive power of the sun and of motion in a
straight line that was tangential to their orbits. From astronomical
data, he calculated this centripetal acceleration of each planet towards
the sun to be proportional to the inverse square of its distance from
the sun. He also calculated the "centrifugal" accelerations in a
straight line. His experiments showed that the centripetal force in a
circular orbit was equal to the mass of the body multiplied by the
square of its velocity, all divided by the radius of the circular path.
He used calculus and differential equations to determine centripetal
forces of elliptical orbits, where the distance from the sun, the
velocity, and the acceleration were variables.
Newton showed that his single gravitational force could account for the
way free-falling objects descend to the ground, the parabolic trajectory
of projectiles, the path of the moon in its orbit around the earth, the
course of the tides every twelve hours, the lower densities of the
earth's atmosphere at greater heights, the paths of Jupiter's moons, the
paths of comets, and the elliptical paths of the planets in their orbits
around the sun. This determination discredited the previous belief that
invisible angels moved the planets. Newton proved from his law of
gravitation and his three laws of motion the truth of Kepler's laws of
elliptical planetary motion. Newton demonstrated from data collected
from the comet of 1680 that comets moved according to his law of
gravitation. He showed that the path of a body traveling within the
gravitational force of the sun is a circle, an ellipse, a parabola, or a
hyperbola. He used the concept of a common center of gravity as a
reference point for other motions. The fact that the center of gravity
of the solar system was within the body of the sun verified that the sun
was indeed at the center of the solar system.
Newton deduced that the tides were created by the rotation of the earth
with bulges of water on the earth's surfaces that were closest and
farthest from the moon. The moon "pulled" the water nearest to it with a
greater force than average. It "pulled" the water farthest from it with
a force weaker than average. These two moving bulges created two tides a
day.
Newton's "Principia Mathematica Philosophiae Naturalis", was published
in 1687. The established church denounced it as being against the
scripture of the Bible. Newton did not agree with the established church
on many points, such as the trinity, and was considered a heretic. He
had his own interpretations of the Bible and doubted the divinity of
Jesus. But it was accepted for dissenters like Newton to qualify for
full civil rights by maintaining an outward conformity and taking the
sacrament in the established church once a year. Newton was given a
royal dispensation from taking holy orders as prescribed by the rules
for tenure of fellows of his college at Cambridge University. He did
believe in a God who created the universe and who had a ubiquitous
presence in all space. When Catholic King James II tried to have a
Catholic monk admitted to the degree of a Master of Arts at Cambridge
University without taking the oath of adherence to the established
Protestant church, so that he could participate in the business of the
university, Newton was active in the opposition that defeated this
attempt. As a result, he was elected to Parliament by Cambridge.
When Olaus Roemer, a Danish astronomer, was applying Newton's laws to
the paths of the moons of Jupiter to make a table of eclipses of
Jupiter's moons for use in determining one's longitude, he noticed that
the eclipses were five hundred seconds ahead of average time at that
time of year when the earth and Jupiter were on the same side of the
sun, and five hundred seconds behind average time six months later, when
Jupiter was on the other side of the sun. He reasoned that this
difference was due to the light from Jupiter's moons taking more time to
reach the earth when Jupiter was farther from the earth, i.e. on the
other side of the sun. He concluded that light does not travel
instantaneously, but at a certain speed. From the fact that it took 1000
seconds for light to travel the diameter of the earth's orbit, he
calculated its speed in 1676.
In 1668, Christian Huygens formulated the law of conservation of
momentum [mass multiplied by velocity], which held that when objects
collide, they may each change direction, but the sum of all their
momenta will remain the same. Huygens also recognized the conservation
of what was later called "kinetic energy", which is associated with
movement. He developed laws of centrifugal force for uniform motion in a
circle. He derived the formula for computing the oscillations of a
simple pendulum. In 1690, he posited the theory that light consists of a
series of waves. It states that all points of a wave front of light in a
vacuum may be regarded as new sources of wavelets that expand in every
at a rate depending on their velocities. He thought this a better
explanation of bending and interference of light than Newton's particle
theory.
In 1661, Robert Boyle, called the father of modern chemistry, defined
an element as a substance that cannot be further decomposed. He
distinguished an element from both a mixture, which is easily separable,
and a compound, which is not easily separable. He used an air pump he
developed and a glass jar to create a confined vacuum space for
experiments to find the properties of heat, light, and sound. He noted
that burning objects such as candles and coal, when placed in the
receiver of his air pump, went out after a time although air was still
present. He opined that animals were dependent upon a fresh supply of
air to live. He studied the relationship between the volume, density,
and pressure of air and gases. He proved by experiment that the volume
of a gas at a constant temperature varies in inverse proportion to the
pressure applied to the gas. Since gas is compressible, he opined that
gases must be composed of discrete particles separated by void, and also
that basic physical properties were due to motions of particles, or
atoms, which was an ancient Greek conjecture. This cast doubt on the
long-held belief that everything was composed from four basic elements:
air, water, fire, and earth. Boyle's laboratory at Oxford was denounced
by the Oxford clergy as destroying religion. In 1679, the steam pressure
cooker was invented by Denis Papin from France. He invented the
atmospheric engine in 1690.
Robert Hooke helped Boyle build his air pump. Hooke was thirteen when
his father, a minister, died. Hooke was a genius with innate mechanical
skill and was an able mathematician. He applied a spiral spring to
regulate the balance of watches. A lord financed him as a Gresham
lecturer of geometry for 50 pounds a year. In 1666, he used a pendulum
to measure the force of gravity and showed that the center of gravity of
the earth and moon is a point describing an ellipse around the sun. In
1667, he explained the twinkling of the stars by irregular atmospheric
refractions. He formulated the theory that light is composed of pulses.
Hooke's Law states that the amount an elastic body such as a spring
stretches out of shape is in direct proportion to the force acting on
it: its tension. He invented the odometer, a wheel to measure distances.
He constructed an arithmetical machine. He invented the universal joint,
which can move in many angles. His book of drawings of microscopic
animals is a classic. He proposed that fossils can be used as a source
of information about the earth's history. Hooke became rich from his
inventions, but this was not known until his death, when thousands of
pounds were found in his iron chest.
In 1668, Wallis postulated the correct theory of impacts of inelastic
bodies, based on the principle of conservation of momentum. In 1685, he
introduced the first graphical representation of complex numbers.
Royal astronomer and genius Edmond Halley, the son of a soap maker,
studied tides, magnetism, and the paths of comets and stars. He went on
voyages to study the heavens from different positions, thereby laying
the foundations of physical geography. He showed that the stars change
in position in relation to each other. With Newton's help, he calculated
the orbit of a comet he saw in 1682 to be elliptical rather than
parabolic and then proved it was the same comet that had appeared in
1531 and 1607, indicating it's regularity; it was then named "Halley's
comet". However, the Church of England still embraced the idea that
comets and eclipses were evidence of God's wrath. Greenwich Observatory
was built in 1675. Halley used a barometer to measure the density of the
atmosphere and related its readings to elevations into the atmosphere
and to weather. He determined that the cause of the tropical trade winds
was the sun warming the tropical air at the equator, causing it to rise
and move north as it was replaced by cooler air from the north. This
body of air was deflected by the rotation of the earth. He illustrated
the tropical winds with the first meteorological map. He made a descent
in a diving bell, which was used to try to reach wrecked treasure ships.
He studied fossils and perceived them as remnants of living beings that
had died long ago, and imagined a succession of living things. Halley
surveyed the tides and coasts of the British Channel for the king in
1701.
In 1675, apothecary Nicolas Lemery divided substances into mineral,
vegetable, and animal. He wrote a dictionary of pharmaceuticals.
John Ray and Francis Willoughby were friends who traveled together to
study plants and animals respectively. John Ray started the science of
zoology with his edition of Francis Willoughby's "Ornithology" on birds
and his own "History of Fishes". He also attempted the first scientific
classification of animals in his "Synopsis of Quadrupeds". Ray compared
anatomies and experimented on movements of plants and the ascent of sap.
He knew that fossils were remnants of old animals. Ray first suggested
the concept of species in classification of animals and plants. He
opined that the goodness and wisdom of God was shown not only by the
usefulness of animals to man's uses as taught by the church, but also by
the adaptation of animals to their own lives and surroundings. The vast
array and dispersal of animals found by world explorers all over the
world cast doubt on the biblical story of Noah putting two of every kind
of animal on an ark. The science of botany began with Ray's "History of
Plants" and the researches of Robert Morrison, who was Charles'
physician and keeper of his gardens.
Nicholaus Steno, a Danish physician, diagrammed six levels of
stratification on the earth's surface and demonstrated in 1669 that
layers of strata of rock are always deposited with the oldest layers on
the bottom and the youngest layers on the top. This began the science of
geology. He argued that shifts in the earth's strata caused the
formation of mountains. He identified fossils as ancient creatures. The
idea that fossils were remnants of dead animals existing before man
conflicted with the religious idea that Adam's fall began sin and caused
death. The idea from fossils that existing species of animals were
modifications of predecessor animals conflicted with the religious
belief that Noah's ark had preserved all the varieties of animals. John
Aubrey described Stonehenge, thus founding prehistoric archaeology. He
thought it to be a Druid temple.
The telescope and compound microscope, which has an objective lens and
an eyepiece lens for producing a wide range of magnifications, were
further developed. The cellular basis of life was discovered and
described by Robert Hooke. Nehemia Grew, the son of a grammar school
master who became a physician, observed and drew plant anatomy,
including leaves, flowers, fruits, seeds, ovules, pollen grains, and
stamens. He was the first to observe the existence of plant sexuality.
Italian Marcello Malpighi, a physician, used the new compound microscope
to study human skin, spleen, kidneys, and liver and also compared the
livers of several types of animals. He discovered capillaries linking
the arterial and venous circulation in the lungs. Dutchman Anton van
Leeuwenhock, a cloth manufacturer who made microscopes to inspect the
quality of cloth, turned them to use in understanding the life cycles of
mites, lice, and fleas. He correctly described human blood cells. When
he found what he described as tiny animals (bacteria, protozoa, and
rotifers), he sent clear descriptions of them to the Royal Society in
London as proof against the theory of spontaneous generation, which held
that lower forms of life could arise from nonliving matter. This started
the science of bacteriology. With the discovery of the egg in the female
reproductive system, the status of women was lifted.
Physician Thomas Willis, son of a farmer, dissected brains of men and
animals to study the anatomical relations of nerves and arteries. Excess
urine had been associated with a wasting disease. Willis identified
diabetes mellitus with excess of urine that was sweet. Physician Thomas
Sydenham, son of a gentleman, observed epidemic diseases of London over
successive years, thus founding epidemiology. He also furthered clinical
medicine by emphasizing detailed observations of patients and
maintaining accurate records. He wrote a treatise on gout and identified
scarlet fever. He introduced a cooling method of treating smallpox. But
he still relied on the big three treatments: bloodletting, purging, and
sweating. Bloodletting was to draw off bad blood so that it could be
replaced by a better fluid. Another treatment used was cupping, whereby
a vacuum was created by heated glass cups to draw blood to the surface
of the skin. John Locke performed one of the first successful operations
draining a kind of abscess of a man's liver. It was common for people
who felt ill to take a laxative and rest at home.
In 1690, physicians opened the first dispensaries, which gave treatment
and medicine together, to take business away from their rivals: the
apothecaries. London's apothecaries were released in 1694 from jury
service and service as constable, scavenger, or other parish or ward
office because it was necessary that they be available to attend the
sick at all times. Peruvian bark which had quinine as its alkaloid had
been introduced as a proven cure for the ague, a fever with chills
usually due to malaria, in 1653. The English ceased to believe in holy
wells, but went to spas such as Bath for treatment of disease.
There was more bathing because private homes in towns now had indoor
baths. The public baths came into disuse.
For childbirth, only rich women were attended by physicians. Most
physicians used talismen such as the eagle stone at deliveries.
Caesarian section almost always led to the death of the mother. Midwives
were licensed by the church and could baptize babies. Jane Sharp wrote
"The Midwives Book" with anatomical illustrations.
Women over thirty had fewer children and the last child born was at an
earlier age than before. This was in part due to birth control such as
coitus-interruptus, long breast-feeding of a current child and/or the
taboo against sex if the wife was still breast-feeding. Rich women often
employed wet-nurses to breast- feed their babies. Babies seldom thrived,
or even survived, without out a regular supply of breast milk.
John Locke, an Oxford don, physician, and son of an attorney, expressed
a view that the monarchy was not based on divine right, but rather on a
contractual relationship with the people, who were reasonable, free, and
equal by nature. This idea was first adopted by revolutionists and then
became accepted as orthodoxy. Also, he articulated the right of
resistance, the supremacy of legislative assemblies, and the
responsibility of rulers to answer to their subjects. He theorized that
men turn to forming a civil government when there is a need to protect
accumulated property from some unreasonable men. This, along with the
protection of life and liberty, was the primary function of government,
before royal pleasure, national pride, or foreign conquest. He wrote
theories on the interaction of supply, demand, interest rates, rents,
coinage, and foreign exchange rates. He believed that interest rates
should be the natural ones determined by market forces rather than by
the legislature, especially if there was an attempt to lower interest
rates below their natural rate, which was not only undesirable but
easily circumvented. He thought that attempting to legislate contrary to
natural economic laws, e.g. prices, was doomed to failure from
unexpected consequences. He agreed with most mercantilists that by
maintaining a large inflow of precious metals through consistent export
of surpluses in foreign trade would lead to low interest rates,
increased trade, increased capital stock, high employment, and high
prices, and therefore a healthy economy and enrichment of the nation.
Locke thought that knowledge comes primarily from experience, i.e.
sensation and reflection, rather than from innate ideas placed in the
mind by God, so that observation and experimentation are necessary to
find truth. He theorized that propositions of truth have probability
rather than certainty. Probable propositions included opinion, belief,
and revelation. His "Thoughts on Education" was a great book on the
formation of character. Locke also advocated the use of a large field
for inventing labor-saving and economic devices for agriculture. He
espoused freedom of thought in "Letters on Toleration" and wrote "An
Essay Concerning Human Understanding", which described how the mind
functions in learning about the world and which attempted to reconcile
science and Christianity. He was a great admirer and friend of Newton
and they shared religious views. He was also a member of the Royal
Society.
At Oxford and Cambridge Universities, there were the most enlightened
theologians, classicists, orientalists, philologists, mathematicians,
chemists, architects, and musicians. There were professors of
Anglo-Saxon, Hebrew, and Arabic. John Locke's influence caused modern
philosophy to supercede traditional scholasticism. There were no more
disputations to qualify for degrees. Some of the students were the sons
of noblemen and sat at meals with the heads, tutors, and fellows of the
colleges. Most students were the sons of landowners, clergymen,
professional men, or prosperous men of business. They were known as the
gentlemen commoner students. The few poor students were known as
servitors and paid for their education by menial work. Corporal
punishment ceased. Instead there were fines, suspension, and expulsion.
Fellows of colleges had common rooms for drinking and smoking together
as they had done in taverns outside college walls. The king had
authority to grant licenses in sell or give land in perpetuity, to
encourage founding and augmenting colleges and schools. The two
universities were vested with the presentation of benefices that had
belonged to Papists.
English nonconformists such as Presbyterians were excluded from Oxford
and Cambridge Universities, so they were educated at Glasgow in
Scotland.
Grammar schools were blamed for the past civil war by educating too
many people above their station, so ecclesiastical control now stifled
them. A few dissenting schools were established. Charity was given to
schools for children of the poor for placement as apprentices, but not
to educate them above their stations.
In the 1670s, about 70% of males in London were literate. By 1680,
illiteracy was a special characteristic of the poor instead of a
characteristic of the vast majority of common people as in 1580.
Fountain pens came into use.
Many books written tended to be about the author's experiences, for
instance Samuel Pepys' "Diary", Gilbert Burnet's "History of my own
Times", John Evelyn's lifelong diary with vivid descriptions of striking
events of the day, and nonconformist Celia Fiennes' description of her
tour of England on horseback. There were many political biographies.
Historians did not yet study history as a continuous process, but
narrated self-contained stories to instruct by example. William
Fleetwood wrote about economic history in "Chronicon Preciogum". George
Hicks put together a "Thesaurus" of the northern languages. Thomas Hyde
wrote on ancient Persian religion. John Spenser compared Jewish rites
with those of other Semitic people, thus starting comparative religion.
Richard Bentley, William's librarian, wrote a "Dissertation" on the
ancient Greeks. He compared the ancient Greek life with modern life. He
also confuted atheism on the Newtonian system. A translated version of
"Critical History of Old Testament" by Frenchman Richard Simon
identified the old testament as history instead of divine revelation.
John Milton wrote "Paradise Lost", which retells the Biblical story of
the Creation and the fall of Adam and Eve against the backdrop of
Satan's rebellion and expulsion from heaven and emphasized God's justice
in spite of everything. The poem deals with the puritan struggling
against evil and the problem of sin and redemption. It has a cold and
severe conception of moral virtue and stoical self-repression in its
characters. There is no sympathy with the human condition. Reading this
book made the English more serious, earnest, and sober in life and
conduct and more firm in the love of freedom. John Bunyan wrote
"Pilgrim's Progress" in which a tinker takes a journey to find the
Everlasting City of heaven and on the way meets people who try to harm
him. But he derives strength from his adversities. The journey is a
metaphor for the Christian soul trying to find salvation. It is Puritan
in its sympathies and has insights into human nature. John Dryden wrote
on large social, political, and humanistic issues, often by political
satire. William Congreve wrote plays such as a comedy on manners.
William Wycherley wrote cynical satires and portrayed folly, affection,
and vice. John Vanbrugh wrote plays satirizing London high society and
social institutions. John Toland wrote "Christianity and Mysterious" on
deism. "Puss in Boots", "Red Ridinghood", and "Cinderella" became
available in print. There were many female poets, bookwriters, and
playwrights. Anne Finch, later Vicountess Conway, wrote the
philosophical book: "Principle of the Most Ancient and Modern
Philosophy" to reconcile the new science with Christian belief. In it
every creature had a body and a spirit. Mrs. Aphra Behn wrote
"Oroonoko", one of the first novels. Basua Makin, governess of the
little sister of Charles II wrote an essay to revive the education of
women, arguing that women's activity in wartime showed that they were
fit to be educated. Elizabeth Elstob, who studied Teutonic languages,
was one of the founders of women's education. Mary Astell proposed a
college for women. Some women painted portraits.
There were rigid censorship acts from 1662 to 1695. The first required
that no one could print a book without first registering it with the
Company of Stationers of London and having it licensed by appropriate
authority: common law books by the Lord Chancellor or the Lord Keeper of
the Great Seal, affairs of state and history books by the Secretaries of
State, heraldry books by the Earl Marshall or Kings of Arms Garter,
university books by the Chancellor or Vice Chancellor of either of the
universities, and all others including divinity, physics, and philosophy
by the Archbishop of Canterbury, or Bishop of London. Books could be
imported only into London and not sold until approved by the Archbishop
of Canterbury or Bishop of London after being opened and viewed by a
scholar appointed by these bishops and a representative of the Company
of Stationers. If heretical, seditious, scandalous, schismatic or
otherwise dangerous or offensive, the importer could be punished. No one
could print or import copies of any books without consent of the owner
with right by letters patent. The penalty for not doing so was to
forfeit 6s.9d. for each such book, of which the king would receive one
half and the owner one half. Printers had to set their own name to the
books they printed and also the name of the author or else forfeit such
book. Only freemen of London who were members of the Company of
Stationers could sell books. The Company of Stationers had the authority
accompanied by a constable to search all houses and shops where they
knew or had "probable reason" to suspect books were being printed. They
could search houses of persons of other trades only by special warrant.
They could examine books found to determine if they were licensed and,
if not, to seize them. Justices could imprison offenders. The first
offense by offending printers was to be punished by suspension from
printing for three years, the second offense by permanent disallowance
from printing, fine, imprisonment, and corporal punishment not extending
to life or limb. This statute was enforced by frequent prosecutions,
such as of publishers of pornographic books.
The only newspapers to appear between 1660 and 1679 were official
government sheets. But in 1695 the requirement to license publications,
including newspapers, was abolished, thereby giving some freedom to the
press. Locke had argued for this freedom, stating "I know not why a man
should not have liberty to print whatever he would speak and to be
answerable for the one just as he is for the other..." In 1702 the first
daily newspaper in the world came into existence in England. The
Stationer's Company monopoly of printing also ended in 1695. Printing
was not regulated and no longer criminal just because it was
unauthorized. Printing could now be done in other places than London,
York, Oxford, and Cambridge.
The rich got richer and the poor got poorer. Many successful merchants
and manufacturers bought landed estates and established a line of
country squires or baronets or even peers. The fashion started in the
nobility and the richest mercantile families that their wives should
become ladies of leisure. For workers though, there was constant
underemployment. In periods of economic crisis industrial workers lost
their jobs. Much work was seasonal. Anyone who could work most of the
time was fortunate. Laboring and out- servants, who comprised one fourth
of the population, and cottagers and paupers, who comprised another
fourth of the population, had to spend more than they earned. The poor
rate collected from the parishes for the cottagers and paupers was 3d.
per week. There was an agricultural depression that was deepest in the
1680s after the collapse of a boom. It was the only bad depression
experienced in peace time. There was famine in 1698.
Any person receiving relief from any parish and his family members
cohabiting with him was required to wear a badge with a "P" which
identified his parish. This was to differentiate them from idle, sturdy,
and disorderly beggars who were not entitled to relief.
There were more poor people and, despite the poor laws, many became
rogues or vagabonds or starved to death. Many went from parish to parish
to build cottages and consumed all the wood there and then went to
another parish. So the parishes were allowed by statute to remove any
person coming to settle in any tenement under the value of ten pounds
who was likely to be chargeable to it. They were then removed to the
last parish were they had resided for at least forty days. Excepted were
people temporarily moving to another parish to work at harvest time. The
overall effect was to decrease the mobility of people. But a later
statute permitted greater movement of poor people by allowing those who
were poor for want of work to go to another parish where labor was
wanted. They had to bring a certificate of their present parish
membership to the new parish, where they could settle if they rented a
tenement worth ten pounds a year or served in a parish office. Later,
settlement had to be given to inhabitants paying its parish's rates, and
unmarried inhabitants hired for one year, and apprentices bound by
indenture. But parishes were displeased with the requirement to give
settlements to these people because they feared they would become poor
and need parish assistance, thereby increasing the rates to be paid.
Parish poor houses were converted into spinning schools to obtain an
income. Parishes of large towns were combined to set up large
workhouses, where the poor could be set to unskilled manufacture, but
the managers lacked the character and education to make them work.
Because prisoners often died before trial and the poor prisoners became
instructed in the practice of thievery in prison, they were set to work
on materials provided to them at public expense. No parish was rated at
more than 6d. per week for such. The president and governors of
corporations oversaw rogues, vagrants, sturdy beggars, and idle or
disorderly persons working in corporations or workhouses.
Assessments were made for building and repairing gaols in order to
maintain the health and safe custody of the prisoners. Also, gaol fever,
a virulent form of typhus, was so prevalent in the large prisons for
criminals and debtors that it frequently spread through the adjacent
towns. During some assizes, it killed sheriffs, lawyers, and justices.
In 1692, London lands were taxed for the relief of orphans.
Churchwardens could seize the goods and chattels of putative fathers and
mothers deserting bastard children.
From 1691 to 1740, Societies for the Reformation of Manners prosecuted
poor people for moral offenses.
All hackney coaches and stage coaches in all the realm became required
to be licensed. The turnpike system came into use. Tolls were paid for
road upkeep and repair by private companies. The local parishes ceased
to have this responsibility. John Ogilby wrote the first road book based
on actual surveys of the roads. Stage coaches cost a shilling for every
five miles and went 40-50 miles a day. The trip from London to Oxford
was twelve hours. The company of Coach and Coach Harness Makers was
founded with the consent of the king. The body of a coach hung from the
frame by leather braces. One axle pivoted for turns. Plate glass was
used in the windows. Rivers improved so that most places were no more
distant from navigable waters than a long day's haul on land.
The several post offices were put under the authority of one Postmaster
General appointed by the king for the purpose of speed and safety of
dispatches, which were carried by horseback. One sheet letter going less
than 80 miles cost 2d., and more than 80 miles, 4d.
When the army was disbanded after the Restoration, its officers and
soldiers were allowed return to their trades and their apprenticeships
without serving the usual seven years. Parishes were required to provide
for poor and maimed officers and soldiers who served Charles I or
Charles II. The Royal Hospital founded by Charles as a home for veteran
soldiers opened in 1692. Greenwich palace was converted to a hospital
for seamen and their widows and children to encourage men to become
seamen: mariner, seaman, waterman, fisherman, lighterman, bargeman,
keelman, or seafaring man in the king's Navy. Also, children of disabled
seamen were to be educated at the expense of the hospital.
Charles retained one regiment from which he started a small standing
army, which slowly increased in size ever after. The army was primarily
mercenary, as it had been in medieval times, with officers buying their
commissions. Colonels were the proprietors of their regiments and
captains were the proprietors of their companies. The soldiers were ill
mannered, swearing and cursing and stealing, sometimes from peoples'
homes, and intimidating people with their swords. The bayonet was
invented to attach onto a gun, which were muzzle-loading with a match
lock. So pikemen with their long spears became obsolete. Hand grenades
and small explosive bombs came into use about 1670.
Explosives were also used in mines. Mines for coal became deeper as
coal replaced the use of increasingly expensive wood charcoal for
brewing and for brick, glass, and china manufacture. Flooding of coal,
tin and copper mines became a problem. In 1698, Thomas Savery invented
the Miner's Friend, a practical atmospheric steam engine without a
piston.
There was resort to many devices to fund wars. The land tax was still
the primary tax. The customs and excise taxes were often extended to
more goods and wares. Sometimes there were duties imposed on marriages,
births, and deaths. Also, hawkers, peddlers, and other trading persons
going from town to town to other men's houses on foot or on horse
carrying wares had to buy a license. There were also loans from
privileged companies such as the Bank of England, East India Co., and
the South Sea Co. Commissioners were appointed to take and state the
account of all money in the public revenue. This discouraged the
prevalent corruption of government officials and thereby the people were
encouraged to pay their taxes.
The Goldsmiths loaned money to the king and to private persons and to
the Exchequer. Receipts from Goldsmiths for storage in strong boxes had
become a de facto paper currency. But when the Goldsmiths had no more
money to lend, the Bank of England was founded in 1694 under whig
auspices to provide money for war. It was the first institution to issue
notes in excess of its total deposits. However, it was not allowed to
lend money to the Crown without the consent of Parliament. It was
incorporated as the first English joint-stock bank and had about 1,300
shareholders. These original subscribers were individuals from London
from many walks of life, including well-to-do tradesmen and about 12% of
whom were women: wives, widows, or spinsters. Not many corporations were
original subscribers. Holders of at least 500 pounds could vote, of 2000
pounds could be directors, and of 4000 pounds could be Governor. The
Bank issued notes payable to bearer and discounted bills, but these were
not legal tender. It lent at 8% to the Crown and occasionally to
corporations. Money was also borrowed by offering annuities on single
lives. This was the first time the government borrowed directly from the
public on a long- term basis.
In 1695 there was inflation due to over issue by the Bank because of
inexperience, pressure from government, and the Bank's greed for
business. After a dividend of 5% in 1695, the next year there was no
dividend and so the bank stock price fell. In 1696, five pound and ten
pound short term bonds were sold to the public. Also in that year was
the first run on the bank. This occurred two days after clipped money
lost currency; people wanted the new recoined money, but the Mint had
not supplied the Bank with sufficient supplies. Interest instead of cash
was given for notes. Cash was short for months. The Bank's credit was
much shaken. It was then given a monopoly so that its notes would not
have competition. Thereafter, its dividends were good - about 12% per
year. Because of its monopoly, its dividends were about 3% above the
current going rate of interest. About this time, Exchequer Bills, with
interest, were started by the Exchequer and circulated by the Bank of
England. They were frequently endorsed many times by successive holders.
The Bank simply took over from the goldsmiths its main everyday
business of deposit, with a running cash note [cashier's note, specie
note, cash note], which was payable on demand and normally did not bear
interest; and a drawn note [precursor to the check, but not on special
paper]. The Bank gradually convinced many of its clients to use its
"check" [cheque] paper when drawing. The check paper was unique to the
Bank and embellished with distinctive scroll work to serve as an
obstacle to fraud. Over time the running cash note tended to be for
round sums of at least twenty pounds and multiples of five pounds. The
Bank of England had a monopoly on issuing notes in the London area.
Country banks arose and issued bearer notes payable on demand and
interest-bearing notes in their areas. The Bank of England gave to its
depositors the service of paying annually to a designee without further
order.
A decision of the common law courts held that bills of exchange
(written orders to pay a given a sum on a given date) were transferable
to other people by successive endorsements. So long distance payments no
longer had to be made in coin, with all the dangers of highway robbery.
The financial revolution of the 1690s meant that the merchant elite
could invest in government bonds or company bonds at 5-6%, or London
leases at 10%, as opposed to income from landed estates, which was under
3%. Shareholders were no longer personally liable for company losses.
Interest on loans was no longer considered sinful as long as it was not
oppressive. The greater ability to borrow spurred the growth of
capitalism.
All brokers and stock jobbers in London and Westminster of bank stock,
bank bills, shares and interests in joint stock must be licensed by the
mayor, which shall necessitate their taking an oath to exercise their
office without fraud or collusion to the best of his skill and knowledge
as of 1697. This is to avoid the collusion of fixing values to their own
advantage.
Compilations of tables of mortality originated the science of
life-statistics. This made life insurance possible. But it was
administered by ad hoc offices rather than companies and was not
reliable in making payments.
William Petty made a statistical study of economics and determined that
the basic values of an economy derive not from its store of treasure,
but from its capacity for production. Trade was studied empirically by
statistics by new offices such as the Inspector General of Imports and
Exports.
Charles instituted a hearth tax of 2s. per year in 1662, with
constables and officers authorized to verify the number of hearths and
stoves in houses. It was repealed in 1688 because it could not be
enforced except by exposing every man's house to be entered and searched
at pleasure by persons unknown to the people, which was oppressive and a
badge of slavery.
By bribes, Charles built up a body of support in Parliament which could
be relied upon for a majority. They came to be called "tories" by their
opponents. "Tory" had been a term of abuse for Irish Catholic bandits.
The tory and whig groups were known by their disagreement over the
authoritarianism of the Crown. The tories were sympathetic to the
doctrine of divine right and favored a doctrinally high church. The
tories represented landed property and the established church, and
usually wore blue in contrast to the purple of royalty. Many royalists
became tories. The whigs refused to accept the sacrosanct character of
the monarchy. The whigs opined that government depended upon consent of
the people and that the people had a right of resistance. They
subordinated the Crown to Parliament. The whigs represented the
dissenters and the mercantile classes, and often wore red. Many former
Puritans became whigs. "Whig" had been a term of abuse for Scots
Presbyterian rebels and horse thieves.
The gout and venereal disease were common among political leaders. A
primitive condom just introduced to the aristocracy from France helped
deter syphilis, but was uncomfortable and unreliable.
Under Charles II, the Treasury as a supreme financial body separated
from the Exchequer as a depository of revenue. A gold guinea coin was
issued. From 1690, government policy was controlled by specific
appropriations. Money bills had to originate in the Commons, and could
not be amended by the House of Lords.
Boards became independent of the king's Privy Council and answerable to
the secretary of state.
In the 1680s, Charles compelled some of the livery companies in London
to give up their charters to him and he called in many corporation
charters of boroughs whenever some light excuse could be found to
justify it. This was done by the use of the writ of quo warranto [by
what authority] before a court. In London he had the tory mayor revive
an ancient custom of selecting a sheriff by drinking to him at the
annual feast. Two tory sheriffs were installed into office. All these
actions gave the king a voice in selection of the officers of London and
boroughs, since Royal commissioners would then determine who the
officers would be. This was to assure London's representation in
Parliament by Crown loyalists as London had been whig. It also allowed
influenced selection of sympathetic jurors.
Criminal seditious libel was brought into the common law courts in
1664, when Benjamin Keach was tried for writing a book containing
contradictions of the doctrine of the established church. He wrote
against infant baptism and asserted that laymen might preach the gospel.
The justice intimidated the jury to find him guilty. He was sentenced to
be fined, to spend two hours in the pillory in two successive weeks, and
his book to be burned before his face. He was to be imprisoned until he
found sureties for his good behavior and renunciation of his doctrine
and for his future appearance in court. Juries were loath to find anyone
guilty of seditious libel.
James II succeeded Charles II to the throne and fostered Roman
Catholicism by appointments and by attempting to suspend laws
unfavorable to Catholics. He commanded all bishops to read in the
churches his Declaration of Indulgence exempting both Catholic and
Protestant dissenters from all penal statutes based on religion. Seven
bishops refused to obey and jointly petitioned him, stating that his
action was illegal according to Parliament. He prosecuted them for
seditious libel in the petition. The jury found them not guilty. James
discharged the two justices of the five who had rejected the seditious
libel doctrine which had been created by the Star Chamber Court. This
roused the whigs and tories in turn to discharge him by joining in
inviting Protestants William of Orange and Mary to take the throne in
his place. James was effectively chased out of England by William's
advancing army in the Glorious Revolution of 1688-9, which took away the
powers of final authority from the king, but without transferring them
to any other body. A "Bill of Rights" stated that
1. The king may not suspend laws or dispense with them without consent
of Parliament.
2. The establishment of a Court of Commissioners and like bodies for
ecclesiastical causes is illegal.
3. The king may not levy money or extend an authorized levy without
consent of Parliament.
4. Subjects have a right to petition the king without prosecution.
5. The king may not raise or keep a standing army within the country in
time of peace without the consent of Parliament.
6. Protestants may have arms for their defense as allowed by law.
7. The elections of members of Parliament should be free.
8. The freedom of speech or debates or proceedings in Parliament should
not be impeached or questioned in any court or place outside of
Parliament.
9. Excessive bail should not be required, nor excessive fines imposed,
nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted (so no more men were whipped
to death).
10. Jury selection should not be tampered with, and jurors who try men
for high treason should be freeholders.
11. All grants and promises of fines and forfeiture of particular
persons, before conviction, are illegal and void.
12. Parliament should be held frequently for redress of grievances and
for the amending, strengthening, and preserving of the laws.
13. All Protestants may freely exercise their religion and the king will
maintain the Protestant religion and the law and liberty of the realm.
The right of the peoples' representatives to select and depose the king
and to change the order of succession was established. There was no
divine right or hereditary right to the Crown. An English monarch was
created by an act of Parliament. The king still called and dissolved
Parliaments, except that Parliament continued for six months after the
death of a king. From 1689, Parliament sat every year. Freedom of speech
for members of Parliament was established by a resolution overturning a
King's Bench felony conviction of Sir John Elliot.
By the act of settlement of 1701, no officer or pensioner of the king
could be a member of Parliament. All resolutions by the Privy Council
had to be signed by the members consenting to them. No one born outside
the realm could be a member of the Privy Council or of Parliament, or
could have any civil or military office or place of trust, or any grants
of land or tenements from the king. Justices served during good behavior
instead of at the pleasure of the king.
After the Glorious Revolution, Tories tended to accept of the Whig
principles of limited constitutional monarchy instead of rule by divine
right.
Under William and Mary, the ministers were first chosen by them but
could be impeached by the Commons and then removed by the Parliament.
The Commons removed anyone who disagreed with them as soon as he made a
mistake. But the king could pardon anyone convicted by Parliamentary
bill of attainder. This was inconsistent, so no one was allowed to plead
pardon by the king in an impeachment by the Commons. Thus Parliament
gained control of who would be ministers.
The Glorious Revolution favored the capitalists and the commercial
magnates even though it had been started by the landed families, with
whom they now intermarried. There were companies in the fishing, silk,
baize [a coarse wool], sugar, rope, paper, iron, hardware, cutlery,
gunpowder, saw milling, and pottery trades. These industries for
manufacturing were organized on capitalist lines rather than being
subject to guilds. That is, production was controlled by men with money
and the means of manufacture. The largest pottery workshops employed
about six men. One man shaped the pots, another made the handles and put
them on, while the others did the decoration, the glazing, and the
firing. New companies could be formed without royal or Parliamentary
consent. Regulated companies declined. There were no more commercial
monopolies. The Merchant Adventurers lost their last monopoly privileges
and their entrance fees were abolished. Their method of limiting the
volume of their exports of English cloth to Germany to keep up prices
was obsolete. Now they tried to capture the market by selling cheap.
There were more joint-stock companies and on a larger scale. They also
no longer restricted output to keep prices high, but geared to export
many inexpensive goods.
Drinking of gin, which had first been made by a Flemish physician,
became popular under King William, who was Dutch. The year of his
accession, the gin monopoly ended.
From the mid-1500s to 1700, coal production increased fourteen times.
Sir Ambrose Crowley, an iron maker with coal works, established
disability and medical benefits and pensions for his workers.
The capitalist organization of the mining, glass manufacture, salt,
soap, wire and other monopolized industries was made possible only by
government support. Salt and glass manufacture expanded. Glass drinking
vessels were in common use. Mirrors of blown plate glass were
manufactured in England. In 1670, Vauxhall glass works were opened with
workmen brought from Venice to blow their fine glass and make mirrors.
Some plate glass by casting was imported. Plate glass was a large and
strong glass piece, which was formed by the liquid glass being poured on
a table. This glass was not distorted, so mirrors could be made
perfectly reflective. Then plate glass for coaches, mirrors, and windows
became manufactured in England; this new industry was organized on
capitalist lines.
The domestic or "putting out" system came into use. In this system, the
worker usually owned his own machinery and the capitalist owned the
material, which he put out to the worker at home. The merchant
manufacturer bought raw wool and had it carded, spun, woven, fulled, and
dressed at his own expense. Some farmers became spinners in the winter
when outside work was impossible. The manufacture of nails was also done
by this system. Accordingly, the guilds and municipal corporations in
towns ceased to control the recruiting, conditions of work, and pay of
industries. Only a quarter of 200 towns had any organized guilds at all.
The growing town of Birmingham was not a chartered borough, so never was
encumbered with guild regulations. Overall, the guild and apprentice
regulations were effectively enforced only in agriculture work. Artisans
became known as tradesmen. Work was usually irregular, some seasonal. In
bad years, when a worker had to borrow money, he used work tools, such
as his loom, as security. In this way, one's work tools often became the
property of a merchant. Some merchant clothiers also owned a fulling
mill and a shop where the cloth was sold. The capitalists first became
owners of the materials, then of the implements, and then of the work
places. But production was still confined to the known wants of its
habitual market. Men used to working at home were generally not inclined
to go to work in a factory. So there was an assortment of unskilled
factory labor, such as country people driven from their villages by the
growth of large estates, disbanded soldiers, and paupers. They had to be
taught, trained, and above all disciplined.
Smiths used trip hammers powered by watermills which turned axles with
cams on them. They made iron gates, fences, balconies, and staircases
with hammer, anvil, and chisel. Cast iron was made by running liquefied
metal into molds. This was harder but more brittle than the tough but
malleable wrought iron. Tinkers went from house to house to repair metal
items such as pots and pans.
The East India Company had about half the trade of the nation. Its
shares were frequently bought and sold. It responded to anger over its
semi-monopoly status by granting liberty to all English subjects below
the age of forty to live in its Indian settlements and to trade
practically everywhere. Bombay, India became subject to the East India
Company. Charters gave the East India Company the right to coin money,
to exercise jurisdiction over English subjects, to levy taxes, to build
and command fortresses, to command English and Indian troops, to make
peace and war, and to enter into alliances with Indian rulers. The
Company always paid high dividends and the market price of its shares
generally rose. 100 pound stock was worth 130 pounds in 1669, 245 pounds
in 1677, 280 pounds in 1681, 360 and even up to 500 pounds in 1683, and
then fell to 190 pounds in 1692. In 1693 a new charter for the Company
included loss of monopoly status by resolution of the Commons. With this
resolution, Parliament assumed the right of regulating commerce, now no
longer the king's province. Thereafter the Commons regulated trade with
India and determined who could participate in trade there. Political
issues developed, which initiated corruption at elections by
entertainment and bribes to candidates, which were later proscribed. The
trade opened up to many more traders and investors. Ordinary investors
came to include women and Quakers. The Stock Exchange was incorporated
about 1694.
Exports included grain, silk, metal wares, foodstuffs, lead, and tin.
Cloth and manufactures were exported to America. Dyeing and dressing of
cloth became the norm and undressed cloth exports fell sharply. Imports
included linen; flax; hemp; timber; iron; raw, thrown, and woven silk;
wine; brandy; fruit; coffee; chocolate, served as a drink or used in
cooking; cauliflower; and oil. From America came molasses, sugar,
tobacco, and dyes. Sugar was in great demand for tea, coffee, and
chocolate. The East India Company imported calico, silk, pepper, spices,
China tea, potions, and saltpeter. Tonnage of English shipping doubled
by 1688 Exports and imports increased 50% by 1700.
When there was a surplus of grain, it was exported. About 1696, the
king set up a board of trade of eight paid members and great officers of
state, who nominally belonged to it, and a staff. This was to achieve a
favorable balance of trade. For instance, it imposed tariffs to protect
internal markets and put restraints on imports of goods producible in
the country, e.g. live cattle, dairy products, and woolen goods. It also
restricted the export of raw wool. England led the way in protectionist
measures.
Parliament required an oath of allegiance to the new sovereigns William
and Mary from all those in public functions, including the clergy. By
extending this rule to the clergy, Parliament asserted a supremacy of
Parliament over the church. It also asserted a supremacy over the king
by requiring all monarchs to take a coronation oath promising to govern
according to the statutes, laws, and customs of Parliament, to make
judgments with law and justice in mercy, and to maintain the Protestant
religion established by law.
England competed with other nations for land in the New World.
Carolina, named for Charles II, was colonized for commerce in 1663. The
Episcopal Church, an analogue of the Church of England, was established
there by law. The whole coast became English after war with the
Netherlands gave New York, named for Charles II's brother the Duke of
York, and New Jersey to England in 1667. Presbyterians and Baptists fled
from religious tests and persecutions in England to colonize New Jersey.
For free passage to the English colonies, people became indentured
servants, agreeing to serve the master of the ship or his assigns with a
certain kind of labor for a term of a few years according to a written
contract made before departure. Also, various statutes made
transportation to any part of America available to any person who would
pay for his transportation, for a term of years, usually seven, as a new
possible penalty for offenses. In 1636, Harvard College was founded in
New England to advance literature, arts, and sciences, as well as to
train ministers. Some American colonists sent their sons to be educated
at the Inns of Court in London.
In 1682, Quaker William Penn, son of an Admiral, founded the colony of
Pennsylvania for Quakers in a "Holy Experiment" in political and
religious freedom. The king had granted proprietary rights to this land
to him to discharge a Crown debt to his father. When Penn refused to
take off his hat before King Charles and asked why Charles took off his
own, Charles, unruffled, replied that "It's the custom of this place
that only one man should remain uncovered at a time". The Pennsylvania
Charter of 1701 went beyond Magna Carta and England's law in
guaranteeing right to counsel and giving a right to defendants to summon
witnesses in all criminal cases. It gave Penn absolute authority and he
established liberty of conscience, i.e.freedom of religion, and freedom
from arbitrary arrest. In 1751, some Quakers founded a small hospital in
Pennsylvania as an asylum for the insane, where they would be treated
humanely.
Proprietary colonies, in which an individual or syndicate held under
the crown a sort of feudal overlordship, were founded in America:
namely, Virginia, Maryland, Carolina, New York and New Jersey in 1663,
and Pennsylvania and Delaware in 1682. New Hampshire was made a royal
province in 1680 to cut off the expansion of Massachusetts, which had
been avoiding the trade laws. These colonies were distinguished from the
corporate colonies of Massachusetts, Plymouth, Connecticut, and Rhode
Island, which made their own arrangements for internal government
without a royal executive. Charles persuaded the Chancery Court to
declare the charter of Massachusetts void; it was given a new charter in
1691 which made it a royal province. New York was made a royal province
in 1691. Maryland's proprietor gave way to a royal governor in 1692.
Soon all colonies except Rhode Island, Connecticut, Pennsylvania were
royal provinces, with governors nominated by the Crown. This bringing of
union to the colonies was done for maintenance of order, to coordinate
defense, and to enforce trade laws.
In 1670, the Hudson's Bay Company was incorporated to engage in fur
trade with Indian trappers in the Hudson Bay and to find a northwest
passage to China.
In 1701 the founding of the "Society for the Propagation of the Gospel
in Foreign Parts" by the Church of England created many missionaries in
the colonies, where they called their churches "Episcopalian".
Increase Mather and his son Cotton Mather were Puritan ministers in
colonial Boston. Increase was for a time the President of Harvard
College and participated in obtaining the new charter of colonial
Massachusetts of 1691. He and his son tried to maintain the principles
of the Puritan founders of Massachusetts, which included the theories of
diabolical possession and witchcraft. But the thought of Presbyterians,
Anglicans, and Baptists became influential also. In 1692 in the small
town of Salem, Massachusetts, some hysterical girls showing strange
spasms and sounds charged they had been bewitched by certain other
residents. Victims were deceived, flogged, or tortured into forced
confessions and then excommunicated from the church. They were then
hanged and their property confiscated. One man endured being pressed to
death for refusal to plead so that his property would be inherited by
his family rather than confiscated due to being convicted. Eventually,
some prominent citizens including judges were accused. Then the more
thoughtful people began to doubt the whole phenomenon and admitted
error. The excommunications were revoked. Cotton Mather came to accept
Newton's science and advocated inoculation. He encouraged Puritanism
into a simpler piety and charity. This influenced American Protestantism
toward a generalized concern with good works, morality, and social
leadership.
- The Law -
Treason to the king is to compass, imagine, or intend death or any
bodily harm tending to death, or maiming or wounding, or imprisonment,
or restraint as well as trying to depose him or levy war against him.
Also included is printing, writing, preaching, or malicious speaking.
Traitors shall suffer death and forfeiture as in high treason.
The fine for having, buying, or selling clipped coins is 500 pounds,
one-half going to the informer, and one-half going to the king. The
offender shall also be branded in the right cheek with the letter "R".
He shall be imprisoned until he pays the 500 pounds. No hammered coins
are lawful. Anyone except a smith in the king's mint making tools or
presses or other machines that can make counterfeit coins or having such
which were stolen from the mint shall be guilty of high treason.
Any malicious and willful burning or destroying of stacks of hay,
grain, or barns, or killing any horses, sheep, or cattle at nighttime
shall be felony and punished by transportation to the American colonies
for seven years.
Any person apprehending a thief or robber on the highway will be
rewarded 40 pounds from the local sheriff, to discourage the many
robberies and murders which have made travel dangerous. Also, executors
of persons murdered while trying to apprehend a robber shall have the
reward.
Anyone killing, hurting, or taking away deer from any forest or park or
other ground without consent of the owner or custodian shall pay a 20
pound fine. This was later increased to 20 pounds for hunting deer and
30 pounds for wounding or killing deer, with the pillory for one hour on
market day and gaol for a year without bail for those who couldn't pay.
Any person privately and feloniously stealing any goods, including
horses, by day or night, in any shop, warehouse, coach stable, or
stable, whether there is a break-in or not, and whether or not the owner
is present, or anyone assisting or hiring such person may not have
benefit of clergy. Any person who apprehends and prosecutes such person
is excused from having to serve in parish and ward offices. An offender
being out of prison who informs against two other offenders who are
convicted is to be pardoned. Any person convicted of theft or larceny
and having benefit of clergy is to be burnt in the cheek nearest the
nose instead of on the hand.
When a bill of exchange drawn to at least five pounds is not paid on
demand at the time it is made payable, the person who accepted it may
make a protest in writing before a notary public, which shall be served
on the maker of such bill, who must pay it and all interest and charges
from the date of the protest. But if a bill of exchange is lost or
miscarried, another shall be given in its place.
No one may take more than 6 pounds in interest for a 100 pound loan.
Persons seeking election to Parliament may not give or promise money,
meat, drink, entertainment, present or gift to any elector.
Because the gaols were full of people in debt due to the late unhappy
times such as the London fire, all prisoners for debt were released upon
taking an oath that they had no property over ten pounds nor had
disposed or conveyed property to defraud creditors. Creditors not
wanting them released had to contribute to their maintenance in gaol.
Any sale of land or lease or estate of freehold or copyhold shall be in
writing and signed. An interest in land given orally shall have only the
force of estates at will. All contracts for sale of goods or merchandise
for the price of at least 10 pounds shall be in writing and signed by
the parties or shall be accompanied by part payment or partial
acceptance of the goods. This is to deter fraud. This statute caused
many small freeholders, including yeomen, who paid rent by custom to be
dispossessed.
Mortgagees can hold the land of any mortgagor who borrows money upon
security of the land or obtains another mortgage without prior notice to
the initial mortgagee. The mortgagor has six months to pay off the
mortgage and all interest and charges or vacate the land and lose his
equity therein. But a widow's dower will not be affected if she did not
join with her husband in the mortgage.
If rent is not paid in a reasonable time, the renter's goods and grain
may not only be distrained, but sold.
One coparcener of a joint tenancy or tenancy in common may have a court
partition the property without the presence of other coparceners,
because such coparceners are often difficult to find. This is to avoid
wasting of land lying uncultivated and unmanured.
After the intestate death of a father of any sons or daughters without
wives or children of their own in the life time of their mothers, the
mother and every brother and sister shall share equally except the
customs of London and York shall not be affected. Administrators have to
make an inventory. They have to account on request by an interested
person. They must be bonded by two sureties.
Executors and administrators of estates of deceased persons must pay
the debts of the deceased person rather than waste or convert the goods
and chattels to their own use. Creditors may recover their debts from
heirs or devisees of the will of a debtor.
Men gone beyond the sea who could not be accounted for were deemed dead
after seven years, so their life estates could be terminated.
Whereas lawful games are not to be used as constant callings for a
livelihood, and young people are deceived and debauched and their money
taken, anyone "winning" money by deceitful or fraudulent gambling shall
forfeit three times his "winnings".
The making or selling of fireworks is forbidden or else forfeit 5
pounds. Firing or throwing such from one's house onto or across the
street is a common nuisance with a penalty of 20s. This is to avoid the
loss of life and of eyes.
No more than 20 people may petition the king nor more than 10 people
may assemble to present a petition to the king, because more has been
tumultuous and disorderly.
Anyone may without fee set up a hemp business including breaking,
hatchelling [separating the coarse part and broken pieces of the stalk
from the fine, fibrous parts by drawing the material through long iron
teeth set in a board], and dressing it; or a flax business, including
making and whitening thread, spinning, weaving, making, whitening, or
bleaching hemp or flax cloth; making twine or nets for fishing or
treating cordage for tapestry or hangings, because the daily importation
of such has in effect taken the work from the poor and unemployed of
England.
No sheep, wool, woolfells, shearlings, yarn, fuller's earth, or fulling
clay may be exported as has secretly been done, so that the poor of the
realm may have work.
Fishermen may sell their fish to others than Fishmongers at
Billingsgate fish market because the Fishmongers have forestalled the
market and set their own prices. The buyers of such fish may resell them
in any other London market by retail, except than only Fishmongers may
sell in shops or houses.
No tanned or untanned skin or hide of any ox, steer, bull, cow, or calf
may be exported because the price of leather has risen excessively and
leather workers can't get enough raw material to carry on their trade
and because poor people cannot afford leather items they need.
The newly incorporated Company of Silk Throwers (drew the silk off the
cocoon) employs many of the poor, but others practice the trade, so an
apprenticeship of seven years is required to practice the trade in the
realm. Winders or doublers who purloin or embezzle and sell silk from
the thrower who employs him and the buyer of such silk shall make such
recompense as ordered by a Justice of the Peace or be whipped or set in
the stocks for the first offense.
The regulation of the Silk Throwers company restricting the number of
spindles to be worked at one time is voided because it has taken
livelihoods away and caused foreign thrown silk [silk twisted from
cocoons into thread] to be imported.
Buttons on garments must be made of silk, mohair, gimp, and thread and
by needle to keep employed the many throwers, twisters, spinners,
winders, and dyers preparing the materials for these buttons. No button
may be made of cloth or wood.
When a bill of exchange drawn to at least five pounds is not paid on
demand at the time it is made payable, the person who accepted it may
make a protest in writing before a notary public, which shall be served
on the maker of such bill, who must pay it and all interest and charges
from the date of the protest. But if a bill of exchange is lost or
miscarried, another shall be given in its place.
No one may take more than 6 pounds in interest for a 100 pound loan.
Persons seeking election to Parliament may not give or promise money,
meat, drink, entertainment, present or gift to any elector.
Because the gaols were full of people in debt due to the late unhappy
times such as the London fire, all prisoners for debt were released upon
taking an oath that they had no property over ten pounds nor had
disposed or conveyed property to defraud creditors. Creditors not
wanting them released had to contribute to their maintenance in gaol.
Retailers of wine may not add to imported wines cider, honey, sugar,
molasses, lime, raisin juice, or herbs.
Butter sold must be of one sort and not contain bad butter mixed in
with good butter. Butter pots must bear the name or mark of their
potter.
Salt may be sold only by weight, to avoid deceit by retailers and wrong
to buyers.
No tobacco maybe grown in England because the colonies would be
discouraged from growing it and the king would not receive customs from
it.
No goods are to be imported to or exported from America, Asia, or
Africa except in English ships, with masters and 3/4 of the mariners
Englishmen. No manufacture of Europe may be imported into any colony or
territory except shipped from England in English ships manned by
Englishmen. As of 1672, if bond is not given for colonial exports of
sugar, ginger, tobacco, cotton, indigo, cacao nuts, or fustic [tree that
yields a yellow dye] and other dye- woods going to England, a duty must
be paid. As of 1696, no colonial goods are to be imported or exported or
carried from one colony to another, except in ships owned and built in
England, Ireland, or the colonies with the masters and three fourths of
the mariners from such places. These navigation acts were strictly
enforced.
Only persons with lands and tenements or estate worth over 100 pounds
per year or having a lease of at least 99 years worth 150 pounds per
year and owners and keepers of forests or parks may have any guns, bows,
greyhounds, hunting dogs such as setting dogs, snares, or other hunting
equipment. These persons may kill hare, pheasants, partridges, and other
game. Gamekeepers authorized by Justices of the Peace may search houses
and outhouses and seize unlawful hunting equipment. If hunting equipment
or game is found in a house without good account to the Justices of the
Peace, they shall impose a fine of 5s. to 20s., one-half going to the
informer and one-half going to the poor of the parish.
Army officers or soldiers who desert or mutiny shall suffer death or
such other punishment as decided by a court martial of senior officers
rather than the usual form of law, which is too slow.
Seamen not showing up on board after notice shall serve six months
without pay, but shall not suffer as deserters. Seamen do not have to
perform service in the Army.
Pirates may be punished by death and loss of all lands and chattels.
Any person aiding, advising, or concealing pirates may be likewise
punished. Officers and seamen killed or wounded in the defense of a ship
or who seize or destroy pirates may be paid by the owners an amount up
to 2 pounds per 100 pounds of freight as determined by a group of
disinterested merchants and the judge. The amount due to a man killed
will be paid to his widow and children. This is to be done when the ship
arrives in port. Any person who informs of any combinations or
confederacies planning to run away with or to destroy a ship shall be
rewarded by the commander or master of such 10 pounds for a ship 100
tons or under, and 15 pounds for a ship over 100 tons. The trial may be
in England or the American colonies, whose authorities may issue
warrants for arrest of alleged pirates. Deserters from ships, because
they often become pirates, shall forfeit all wages. Masters forcing any
man fit to travel to stay on shore or willfully leaves him behind shall
suffer three months in prison without bail.
Persons may mine for ores on their own land, but must turn it over to
the king who will give compensation for it, including gold, silver,
copper (16 pounds per tun), lead (9 pounds per tun), tin (40s. per tun),
and iron (40s. per tun).
By statutes of 1660 and 1662, when goods have been carried off ships
without customs being paid, the Chief Magistrate of the place where the
offense was committed or the adjoining place, or the Lord Treasurer, or
a Baron of the Exchequer may, upon oath, issue out a warrant to any
person to enter, with the assistance of a sheriff, constable or other
public official, any house, shop, cellar, warehouse, or room in the day
time where the contraband goods are "suspected to be concealed", and in
case of resistance, to break open doors, chests, trunks, or other
packages and to seize such goods, provided that if the information
whereupon any house is searched proves to be false, the injured party
shall recover his full damages and costs against the informer by action
of trespass. This was extended to the colonies in 1696.
The penalty for cursing or swearing by a servant, day laborer, soldier,
or seaman is 1s. For others, it is 2s. The fine is doubled for the
second offense, and tripled for the third offense. If an adult offender
can't pay, he shall be put in the stocks for one hour. If a child
offender can't pay, he shall be whipped by the constable or by a parent
in the presence of the constable.
The equity courts are now conceding limited proprietary rights to
married women by enforcing premarital settlements or trust arrangements
that designate certain property as a wife's separate estate and exempt
it from control by the husband. Such protective devices generally
reflected a father's desire to shield his daughter from poverty and
benefited only the landed aristocracy in practice. Also, husbands are
not allowed to punish and beat their wives as before. But the lower rank
of men were slow to give this up. A wife could have the security of the
peace against her husband. He could restrain her liberty only for gross
misbehavior.
In 1685, the courts ruled that apprenticeships were necessary only for
servants hired by the year, thus exempting most wage laborers.
There were many variations in religious practices for statutes to
address. The Quakers and Baptists were opposed to any state church. The
Independents and Presbyterians accepted the idea of a state church. The
members of the established church and Roman Catholics adhered to their
version the state church as they had experienced it in the past. Atheism
had a bad reputation. In 1662, the Jews established the first synagogue
in London. The Privy Council recognized their religious status as long
as they were peaceful and obeyed the laws. They engaged in pawn-broking
as well as money-lending.
There were various statutes enacted over the course of time regarding
religion, as follows:
All ministers, school teachers, mayors and other town officials,
including magistrates, were required to take the oaths of allegiance and
supremacy [of the King over the church] or be removed from office.
A great number of people refused to come to their parish church or
other public place where common prayer and sacraments were administered
and the word of God was preached according to the established church.
The morning and afternoon Sunday services with sermons, sometimes by
guest preachers, continued. So factions and schisms developed. In
response, the king changed the Book of Common Prayer and its prayers
were required by statute in 1662 to be read by some priest or deacon in
all the churches and places of public worship wherever and whenever
there was any preaching or lecturing. Attendance at one's local parish
church was never again required.
Attendance at the established Church of England was never again
required. Nor was preaching or lecturing constrained. Instead, a statute
was passed in 1677 that: Every person shall be pious and exercise
religion publicly and privately on Sunday. No work may be done or goods
sold or else forfeit 5s. or the goods respectively. No one may travel or
else forfeit 5-20s. In a further statute of 1688, because some ease to
scrupulous consciences in the exercise of religion may be an effectual
means to unite Protestant subjects in interest and affection, Protestant
nonconformists who took the oaths, or declaration in the case of
Quakers, and a declaration that they were not Catholic, did not adore
the Virgin Mary or any saint, and did not go to mass were declared not
liable for punishment in any ecclesiastical court by reason of their
nonconformity to the Church of England, except Protestant dissenters
meeting behind locked doors. But payment of tithes and performance of
parish duties were still obligatory. Non-conformist preachers had to
subscribe to the tenets of belief listed in the first eighteen Articles
of Religion, but were exempted from the articles on expounding
inconsistencies in scripture, the traditions of the church, homilies,
and consecration of bishops and ministers of the Elizabethan statute and
the statute on uniformity of prayers and sacraments of Charles II.
As of 1665, no nonconformist minister, i.e. one who endeavored any
alteration of government either in church or state, was allowed to live
or visit within five miles of any corporate town or any place where he
had acted as minister or else forfeit 40 pounds. Persons not frequenting
the established church were not allowed to teach in any public or
private school or else forfeit 40 pounds.
By statute of 1670, anyone at least sixteen years old who is present at
any assembly, conventile [private meeting of religious dissidents to
pray and expound scripture], or meeting under pretence of any exercise
of religion in other manner than according to the established Church of
England at which there are at least five persons present shall be fined
5s. for the first offense and 10s. for the second offense. This does not
include members of the same household meeting in their home. Anyone who
preaches or teaches at such a meeting shall pay 20 pounds for the first
offense, and 40 pounds for further offenses. The householder who permits
such a meeting shall pay 20 pounds. A justice or Justice of the Peace or
chief magistrate may break open doors and enter by force any house or
other place where they have been informed of any such meeting and take
persons there into custody for prosecution. This is to discourage the
growing of dangerous seditious persons under pretence of tender
consciences.
Religious nonconformity continued especially among the humble people.
The penal statutes caused hundreds of these nonconformists to be put in
gaol. From time to time, the king would release them and suspend these
laws. Sometimes, Charles II allowed dissenters to meet in private for
worship if they got a license from him. Religious gatherings grew in
numbers, size, and geographical extent. Dissenters were then allowed by
statute to meet behind locked or barred doors. But they had to pay
tithes and could be prosecuted in the ecclesiastical courts for not
doing so. By statute, all congregations and assemblies for religious
worship had to register with the local bishop or archbishop. Disturbers
of religious worship were required to find two sureties for the amount
of 50 pounds.
Quakers were active in the countryside. They were about one tenth of
the population and did not believe in a state church. There were some
Quakers schools and some Quaker workhouses to give work to the poor. For
the reason that they met together in large numbers to the great
endangering of public peace and safety and to the terror of the people,
and because they had secret communications and separated themselves from
the rest of the people and from the usual places of worship, a statute
was passed in 1662, that any Quakers who assembled to the number of five
or more under the pretense of unauthorized religious worship and any
person maintaining that taking an oath before a magistrate was unlawful
and contrary to the word of God or refusing to take a required oath was
to forfeit 5 pounds for the first offense or be imprisoned for 3 months
if he couldn't pay. For the second offense, the penalty was 10 pounds or
imprisonment for 6 months with hard labor. The third offense required
abjuring the realm or being transported to a plantation of the king
beyond the seas. The policy of Charles II was to allow Quakers to meet
undisturbed, to keep their hats on before magistrates, and to not come
to the parish church. But this policy was only partially adopted in the
country. From 1689, by statute, the Quakers were allowed to affirm or
declare instead of making the customary oath.
Many Presbyterians became Unitarians, who rejected the trinity of
"Father, Son, and Holy Ghost" and doubted the divinity of Jesus, but
accepted revelation. This statute was then passed in 1697: Any person
having been educated in or having at any time made profession of the
Christian religion who, by writing, printing, teaching, or advised
speaking, denies the Holy trinity, asserts that there is more than one
god, or that the Bible is not of divine authority, shall be disabled for
any ecclesiastical, civil, or military office. The penalty for a second
offense is being disabled from suing or pleading any action in any
court, being guardian of any child, or executor or administrator of any
estate, or receiving any legacy or deed of gift and imprisonment for
three years without bail or mainprize.
Catholicism was always disfavored. Catholic priests were executed with
little evidence. At times, Charles commuted the death penalty for them
to banishment. Sometimes there were effigies of the pope burned in the
streets. Such burnings were later banned. At times Charles allowed
Catholics to attend mass.
By statute of 1672, all civil and military officers and king's
officials must take the oaths of supremacy and allegiance and take the
sacrament of the established Church of England or be incapable of
office. They also had to make a declaration that they believed that
there is not any transubstantiation in the sacrament of the Lord's
Supper, or in the elements of bread and wine, when they were
consecrated. This is to prevent dangers from Papists. As of 1678, no one
may be a member of Parliament if he has refused to take the oaths of
allegiance and supremacy and the declaration that they were not
Catholic, did not adore the Virgin Mary or any saint, and did not go to
mass.
Papists were made to pay higher taxes. Every temporal and spiritual
person, corporation, and guild had to pay taxes to subsidize the king in
the amount of 2s.8d. for every pound's worth of personal property and
money. But Papists had to pay 5s.4d. for such. Persons and corporations
having land worth at least 20s. yearly, had to pay 4s. for every pounds'
worth. But Papists and aliens had to pay 8s. for such.
But Charles' successor, King James II was Catholic and gave many
offices to Catholics. This prompted a reaction against Papists and more
statutes restricting them. After James II was chased out of England, a
statute of 1688 required suspected Papists in London to make a
declaration that they were not Catholic, did not adore the Virgin Mary
or any saint, did not go to mass, or else stay ten miles outside of
London. Excluded were tradesmen and manual workers, who had only to
register. All Papists had to forfeit their arms and any horse worth more
than 5 pounds. Also, no King or Queen or spouse of such could be a
Papist, but had to make the same declaration as members of Parliament,
and join in the communion of the established Church of England. As of
1696, a person who was serjeant at law, counsellor at law, barrister,
advocate, attorney, solicitor, proctor, clerk, or notary had to take the
oath of supremacy and allegiance. As of 1698, Papists who kept a school
or tried to educate the young were threatened with perpetual
imprisonment. Also, Popish parents were prohibited from forcing their
children who were inclined towards Protestantism to become Catholic by
refusing them suitable maintenance. As of 1699, a reward of 100 pounds
was offered to any person who apprehended a Popish bishop, priest, or
Jesuit saying mass. Also, no Papist was allowed to buy land.
- Judicial Procedure -
As of 1679, no man could be held in prison but on a charge or
conviction of crime or for debt. Every prisoner on a criminal charge
could demand as a right from the Court of the King's Bench the issue of
a writ of habeas corpus which bound his gaoler to produce the prisoner
and the warrant on which he was imprisoned for review as to legality.
This forced trials to be speedy, which they had not hitherto been. Now
it was impossible for the Crown to detain a person for political reasons
in defiance of both Parliament and the courts, as Charles I had done.
The writ was suspended in times of war and domestic unrest: 1689, 1696,
1708.
In 1670, William Penn was arrested for sedition for delivering a sermon
in London, contrary to the statute that only the Church of England could
conduct meetings for worship. The jurors would not convict him, so were
gaoled and fined by the justices. The jurors filed a writ of habeas
corpus in the Court of Common Pleas, which held in their favor.
Thereafter the English jury had full independence to decide verdicts. By
court decision of 1679, jurors were held not to be responsible to the
justice for their verdict.
After 1688, hearsay was inadmissible as evidence, which Coke had
recommended. The old system of original writs was abandoned, and the
general concept or a wrong to person or property took its place.
A person who was sergeant at law, counselor at law, barrister,
advocate, attorney, solicitor, proctor [supervisor of students taking an
eexam], clerk, or notary in the courts had to take the required oaths of
allegiance and supremacy.
As of 1692, persons outlawed could appear by attorney as well as in
person to argue reversal of such outlawry, except in cases of treason
and felony.
As of 1696, persons accused of high treason where there might be
corruption of the blood or for misprison [concealing knowledge] of such
treason had to be taken before a grand jury for indictment within three
years of the offense. Those indicted or outlawed for such were given a
copy of the whole indictment, but not the names of witnesses, at least
five days before trial in order to prepare their defense. They could
have a copy of the panel of jurors at least two days before trial. They
could be represented in their defense by not more than two counsel
learned in the law and assigned by the court. Their counsel had free
access to them at all reasonable hours. They could make proof through
lawful witnesses under oath. In a trial of commoners for their lives, a
jury of twelve freeholders had to all agree on acquittal or conviction.
In a trial of a peer, the others peers in Parliament determined the
outcome by a majority vote.
Jurors were required to have at least 20 pounds income from freehold
land or rents in fee, fee tail, or for life. This increase in the
quality of the jury enabled it to better discern the issues in dispute.
Jury sympathy was determined by the sheriff who chose the jury. So if a
sheriff was popularly elected, as in London, he chose jurors who favored
individual and corporate liberty. If the king selected the sheriff, he
chose tories, who supported the Crown.
Issues of bastardy or lawfulness of marriage had to be tried by a jury.
The civil suit of trespass on the case branched into assumpsit [a
promise], trover [to recover goods converted to the use of another],
deceit, negligence, and libel and slander. The latter supplements bad
words punished by the local courts and defamation punished by the church
courts. Trover becomes the normal mode of trying the title to moveable
goods as the courts oblige the defendant to answer the charge of
conversion without permitting him to dispute the loss and finding of the
goods by the plaintiff.
This is an example of the initiation of a suit by a writ for trespass on
the case: The King to the sheriff &c. as in Trespass to show: wherefore
(e.g.:___) he fixed piles across the water of Plim along which, between
the Humber and Gaunt, there is a common passage for ships and boats,
whereby a certain ship, with thirty quarters of malt of him the said A,
was sunk under water, and twenty quarters of the malt of the price of
one hundred shillings perished; and other wrongs &c. as in trespass.
This is an example of a writ for trespass on the case in assumpsit: The
King to the sheriff greeting &c. as in Trespass to show: wherefore
whereas he the Said X undertook well and competently to cure the right
eye of the Said A, which was accidentally injured, for a certain sum of
money beforehand received, he the same X so negligently and carelessly
applied his cure to the said eye, that the said A by the fault of him
the said X totally lost the sight of the said eye, to the damage of him
the said A of twenty pounds, as he saith, and have there &c. wherefore
whereas he the said X undertook to make and build three carriages for
conveying victuals of him the said A to parts beyond the sea for a
certain sum of money beforehand received, within a certain term between
them agreed; he the said X did not take care to make and build the
carriages aforesaid within the term aforesaid, by which he the said A
hath wholly lost divers his goods and chattels, to the value of one
hundred marks, which ought to have been conveyed in the carriages
aforesaid, for want thereof to the great damage of him the said A as it
is said: and have there &c.
This is an example of a writ for case on indebitatus assumpsit: The
King to the sheriff &c. as in Trespass to show: for that, whereas the
said X heretofore, to wit (date and place) was indebted to the said A in
the sum of for divers goods wares and merchandises by the said A before
that time sold and delivered to the said X at his special instance and
request, and being so indebted, he the said X in consideration thereof
afterwards to wit (date and place aforesaid) undertook and faithfully
promised the said A to pay him the said sum of money when he the said X
should be thereto afterwards requested. Yet the said X, not regarding
his said promise and undertaking but contriving and fraudulently
intending craftily and subtly to deceive and defraud the said A in this
behalf, hath not yet paid the said sum of money or any part thereof to
the said A (although oftentimes afterwards requested). But the said X to
pay the same or any part thereof hath hitherto wholly refused and still
refuses, to the damage of the said A of ------ pounds as it is said. And
have you there &c.
This is an example of a writ for case for trover: The King to the
sheriff greeting &c. as in Trespass to show: for that, whereas the said
A heretofore to wit [date and place] was lawfully possessed as of his
own property, of certain goods and chattels to wit, twenty tables and
twenty chairs of great value to wit of the value of ___ pounds of lawful
money of great Britain; and, being so possessed thereof he the said A
afterwards, to wit (date and place aforesaid) casually lost the said
goods and chattels out of his possession: and the same afterward, to wit
(date and place aforesaid) came into the possession of the said X by
finding; Yet the said X well knowing the said goods and chattels to be
the property of the said A and of right to belong and appertain to him,
but, contriving and fraudulently intending craftily and subtly to
deceive and defraud the said A in this behalf, hath not as yet delivered
the said goods and chattels, or any part thereof, to the said A
(although often requested so to do) but so to do hath hitherto wholly
refused and still refuses; and afterwards to wit (date and place
aforesaid) converted and disposed of the said goods and chattels to his
the said X's own use, to the damage of the said A of ____ pounds as it
is said; and have you there &c.
The rigid writs with specific forms of action for common law cases
started to fall into disuse. Later, trespass on the case bifurcates into
misdemeanor and the tort of trespass.
Persons in prison on suspicion of treason could not be released on bail
as of 1688.
If one of several defendants of a case was acquitted, all defendants
recovered their costs from the plaintiffs. A person found guilty of
malicious prosecution recovered his costs from his accuser.
Mercantile cases were decided in light of mercantile custom rather than
according to the strict rules of the common law.
Merchants and traders could settle their trade disputes by arbitration,
which decision could be enforced by court order.
After the Restoration, all legal decisions of the Commonwealth and
Protectorate were confirmed subject to a right of appeal.
The Star Chamber was not restored, and Parliament assumed its control
of the press. The King's Bench succeeded to most of the Star Chamber's
jurisdiction. No longer could the Privy Council influence criminal cases
and the general supervision of legal processes through the Star Chamber.
The High Commission court was not restored, but church courts were, but
with depleted powers. They accepted subordination to the common law
courts. Because the church's administration was inefficient and corrupt
and its punishments inadequate, they gradually lost their power to the
common law justices and Justices of the Peace. They had virtually no
authority over laymen. They could still punish heresy, but lost
jurisdiction over the law of libel and slander, which then were
transformed by the civil courts, and over prostitution and scandalous
lewdness. Local ordinances for suppression of brothels, which were run
by madams, were founded on breach of the peace. In 1678, the death
sentence was taken away from the church courts. In 1697, church
sanctuary was abolished.
The county courts faded into insignificance, as the Justices of the
Peace took on more jurisdiction.
In 1668, new justices were issued patents with "at pleasure" instead of
"during good behavior" describing their tenure. Charles II and James II
frequently dismissed justices not favorably disposed to the Crown. In
1697, they were to have fixed salaries instead of the profits of
justice. By statute of 1701, justices' commissions were to be made with
an established salary determined by Parliament and a tenure to last
during good behavior. They could be removed only by the address of both
Houses of Parliament. This gave them independence from the king. Their
tenure lasted for the life of the monarch.
The chief justice could empower persons by commission to take
affidavits from people in the country for court proceedings in
Westminster.
Judgments were docketed so they could easily be found e.g. by heirs,
executors, administrators, purchasers, and mortgagees.
Court judgments and fines could be challenged for error only within
twenty years.
Court decisions were still appealable to the House of Lords. In 1668,
Skinner v. East India Company held that the House of Lords could not
exercise original jurisdiction in civil cases between commoners as it
had claimed, but retained its appellate jurisdiction. In 1675, the House
of Lords acquired the new judicial function of hearing appeals from the
Chancery Court by virtue of the case of Shirley vs. Fagg.
Any gaol keeper allowing a prisoner to escape in return for money lost
his office forever and had to forfeit 500 pounds.
The last burning of a woman as a penalty for an offense, which had been
only occasional, was in 1688.
The last bill of attainder, which condemned a person to death, occurred
in 1697.
The pillory was still in use.
Benefit of clergy was taken away from those who stole cloth or woolen
manufactures from their drying racks or who embezzled military stores or
ammunition worth at least 20s, or stole goods of over 5s. value from a
dwelling house with a person therein put in fear, a dwelling house in
daytime with a person therein, or by day or night a shop or warehouse.
A statute of 1661 gave jurisdiction to naval courts-martial to decide
cases at sea, e.g. insubordination; failure to fight the enemy, a
pirate, or rebels; not assisting a friend, mutiny, drunkenness, creating
a disturbance to protest the quality of the food, quarreling, sleeping
on watch, sodomy, murder, robbery, theft, and misdemeanors. Usually the
penalty was to be determined by the courts-martial, but sometimes death
was decreed.
In the American colonies, judges were still appointed by the royal
governors and paid by the local legislatures. They still served at the
pleasure of the king.
- - - Chapter 18 - - -
- Times: 1702-1776 -
Dress was plainer than before. Gentlemen wore white linen shirts;
waistcoats fitted at the waist and covering the trunk at least; long
lawn ties wound around the throat and tied in front with the tails
tucked in, knee-length coats that were wide in the skirts and in the
sleeve cuffs and having large gold, silver, or bronze buttons which
didn't reach to the buttonholes on the other side of the coat; knee
breeches of cloth, knitted wool, thread, and silk; and silk stockings
rolled up at the knee. Some shoes had metal buckles. Gold fobs with
watches or seals hung from the breeches pocket. The clothes were made of
silk, satin, or velvet and often in colors such as yellow, orange,
scarlet, blue, violet, pink, and dull slate, and decorated with gold and
silver trimmings. A slender sword was worn on the side. Short wigs,
often powdered with heavily scented white or gray wheat flour, with
rolls over the ears and hair tied at the back, were worn for formal
occasions. Wigs were made of human, horse, goat, or cow hair, or mohair,
worsted, silk, or wire. Sometimes feathers and cork were also used.
There were new colors and cuts of dress for every season. By 1750,
wearing a sword was just a symbol of gentility. Gentlemen often had
valets to help them dress. Ladies wore fitted full-length dresses held
out by hoops with shoulders hidden, sometimes with a laced bodice with
stays, and lace at the neck. The waistline fashion fluctuated between
high and low and in tightness. The dress could be brocade, satin,
velvet, silk, etc. Some put jewels in their hair and had high elaborate
hats with wide brims tilted forward. Hair was in ringlets at the side or
dressed close to the head with a small top knot covered with a laced
cap. They also wore wigs when dressing up, decorated with ribbons and
artificial flowers. Hooded cloaks were used outdoors and hoods were used
for sun or wind. They carried leather purses with gloves at elbow
length. Both gentlemen and ladies wore cosmetics and face patches and
used tooth powders, breath sweeteners, lip salves, and choice perfume.
Some had false teeth of bone or ivory wired into place. Both gentlemen
and ladies had accessories such as fans, handkerchiefs, head scratchers,
and elaborately designed snuff boxes, patch boxes, and perfume
containers. Both sniffed tobacco snuff but only men smoked it. They
walked with tall, elegant canes, and women also carried parasols. Hats
were made of wool and hair of beaver, rabbit, or camel. A popular hat
was three-cornered, and usually of beaver or dark felt. There was often
a rosette or such to show one's political opinion. Straw hats were worn
in the summer. There were ready-made clothes and shoes, especially for
children. Night gowns and night caps were worn to bed. About 1714,
umbrellas for rain were introduced. They were made of waxed silk or
taffeta. All but the poorest wore silk and lace. A prosperous countryman
wore riding clothes consisting of breeches and boots, cut-away coat, and
low top hat.
The highest class were the peers and peeresses of the House of Lords
and their spouses and families. They were the nobility and held the high
political offices, the high ranks in the army and navy, and owned large
estates, usually scattered over the country. Some were lawyers or
merchants. There was much intermarriage among these families. Indeed,
many a noble family had salvaged its fortunes by marriage to a London
merchant. The richest people in London were international merchants.
These high class families lived in mansions with four or five living
rooms, two to five acre gardens, and stables.
The next class were the gentry. Their family heads had land and were
often Justices of the Peace. They were sometimes members of the House of
Commons. The oldest son took over from his father, while the others had
to find a living such as in the church, law, medicine, or trade. The
gentry usually lived in mansions.
The old yeoman class was disappearing due to their selling their land
to larger landowners. Farming on a large scale was more productive.
The next class were the "middling sort". In this class were merchants,
lawyers, substantial tenant farmers, smaller freeholders, millers,
innkeepers, in town traders, middlemen, clothiers, ironmongers,
goldsmiths, grocers, linen drapers, apothecaries, school masters, clerks
and civil servants, customs and excise men, and .shopkeepers, who now
kept their wares inside and lived on the second floor. The town people
lived in town houses of two stories plus an attic.
The next class were the manual workers. These were wage earners or
independent craftsmen, farriers, rural smiths (who shod horses and made
stair rails, window-bars, torch extinguishers, lamp irons, bells, bolts,
hinges, locks, and fire-grates), sawyers, carpenters, joiners,
wheelwrights, nail makers, brick makers, plumbers (made lead cisterns,
kitchen sinks, rainwater heads, drain pipes and lead flats for houses
and ornaments), thatchers, spinners (silk, flax, hemp, wool, hair),
dyers, wool combers, weavers, shoemakers, hat makers, belt and buckle
makers, dressmakers, milliners (hats, caps, bonnets, cloaks, hoods,
muffs), feather workers, button makers, lace makers, steel pin makers,
brewers, cutlery makers, soap makers, candle makers (made from beeswax,
tallow, mutton-fat, or beef-drippings), comb makers, barber/hairdressers
(shaved, cut hair, made wigs and braids, and let blood), curriers,
leather workers, carpet weavers, paper makers, tin-plate makers,
printers, enamel workers, braziers and coppersmiths (made kettles,
saucepans, canisters, milk pails, lanterns, candle boxes, candle sticks,
and lamp lighters), basket makers, jewelers (made rings, perfumes, match
boxes, buckles, and tops of canes), watch and clock makers, type
founders, letter cutters, trunk and chest makers, cabinet makers,
saddlers, coach body builders, coach carriage makers, shipwrights, rope
makers, and sail makers. These workers typically worked in their stone
or brick houses in a rural setting, with gardens, a cow, a horse, pigs,
and poultry around them on 2-6 acres. They now ate white or wheaten
bread instead of rye bread, much meat and cheese, and drank tea. Working
men could now afford leather shoes. These people also worked in the
harvesting of grain. Some consolidation of work was starting. For
instance, the weaver, who had furnished himself with warp and weft,
worked it up, and brought it to market himself was being displaced by
weavers who worked under supervision for one merchant in a town on looms
the merchant had acquired. Many women and children were so employed. It
was not unusual for a man to work 13 hours a day for 6 days a week. The
wage earners were well above the subsistence level as long as trade was
good. Real wages were higher than at any time since the mid-1400s. But
eventually, as the employer came to realize how dependent the weaver had
become on him, wages tended to fall. In 1757 a Gloucester weaver, with
his wife to help him, could earn, when work was good, from 13s. to 18s.
a week. A few years later, he could only earn about 11s. A woman spinner
earned 10-15d. a day in 1764, but 3-5d. in 1780. In the same period,
men's wages fell from 17d. to 10d. a day. Only certain workers, whose
special occupation needed greater skill, e.g. the wool-combers, whose
wool was longer and of better quality than carded wool, and shearers,
were better paid. In 1770, wool combers made 13s. a week; their wage was
about the same all over the country because they traveled form town to
town in search of work and always supported each other. Also in 1770,
Newcastle miners earned 15s. a week, Sheffield cutlers 13s.6d. a week, a
Rotherham blacksmith 13s. a week, a furnace keeper at Horsehay about
12s. a week, a Staffordshire potter from 8-12s., a Witney blanket weaver
or a Wilton carpet weaver 11s. or more a week, a Manchester cotton
weaver from 7-10s. a week, and a Leeds cloth weaver about 8s. In this
class also were ploughmen, cowmen, dairymaids of the bigger farms. They
had cottages of wood, clay, and straw, with clay floors and low
ceilings, and a divided ground floor. A few had homes built of stone,
covered with slate or thatch.
Wages of industry were higher than those of agriculture. In 1770, a day
laborer earned 5-6s. a week in winter and 7-9s. in summer, without board
or lodging. In the short harvest time, he could earn 12s. a week.
Lastly were the mass of the population of London: hordes of laborers
who depended on casual employment and could be dismissed at will.
About half the population had no resources but their labor, which was
usually unskilled and lowly paid. In good times they had just enough to
feed themselves.
The gap between rich and poor became greater. Marriage remained a main
way to wealth. Also, one trained in the law could aspire to have a
successful career in high political office, which also brought wealth.
But there was less social mobility than in the previous century and many
landed families were consolidating their position. Industrialists who
had made a fortune for example, in steel, cotton, coal mining, and
porcelain, and merchants who wanted to turn themselves into landed
gentlemen found it very difficult to buy landed estates. Old dissenter
families, Quakers in particular, who were highly esteemed as
businessmen, as industrialists, and as model employers were excluded
from the Anglican landowning society. Rich tradesmen, artists, actors,
and writers found it difficult to buy substantial houses in the small
market towns and countryside because of an entrenched hierarchical
atmosphere there that didn't exist in London. The only gentlemen who
were in household service were librarians, tutors, or chaplains. They
ate with the family and did not consider themselves servants. Servants
were kept more at a distance. By the 1750s the servant class was clearly
defined. Their quarters were moved to the basement of the house and they
ate together in the kitchen. But some householders still had special
occasions when everyone ate together in the dining room, with the
servants at one end of the table. Servants had no right to free time or
to holidays. In 1767 about one tenth of the population in London had
servants. Even bricklayers and milk sellers had a servant. Most families
had just one servant. Most wives employed some other woman or child to
help in washing and scouring or in the minding of the children.
London had grown beyond the locations of its walls around the City.
London stretched ten miles along the Thames, and was three miles wide in
the center. On the east of the City was the port and industry. The west
side ended at Hyde Park and Regent's Park and was residential. In 1710
it was still possible to shoot woodcock in Regent Street. In 1750,
Westminster Bridge was opened. In 1760, the City walls were taken down
to ease congestion. The typical London house, usually brick, was on a
rectangular plan and had a basement to utilize all the space possible.
Walls were now more covered with hung damask, brocade, silk, and
wallpaper or plain paint rather than by wood paneling. There were
pictures on the walls. On the first floor was a front hall or parlor and
a back parlor. One of these parlor rooms was the most important room,
where the family entertained or spent leisure time. In it were sofas,
armchairs, and stools of mahogany or white gilded wood. They were
upholstered with damask or needlework. Imported mahogany was replacing
the favorite walnut that had replaced oak. Much wood was inlaid with a
variety of other types of woods. There was also a carved tripod table,
china table, card table, and perhaps bookcases and/or tea-table.
Furniture with original designs made by the cabinet-maker Chippendale
was available. His genius was in combining various motifs into one
harmonious design. Cabinet makers had to keep abreast of his standards
and to imitate them to conform with their customers' orders. Cabriole
legs with claw and ball feet came into fashion with Queen Anne about
1712. Between windows were tall mirrors. From 1760, glass chandeliers
hung from the ceiling to reflect candlelight coming from standing
candlesticks or glazed hanging lanterns with brass frames. The fireplace
had an elaborate mantel. The fire was kept going all day. It was lit by
a tender box, which was unreliable. An iron fireback was behind the
fire. The firewood was placed on andirons. Fire grates were used from
about 1712. At a corner of the building was added a closet. On the
second floor was a dining room, continuation of the closet below, and a
drawing room, dressing room, or bedroom, and perhaps a study or music
room with harpsichord. The dining room had a fireplace; curtains over
the windows looped up at the cornices; one or more mahogany tables; a
set of mahogany chairs with leather or hair- cloth seats fixed with
brass nails, perhaps with some sort of metal springing; two mahogany
sideboards with marble tops; cupboards or shelves or cabinets with
displays of china porcelain; a wine-cooler; a dumb-waiter; and a folding
leather screen. The china, which was displayed, was mostly imported, but
there was some English china. Later, there was famous Wedgwood stoneware
and pottery with bright, unfading glaze, or with dull black and red
surfaces, biscuit ware of pale green, blue or purple, upon which white
designs stood out like cameos. They came from the pottery factory at
Staffordshire founded by potter Josiah Wedgwood in 1769. There were
silver and pewter plates and serving pieces, silver candlesticks, silver
knives, spoons, and two and three pronged forks, glass saltcellars from
1724, and fingerbowls from which one rinsed one's mouth or cleaned one's
fingers after dinner which were made of glass from about 1760. On the
third floor were bedrooms and a nursery. In the bedrooms, there was a
high bed with curtains, canopies, piles of blankets and pillows, and
steps up to it; wardrobe; chairs; a hand wash stand; chests of drawers;
writing bureau; dressing table with a couple drawers and a mirror; swing
standing mirror; tin rush candle canister; and night commode. Children
and servants slept on low wooden bedsteads. Walls were stucco, a form of
cement that could be sculpted, or paneled or hung with silk and printed
paper. Servants, such as the page and footmen, slept in the attic and
perhaps in the kitchen or cellar. There was a wood staircase for the
family and a back staircase for the servants. The floors and stairs were
protected with carpeting. The kitchen was in the basement or in a
covered shed in the back. It had an open fire and a tin oven. The cold
water tap over the stone sink could supply cold water from a cistern in
the basement or hand-pumped to a roof cistern through wooden pipes at
very low pressure at stated hours for a fee. There was a wash shed in
back. Water pumped from the Thames into underground pipes was thus
distributed to householders three times a week. Some water came from a
well or spring, rain, and street water sellers. Water carriers were
still employed at set fees. Water was kept in lead cisterns. The wealthy
had basement cisterns filled by a commercial company. The free public
conduits of water were out of use by 1750. The front door of the house
had two strong bolts on the inside and a heavy chain. The windows could
be shuttered and barred. There were sash windows with cords and brass
pulleys. At the back of the house was a garden and perhaps a coach house
or stables. Landscaping to reproduce an idealized country scene replaced
formal gardens. Foreign trees were imported. The latrine was usually not
in the house, but somewhere in the back garden area. Under it was a
brick drain leading to a public sewer or to a cesspool. Smelly gases
arose from it. Sometimes people gathered such waste up to sell to
farmers returning home in an otherwise empty wagon. In 1760, patented
inside toilets began to be used. Each stood in its own room. A
watchmaker named Alexander Cummings patented in 1775 the water-closet,
which had a stink trap u-bend behind which, after flushing, water
resided and prevented the backflow of noxious sewer gas. Its pans and
overhead cisterns were made of pottery. They were supported by wood
structures. There were better cements for building. Chinese porcelain,
embroidery, and lacquer work were popular. Furniture and landscaped
gardens were often done in a Chinese style.
Many of the well-to-do now lived in districts without as well as within
the city limits. Many streets east of the City were named after the
governing families whose estates were there. Their mansions had interior
columns, archways, marble halls and fireplaces, carving, gilding, rich
colors, and high ornamented ceilings. They each had a picture gallery, a
library, stables with coachmen, grooms, and stableboys, and a still-room
for concocting liquors and cordials such as cherry brandy, sloe gin, and
elderberry wine. Medicine and scents were also developed in the
still-room. Hands were washed in bowls held up by wooden stands. There
were built-in bathtubs, but they usually lacked hot and cold running
water, so hot water usually had to carried up to them.
In these mansions, there were many private parties and balls. The
standard for politeness here was high and gentlemen were expected to
keep their tempers. This came about because impoliteness could easily
lead to a quarrel and then a duel. The pistol was replacing the sword as
the weapon of choice for duels. Good manners developed for all
occasions, with much less swearing and less rudeness. By gentlemen's
agreements, men did favors for each other without a monetary price, but
with the expectancy of a favor in return. The love of one man for
another was recognized as the highest and noblest of human passions.
People of high social standing left their country estates to spend the
winter season in their townhouses in London with its many recreations
such as receptions, routs ]fashionable gatherings], levies, masquerades,
balls, dinner parties, clubs, pleasure gardens, theaters, shops, shows,
taverns, and chocolate and coffee houses. Coffee houses provided Turkish
coffee, West Indian sugar and cocoa, Chinese tea, Virginia tobacco, and
newspapers. They were frequented by learned scholars and wits, dandies,
politicians, and professional newsmongers. Men of fashion often engaged
in wagers and gambling at their clubs and coffee houses. There were
wagers on such matters as the longevity of friends and prominent people,
fertility of female friends, wartime actions, and political matters.
Gentlemen often had valets. Carriage by sedan-chair was common. In 1776,
Buckingham House was bought as a palace for the royal couple.
Physicians and lawyers lived in two-story brick mansions with attics
and sash windows that could be lifted up and down with the help of a
pulley. They had rectangular wood panes each with a sheet of glass cut
from a circle of blown glass. The old blown glass was not regular, but
had a wrinkled appearance. The center of each pane of glass was thicker
with a knot in the middle left from the blow pipe. In front of the house
were railings which supported two lanterns at the doorway.
People from different parts of London differed in ways of thinking,
conversation, customs, manners, and interests. For instance there were
sections where sailors lived, and where weavers, watchmakers, and cow
keepers each lived and worked. There were many specialized craftsmen who
worked with their own tools in their own shops or houses, for some
superior who had contact with the market and who supervised the final
processes of manufacture. These included the goldsmiths, upholsterers,
coach makers, saddlers, and watchmakers, all of whom had many
dependents. The watchmakers had specialists making wheels, pinions,
springs, hands, dials, chains, keys, caps, and studs in their own
houses. The type of industrial organization most common in London was
that in which work was given out to be done in the homes of the workers:
the putting out system. Some industries, such as watchmaking, silk
weaving, and shoemaking were on both a putting out system and a system
of an apprenticeship to journeymen working on piece work. Shoes were
made to order and ready made. The customer was measured in a shop, the
clicker cut out the upper leathers, which were given to the closer to be
closed, and then to the maker for the sole and heel to be put on.
Another class of shoemaker worked alone or with an apprentice in a
garret, cellar, or stall, using pieces of leather cut out for him by the
currier or leather cutter. London industries included the making of
bread, beer, spirits, and vinegar; sugar refining; tobacco refining and
snuffmaking; spinning and/or weaving of woolens, worsteds, silk ribbons,
tape, and cloth; and making printed calico, clothes, linens, laces,
tassels, fancy embroidery, stays, stockings, hats, shoes, leather goods
such as boots, shoes, hats, gloves, harnesses, and saddles, jewelry,
glass, candles, tapestry, musical instruments, cutlery, furniture,
paint, varnish, paper, tools, swords, guns, heavy artillery, ships,
sails, rope, carriages, precious and base metalwares such as brass and
pewter ware, and printer's ink and glue; printing; and publishing.
Surgical instruments made included straight and curved knives and
probes, lancets, scissors, spatulas, trepans (for cutting bone), and
cupping cases. Optical instruments made included eyeglasses, telescopes,
and microscopes. In 1727 eyeglasses were held in place by frames that
went over the ears, which replaced unreliable cords over the ears and
leather straps tied behind one's head. Also made were nautical
instruments, quadrants, sundials, sectors, globes, scales, model solar
systems, and air pumps.
In London, the old distinction between craftsmen and laborers was
blurred by the existence of trades which employed workmen under a
skilled foreman instead of journeymen who had served an apprenticeship.
These trades were, on a large scale, new. Among the most important of
these trades were the distillers and brewers of liquors, the
tobacconists and snuff makers, the sugar refiners and soap boilers, the
vinegar makers, and makers of varnish, glue, printers' ink, and colors.
The latest chemical theories and the chemical explanation of dying
brought about the invention of new colors and new processes in dying
cloth. Workers in these trades were considered as laborers, but their
wages were high and their positions relatively secure. They learned
their jobs by doing them. The older trades of a similar character, such
as tallow melters and chandlers, wax chandlers, fellmongers [removed
hair or wool from hides in preparation for leather making], and the
tanners, employed journeymen.
The skilled artisan who worked at home and either made goods for a
master or sold to the trade verged into the shopkeeping class. On the
other hand, the lowest type of shopkeeper, the chandler, the dealer in
old iron, the tripe shop, the milk retailer, the keeper of a cook shop
or a green cellar belonged to the class of casual and unskilled labor.
The lowly chimney sweep, paid 6d. a day, served an apprenticeship as a
boy, and then was his own master.
The watermen and lightermen, by virtue of their fellowship and their
apprenticeship and often the ownership of a boat, belonged to the class
of skilled laborers. Craftsmen in the building trades and paviours had
their laborers as smiths had their hammermen to do the heavy work at
laborers' pay. The street ragpickers, the ballad sellers, and the match
sellers belonged to the class of beggars.
There were buildings for boiling and distilling turpentine, for casting
brass or iron, and for making glass for chemical works for sale.
Working women in London in 1750 were employed in domestic service: 25%,
nursing and midwifery: 12%, cleaning and laundry: 10%, vitiating: 9%,
shopkeeping: 8%, hawking: 6%, and textiles: 5%. Those employed in
domestic service were mostly young women who later married. Some women
were schoolteachers, innkeepers, or manufacturers, which were
middle-class employments. Many women in the realm engaged in a variety
of occupations from fanmaking and hairdressing to catering, and, as
widows, often carried on their husband's trade, including bookselling,
hatmaking, building or ironmongery.
Although shops still had small frontages of about 15 feet and the
windows had small panes of bottle glass which partly obscured the view
of the goods, there were magnificent shops with large windows displaying
fine goods. There were bookshops, and print shops with prints of
political satire with caricatures. The shops were generally open six
days a week from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m., and years later to 10 p.m. In 1675
Josiah Wedgwood opened a showroom in London for his high quality pottery
from Staffordshire. Consumption was on a mass scale, many people buying
what they wanted instead of just what they needed. There were
circulating libraries, public concert halls, and professional boxing
matches. At coffee houses, chocolate houses, and taverns, people played
at dice and cards, gambled, talked politics and read daily newspapers,
in which there was advertising, reports of marriages and deaths, grain
prices, and book reviews. Different professions and classes and groups,
such as the whigs, the tories, classical scholars, scientists,
clergymen, intellectuals, actors, writers, and journeymen of particular
crafts, had their favorite meeting places. Coffee houses reflected the
character of their neighborhoods. They acted as postal centers, lost
property offices, business addresses, physicians' consulting rooms,
lawyers' and merchants' businesses, matrimonial agencies, masonic
lodges, auction rooms, and gambling dens. Some retained a supply of
prostitutes. Many taverns had a rentable private room for the better-off
to drink wine, have meals, meet friends, gamble, do business, and hold
meetings of societies and clubs, especially political clubs. From this
beginning sprang private clubs such as the Blue Stocking Club in 1750
and the Literary Club in 1764, Lloyd's for sale and insurance of ships
in 1771, and the stock exchange in 1773. The Blue stocking Club was
established by women who organized conversational parties with guests of
intellect and wit. There was opera, playhouses, concerts usually with
Georg Handel's oratorios such as The Messiah or the foreigners Bach and
Haydn, tea-gardens, fire works, balls, masquerades, wax works, beer
shops, and bawdy houses, except on Sunday. There were straight plays,
comic operas, and melodramas. Three-dimensional sets replaced the two-
dimensional backdrop. Plays containing thinly veiled satires on
politicians were becoming popular. Some plays had crude and licentious
material. Theaters still shared a close association with brothels.
Unlicensed theaters were closed down by a statute of 1737, but most came
to acquire patronage to get a license. This shaped the development of
drama in London for a century.
The Beggar's Opera depicting an immoral society unable to master its
bandits was written by John Gay as a powerful attack on a government
which most of London hated. With its many ballads it became very
popular. One such ballad goes:
"Through all the employments of life Each neighbor abuses his
brother; Whore and Rogue they call Husband and Wife; All
professions be-rogue one another. The Priest calls the Lawyer a
cheat, The Lawyer be-knaves the Divine; And the Statesman,
because he's so great, Thinks his trade as honest as mine."
Another is:
"A Fox may steal your hens, sir, A Whore your health and pence,
sir, Your daughter rob your chest, sir, Your wife may steal your
rest, sir, A thief your goods and plate. But this is all but
picking, With rest, pence, chest and chicken, It ever was decreed,
sir, If Lawyer's hand is fee'd, sir, He steals your whole
estate."
The Thames was crowded with sailing boats and with a line of boats
waiting to unload. Foreign and native ships lined the river banks in
rows. Theft of cargo from docked ships was still a problem and pirates
were still executed at low tide on gallows. Londoners went to the
bridges crossing the Thames to breathe fresh air. London air was so
smoky and polluted by coal-burning in kitchens and factories that it
gave a cough to newcomers. The river was so polluted by the sewers by
1760 that all the swans and most of the fish had disappeared. A Mansion
House was built for the Mayor in 1753. The king's zoo had ten lions, one
panther, two tigers, and four leopards. Deer hunting in Hyde Park was
now confined to its northwest corner, which was enclosed for the king,
who occasionally hunted there. Elsewhere in the park were laid out walks
and fountains. Gardens were now natural instead of formal. The streets
were usually crowded with people and traffic. Many people traveled by
sedan chair. On the streets were barrows with goods such as lace,
threads, fruits, and chickens; beggars, ballad singers, musicians,
bands, street dancers, apple women, piemen, muffin men, fruit sellers,
nut sellers, pudding sellers, milk maids selling milk from buckets, milk
sold directly from the cow, vendors of asses' milk, hawkers, newspaper
boys, scavengers with carts, postal collectors, lamplighters on their
ladders, wenches, chimney sweeps, rat catchers, pick pockets, swaggering
bravados, strolling strumpets, brawling watermen, card sharps,
overdressed beaux, dancing dogs, and acrobatic monkeys. Each trade had
it own call. Billingsgate open-air market was now exclusively for the
sale of fish. Small tradesmen such as dairymen, butchers, bakers,
fishmongers, and chandlers delivered to regular customers food bought
from distributing centers. Workers by necessity lived near their place
of work because there was no cheap transport and walking through the
streets after dark was unpleasant and dangerous. Hours of work for most
craftsmen was from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m., six days a week.
It was common for working class families in London to live in a single
room of their house and rent the rest, furnished, to people of different
degrees of prosperity and even of different social grades. Servants and
apprentices slept in the kitchen, the shop, or the garret. The very
poor, such as casual laborers and street sellers, silk winders,
charwomen, usually lived in damp cellars subject to floods from
excessive rain, or in cold and windy garrets. Tenancy was usually on a
weekly basis because of the general uncertainty of life and trade.
Conditions were so cramped that cabinet makers made beds which
masqueraded in the day time as tables, bureaus, cupboards, or bookcases.
The very poor slept in common lodging houses, sleeping uncovered on the
floor, twenty to a room. Some poor families slept in small hovels made
of mud and straw with their pigs, domestic fowl, dogs, and even asses
and horses. Homeless children slept on the streets. All classes lived so
much at coffee houses, alehouses or clubs, which they often used as
their addresses, that house room was a secondary consideration. There
was an alehouse on almost every street in London to provide cheap food
and beer, lodging, employment information, credit, newspapers, tobacco,
and meeting places for tradesmen. Some alehouses were recognized
employment agencies for certain trades, such as the hatters, smiths,
carpenters, weavers, boot and shoe makers, metal workers, bakers,
tailors, plumbers, painter and glaziers, and bookbinders. They were
often run by one of the trade, retired or otherwise. Some alehouses
catered to criminals and prostitutes. For cheap and simple eating there
were chophouses, cookshops, and beef steak houses.
There were about 10,000 English immigrants a year to London in the
1700s. They were mostly young people. London needed many immigrants
because of its high death rate. Over twenty London people a week died
from starvation alone; they were mostly women. Only about one-fourth of
London's population had been born in London. Especially welcome were
sturdy country people for heavy manual labor, the better educated boys
from the north for shops and offices, and the honest country people, as
contrasted with London's poor, for domestic service. Girls mostly looked
for domestic service, but were sometimes made the mistress of the
housekeeper or steered into prostitution as soon as they entered the
city. An ambitious young man would seek an apprentice job, work hard,
flatter his master, and try to marry his master's daughter. It was
easier to find a place to live in London than in the villages, though
there was much overcrowding. Many shopkeepers and workshop owners in
London were involved in leasing, purchases, and contracts.
Queen Anne was authorized by Parliament to build about 50 more churches
in London and Westminster and their suburbs, to be paid for by a coal
tax on imports into the port of London. Churches in London were to be
rebuilt with money paid by funeral rates, rates for tolling the bells,
and rates for the use of palls [altar cloths]. Queen Anne also
appropriated all her revenues from the first fruits and tenths of
ecclesiastical benefices: 16,500 pounds, to the clerical poor in 1704.
There were fewer quarrels among passersby on the London streets; men
were less likely to wear their swords. But there were fist fights by
common men which gathered crowds and occasioned betting. Most crime was
petty theft, but mobs and riots were frequent, as there were no police.
Watchmen and constables were often old and physically incapacitated. The
watchmen were householders taking their turn. This duty of householders
watching the streets had evolved from the ancient obligation of wards to
provide men to guard the walls at night. But few wanted these jobs by
which they could offend their neighbors. Many citizens paid a rate to be
excused from watch and ward duty. Constables were often tavern keepers.
Many riots were started when penal laws against the Catholics were
repealed. They began with the cries of "no popery", but then targeted
rich men's houses. Mobs sacked and pillaged at will, burned houses, and
flung open the prisons to increase their numbers. There were political
riots between Tories and Whigs. Working men still used violence to
protect their livelihoods, such as destroying the lodgings and public
houses of cheap immigrant labor such as the Irish. The stocking-knitters
destroyed stocking-knitting frames so that the number of apprentices who
could be employed would not reach the limit specified by its guild's
regulations. Parish workhouse children also provided a cheap supply of
labor which forced down the wages of the stocking knitters. In 1720 a
statute banned wearing of calico after mobs tore calico garments off
women. In 1765, thousands marched on Parliament and persuaded it to ban
foreign silk imports. But when a mob destroyed engine-looms, the army
was used against the rioters and two of them were hanged. This was the
last major mob action. Around the Tower, there were still demagogues
standing on upturned carts haranguing passing crowds. The Tower area was
a favorite place for demonstrators, and for unemployed and dissatisfied
workmen, particularly coal heavers and underpaid seamen protesting their
low pay and poor living conditions. There was more crime, especially at
night, now with organized bands of men or gangs of children. Bounty
hunters made a lot of money catching offenders. In 1736, to deter the
frequent robberies, burglaries, and other felonies at night, many glass
lamps were set up in places determined by the mayor. They had to burn
from sunset to sunrise. In 1736, a lighting rate was imposed by the City
to pay for all night lighting all year by hired lamplighters. Anyone
breaking or damaging the lights of London would forfeit 40s. for the
first offense, 50s. for the second offense, and 3 pounds for the third
offense. The aldermen had to contract to pay for lighting, trimming,
snuffing, cleaning, supplying, maintaining, and repairing them. To pay
for this system, citizens paid according to the amount of rent their
holdings were worth. If they didn't pay, they could not vote.
Bad areas of thieves and prostitutes and the slums east of the City
were gradually being replaced by warehouses and offices. In 1757, London
Bridge was widened and the houses were cleared off it. There were lanes
for carriages in the middle and for pedestrians on each side. Its arches
were also widened to make the passage of vessels underneath easier.
Lights were put on it to be lit all night. And watchmen were put on it
for protection and safety of passengers. This was paid for by tolls of
1/2 d. per horse, 1d. per carriage, and 2d.-1s. for vessels with goods
passing underneath. About 1762, a body of enterprising citizens secured
private acts of Parliament which allowed them to levy a house tax in
return for providing paving and lighting, which then greatly improved,
as did sanitation. Sidewalks were raised between the street proper and
the buildings, replacing the protective posts which had lined the roads.
Flat stones were put in place of the pebbles on the roadway. Signs
hanging out from stores, which had blocked the sunlight, were placed
flat on the front of the buildings. This also made the streets more
airy. The buildings were given numbered addresses and street names were
placed on buildings. Loading and unloading could not exceed one hour.
Nuisances like empty carts could be removed. Cranes used in warehouses
had to be stored in unobtrusive places. One who drove on the foot
pavement had to forfeit 10s. for the first offense, 20s. for the second
offense, and 40s. for other offenses. Wells were dug and pumps erected
for watering the streets. Pavements were to be repaired on complaint.
Dust boxes and dust holes were built and had to be used for refuse
awaiting pickup by the raker or else forfeit 10s. In 1762, the system of
having every man responsible for cleaning the street in front of his
door, which occasioned piles of rubbish in the central troughs of the
streets waiting for the next rain to be washed away, was abandoned. But
house occupants were required to keep the sidewalk in front of their
house clean or else forfeit 2s. If one broke a light, he had to pay
damages if it was accidental, and also 20s. if willful. Wards were to
choose substantial inhabitants to be collectors for a year at a time to
collect the rates, which were not to exceed 1s.6d. per pound of rents.
If one declined to be a collector, he had to forfeit 50 pounds. There
were special stands for hackney coaches, which were 12s.6d. for a day of
twelve hours. Their regulations were extended to Sundays.
In London, the normal system of building was for builders to buy up
leases, put up a new building, and sell it before the lease became due.
The rules for party walls between buildings were made more stringent: 2
1/2 bricks thick in cellar, 2 bricks thick to the garret floor, and 1
1/2 bricks above the roofs or gutters. They had to be made of brick or
stone. In 1772, rain water from roofs had to be carried to the streets
in lead or other pipes that were affixed against the side of the
building. In 1774, iron, copper, or other pipe or funnel for conveying
smoke or steam were not to be near any inside timber, or in front of
most any building or next to any public street, square, or court.
In the 1720s firefighters had to fill a tank on a wagon by hand with
buckets. On top of the tank was a hose that could spray water high.
London parishes were authorized to place upon the water pipes
underground stop-blocks of wood with a plug and firecocks to go into
such pipe at various distances so that there would be no loss in time in
digging down to the pipes to get water to fight fires. Parishes were
required to keep at known places, ladders and a large engine and a hand
engine to throw up water to extinguish fires including one leather hose
with socket fitting the plug or firecock, so that buckets would not be
needed. The Sun Insurance Company was incorporated for fire insurance in
1711. Insurance offices were authorized to employ watermen with poles,
hooks, and hatchets to be always ready at a call to extinguish fires.
No more than 12 sacks of meal, 12 quarters of malt, 750 bricks, or 1
chalder of coal per load on wagons or carts with wheels bound with
[narrow] iron tire are allowed within ten miles of London or
Westminster, or else forfeit one horse. This is to prevent decay of the
roads.
For every wagon and cart in London, there must be a person on foot to
guide it to prevent the maiming, wounding, and killing of people,
especially the old and children, when drivers ride on their wagons and
carts. Later, it was required that carts must display the name of the
owner and be registered. Still later, there was a penalty of 10s. for
not having a person on foot to guide any cart. Later still, in 1757, if
a new owner of a cart did not put his name thereon, he had to forfeit
40s., and the cart and horse could be seized and sold to pay the
forfeiture. Persons willfully obstructing passage on streets with empty
carts or barrels or pipes shall forfeit 5-12s. or do hard labor up to
one month. The justices of London assessed rates and made regulations
for carriage of goods. Certain houses and buildings were bought and
pulled down to widen several streets, lanes, and passages.
In 1774, persons driving cattle in London, whose negligence or improper
treatment of such cattle cause them to do mischief shall forfeit 5-20s.
or else go to a House of Correction for up to one month or be publicly
whipped.
The roads around London were neither very attractive nor very safe.
Along them was land covered with water from drains and refuse and dung
heaps. Hogs were kept in large numbers on the outskirts and fed on the
garbage of the town. Smoking brick kilns surrounded a great part of
London. In the brickyards vagrants lived and slept, cooking their food
at the kilns.
Queen Anne's drinking of tea made it a popular drink, but it was still
expensive. This habit improved health because to make tea, the water had
to be boiled before drunk. Breakfast included tea and bread and butter,
and later toast with melted butter. The rich also had coffee and
chocolate. The morning newspaper was often read at breakfast. The chief
dinner dishes were roast beef, roast mutton, boiled beef or pork, with
puddings and vegetables. Roast meat was still the basic diet of town and
country gentlemen. There were also fowls, tripes, rabbits, hares,
pigeons, and venison. Many elaborate sauces were made. The national dish
was the pudding, a compound of steak, kidney, larks, and oyster. Drinks
included ginger beer, lemonade, barley water, coffee, chocolate, tea,
and foreign wine. Port from Portugal was introduced about 1703, and rum
about 1714. Rum, made from sugar, first became popular as a medicine,
well-whisked with butter. Beer was drunk by the poorer and middle
classes. The poor could afford very little meat now, unlike 200 years
ago. Their standard fare was cheese, bread, and tea, the latter of which
was usually from used tea leaves bought from rich houses.
Households were smaller; a peer had a household of about 25-50. The
proportion of women in a household grew to one-third to one-half. Dinner
guests sat and were served in order of rank, with gentlemen on one side
of the table and ladies on the other. Later, a fashion came in to sit
alternately by sex. Dinner was in several courses and lasted a few
hours. Toasts might be made. It was bad manners to put one's elbows on
the table, to sniff the food, to eat too slowly or too quickly, to
scratch, spit, or blow one's nose at the table, or to pick one's teeth
with a toothpick before the dishes were removed. After dinner, the men
drank, smoked, and talked at the table. There was a chamber pot under
the sideboard for their use. Politics was a popular subject. The women
talked together in the drawing room. Later, the men joined the women for
tea and coffee. The evening often finished with card games, reading
newspapers, verse-making, fortune-telling, walks in the garden,
impromptu dancing, perhaps gambling, and supper.
The nobility and gentry became more mobile and now mixed together at
parties. At these afternoon parties, there were a variety of
simultaneous activities, instead of everyone participating in the same
activities together as a group. Guests could choose to engage in
conversation, news, cards, tea-drinking, music, dancing, and even go
into supper at different times. Sometimes a man other than her husband
escorted a lady to a party. Having lovers outside marriage was socially
accepted if discrete.
Single women were discouraged from thinking of their independent status
as desirable. Their single status was to be regarded as unfortunate.
Weddings took place in public in church instead of privately. There were
banns, or announcements, publicized before the wedding so that anyone
who knew of a reason why the marriage should not take place could speak
up. Brides wore a white silk or satin dress with a train. Over one third
of brides who were capable of having children were already pregnant when
they married. In 1753 a marriage statute required licenses to marry, the
consent of parents or guardians for minors to marry, the calling of
banns, and four weeks residence in the parish where the license was
given by bishop or other authority. These requirements addressed the
problems of the kidnapping of heiresses, prostitutes trapping unwary
youths after getting them drunk, and priests performing marriages
clandestinely and not in church, which required banns. Two witnesses to
the marriage were required to sign a certificate of marriage, which was
then to be registered in the parish books. Manufactured goods relieved
ladies from baking of bread, brewing, and spinning. So they often
visited with friends, wrote letters, embroidered, and supervised the
servants.
Funerals ceremonies started with socializing at the house with
refreshments, then going in a procession to the church for burial, and
finally returning to the house for more socializing.
It was possible for a woman-covert to be seized of land in fee simple
or in tail general or special to her separate use, free from control or
intermeddling of her husband.
Houses were warmed in winter by burning coal. Moderate homes had
tent-beds in use, with which cloth was hung on all four sides of the bed
from a light iron framework above the bed. The beds were warmed with a
warming pan heated in a fire before use. There were often bed bugs and
fleas. Everyone wore nightcaps to bed. Pewter tableware was used, but
the poor used tinware instead. Copper, brass, and iron pots and pans
were increasingly common.
Most towns had a regular market once or twice a week. In them, street
cleaning was still a responsibility of individual householders. Water
was still obtained from wells and pumps. There was no municipal
government as such. Public works were done by special commissions set up
for particular purposes, such as lighting, cleaning and paving the
streets, night watchmen, traffic regulation, removing nuisances, and
improving local amenities. Large towns had hospitals for the poor. In
the larger manufacturing towns, there were literary and philosophical
societies for debates and discussions. These put together libraries for
use of their members. Also in these large towns, there were booksellers'
shops, printing houses, weekly newspapers, playhouses, concerts, and
horseracing courses, the latter of which was mostly patronized by
gentlemen. Some private citizens of various towns followed the example
of London and obtained from Parliament the right to levy a house rate
for paving and lighting.
Towns tended to be known for certain specialties, such as seaside
holiday resorts, spas like Bath, cathedral towns, fashionable shopping
for gentry, and towns with certain industries like glass and china
manufacture, pinmaking, pottery, tanning, manufacture of linen, silk,
cotton, and the knitting trade. Certain towns were famous for certain
varieties of wool cloth. Before 1750, a town with more than 5,000
inhabitants was considered a large town. Shopkeeping was supplanting
fairs and markets. Certain industries were done on a large scale and
required workers to be at the same site, e.g. brewing and distilling;
building ships; printing fustians; making paper, soap from animal fat or
candles; coal mining, iron production, mining and smelting of tin and
copper, refining of salt, and digging of clay. Certain other industries
also required some kind of power or team work for their production, e.g.
refining sugar; finishing cloth; making bricks; glassmaking; manufacture
of ropes and sails, and processing of copper and brass into rods and
sheets. Often the manufacturer's house was surrounded by the many
cottages of his workers. There the wife and children usually were busy
carding and spinning. Putting out work and subcontracting were
widespread and created many small-scale capitalists. Workers' hours were
typically 6 a.m. to 8 p.m.
Though grammar schools were endowed for the education of local poor
boys, they sought fee-paying sons of gentlemen. They taught arithmetic
as well as reading and writing. Translation and reading of Latin was
still important, e.g. Aesop's Fables, Virgil, Cicero's Letters, Caesar's
Commentaries, Horace, Pliny, Juvenal, Ovid, Livy, and Plautus. The "Eton
Grammar" book replaced the "Royal Grammar" as the standard for Latin and
English grammar. The boys lived in boarding houses superintended by
"dames" or older boys. There were usually two boys to a bed. There was
bullying and initiation ceremonies such as tossing small boys up from a
held blanket or having younger boys run naked in the snow. There were
occasional rebellions by the boys and fights with the townspeople.
Flogging with a birch or caning with a rod until blood was drawn from
the bare buttocks was the usual punishment. There were some national
boys' boarding schools such as Eton, Winchester, and Westminster. In
these schools, boys could mix with sons of rich and powerful people,
thus establishing important connections for their adult life. But there
was more bullying of small boys by large boys at these schools and the
smaller boys became menial servants of their seniors. Occasionally there
were student riots. However, most grammar schools were not residential.
Because the grammar schools were limited to boys, many boarding schools
for girls were established. Tradesmen's daughters were often sent to
these to learn to act like ladies. Most upper class girls were taught,
at home or at school, English, writing, arithmetic, drawing, courtly
dancing, needlework, music, and French. Dissenting academies were
established for those who did not pass the religious tests of the
grammar schools. Pencils were now in use.
Sons of gentlemen usually took "The Grand Tour" of the continent before
going to university. These tours lasted for months or years, and always
included Paris and a Protestant French university. The students went in
groups with tutors. The chief purpose was now cultural, instead of
practical. On these tours there was often misbehavior such as drinking
and fighting. In 1720, Travelers Checks were developed for those on the
Grand Tour.
The universities began to teach science. The new professorships at
Cambridge University were: chemistry, astronomy, experimental
philosophy, anatomy, botany, geology, geometry, and Arabic. Ideas in
geology challenged the Bible's description of the creation of the world
and there was a controversy over the origin and nature of fossils. In
1715, a large pointed weapon of black flint was found in contact with
the bones of an elephant in a gravel bed in London. Oral and written
examinations began to replace disputations. Few professors lectured.
Dissenters were excluded from universities as well as from offices and
grammar schools. Oxford and Cambridge Universities were open only to
members of the Church of England, so other universities were established
for dissenters. They taught geography, mathematics, science, physics,
astronomy, mechanics, hydrostatics, and anatomy. At Oxford and Cambridge
and Harvard Universities, students in science were relegated to
different instructors, buildings, and degree ceremonies than students in
literature, who often looked down on them as socially and intellectually
inferior.
The Inns of Court had ceased to provide residence. The period of
education at law school at the Inns of Court was now reduced in 1760
from seven to five years for ordinary students and to three years for
graduates of Oxford or Cambridge Universities. The textbooks were:
"Doctor and Student" by Christopher Saint-German in 1518 and "Institutes
of the Laws of England" by Thomas Wood in 1720. Most landed families
tried to ensure that at least one member of the family in each
generation was educated at the Inns of Court after going to Oxford or
Cambridge. In 1739, attorneys formed a "Society of Gentlemen
Practitioners in the Courts of Law and Equity". In order to earn a
living, most attorneys had to attach themselves to some great patron and
serve his interests. So it was hard for an ordinary person to find an
impartial attorney or to find any attorney willing to contest a powerful
family.
The first encyclopedia came into existence in 1728. In 1740 was the
first public circulating library in London. Samuel Johnson put together
the first dictionary in 1755. It standardized spelling and
pronunciation. Then came dictionaries for the arts, sciences, and
commerce. There were histories with political biases such as the Earl of
Clarendon's "History of the Great Rebellion". Alexander Pope wrote witty
satire on human faults of the period such as "Rape of the Lock". Daniel
Defoe wrote "Robinson Crusoe", "Moll Flanders", and "The Poor Man's
Plea" protesting disparity of judicial treatment of rich and poor, for
instance for drunkenness. Henry Fielding wrote one of the first novels:
"Tom Jones". Joseph Addison wrote essays on social behavior. Jonathan
Swift wrote the satire on the times, "Gulliver's Travels". Samuel
Richardson wrote some of the first novels, such as "Clarissa"; he wrote
on values such as religious faith, moral virtue, and family closeness.
Catherine Macaulay started writing her weighty and impressive "History
of England". Many schoolmistresses wrote textbooks on a variety of
subjects. Poet and essayist Hester Chapone wrote "Letters on the
Improvement of the Mind". Elizabeth Carter wrote poetry and translated
Greek works; her work was published in "The Gentleman's Magazine".
Hannah More wrote the play "The Inflexible Captive". The diaries of
Caroline Girle Powys Daniel told of her extensive travels in the nation,
and the various life styles of polite society she visited. Defoe's
newspaper was the first great political journal. He claimed that the
people have a right to control the proceedings of Parliament. Essayists
like Richard Steele, who introduced the periodical essay in his
newspaper, and Joseph Addison, in his newspaper, wrote in a
conversational style about the social life around them and the thoughts
and behavior of common men and women in a light and good-humored way.
They separated humor from the old-style farce and gave it taste and
gentility. And with this came a moderation, reserve, and urbanity in
matters of religion, politics, and society. Religious issues even became
a matter of indifference. Fairies, witches, astrology, and alchemy were
no longer taken seriously by educated men. Tales of fairies, witches,
ghosts, and miracles were deemed appropriate for children. Childrens'
stories were becoming a distinct literary form. Nursery rhymes included
"Hush-a-bye baby on the tree top" and the five little piggies. "Mother
Goose's Melody" was published in 1765. There were picture books for
children such as Cinderella, Red Riding Hood, and Sleeping Beauty.
Craftsmen made small models of their wares, such as dolls' china, dolls'
furniture, silver, and flat lead soldiers. Babies had rattles and
teething rings.
In 1710 copyrights for books was given for 14 years, renewable for
another 14 years. Alexander Pope's translation of the Iliad and Odyssey
made him financially independent. He collected advance payments from
subscribers who would be listed in the book. A new book industry emerged
in London with booksellers as master manufacturers who employed writers,
authors, copyers, and subwriters. Booksellers sold books of sermons,
histories, political and literary satires, literary criticism, and
dictionaries. There was a growing popularity of novels. Books were
expensive to buy. Regular magazines on the new and strange were
published. There were three daily, six weekly, and ten thrice yearly
newspapers. Newspapers increased in number from 8 founded in 1700 to a
total of 25 in 1727. By 1753, there were over a million throughout the
country. Workmen usually began their day by reading a newspaper at a
coffee house.
Authors of books which have been registered at the Stationers Hall had
the sole liberty of printing and reprinting such book for 14 years.
Others who printed or sold or published such forfeited the books and
paid one penny for each sheet found in their custody, 1/2 to the Queen
and 1/2 to the suer. The printer had to give a copy of each book printed
to the Company of Stationers, the Royal Library, the libraries of the
Oxford and Cambridge universities, and certain other libraries.
In 1775, the two universities in England, the four universities in
Scotland, and the several colleges of Eton, Westminster, and Winchester
were given in perpetuity a copyright in books given or bequeathed to
them.
The British Museum was incorporated to hold the collections of Robert
Cotton of manuscripts, books, records, coins, and medals and of Hans
Sloane, which contained rare books, coins, precious stones, pictures,
plants, and mathematical instruments and had been left to the public.
Italian opera was introduced in 1706 by Georg Handel on his visit to
England. His music became the standard music of Georgian England. The
Academy of Ancient Music was founded in 1710. It set the standard of
selection and performance. In existence were the violin (including ones
made by Stadivari), viola, cello, double bass, oboe, trumpet, clarinet,
bassoon, trombone, horn, flute, harp, organ, harpsichord, in which the
strings were plucked, and piano, in which the strings are struck by
little hammers. Orchestras had at least thirty members. Many hymns were
written.
Painting by artists developed. Gentlemen had portraits painted of their
horses and dogs as well as of family. Joshua Reynolds painted the wealth
and beauty of England. Painters such as Gainsborough did landscapes and
dramatic history paintings too, but neither of these sold as well as
portraits. Scenery was painted for the theater. Places of business had
signs painted which portrayed animals. Coaches were painted with
mythological creatures and such. Gentlemen collected antique statuary
and painting, such as by Rembrandt and Rubens. In 1711 an academy of
painting was founded, which included women painters. The first public
exhibition of paintings was in 1760. The Society of Artists was formed
in 1761 and incorporated by royal charter in 1765. This differentiated
them from the Painter-Stainers Company of face painters, coach painters,
and house painters. The Royal Academy of London was founded in 1768 to
merge all private academies and societies into one official body and to
recognize the best artistic work. Joshua Reynolds was its first
president. It was at first financed by the king. Under George I,
sculptors became distinct from masons. They did monuments and portrait
busts of the royal family, nobles, and great men. From Italian
influence, Palladian architecture came into vogue. It was typified
externally by a panoramic look achieved by horizontal lines, balanced
alternatives of plain wall and openings, and portico with a heavy
pediment like the front of a Roman temple. Stucco was often used to
plaster housefronts, flute columns, and ornament pediments. Architects
took students. Designers of engraved, etched, and historical prints were
given the sole right to print them for 14 years. Copiers had to forfeit
5s. per print.
Foreigners were now interested in learning about English life,
philosophy, and opinion. They learned English to read English literature
such as Shakespeare. No longer were France and Italy the only centers of
culture and influence on other nations. By 1713, England was the leading
sea power by far.
The Royal Society was still the principal focus of scientific activity.
Issac Newton was its President for several years and drew in more
foreigners. Its members were mathematicians, chemists, botanists,
physicians, engineers, authors, poets, and theologians. Papers given
there generated much discussion at its meetings. Newton opined that
small particles attract each other by some force in a similar way that
large bodies attracted each other. This force in immediate contact was
exceedingly strong and performed chemical interactions, but at greater
distances had no effect. Also there were local associations and
societies. There were learned journals such as "Philosophical
Transactions".
Drovers bought cattle in the countryside, drove them to big towns, and
sold them to fattening graziers or fatted them themselves. Then they
were driven into town and sold to the wholesale butcher, who sold the
carcass to the retail butcher, the hides to the tanner, and the bones to
the glue maker. Flocks of geese were also driven into towns, after their
feet were given a protective covering of tar. There were also middlemen
wholesalers for cheese, butter, cloth, and iron.
There was a rage of distemper among the cattle so serious that to
prevent its spread, the king was authorized by Parliament to make
regulations for prohibiting the removal or sale of cattle and for the
burial of distempered cattle. Later, the king was authorized to prohibit
the killing of cow calves. No one was to sell any ox, bull, cow, calf,
steer, or heifer until he had possession of such for forty days or else
forfeit ten pounds, Later, the king was authorized to regulate the
movement of cattle from one place to another.
The main industry of the country was still agriculture. In the
countryside, about half the arable land was under the open field system,
in which land was cultivated in common. Enclosures of land were still
taking place. The enclosures were now done by statutory commissions to
ensure equitable allotments.
Agricultural improvements came first to enclosed land, which comprised
about half of the agricultural land. In the 1733, Jethro Tull published
a book about his 1701 invention of the seed-drill to first pulverize the
soil for cultivation without manure and then to deposit seed at a
uniform depth in regulated quantities and in rows instead of being
thrown haphazardly. Also explained was the horse-hoe to stir the soil
about the roots of the plants to preserve moisture, promote aeration,
admit warmth, and destroy weeds. There were more horses than oxen in use
now in the fields. The horse-hoe was first used by large independent
farmers on enclosed land. Also invented was a threshing machine with a
set of sticks to replace hand threshing with flails. Under-drainage as
well as irrigation was practiced. Lord Townshend alternated turnips,
grasses, and grain in his fields, and thus provided winter food for his
cattle. The two-field crop rotation with fallow periods was often
displaced by the three-field system rotating grain crops, legumes, and
fallowness. Independent farming gave rise to the improvement of breeds
of livestock by selective breeding.
Enclosed land produced 26 bushels of grain compared to 18 bushels for
common field land. It produced 9 pounds of sheep fleece compared to 3
1/2 pounds for common field land. Overall, soils were improved by being
treated with clay, chalk, or lime. Artificial pasture was extended and
there was increased use of clover, sainfoin, and rye-grass. Grain
productivity was four times that of 1200. A fatted ox was 800 pounds
compared to the former 400 pounds which it weighed from the 1300s to the
1600s. The fleece of sheep increased fourfold.
By statute of 1756, persons having rights of common in certain land
may, by the major part in number and in value of each's tenement,
enclose such land for planting and growth of timber or underwood.
Every village had a smith, carpenter, and miller. The larger villages
also had a potter, a turner, a malster, a weaver, a tanner, and perhaps
a mercer or grocer middleman. Wheelwrights made ploughs, harrows, carts,
and wagons. Ploughs had one, two, or no wheels. Poor farming families
took up extra work in the villages such as making gloves, knitting
stockings, or spinning yarn. Craftsmen still helped farmers at harvest
time.
Much of the rural population was now dispersed over the countryside
instead of being concentrated in villages because so many small holders
had sold out due to enclosures of farm land, especially of common land
and waste land. The rural working class lived in two room cottages, with
low ceilings, small windows, and an earth floor. Patience was required
for those willing to wait for an existing cottage in a village to be
vacated. Most laborers did not marry unless and until they found a
cottage. Ancient custom that a person could build a home for himself on
waste land if he did it in one night was ceasing to be respected.
Farmers usually preferred employing day-laborers than keeping servants.
There were many migrant workers, mainly from Ireland, for the busy
summer haymaking and harvesting.
The children of laborers and of small farmers had little schooling
because they were needed for work. They scared the birds, weeded the
fields, picked the stones, tended the poultry, set beans, combed the
wool, and collected the rushes and dipped them in the tallow.
Farm people relied on well water or rain water collected in lead
cisterns. A farmhouse fireplace had pots hung from iron rods. Saucepans
sat on iron stands, which were stored above the mantel when not in use.
Spits were rotated by pulleys powered by the upward current of hot air
or by a mechanical device. Bacon was smoked in the chimney accessible by
a staircase or upper floor.
There still existed customary freeholders, who owned their land subject
to certain customary obligations to the lord of a manor.
The people displaced by enclosure became laborers dependent on wages or
paupers. Their discontent was expressed in this poem:
"They hang the man and flog the woman That steals a goose from
off the common But leave the greater criminal loose That steals
the common from the goose."
Eventually there was some relief given to the poor workers. By statute
of 1773, wastes, commons, and fields having several owners with
different interests might by three-quarters vote in number and in value
of the occupiers cultivate such for up to six years. However, cottagers
and those with certain sheep walks, or cattle pasture, could not be
excluded from their rights of common. By statute of 1776, the
Elizabethan statute restricting locations where cottages could be
erected and their inhabitants was repealed because the industrious poor
were under great difficulties to procure habitations.
Land could be rented out at ten times the original value. Land was
typically rented out for 7, 14, or 21 years. Great fortunes were made by
large landowners who built grand country estates. The manufacturers and
merchants made much money, but agriculture was still the basis of the
national wealth. As the population grew, the number of people in the
manufacturing classes was almost that of the agriculturalists, but they
had at least twice the income of the agriculturalists.
The greatest industry after agriculture was cloth. Most of this
activity took places in the homes, but families could earn more if each
family member was willing to exchange the informality of domestic work
for the long hours and harsh discipline of the factory or workshop. More
wool was made into cloth in the country. Dyed and finished wool cloth
and less raw wool and unfinished broadcloth, was exported. Bleaching was
done by protracted washing and open-air drying in "bleach fields". There
were great advances in the technology of making cloth.
Thomas Lombe, the son of a weaver, became a mercer and merchant in
London. He went to Italy to discover their secret in manufacturing silk
so inexpensively. He not only found his way in to see their silk
machines, but made some drawings and sent them to England hidden in
pieces of silk. He got a patent in 1718 and he and his brother set up a
mill using water power to twist together the silk fibers from the
cocoons into thread in 1719. His factory was five hundred feet long and
about five stories high. One water wheel worked the vast number of parts
on the machines. The machines inside were very tall, cylindrical in
shape, and rotated on vertical axes. Several rows of bobbins, set on the
circumference, received the threads, and by a rapid rotary movement gave
them the necessary twist. At the top the thrown silk was automatically
wound on a winder, all ready to be made into hanks [coils] for sale. The
workman's chief task was to reknot the threads whenever they broke. Each
man was in charge of sixty threads. There were three hundred workmen.
Lombe made a fortune of 120,000 pounds and was knighted and made an
alderman of London. After his patent expired in 1732, his mill became
the prototype for later cotton and wool spinning mills in the later
1700s. There were many woolen manufacture towns. Clothiers might employ
up to three thousand workers. At these, the spinning was done by
unskilled labor, especially women and children in villages and towns.
Weaving, wool combing, and carding were skilled occupations.
In 1733, clockmaker and weaver John Kay invented a flying shuttle for
weaving. It was fitted with small wheels and set in a kind of wooden
groove. On either side there were two wooden hammers hung on horizontal
rods to give the shuttle and to and fro action. The two hammers were
bound together by two strings attached to a single handle, so that with
one hand the shuttle could be driven either way. With a sharp tap by the
weaver, first one and then the other hammer moved on its rod. It hit the
shuttle, which slid along its groove. At the end of each rod there was a
spring to stop the hammer and replace it in position. The flying shuttle
doubled the weavers' output. Now the broadest cloth could be woven by
one man instead of two. This shuttle was used in a machine for cotton.
But the manufacturers who used the flying shuttle combined together and
refused to pay royalties to Kay, who was ruined by legal expenses. Now
the price of thread rose because of increased demand for it. The
weavers, who had to pay the spinners, then found it hard to make a
living. But the process of spinning was soon to catch up.
In 1738, John Wyatt, a ship's carpenter who also invented the harpoon
shot from a gun, patented a spinning machine whereby carded wool or
cotton was joined together to make a long and narrow mass. One end of
this mass was drawn in between a pair of rotating rollers, of which one
surface was smooth and the other rough, indented, or covered with
leather, cloth, shagg, hair, brushes, or points of metal. From here, the
mass went between another set of rollers, which were moving faster than
the first pair. This stretched the mass and drew it into any degree of
fineness of thread by adjusting the speed of the second pair of rollers.
Then the thread went by a flier, which twisted it. After this the thread
was wound off onto spindles or bobbins, whose rotation was regulated by
the faster pair of rollers. Or the mass could be drawn by rotating
spindles directly from one pair of rollers. This machine was worked by
two donkeys and was tended by ten female workers. Because of bankruptcy
in 1742, the invention was sold to Edward Cave, the editor of
"Gentleman's Magazine". He set up a workshop with five machines, each
fitted with fifty spindles and worked by water wheels. Carding was done
by cylindrical carding machines invented by Lewis Paul.
In 1764, the plant was bought by carpenter and weaver James Hargreaves.
He was watching his wife spin when the spinning wheel tipped over onto
its side. It continued to revolve, while the thread, held between two
fingers, seemed to be spinning itself, even though the spindle was in a
vertical instead of a horizontal position. It occurred to him that a
large number of vertical spindles arranged side by side could be turned
by the same wheel and that, therefore, many threads could be spun at
once. He named his machine the "the Jenny" after his wife. This
"spinning Jenny" could spin a hundred threads at a time. He patented it
about 1770. The machine consisted of a rectangular frame on four legs.
At one end was a row of vertical spindles. Across the frame were two
parallel wooden rails, lying close together, which were mounted on a
sort of carriage and slid backwards and forwards as desired. The cotton,
which had been previously carded, stretched, and twisted passed between
the two rails and then was wound on spindles. With one hand the spinner
worked the carriage backwards and forwards, and with the other he turned
the handle which worked the spindles. In this way, the thread was drawn
and twisted at the same time. The jenny did the work of about 30
spinning wheels. No longer did it take ten spinners to keep one weaver
busy. But manufacturers refused to pay him royalties for his invention.
He was offered 3,000 pounds for his rights in the jenny, but refused it.
The courts held that the model of his jenny had been used in industry
before it was patented and any rights he may have had were declared to
have lapsed. Nevertheless, he made over 4,000 pounds. The spinning jenny
was used in many homes.
Richard Arkwright came from a poor family and was taught to read by an
uncle. He became a barber and made wigs. He taught himself crafts
necessary to invent and patent in 1769 a spinning frame worked by a
water wheel, which he called a" water frame". He strengthened cotton
thread by adding rollers to the spinning process which were able to
strengthen the cotton thread and make it of even thickness so that it
could be used instead of costly linen as the warp. With capital from two
rich hosiers, he set up a workshop next to a swift and powerful river
running down a narrow gorge. Then he turned his attention to weaving
this thread with multiple spinning wheels in the first practical cotton
mill factory. In 1773, he set up weaving workshops making pure cotton
calicoes which were as good as Indian calicoes. This was the first
all-cotton cloth made in England. He had confronted and solved the
problem of a statute of 1721 which proscribed wearing or using printed,
painted, stained or dyed calicoes e.g. in apparel, bed, chair, cushion,
window curtain, and furniture, except those dyed all in blue, or else
forfeit 20 pounds by a seller, 5 pounds by a wearer, and 20 pounds by
other users. The purpose was to provide wool-working jobs to the poor,
whose numbers had been increasing excessively because of lack of work.
Arkwright argued that the statute should not include printed or painted
cloth made in Great Britain in its ancient tradition of fustians with an
all linen warp for strength and a cotton weft for fineness. This statute
was so "clarified" in 1735. When wool-weavers had expressed their
opposition to imported printed cottons and calicoes by tearing them off
people, a statute of 1720 provided that any one who willfully and
maliciously assaulted a person in the public streets or highways with an
intent to tear, spoil, cut, burn, or deface the garments or clothes of
such person and carried this out was guilty of felony punishable by
transportation for seven years. The prohibition against the manufacture
and wearing and using of pure cotton fabrics came to an end in 1774 on
arguments of Arkwright made to Parliament that his pure cottons would
bleach, print, wash and wear better than fustians.
In 1775, Arkwright added machines to do work prefatory to spinning. Raw
cotton was first fed by a sloping hose to a feeder that was perpetually
revolving. From here it went a carding machine of three rollers of
different diameters covered with bent metal teeth. The first, with teeth
bent in the direction of its revolution, caught up the cotton fibers.
The second, revolving in the same direction but much faster, carded the
fibers into the requisite fineness by contact with the third, whose
teeth and motion were in the opposite direction. Next, a crank and comb
detached the carded cotton so that it came off as a continuous ribbon.
Then the ribbon went into a revolving cone, which twisted it on itself.
Eventually Arkwright became rich from his creation of the modern
factory, which was widely copied. He established discipline in his mills
and he made his presence felt everywhere there, watching his men and
obtaining from them the steadiest and most careful work. He provided
housing and services to attract workers.
After cotton, the inventions of the spinning jenny and the water-
powered frame were applied to wool. Silk and cotton manufacture led the
way in using new machinery because they were recently imported
industries so not bound down by tradition and legal restraint. Yarn
production so improved that weavers became very prosperous. Cards with
metal teeth challenged the use of wood and horn cards with thistles on
them in carding wool. Merchants who traveled all over the world and saw
new selling opportunities, and therefore kept encouraging the
manufacturers to increase their production and improve their methods.
Factory owners united to present suggestions to Parliament.
Manufacturing broke loose from traditional confines in several ways. To
avoid the monopolistic confines of chartered towns, many entrepreneurs
set up new industries in Birmingham or Manchester, which grew
enormously. Manchester had no municipal corporation and was still under
the jurisdiction of a manor court. It sent no representative to the
House of Commons. All over the country the Justices of the Peace had
largely ceased regulating wages, especially in the newer industries such
as cotton, where apprenticeship was optional. Apprenticeship lapsed in
many industries, excepting the older crafts. Several legal decisions had
declared seven years practice of a trade as good as an apprenticeship.
Apprentices still lived in their masters' houses and were still treated
as family members. The regulations of the Cutlers' Company remained in
force as its masters used their great manual skill to make cutlery in
their own homes with the help of their children and apprentices. Trades
in some towns which had guild regulations that had the force of law hung
on to their customs with difficulty.
Although there were few large factories in the country under effective
management of a capitalist, trade unionism was beginning as two distinct
classes of men were being formed in factories. The factory owner was so
high above his workmen that he found himself on the same level as other
capitalists, the banker, who gave him credit, and the merchant, who gave
him customers. Journeymen in factories could no longer aspire to become
masters of their trade and no longer socialized with their employers.
Hard and fast rules replaced the freedom of the small workshops. Each
worker had his allotted place and his strictly defined and invariable
duty. Everyone had to work, steadily and without stopping, under the
vigilant eye of a foreman who secured obedience by means of fines,
physical means, or dismissals. Work started, meals were eaten, and work
stopped at fixed hours, signaled by the ringing of a bell. Factory hours
were typically fourteen hours or more. Organized resistance, as usual,
began not with those most ill-treated, but with those men who had some
bargaining power through their skills.
Wool-combers, who worked next to a charcoal stove where they heated the
teeth of the comb, were the most skilled of the cloth industry were hard
to replace. Since they were nomadic, they quickly organized nation-wide.
They agreed that if any employer hired a comber not in their
organization, none of them would work for him. They also would beat up
and destroy the comb-pot of the outsider. In 1720 and 1749, the Tiverton
wool-combers objected to the import of combed wool from Ireland by
burning Irish wool in clothiers' stores and attacking several houses.
They had strike funds and went on strike in 1749. Their bloody brawls
caused the military to intervene. Then many of them left town in a body,
harming the local industry. The earnings of wool-combers was high,
reaching from 10s. to 12s. a week in 1770, the highest rate of a weaver.
In 1716, the Colchester weavers accused their employers of taking on
too many apprentices. When the weavers organized and sought to regulate
the weaving trade, a statute was passed in 1725 making their
combinations void. Strike offenses such as housebreaking and destruction
of goods or personal threats had penalties of transportation for seven
years. Still in 1728, the Gloucester weavers protested against men being
employed who had not served their apprenticeship.
When the journeymen tailors in and around London organized a union, a
statute made their agreements entering into combinations to advance
their wages to unreasonable prices and to lessen their usual hours of
work, illegal and void, because this had encouraged idleness and
increased the number of poor. Tailors' wages were not to exceed 2s. per
day and their hours of work were to be 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. for the next
three months, and 1s.8d. per day for the rest of the year. A master
tailor paying more would forfeit 5 pounds. A journeyman receiving more
was sent to the House of Correction for 2 months. Justices of the Peace
could still alter these wages and hours depending on local scarcity or
plenty. Despite this statute, the journeymen tailors complained to
Parliament of their low wages and lack of work due to their masters
calling them to work only about half the year. There was much seasonal
fluctuation in their trade as there was in all trades. The slack period
for the tailors was the winter, when the people of fashion retired to
their country estates. After their complaint, their wages then rose from
1s.10d. per day in 1720, to 1s.8d.- 2s. in 1721, to 2s.- 2s.6d. in 1751,
to 2s.2d.- 2s.6d. in 1763, to up to 2s.7 1/2 d. in 1767, and to 3s. in
1775. Foremen were excluded from wage control. When they complained of
their long hours, which were two hours longer than the 6 a.m. to 8 p.m.
of most handicraft trades, their hours were reduced in 1767 by one hour
to 6 a.m. to 7 p.m. and their pay was set at 6d. per hour for overtime
work at night during periods of general mourning, e.g. mourning for a
deceased courtier. Their work hours were lowered another hour to 6 a.m.
to 6 p.m. in 1768.
The stocking frame-knitters guild, which had been chartered in 1663,
went on strike to protest the use of workhouse children as an abuse of
apprenticeship which lowered their wages. They broke many of their
frames, which belonged to their employers, to limit their number.
In 1749, combinations to advance wages, decrease hours of work, or
regulate prices were declared void for journeymen dyers, journeyman hot
pressers, all wool workers, brickmakers and tilemakers, journeymen
servants, workmen, laborers, felt and hat makers, and silk, linen,
cotton, iron, leather, and fur workers in and around London. The penalty
was prison or hard labor at a House of Correction for three months
without bail. In 1756, Justices of the Peace were to determine the rates
of wages of wool workers according to numbers of yards. But this was
repealed the next year to prevent combinations of workers. Wage
agreements between clothiers and weavers were declared binding.
Clothiers not paying wages within two days of delivery of work forfeited
40s.
In 1763 the silk weavers in east London drew up a scale of wages, and
upon its being rejected, 2000 of them broke their tools, destroyed the
materials, and left their workshops. A battalion of guards had to take
possession of the area. In 1765, the silk weavers marched on Westminster
to stop the import of French silks. In 1768, the weavers rebelled
against a 4d. per yard reduction in their wages, filling the streets in
riotous crowds and pillaging houses. After the garrison of the Tower
came, the workmen resisted with cudgels and cutlasses, resulting in
deaths and woundings. The throwsters [those who pulled the silk fibers
from the cocoons of the silk worms and twisted them together to make a
thread] and the handkerchief weavers also became discontent. A battle
between soldiers and silk weavers at their meeting place resulted in
several men on both sides being killed. In 1773, wages and prices for
the work of journeymen silk weavers in and around London were designated
to be regulated by the Mayor and Justices of the Peace. Foremen were
excluded. No silk weaver could have more than two apprentices or else
forfeit 20 pounds. Journeymen weavers entering into combinations
forfeited 40s. This statute satisfied the weavers, but they formed a
union to ensure that it was followed.
In 1750, 1761, and 1765, there were strikes which stopped the work of
the coal industry and harbor at Newcastle for weeks. In 1763, the
keelmen formed a combination to force their employers to use the
official measure fixed by statute for the measurement of loads of coals.
The book "Consideration upon the East-India Trade" dating from 1701
advocated free foreign trade. It argued that the import of goods from
India not only benefited the consumer but also the nation, because it
was a waste of labor to use it in producing goods which could be bought
cheap abroad. This labor could be better put to use at easily learned
plain work in the new industries. Also the low cost of imported goods
would motivate the invention of machines in the nation which would be
even more efficient in manufacturing these goods. But English
manufacturers were still suspicious of free trade.
Making beer and distilling gin from barley were widespread. The
pastimes of gambling and drinking were popular with all classes. In the
trades, this was promoted by the uncertainties of life and work and a
general sense of instability. Many London tradesmen started their day
with a breakfast of beer, bread, and cheese, the traditional breakfast
of countrymen. Gambling and dissipation reduced some London men with
good businesses to destitution, the work house, or street begging.
Drunken gentlemen played pranks such as imitating a woman in distress or
throwing a person in a horse trough. Some innkeepers had "straw houses"
where customers who were so drunk they were unable to walk home could
sleep in fresh straw. A person could get drunk for a few pence. Gambling
with cards was a popular pastime after dinner. Cricket matches were
played by all classes instead of just by humbler people; there were
county cricket matches. Gentlemen often took their coachmen with them to
public events such as cricket matches. Tennis was a sport of the wealthy
classes. Billiards, chess, and games with cards or dice were played,
especially in alehouses. There was horse racing on any open ground to
which people brought their horses to race. Jockeys tried to unseat each
other. Hunting of rabbits and then foxes replaced deer hunting. Bird and
duck hunting was usually with flint lock guns instead of hawks, as the
hedges provided cover from hawks. There was fishing with line, hook, and
bait. Watching the hanging of felons, about 35 a year in London, was
popular, as was going to Bedlam to watch for a fee the insane being
flogged. People went to the Tower to try to get a glance at a famous
prisoner looking through a window or taking a walk along the
battlements. Besides the grand pleasure gardens for gentry, there were
lesser pleasure gardens in London for working families, which offered
fresh air, tea, beer, swimming, fishing, courting, bowling, and cheap
entertainment. Running, vaulting, and leaping were still popular in the
countryside. Fairs had amusements such as fire swallowers,
ventriloquists, puppet shows, acrobats, jugglers, animal performances,
pantomimes, boxing, dwarfs, and albinos, but less trading. In 1769 was
the first circus. Circuses included feats of horsemanship and clowns.
There was also eating and drinking competitions, foot races, football,
archery, some wrestling, and some bowling on greens or alleys. In winter
there was ice skating with blades and sliding. The right of public
access to St. James Park became entrenched by the 1700s. There was
sailing, rowing, swimming, and hopscotch. George III made sea-bathing
popular and it was supposed to be good for one's health. There was
steeple chasing as of 1752. Horse-racing was given rules. On Sunday,
there was no singing, music playing, dancing, or games, but the Bible
was read aloud, prayers were said, and hymns were sung. Sabbath-breakers
were fined by magistrates. Men often spent Sunday in a tavern.
In general, commodity prices were stable. But when harvests were poor,
such as in 1709 when there was famine, and between 1765 and 1775, bread
prices rose. The price of wheat in London, which since 1710 had been
between 25s. and 45s., rose to 66s. in 1773. Then the poor engaged in
food riots. These riots were often accompanied by mob violence, burning,
and looting of grain mills, shops, and markets. The English economy was
so dependent on foreign trade, which had trebled since the 1710s, that
the slightest disturbance in the maritime trade threatened the English
with starvation. In many localities the men in need of parochial relief
were sent around from one farm to another for employment, part of their
wages being paid from the poor rates. The poor often went from parish to
parish seeking poor relief. Settled people tended to fear wandering
people. Parishes sought to keep down their poor rates by devices such as
removing mothers in labor lest the infant be born in the parish. So a
statute was passed that a child born to a wandering woman could not have
the place of birth as his settlement, but takes the same settlement as
his mother. Another device to prevent others from establishing
settlement in a parish was for its farmers to hire laborers for only
fifty-one weeks. Also, some apprentices were bound by means other than
indenture to avoid settlement. Laborers who came to work in industries
were refused settlement and sent back to their original parishes
whenever they seemed likely to become dependent on the rates. Statutes
then provided that a parish must give settlement to apprentices bound
for forty days there, not only by indenture, but by deed, writings, or
contracts not indented. In 1722, parishes were authorized to purchase
houses in which to lodge or employ the poor and to contract with any
person for the lodging, keeping, maintaining, and employing of the poor.
These persons could take the benefit of the work, labor, and service of
these poor, which was then used for the relief of other poor. The poor
refusing such lodging could not then get relief. Many of the poor
starved to death. The propertied classes turned a blind eye to the
predicament of the poor, opining that they were idle or could save more
and did not need higher earnings.
Charitable organizations gave to the poor and set up all day Sunday
schools to set wayward children on a moral path. The Sunday schools
could accommodate children who worked during the week. Punishment of
children by parents or others could be by whipping or even sitting in
stocks. About half of the people were dependent on poor relief or
charities.
Desertion by a man of his family was a common offense. Parishes
providing upkeep for the family sent men to find the errant husbands.
The parish would ask unmarried mothers who was the father of their child
and then force him to marry her or pay for the upkeep of the child. He
often made a bargain with the parish to release him of his obligation
for a sum of money paid to the parish. But many young parish children
died of neglect, and later, parishes were required to list children
under four to aid in accounting for them. Divorces were still few and
expensive, but increasing in number; there were more 60 in this period.
It was easier for a man to get a divorce for one act of adultery by his
wife, than for a wife to get one for habitual unfaithfulness.
Vagrants and other offenders could be committed to Houses of Correction
as well as to county gaols, because of the expense of the latter.
Crime was exacerbated by orgies of liquor drinking by the common
people, especially between 1730 and 1750, the sale of which did not have
to be licensed as did ale. In 1736, it was required that retailers of
brandy, rum, and other distilled spirituous liquors be licensed and to
pay 50 pounds a year for their license, because excessive use had been
detrimental to health, rendering persons unfit for useful labor and
business, debauching their morals, and inciting them to vices. Only
persons keeping public victualing houses, inns, coffee houses, alehouses
or brandy shops who exercised no other trade were allowed to obtain a
license. This excluded employers who had sold liquors to their
journeymen, workmen, servants, and laborers at exorbitant prices. Street
vendors who sold liquors had to forfeit 10 pounds. A duty of 20s. per
gallon was imposed on the retailers. There were riots in London against
this statute and its new duties. There had been a tremendous growth in
liquor drinking, which did not stop but went underground after this
statute. In 1753, a penalty of 10 pounds or hard labor for two months
was made for selling spirituous liquors without a license. Also licenses
were restricted to people who were certified by four reputable and
substantial householders to be of good fame and sober life and
conversation. Sellers had to maintain good order in their premises or
else forfeit 10 pounds. About 1754 only innkeepers, victualers, and
vendors paying rent of at least 200 shillings could sell gin at retail.
The punishment for the second offense was whipping and imprisonment.
That for the third offense was transportation out of the country. In
1751, additional duties were placed on spirituous liquors to discourage
immoderate drinking going on by people of the meanest and lowest sort to
the detriment of the health and morals of the common people. In 1761,
these duties were again raised. In 1768, officers were authorized to
seize all horses, cattle, and carriages used to transport foreign
spirituous liquors for which duties had been evaded. In 1773, the
penalty for selling without a license was raised to 50 pounds, which
could not be mitigated below 5 pounds. Half the forfeiture was to go to
the suer.
The informer system for enforcing laws had its drawbacks. Informers
were not trained and were sometimes retaliated against for informing.
Sometimes this meant being tortured to death. Sometimes there were
schemes in which a leader of thieves, would take a profit in the stolen
goods by posing as a good citizen who tracked down and returned them to
the owners for a fee. Also he might inform on his companions to get the
reward for informing or to punish a troublesome one. Sometimes the owner
of goods was involved in a fake robbery. An effort in 1749 to turn the
whole haphazard system of informers, into a specialized organization for
the detection and apprehension of criminals had caused a mob to form and
make threats. Englishmen associated a police force with French tyranny.
Nevertheless, about 1750, Sir John Fielding, a Bow Street magistrate,
and his half-brother picked men to police the street under the direct
control of the Bow Street magistrates. This first police district made
an impact on the increasing violence of the times. In 1753, a proposal
before Parliament to have a national census was also defeated by public
fear of liberty being curtailed by having to make account of the number
and circumstances of one's family and giving out information that could
be used by enemies both in the realm and abroad.
In 1714, the mercury thermometer was invented by Gabriel Fahrenheit of
Germany; this was much more accurate than the alcohol and water
thermometers. Sweden's Anders Celcius invented the Celsius scale. The
hydrometer, which measures air humidity, was also invented. These made
possible weather forecasting. In 1718, the French chemist Etienne
Geoffroy published a table of affinities among chemical substances, a
precursor to the periodic table of elements. Carolus Linneaus, a Swedish
naturalist and botanist, established the scientific method of naming
plants and animals by genus and species. When he showed that there was a
sexual system in plants, church authorities were so shocked that they
suppressed this knowledge as they did other scientific knowledge. Rev.
Stephen Hales made ventilators for ships, prisons, and granaries, using
the method of injecting air with bellows. This saved many lives in the
prisons. In 1727, he discovered that water that plants lost by
evaporation was restored by the roots up the stems. He found that gas
could be obtained from plants by dry distillation and invented a way to
collect gases by heating certain substances.
Hans Sloane, the son of a receiver-general of taxes, who became a
physician, had collected hundreds of species of plants in Jamacia while
physician to its governor. He became physician to George II and was a
benefactor to many hospitals and devised a botanic garden in London for
the Society of Apothecaries.
Italian Luigi Marsigli started the science of oceanography with a
treatise discussing topography, circulation, ocean plants and animals,
along with many measurements. Frenchman Jean-Etienne Guettard prepared
the first true geological maps, showing rocks and minerals. He
identified heat as the causative factor of change in the earth's
landforms. John Mitchell studied earthquakes.
In 1735, George Hadley, a London lawyer and philosopher, determined
that the cause of the prevailing westerly winds was the rotation of the
earth to the east. Benjamin Franklin in 1743 observed that a
particularly violent storm occurred in Boston a day after a particularly
violent occurred in Philadelphia, and realized that they were the same
storm, even though the storm's surface winds were from the northeast. He
determined that Atlantic coastal storms traveled from the southwest to
the northeast. In 1770, he prepared the first scientific chart of the
Gulf Stream.
Daniel Bernoulli, a Swiss university lecturer in physics, mechanics,
medicine, and anatomy, proved his theorem that any degree of statistical
accuracy can be obtained by sufficiently increasing the observations,
thereby also representing the first application of calculus to
probability theory. In 1738, he showed that as the velocity of
horizontal fluid flow increases, its pressure decreases. This followed
from his theorem that the total mechanical energy of a flowing liquid,
comprising the energy associated with fluid pressure, the gravitational
potential energy of elevation, and kinetic energy of fluid motion
remains constant; that is, the mechanical energy is conserved. This was
the first mathematical study of fluid flow. He demonstrated that the
impact of molecules on a surface would explain pressure, and that
assuming the constant random motion of molecules, pressure and motion
will increase with temperature. He explained the behavior of gases with
changing pressure and temperature, establishing the kinetic theory of
gases. Jean Nollet from France discovered osmosis, the passage of a
solution through a semi-permeable membrane separating two solutions with
different concentrations.
In 1754, Scotsman physician Joseph Black identified carbon dioxide, the
first gas recognized as distinct from everyday breathing air. He did
this by using a balance to weigh alkalies before and after exposure to
heat. They lost weight by losing carbon dioxide. His development of the
concept of latent heat, the quantity of heat absorbed or released when a
substance changes its physical phase at constant temperature, was the
first application of quantitative analysis to chemical reactions. He
ascertained the effects of carbon dioxide on animals and its production
by respiration, fermentation, and burning of charcoal. At this time, all
flammable materials were thought to contain "phlogiston", which was
given off as they burned and was associated with the transfer of heat.
Plants were thought to remove phlogiston from the air and therefore
burned when they were dry.
In 1773, Joseph Priestly, a nonconformist minister, schoolmaster, and
tutor, discovered oxygen by heating red oxide of mercury. He became
interested in the study of gases by watching the process of fermentation
in a brewery next to his house. His gas collection techniques enabled
him to work with gases soluble in water. He showed that the processes of
combustion, respiration, and putrefaction caused one-fifth of air
exposed over water to disappear, and that plants restored air vitiated
by these processes. When he isolated oxygen, he noted that it was better
than air in supporting respiration and combustion produced by heating
certain metallic nitrates. It was called "respirable air".
Hydrogen (inflammable air) and nitrogen were discovered. The
differences between acids, bases, and salts and their relationship to
one another became understood. There was some theoretical as well as
empirical knowledge about metals, e.g. in boiling points, intermetallic
compounds, and changes in properties.
In 1742, Benjamin Frankin invented the Franklin stove, which greatly
improved heating efficiency. As a freestanding cast-iron fireplace, it
supplied heat in all directions instead of only from the one direction
of the usual wall fireplace. Also, the heat absorbed by its cast-iron
sides provided warmth even after the fire went out.
Static electricity was being discerned. It had been noticed that
shaking a mercury barometer produced a strange glow in its "vacuum".
Experiments showed that a glass rubbed in vacuo would shine brightly and
that an exhausted glass globe rapidly whirled on a spindle and rubbing
against the hand produced a brilliant glow. And further, as Newton
wrote: "if at the same time a piece of white paper or white cloth, or
the end of ones finger be held at the distance of about a quarter of an
inch or half an inch from that part of the glass where it is most in
motion, the electric vapor which is excited by the friction of the glass
against the hand, will by dashing against the white paper, cloth, or
finger, be put into such an agitation as to emit light, and make the
white paper, cloth, or finger, appear lucid like a glowworm". In the
study of electricity, conductors and insulators were recognized. There
were demonstrations of electrical phenomena such as seeing the ignition
of brandy by a spark shooting from a man's finger and the feeling the
transfer of an electrical impulse created from a rubbed glass globe
among a circle of people by their holding hands. In 1733, Frenchman
Charles DuFay discovered that there are two types of static electric
charges, and that like charges repel each other while unlike charges
attract, linking electricity to magnetism.
In 1750, Benjamin Franklin "caught" lightning with a sharp pointed wire
attached to the top of a kite which led down to a key at the other end.
When a thunder cloud electrified the kite, a charge was seen coming from
the key to an approaching finger. This charge was then stored in an
early type of capacitosr, a1745 Leyden jar, and then reproduced to
create the same feeling of transfer of electrical impulse among a circle
of hand-holders, thereby illustrating that it was the same phenomenon as
electricity. This countered the theological belief that thunder and
lightning were signs of divine displeasure or the work of the devil.
Franklin invented the lightening rod, which was then used to protect
buildings. About ten years later, the first lightening rod on an English
church was erected, which showed the church's acceptance of his theory.
Franklin theorized that there were electric charges everywhere and
designated them as positive or negative. He observed that opposite
charges attracted each other, but that like charges repelled each other.
In 1766, Joseph Priestly did an experiment suggested by Franklin and
showed that electrical force follows the same law as gravitational
force; that is, that the attraction or repulsion between two electrical
charges varies inversely in proportion to the square of the distance
between them.
Joseph-Louis LaGrange from France developed differential equations.
Natural history museums were established. A group split off from the
Royal Society to show collections of curiosities.
In 1754, a self-educated mechanic founded the Society for the
Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce. It had sections on
agriculture, manufactures, mechanics, chemistry, liberal arts, and trade
and colonies. It sponsored contests at which prizes were given, such as
that in 1761 for the best invention of a machine that would spin six
threads of wool, flax, cotton, or silk at one time with only one person
attending it.
Machines still mostly relied on human, animal, and water power.
Abraham Darby was a Quaker and millwright who made large cooking pots
of iron, which cost less than bronze. Around 1709, he experimented with
various substances to take the place of wood charcoal in iron smelting.
Coal was a remote possibility. In forging or working metals coal had
more or less the same qualities as wood charcoal, but this was not the
case in smelting ores, especially iron ore. Coal contained sulphur
compounds which caused the iron ore to deteriorate. So he controlled the
burning of coal to burn out these impurities, which produced coke. His
son took over after his death and improved the methods of coking,
strengthened the bellows, and added ore limestone and other reagents to
the mixture. By 1756, his large blast furnace using both pit coal and
wood charcoal was very productive. He made iron goods of such quality as
those imported.
In 1767, Richard Reynolds replaced the wooden rails connecting a blast
furnace to mines with cast iron rails. He had apprenticed as a grocer
and then became a partner in a large ironworks of Darby with a man whose
daughter he married. After Darby died and before Darby's sons became of
age, Reynolds was in charge of the ironworks. He cast cylinders of the
early steam engines.
In 1749 John Roebuck, a physician and son of a prosperous manufacturer
of Sheffield goods, found a cheaper way to manufacture sulphuric acid.
He did this by using leaden chambers instead of glass globes to collect
the vapor from burning nitre and sulphur over water. This reduced the
cost of sulfuric acid to one-fourth of its previous cost, so that
sulfuric acid came to be used to bleach linen instead of sour milk. He
also made cast iron into malleable iron by smelting iron using coke from
pit-coal instead of charcoal. But flooding in his mines and further
ventures resulted in his ruin and bankruptcy.
Thomas Newcomen, a Baptist ironmonger, blacksmith, and locksmith,
supplied iron tools to mine workers. He was aware of the problem of
flooding of mines and the awkward system of pumps which were used one
above the other and were powered by teams of horses. He made a very
valuable contribution to power generation by inventing the atmospheric
pressure steam engine with piston around 1712. He did this by connecting
theory with experiment, through the use of scientific knowledge,
especially the Royal Society's investigation into atmospheric pressure.
First cold water was poured on a cylinder in which a piston could move
up and down. This caused steam inside the cylinder to cool and condense
into water. The vacuum created inside the cylinder under the piston
caused atmospheric pressure on top of the piston to push the piston
down. The piston was attached by a rod to the end of a beam which end
then swung down from a point on a vertical stand to which it was
attached. When the beam swung, its other end, which was attached to a
rod connected to a pump, rose, thus working the pump. Then steam from
water heated in a boiler under and communicating with the cylinder was
allowed into the cylinder under the piston. This overcame the
atmospheric pressure on the piston from above and allowed the piston to
rise by a counterweight on the rod over and connecting to the pump. Boys
opened and closed the steam valve, which let steam into the cylinder
from below, and the water valve, which let cold water pour on the
cylinder from above. Then the boys were replaced by the valves being
connected to the swinging beam which caused them to open and close at
perfectly regular intervals. A story gives the credit for this
improvement to an inventive valve boy who wanted to play with his
friends. In 1712, the mining industry used this steam engine to pump
water out of mine-shafts which had flooded. These engines were also used
to supply water to reservoirs locks at canals, and drinking water
facilities in towns. One such engine developed power equivalent to fifty
horses working at one sixth the cost. It was the first automatic machine
since the clock.
Then James Watt invented the steam engine which used steam as a force
acting on the piston. Watt made his living making scientific instruments
for Glasgow University. Around 1764, he was fixing one of Newcomen's
engines belonging to the university, when he saw its inefficiencies,
such as the loss of heat when the cylinder was cooled. He saved this
heat energy by having the steam condensed in another vessel distinct but
connected to the cylinder. This condenser was kept constantly cool by
cold water. So the condensed steam was pumped back into the boiler and
it circulated continuously, thus obviating the need for constant
resupply of water. In order to avoid the necessity of using water to
keep the piston air-tight, and also to prevent the air from cooling the
cylinder during the descent of the piston, he used the expansion of the
steam to push the piston instead of atmospheric pressure. Then, in order
to expand the use of the steam engine beyond that of a pump, he
converted the oscillating motion of the beam into rotary motion. He
formed a partnership with John Roebuck, who had a two-thirds interest.
But when Roebuck needed money, he sold his interest to Matthew Boulton.
Boulton wanted better power that that of his watermill for his workshops
that made metal buttons, watch chains, shoebuckles of engraved steel,
ornamental bronzes, vases, chandeliers, tripods, silver and plated
wares, and imitation gold and tortoiseshell work. In dry weather, about
eight horses were needed to aid in driving the machinery. A steam pump
could pump water from the bottom of the watermill to the top to be used
again. He had built up this factory of five buildings and six hundred
workers, with 9,000 pounds derived from his marriage to an heiress. By
1774, the partnership had built a model steam engine with rotary power
whose design could be sold. The price of the engine was set as the
amount of money saved on fuel costs in the first three years of its
operation. This machine was a relatively economical user of energy,
capable of performing almost any kind of work.
About 1750, John Wilkinson, the son of a farmer who also oversaw an
iron furnace, substituted mineral coal for wood charcoal in the smelting
and puddling of iron ore. In 1766, he made it possible to transport coal
out of mines on rail wagons drawn by horses. As father of the iron
industry, he made iron chairs, vats for breweries and distilleries, and
iron pipes of all sizes. With his invention of the first precision
boring machine, he provided Watt with metal cylinders of perfectly
accurate shape, which were necessary for the smooth working of Watt's
steam engine. In 1775 he bought a pumping steam engine from Boulton and
Watt's company for his ironworks. It pumped three times as fast as
Newcomen's engine.
Watt's steam engine came to be used for power-loom weaving and then for
all sorts of manufactures. It would put England ahead of every
manufacturing country in the world. Millwrights built, installed, and
later designed not only steam engines but the machinery that they drove.
These men were essential in setting up the first factories. They were
the most imaginative and resourceful craftsmen. They knew how to use a
turner's, a carpenter's and a blacksmith's tools and had supervised or
done smith work, brick-laying or stone-mason's work in erecting and
maintaining windmills with their many gears and bearings. There was a
good deal of variety in mills, as well as in the structure and
workmanship of them, some being worked by horses, some by wind, and
others by water. They had some knowledge of arithmetic and practical
mechanics. They could draw out a plan and calculate the speed and power
of a wheel. Although technically in a branch of carpentry, the
millwrights learned to work with metal as well. Metal was superior to
wood not only because of its strength but because wood parts were
irregular in motion and wore out rapidly. So iron and brass parts came
to replace wood and leather parts.
In 1728, J. Paine got a patent for rolling iron instead of hammering
it. The iron bars, being heated in a long hot arch or cavern passed
between two large metal rollers, which had certain notches or furrows on
their surfaces.
Clockmaker and Quaker Benjamin Huntsman was struck with the difficulty
of finding finely tempered steel for the springs of his watches and
pendulums of his clocks. He experimented for years to find a homogeneous
and flawless metal, and finally, in 1740, invented cast steel, which had
high tensile strength and was much harder than ordinary steel. He did
this by remelting refined high quality wrought iron bars at very high
temperatures in sealed fireclay crucibles, together with small
quantities of charcoal and ground glass as reagents. This distributed
the carbon evenly in the metal, which hammering could not do. He
approached the Sheffield cutlers, who finally agreed to try his cast
steel for fear of losing their business to some other manufacturers who
were approaching Huntsman. Since Huntsman had no patent, he worked at
night and employed only men who would keep his secret. His steel was
made at night. His factory became prosperous about 1770 and the
excellence of his steel manufacture was never equaled. Steel and wrought
iron was scarce and expensive.
Around 1748, iron founder Samuel Walker, discovered Huntsman's secret
by appearing at Huntsman's factory disguised as a shivering tramp who
asked to warm himself by the furnace fire. He feigned sleep while
watching the whole process. When he began to make cast steel, his annual
output grew from 900 pounds in 1747 to 11,000 pounds in 1760 and he made
a fortune.
Silver was plated over copper from 1751. White metal from tin and
antimony was used from about 1770.
The brass industry was beginning to produce brass from copper and zinc
that was as good as foreign brass. The secret of plate-glass manufacture
came to England in the 1770s.
In 1773, a corporation was set up for the manufacture of plate glass.
It could raise joint-stock because of the great risk and large expense
of the undertaking.
In 1775, chemist William Cookworthy was given a fourteen year patent
for the discovery of certain clay and stone in England from which he
made England's first true porcelain, i.e. that which could sustain the
most extreme degree of fire without melting, and also had grain as
smooth and lustrous, and the transparency and beauty of color, equal in
degree to the best Chinese or Dresden porcelain.
The import duties on diamonds, pearls, rubies, emeralds and other
precious stones and jewels was dropped to increase the business of
cutting and polishing them.
The world's first chocolate factory was set up in England in 1728. Milk
was added to chocolate.
The Fanmakers were incorporated in 1709.
A linen company to sell cambricks [a fine white linen] and lawns [a
thin and fine linen] was incorporated in 1763.
A free market for fish was established in Westminster to supplement the
free fish market in London to prevent forestalling and monopolizing of
the fish industry and to increase the number of fishermen. Duties for
its maintenance were paid by the fishermen. Certain men were given the
right to incorporate fisheries of white herring for twenty one years to
improve the fisheries and give employment to the poor. They were
authorized to sell subscriptions and to build ships provided the fishery
employ 100,000 in such fishery. There were restrictions on taking fish
from rivers during their breeding season. Herring fishermen were allowed
to land and dry their nets and erect tents and pickle, cure, and reload
fish on uncultivated land up to 100 yards beyond the high water mark all
any shore, forelands, harbors, and ports, without paying the landholder.
Later, a bounty of 30s. per ton was authorized to be given for vessels
that were fitted out and used for white herring fishery.
Anyone wishing to be admitted to the Levant (Turkey) trading company
was to be made free of such on paying 20 pounds, so that this trade
might be increased.
In the 1760s the first cooking school was established by Mrs. Elizabeth
Raffald, a servant.
As for health, there were many occupational hazards. These included
paralysis by mercury of refiners of silver and gold, paralysis by
mercurial fumes of molten lead by plumbers, palsy of glaziers working
with melted lead and of watch gilders, lead poisoning of painters,
blinding by sawdust of sawyers, and the affects of fumes on pewterers
and letter founders. Particles of copper were breathed in by copper
workers, whose hair and beards then turned green. Braziers became deaf.
Hairdressers, bakers, masons, bricklayers' laborers, coal heavers,
chimney sweeps, flax and feather dressers, and workers in leather
warehouses suffered pulmonary diseases. Chimney sweeps also had warty
skin cancer from their bodies being habitually covered with soot and the
lethal cancer of the scrotum. Working with charcoal fires affected
confectioners, chocolate makers, and sail-cloth makers. Tanners, catgut
makers, and tallow-candle makers became nauseous. Heavy work weakened
many bodies and caused hernias. Bending over work for long hours caused
stooped posture and hump backs.
The association between dirt and disease was just beginning to be made.
The principles of infection and hygiene were not well understood.
Bathing every couple of months was not unusual. There was some
theological feeling that cleanliness betokened pride and filthiness
humility. Most houses had a bathtub that could be placed beside the fire
in a bedroom. About 80% of the population had been getting smallpox,
which blinded, maimed or disfigured many. Deaths from smallpox were only
occasional in the country, but constant in London, where about 13% of
every generation died from it. Making death commonplace, especially in
the winter months when thick, dirty clothes were worn day and night,
were typhus, which was carried by lice; typhoid, which was spread by
flies from horse dung; tuberculosis; and influenza. Dysentery and
diarrhea made death commonplace especially in the summer when flies
transmitted bacteria from filth to food and the water was its most foul.
There was great meaning in the prayer "Now I lay me down to sleep; I
pray the Lord my soul to keep; if I should die before I wake, I pray the
Lord my soul to take." Thyphus spread easily in hospitals and gaols
where vermin could live in the beds made of wood. Colds and toothache
were also common. Venereal disease was not uncommon among the well-to-do
in London. Condoms were used to deter disease, but were still crude,
coarse, uncomfortable, and unreliable. London had almost double the
mortality rate of the nation. The number of baptisms in London were
about 80% of its burials. About 40% of the deaths in London were among
children under two, due to infantile diseases fostered by malnutrition,
maternal ignorance such as giving babies adult food, ill-health, bad
water, dirty food, poor hygiene, and overcrowding. Many children died
from diptheria, measles, scarlet fever, and smallpox. Ten or twelve
children with three or four surviving was a common family pattern. Many
well-to-do in London kept their children in the country for their better
health. No matter what the ailment, physicians regularly bled patients
and often gave them enemas with wooden funnels. Sometimes a blister or
irritant was applied to the skin to draw out the evil humors. Cupping
was used to provide suction to remove pressure from various parts of the
body. Also used were poultices, ointments, and herbal treatments,
notably quinine. Opium was given to deaden pain. There were about 70
drugs in use. Charms, spells, astrology, and folk remedies still played
a major role in medicine. A physician attended surgeries to give advice.
Physicians could visit apothecary shops once a year and throw away any
drugs falling below an arbitrary standard of excellence. In 1703 the
House of Lords decided a jurisdictional contest between the College of
Physicians and the Society of Apothecaries. It permitted the
apothecaries to direct the remedies as well as to prepare them, although
they could only charge for the drugs they provided. The poor sought
advice from apothecaries.
There was progress in health. Scurvy virtually disappeared as a cause
of death due to the eating of more vegetables. People were cleaner when
wearing cotton, which had to be washed. In 1721, free inoculations for
smallpox began in England, pioneered by Lady Mary Wortley Montague, also
a poet and letter writer. She led the way by having herself and her son
inoculated. Theologicians denounced this practice as a diabolical
interference with disease sent by Providence for the punishment of sin.
Sarah Wallen Mapp was a famous bone-setter. In 1727 surgeon William
Cheselden, whose master was specially licensed to perform the operation
of removing stones in the hospital, reduced the death rate for removing
stones due to hemorrhage, shock, and infection down to 17% by his
invention of a lateral operation. He also published an anatomy book and
treated certain kinds of blindness by forming an opening in the eye to
serve as an artificial pupil. In 1736, Claudius Aymand conducted the
first successful appendectomy.
Nutritional deficiency diseases were beginning to be understood. In
1753, James Lind, a surgeon in the navy who noted that more men died of
scurvy than in battle, published his work on his dietary controlled
experiment on seamen showing that oranges, lemons, limes, green food,
and onions cured scurvy. He published his methods of prevention and cure
of malarial fevers and his method of disinfecting ships with the smoke
of wood and gunpowder. In 1761, he discovered that steam from salt water
was fresh, and proposed a method of distillation to supply ships with
fresh water. In 1761 Giovanni Morgagni from Italy opined that disease
resulted from a breakdown of organs and tissues that was viewable on
autopsy. He wrote an extensive book showing the anatomy of diseases,
e.g. affections of pericardium and aorta, (e.g. aneurysm), valve
diseases, ulceration, rupture, dilation, and hypertrophy. He associated
clinical observation with anatomy of disease. For example, pain on the
left upper chest, numbness of the left arm, and difficulty breathing
occurring together with exertion were associated with dilation of the
aorta and hardening of arteries, which caused delay of blood in the
aorta, in the heart, and in the lung vessels. Bernoulli showed that the
living human body constantly changes so that all its particles are
renewed in a certain number of years. Stephen Hale described the first
quantitative estimate of blood pressure and fundamental characteristics
of blood circulation. In 1728, Frenchman Dr. Pierre Fauchard, the father
of dentistry, recommended rubbing one's teeth and gums with a piece of
sponge.
Since three out of four babies died shortly after birth, beds in
hospitals for pregnant women were established starting in 1739. The next
year physicians began to replace midwives. A hospital was established
for abandoned foundling children in 1739 so they wouldn't die, as they
usually did, in the care of parishes or workhouses or be exposed in the
streets or left on door steps of the wealthy. It was besieged by women
with babies in their arms. In 1762 a statute made the principles of the
foundling hospital obligatory for all London parish children under six;
they were to be sent to nurses outside London who were to be paid at
least 2s. a week by the parish. In 1766, this was extended to all
parishes, and nurses who cared for a child well for a year was given a
reward of at least 10s. Also, parish children were not allowed to be
apprenticed for more than seven years or until age 21 and an apprentice
fee of at least 4 pounds, 2s. was to be paid to the master or mistress
by the parish.
After 1740, there was a steady growth of population due to improved
midwifery. William Smellie taught scientific midwifery in London from
1741 and wrote a "Treatise on Midwifery" in 1752, which had a clear
explanation of the mechanism of labor. At this time there were several
maternity hospitals. Forceps existed for difficult deliveries. In 1750,
Dr. Cadogan wrote his book: "An Essay on the Nursing and Management of
Children, which made a great improvement in the care of young children.
For instance, it recommended loose clothing, no tight swaddling clothes,
and a simple diet. Swaddling clothes were used to retain a baby's
evacuations but produced discomfort and serious skin conditions. A
hospital was founded for venereal diseases in 1746, another as an asylum
for the penitent and orphaned girls who might otherwise be inclined to
prostitution, and yet another for prostitutes in 1758. Coitus
interruptus was widely used for birth control. There were also
clandestine abortions and intentional neglect of newborns.
Melancholy was widespread. Suicides were frequent and drugs were sold
for this purpose. In 1725, the mentally ill were classified as curable
or incurable. There were many private asylums. A lunatic who was
furiously mad and dangerous was required to be safely locked up or
chained in his place of settlement. There were frequent and dangerous
abuses in madhouses, so in 1774, no one was to keep or confine more than
one lunatic without a license granted by the Royal College of Physicians
or else forfeit 500 pounds. A Justice of the Peace and a physician
inspected all madhouses to observe conditions and care of patients
there. If refused admittance, the license was forfeited.
In 1712 was the last time a monarch touched a person to cure him of a
malady such as scrofula.
In 1743 surgery students began to dissect corpses with their own hands
to better learn anatomy. In 1744 the Company of Surgeons was separated
out of the Company of Barber-Surgeons. The barbers were proscribed from
performing surgery and had to have a separate corporation from the
surgeons because of the ignorance and unskillfulness of barbers healing
wounds, blows, and hurts e.g. by blood letting and drawing of teeth.
There was a Surgeon's Hall, officers chosen by the surgeons, and bylaws.
The surgeons were required to examine candidates for the position of
surgeon in the king's army and navy. They were exempted from parish,
ward, and leet offices, and juries. In 1752, a statute provided that the
corpses of murderers were to be sent to the Surgeon's Hall to be
anatomized, for the purpose of deterring murders. The penalty for
rescuing the corpse of a murderer was to suffer death.
The first dispensary for the poor was established in 1769 to give free
medicine and treatment to the infant poor, and then to the infants of
the industrious poor.
The progress of science was seen to threaten the authority of the
church. There was a general belief in God, but not much attention to
Jesus. Feared to come were free thought, rationalism, and atheism. There
was still a big gap between local parsons and bishops, who were
educated, well-off, and related to the aristocracy. On the whole,
preachers talked about morality and Christian belief. They stressed good
works and benevolence. But many Protestant clergy were more concerned
with their own livings than with their parishioners. They were indolent
and did not set a good example of moral living.
From 1715, Freemasonry spread and swiftly provided a spiritual haven
for those who believed in God and desired ritual and mysticism.
About 1744, John Wesley, the son of an Anglican clergyman, became a
religious leader for mining and industrial laborers, who were crowded
into the slums of industrializing cities, and largely ignored by the
Church of England. He had been led to this by a profound religious
experience. He led an evangelical revival with a promise of individual
salvation. He lead an aesthetic life, eating bread, and sleeping on
boards. The person to be saved from the horrors of eternal damnation in
hell was to discipline himself to regular prayer, self-criticism, and
hard work and to forsake worldly pleasures such as drinking, overeating,
and even frivolous talk. This methodical regularity of living led to the
movement being called Methodist. Wesley believed in witchcraft and
magic. He opined that bodily diseases and insanity could be caused by
devils and that some dreams are caused by occult powers of evil. The
Methodists engaged increasingly in philanthropic activities. They gave
to the poor, and visited the sick and the imprisoned. Wesley preached in
the open air where all who wanted to attend could attend and also wear
whatever clothes they had. Large crowds of poor people gathered for
these meetings. Crowds of poor people were generally feared because of
their mob potential. These Methodist meetings were stormed as were
Quaker meetings, with shouts of "the church in danger". The Methodists'
homes were invaded and their belongings destroyed or taken or their
persons beaten with tacit permission of authorities. Some Justices of
the Peace drafted preachers into the army or navy as vagabonds.
Eventually, however, the Methodist revival imbued energy and piety into
the lethargic clergy of the established church. A new moral enthusiasm
and philanthropic energy grabbed the nation. Prisons were reformed,
penal laws made more wise, slave trade abolished, and popular education
given momentum. In the established church, charity gained precedence
over theology and comfort over self-examination and guilt. Evangelist
George Whitfield preached Calvinism and it split off from Methodism.
Then Calvinism went into full decline. Presbyterianism collapsed into
Unitarianism and a general tendency towards deism developed.
Church sanctuary was abolished for those accused of civil offenses.
There was much travel by scheduled coaches, which usually carried
several passengers and were drawn by four horses. Regular service of
public vehicles to and from London went four miles an hour; it took two
days to go from London to Oxford. It was not unusual for a coach to bog
down or overturn. Sometimes it had to detour around an impassable
stretch of road or borrow a couple of oxen from a nearby farm to get out
of a quagmire. Men and horses drowned in some of the potholes. Robbery
was endemic and some of the roads were so unsafe from highwaymen that
bands of armed horsemen were hired to accompany the coaches. It was not
unusual to come across gibbets for hanging at crossroads. In London inns
at coach stops, there were casual workers who were associated with gangs
of thieves specializing in passengers' goods. These workers would inform
their associate thieves of specific goods that had been loaded onto
certain coaches, which were then robbed selectively. Traveling merchants
preferred packhorses to carts because they could cross overland or
through watercourses more easily. These pack horses traveled in regular
caravans in single file. The leader had a bell around his neck to warn,
from a distance, riders or carts coming in the opposite direction. Carts
traveled about two miles an hour. In 1711 the trustee system superseded
administration by the Justices of the Peace of the turnpike system,
including tolls and toll booths. The toll booths were frequently
attacked by riotous mobs. So anyone pulling down or destroying turnpike
gates at which tolls were to be paid went to prison or was put to hard
labor in a House of Correction for three months without bail. He was
also whipped in the market place between 11:00 and 2:00. If he offended
a second time, he was transported for seven years. Later the penalty of
prison up to three years was added as an alternative. The hundred had to
pay the damages up to 20 pounds. The penalty for threatening the toll
collector or forcibly passing through was 5 pounds for the first
offense, and 10 pounds for the second offense with imprisonment for one
year for those who couldn't pay.
By 1750, about 60 miles could be made in a day. The turnpike trusts
took over most of London's major highways during the 1700s. There was no
travel on Sundays until 1750.
In 1745, shocked by the difficulty caused by bad roads in concentrating
the royal army to stop the Scottish invasion, the king began
systematically to improve all the roads. There was much road and highway
widening and repair, and also river bank and pier repair, going on all
over the country. Marsh lands were drained. Harbors were deepened. There
were numerous statutes trying to adjust the needs of travel with the
condition of the roads. For instance, there had to be a pole between
wheel horses or double shafts. Carriages, wagons, or carts drawn by more
horses, oxen, or animals, or with very heavy loads, or with wheels bound
with iron tires were observed to cause more damage, so they were
restricted or had to pay higher tolls. Then broad and smooth iron tires
were observed to not cause the amount of damage as did narrow or
irregular iron tires and their use was encouraged. From 1741, weighing
machines were kept at toll gates. By 1766, turnpike roads had to be at
least 30 feet wide, and hedges and fences thereon had to be taken down
by their owners. Cartways to markets had to be at least 20 feet wide,
and horseways 3 (later 8) feet wide. There were ditches, drains, and
gutters to carry off water. Names and abodes of owners were to be put on
carriages, wagons, and carts or forfeit 2-5 pounds, except for carriages
or coaches of a nobleman or gentleman for his private use or those drawn
by only one horse or two oxen, or those with wide wheels and a light
load. There were town name signs, direction posts, and milestones. In
1773, the Surveyors and the Commissioners of Turnpikes were given
authority to requisition local men, carts and draught animals for
compulsory labor, or money instead, in maintaining the roads and making
new ditches and drains. They could take any local sand, gravel, chalk,
or stone from waste or common land or, if not needed by and satisfaction
was made to the owner, from enclosed land. The surveyor was to be chosen
locally for a year and could be given an allowance. New roads required
the consent of the landowners and a negotiated price.
A driver of a carriage, wagon, or cart on the public highway who by
negligence or misbehavior caused any hurt or damage to a person or any
other carriage or hindered free passage of any other carriage was to
forfeit up to 20s. Anyone leaving an empty cart or other obstruction on
a public highway was to forfeit up to 20s. Any cart, wagon, or carriage
driven without a person on foot or on horseback leading it had a
forfeiture up to 20s. Any driver of an empty cart, wagon, or carriage
who refused or neglected to make way for any coach or loaded cart,
wagon, or carriage was to forfeit up to 20. Any offender could be
apprehended without warrant by anyone who saw his offense, and who was
then to deliver him to a constable or other peace officer.
By 1719, the mail service was well-regulated. Letter rates within 80
miles of London were 3d. per piece of paper, then 12d. per ounce. Within
60 miles of New York City in America there were 4d. per piece of paper,
then 1s.4d. per ounce. Letters were still carried by post horses. From
London to New York, they were 1s. per piece of paper for the first three
pieces, then 4s. per ounce. In 1765, this rate was extended to all
colonial ports.
In 1754, canals began to be constructed linking the main rivers. The
barges were hauled by horses or men from the land near the river's edge.
Now goods of many inland towns cheapened and reached a national instead
of just a local market. In 1761 an almost illiterate man called James
Brindley cut the first real canal at Worsley for the Duke of
Bridgewater, who owned the coal deposits there. He kept the line of the
canal at one level to avoid having to make locks. It crossed one river
as a forty foot high aqueduct. He refused to use the beds of small
rivers, whose sluggish flow gave no adequate security against silting.
Coal at the destination point of Manchester fell to half its former
price. After Wedgwood headed a campaign to persuade Parliament to
construct a certain canal, he bought adjacent land on which he built his
great factory.
In 1713, the maximum interest rate that could be charged was reduced to
5% for the advancement of trade and improvement of lands because that
rate was the norm in foreign lands. Thus the maximum interest rate fell
from 10 to 8 to 6 and then to 5%. When Issac Newton was Master of the
Mint, he noted that too restricted a currency caused a high interest
rate to prevail, which was bad for commerce and the plans to set the
poor to work, but that too large a quantity of money in circulation
caused interest rates to fall, which encouraged luxury imports and the
export of bullion.
The Bank of England provided a safer deposit and lower interest than
goldsmiths or scriveners. It also issued notes for 10 and 15 (since
1759), and 20 pounds. Outside retail trade and wages payments, business
was conducted on a credit basis with a paper promise to pay at some
future date. Check use was still formal and rare. Tradesmen typically
authorized their apprentices to "write off or draw" from their accounts,
bringing their bank books. Depositors authorized other people such as
certain servants, relatives, cashiers, or company secretaries to make
use of their accounts. After 1721, the Bank dividend was about 6% a
year.
Promissory notes were assignable and endorsable and the holder could
recover against the signer or any endorser as was the case with bills of
exchange. In 1775, no more promissory or other notes, bills of exchange,
draughts, or undertakings in writing and being negotiable or
transferable could be made for under 20s., because it was hard for the
poorer sort of manufacturer, artificer, laborer and others to use them
without being subject to great extortion and abuse. Cash was to be used
instead.
By 1711, government finances had become so chaotic that the Chancellor
of the Exchequer sought to re-establish public credit by means of a
chartered commercial company, the shares of which were offered in
substitution for government stock. This South Sea Company was
established in 1711 with a monopoly to trade in South America. The
prospects of huge profits sent the share prices soaring. There was also
an increase in the money supply. These factors led to a speculation
bubble in 1720 in this stock. Also, many stock-jobbers promoted
companies of every description, such as one to extract gold from
seawater. There was an insurance boom with about seventy insurance
companies in existence, many virtually gambling in life contingencies.
There was speculation in insurance for all types of occurrences, such as
housebreaking, highway robbery, death by gin-drinking, and horses
becoming disabled. The total capital invested in all these enterprises
rose to over five times the cash resources of all Europe. When the
bubble burst, 100 pound South Sea stock had gone up to 1050 pounds and
back down again to 120. Since the government had in effect bought this
stock at a low price and paid off its debt with this stock at a high
price, this bubble relieved the government of much of its massive debt.
It also redistributed wealth. After the bubble burst, investors took
refuge in investing in 3-4% government fixed-interest securities. A
result of this bubble burst was the chartering of two corporations for
marine insurance and prohibition of such by any partnership or firm.
Private persons could continue to write policies, and they chose Lloyd's
Coffeehouse as their headquarters; it came to dominate the world of
marine insurance after the two chartered companies came to concentrate
on fire and life insurance. Lloyd's list became the foundation for a new
newspaper. There were specialty boxes at Lloyd's such as on America or
the Baltic. Many ships were reported captured by enemies or pirates, but
underwriting insurance was a lucrative business for many.
In 1717 the gold guinea was assigned a value of 21s. In 1774, the gold
standard was introduced. In 1774, clipped and deficient gold coin was
called in to be exchanged for new coin.
Local taxes were collected for the church, the poor, county courts of
justice, borough administration, and highways. National taxes included
the income, customs, and excise taxes. When the government tried to levy
excise taxes on wine, tobacco, and then on cider, there was a public
protest with mobs demonstrating against the power given to excise
inspectors to search in people's homes. These excise taxes were no
longer levied.
Duties were placed on items for encouraging industries within the
country and to pay the expenses of government. There were more and
higher duties to pay for war. At various times there were duties on
hides, skins, seal skins, gilt and silver wire, malt, mum [strong beer
made from malted wheat], cider, perry, spices, tea, coffee, cocoa nuts,
chocolate, cocoa paste, snuff, chinaware, drugs, calicoes, herrings,
apples, oysters, raw Italian and Chinese silk, gum arabic, gum senega,
tallow, hogs-lard, grease, beaver skins and wool, imported brandy,
raisins, coals and coal dust, coaches for one's own use or for hire,
except licensed hackney coaches; silver plate owned by persons,
corporations, and bodies politic; leases, bonds, and other deeds;
licenses for retailing wine, beer, and ale; 5% of salaries, fees, and
perquisites from office and employments including royal pensions and
gratuities over 100 pounds. When the price of wheat was high, as in
1765, when it was 6s. per bushel, wheat products could not be exported.
At other times, they could not be imported. Duties on imported wheat,
barley, rye, oats, beans, rice, Indian corn were also dropped. The
prohibition of importing salted beef, pork, bacon, and butter was
dropped. In 1770, no live cattle, pigs, mutton, pork, beef, either fresh
or salted could be exported or forfeit 50 pounds for every such animal
or 5s. per pound of such meat. In 1773, peas, beans, bacon, hams, and
cheese could be imported duty free, and in 1775 Labrador codfish. In
1775, raw goat skins could be imported duty-free to improve the domestic
manufacture of red, green, and blue leather.
In 1773, there were given costs above which various commodities could
not be exported: wheat at 44s. per quarter, rye, peas, or beans at 28s.,
barley and beer at 22s., oats at 14s. or else forfeit the goods, 20s.
per bushel and the ship or boat in which laden. (There are 8 bushes in a
quarter.)
A window tax replaced the hearth tax. These duties were 2s. on dwelling
houses, increased by 6d. per window for houses with 10-14 windows, and
increased by 9d. per window for houses with 15-19 windows, and increased
by 1s. per window for houses with 20 or more windows, per year to be
paid by the occupant. These were increased three more times, until the
dwelling house duty was 3s. and the duty for 25 or more windows was 2s.
Another duty for war was that on imported starch, certain imported
clothes, cards, dice, soap, vellum, parchment, and paper made in the
realm (4d.-1s.6d. per ream depending on quality) or imported (1-16s. per
ream). For pamphlets and newspapers made in the realm there was a duty
of 2d. per sheet and 12d. for every advertisement. When the duty was
paid, the paper was stamped. The penalty for nonpayment was 10 pounds
for sellers and 5 pounds for those writing or printing on the paper.
Later, there was a penalty of imprisonment in a House of Correction up
to three months for sellers or hawkers of pamphlets or newspapers, and
the apprehender received a reward of 20s. A parson marrying a couple
without publishing banns or license could forfeit 100 pounds.
Not paying duties was punishable by various forfeitures of money.
Officers for duties could search warehouses on suspicion of concealment
of coffee, tea, chocolate, or cocoa beans with an intent to avoid duties
after making an oath before a duty commissioner or Justice of the Peace
setting forth the grounds of such suspicion. A special warrant could be
issued authorizing the officer to seize such goods.
Wars were funded not only by some duties, but by lotteries and
short-term funding purchased at 5% yearly interest from the Bank of
England and by long-term funding by the sale of annuities.
County militias could be raised and called out to march together in
order to be better prepared to suppress insurrections or invasions.
Their horsemen were to be provided with broad sword, a case of pistols
with 12 inch barrels, a carabine with belt and bucket, a saddle, and a
bit and bridle. Each foot soldier was to be provided with a bayonet, a
cartouch-box, and a sword. In the militia act of 1757, there were quotas
for each parish, to be chosen by lot from lists of men 18-50 years old.
After militia service for three years, one could not be called again
until by rotation, and, if married, he was allowed to practice any trade
in which he was able in any town or place. While he was in the militia,
his parish had to pay an allowance to his family, if distressed, the
usual price of an agricultural laborer, according to the number and ages
of the children. Quakers could provide a substitute or pay money to
defray expenses of a substitute for three years. Exempt were peers,
commissioned officers in royal army or royal castle, other military
personnel, members of either university, clergymen, teachers of any
separate congregation, constables and peace officers, and watermen of
the Thames River.
This militia act was due to an invasion scare in 1756 because Great
Britain then had no allies on the continent. The old strategy of
maintaining a small army of 17,000 men and relying on volunteers had
really depended on England's allies to tie down France's land forces.
The militia act of 1757 was designed to reassure squires they would not
be used as adjuncts to the army. Only those with much property could be
officers. Enlistees could still carry on their trades and jobs. Costs
were to be from general taxation rather than by locality. But it was
almost impossible to get officers and there were many riots when parish
authorities tried to draw up lists of those liable to serve. In 1759 the
navy prevented French invasion.
Able-bodied men without a calling, employment, or visible means of
maintenance or livelihood could be searched for and conscripted into the
army. Volunteers who enlisted were paid 40s. and were not taken out of
her majesty's service by any process other than for some criminal
matter. King George II was the last king to lead his troops into battle.
Later, parishes were given 20s. for every soldier they summoned. Also,
persons who had a vote for member of Parliament were exempted.
Whipping was the usual punishment for offenses. A soldier who deserted
or joined in any mutiny or sedition in the royal army within the realm
was to suffer death or any other punishment determined by court martial.
In 1760, a soldier (later, or a marine) who slept at his post, left his
post before being relieved, communicated with any rebel or enemy, struck
or disobeyed any superior officer could suffer death, including those
soldiers in America.
During war, chief officers of towns quartered and billeted royal army
officers and soldiers in inns, livery stables, alehouses, and victualing
houses for 4d. a day, but not in any private house without consent of
the owner. From 1714 to 1739, the army regiments were split up and
scattered among the ale-houses of small towns for maintenance; this was
to disperse the soldiers. It was easier to count them, thereby keeping a
check on their number, which might be exaggerated if they were in large
groups in barracks. The towns protested having to maintain soldiers and
town magistrates imposed severe penalties for small offenses by
soldiers. Their drunkenness and violence were not tolerated as they were
for ordinary people. Their officers not being with them, the soldiers
retaliated with troublesomeness. As of 1763 English troops could be
quartered in unoccupied houses or barns and supplied with necessities
such as bedding, firewood, candles, vinegar, salt, cooking utensils, and
beer or cider. The Royal Hospital gave pensions to maimed and worn out
soldiers treated there.
Sailors had more status than soldiers because they had regular work as
seamen in times of peace and they did not remind the people of the idea
of a standing army, which they had hated especially since Cromwell.
Justices of the Peace, mayors, and other officers could bind boys as
apprentices to sea service if they were at least ten and their parents
were chargeable to the parish or begged for alms. This indenture to the
masters or owners of ships lasted until the boy reached 21. The boy's
parish paid 50s. for clothing and bedding for such sea service. No such
apprentice could be impressed into the navy until at least 18 years of
age. Master and owners of ships that carried 30-50 tuns had to take one
such apprentice and one more boy for the next 50 tuns, and one more boy
for every 100 tuns over 100 tuns, or else forfeit 10 pounds to the boy's
parish. Boys voluntarily binding themselves to such sea service were
exempt from impressment for the next three years. This was to increase
the number of able and experience mariners and seamen for the navy and
for the trade and commerce of the nation.
No masters or commanders of merchant ships were to proceed on a voyage
beyond the seas without first agreeing in writing on wages with the
seamen, except for apprentices. Such agreement had to be signed by the
seamen. Offenders were to forfeit 5 pounds per seaman, which sum went to
the use of Greenwich Hospital. Any seaman leaving the ship before being
discharged in writing was to forfeit one month's pay because too many
left the ship before it was unladen.
There were some ships of 2000 tons. The steering wheel had been
introduced because a sudden heavy sea could wrest a tiller from the
hands of a helmsman. Triangular head-sails with jib boom and stay-sails
on stays between masts were in use so that ships could sail closer into
the wind. The length of ships was still determined by the same length of
trees that could be grown. Sailing ships were still vulnerable to a lee
shore. Latitude was easy to determine using the reflecting octant
invented by John Hadley in 1731, and a sextant invented in 1757, with
mirrors and a small telescope to measure the angle between a celestial
body such as the sun or north star and the horizon. But longitude could
not be determined with any degree of accuracy. One method relied on
accurate predictions of the future position of the moon as observed from
a fixed reference point, such as Greenwich. By precisely observing the
local time of the moon's occultation of a known star at a particular
place, and looking up in a table the predicted time of the event at
Greenwich, one could approximate the time difference of the place from
Greenwich. There were so many shipwrecks on this account that the
government offered a reward to anyone who found a way to measure
longitude accurately. In 1763 carpenter and clockmaker John Harrison
made the chronometer to do this with an accuracy of 2 1/2 seconds per
month, and received 5,000 pounds. He was promised 10,000 pounds to
explain the principle of his timekeeper and build three more. The
chronometer kept time with extreme accuracy and was mounted to remove
the effect of the ship's motion. To find a ship's position, a navigator
noted the time and measured the positions of certain stars. He compared
these positions with tables that showed the stars' positions at
Greenwich mean time, and then calculated the ship's position.
Officer positions were no longer bought, but were subject to
examination for a minimum of knowledge, especially in navigation. In
1729 the Naval Academy was established. Boys entered at age 13 to 16 and
spent two or three years there.
Only about 15% of the crew of navy ships were volunteers. Many were
gaolbirds, having chosen the Navy over more gaol time for debt. Press
gangs seized men in the port towns and from ships coming into harbor.
>From 10% to 20% of the crew were foreigners, many of these pressed men.
About 1756, the Marine Society was founded for training and placing poor
boys in work in naval and merchant ships. This not only supplied men and
boys for the Navy, but saved boys from a life of vagrancy and crime.
These boys usually became reliable and obedient sailors.
The life of a sailor was a hard one, requiring much strength. Sailors
did not know how to swim, so falling overboard usually meant death.
Flogging was the usual punishment in the Navy, even for small offenses.
The amount of flogging due for each offense rose over time. If flogging
were fatal, there would be an inquiry and occasionally punishment. A
sailor's meals were usually hard bread invested with weevils and
maggots, dried or salted meat or fish, and small quantities of oatmeal,
butter, and cheese. Many sailors had scurvy or other deficiency
diseases. Experiments with lime and lemon juice as remedies for scurvy
were made around 1764, but were not used in the Navy until about 1800.
Many more sailors died from these diseases than from battle. Rum and
water was a daily ration introduced in 1745. The ordinary sailor was
paid about one pound a month, a rate established in 1650s which became
outdated. This was not in cash, but in a ticket which entitled him to
payment in full if he presented it at the pay office in London, but was
subject to swinging deductions if he tried to cash it in another port.
Prize money from conquered ships was substantial. To encourage seamen
to enter the navy, Parliament provided that the prizes be divided among
flag officers, commanders, other officers, seamen, marines, and soldiers
on board every ship of war, including private ships commissioned by the
Admiral, as directed by the king, or as agreed with the owner of a
private ship. It included an enemy's ships, and goods and arms on the
ships or in fortresses on the land. There was also bounty money for
enemy ships taken or destroyed. For retaking or salvaging English goods
taken by the enemy, 1/8th their value was paid. Privateers colluding
with others to fraudulently take their merchant ships forfeited their
ships, with 1/3rd going to the person who made the discovery and
prosecuted.
Later, any able seaman volunteering for the navy was to receive 5
pounds bounty. Any seaman volunteering for the navy was to receive a
bounty of 3 pounds. If a navy seaman was killed or drowned, his widow
was to receive a year's pay as bounty. No seaman in a merchant ship was
to receive more than 35s. per month because of war at that time.
Still later, anyone who ran goods or avoided customs was excused and
indemnified if he enlisted in the navy as a common sailor for three
years.
Those under 18 or over 55 were made exempt from impressment into the
king's service. The time of service was limited to five years if the
serviceman so demanded. Worn out and decrepit seamen no longer being
treated at the Royal Hospital for Seamen at Greenwich received a pension
as determined by the hospital.
In war, the Navy favored blockading tactics over attack by fireships,
which grew obsolete. In peace, when not used in convoys to remote lands,
many ships of war were used as cruisers to guard the coast, to trade,
and to accompany merchant ships going out and returning home. About
1755, marine forces of the navy were raised and quartered on shore.
No war ship could carry goods except gold, silver, and jewels and
except the goods of a ship in danger of shipwreck or already
shipwrecked.
The king was authorized to prohibit the export of gunpowder, saltpeter,
ammunition, and arms.
When a ship had been forced on shore or stranded on the coast, it had
been the practice for people to plunder it and to demand high payment
for salvaging its goods. So a statute required that salvage only be done
by sheriff, mayors, and other officials. A person who defaced the marks
on goods or hindered the saving of the ship had to pay double
satisfaction to the person aggrieved and spend 12 months at hard labor
in a House of Correction. If a person unduly carried off goods, he
forfeited treble damages. If he made a hole in the ship or stole the
pump from the ship, he was guilty of felony without benefit of clergy.
The owner of the island of Skerries was allowed to erect a lighthouse
and charge passing ships other than Navy ships 1d. per tun.
Only pilots examined and admitted into the society of pilots and, if no
such pilot was readily available, a ship's own owner, master, or mate
could pilot ships up the Thames River, or else forfeit 10 pounds for the
first offense, 20 pounds for the second, and 40 pounds thereafter. Any
pilot losing a ship could no longer be a pilot. There had to be at least
120 qualified pilots. The prices of piloting were 3 pounds 10s. for
ships drawing 7 feet of water, and 10s. more for each additional foot
drawn up to 8 pounds 10s. for ships drawing 17 feet of water.
To preserve navigation, ships were not to throw any ballast, filth,
rubbish, gravel, earth, stone, or filth into rivers or ports where the
tide or water flowed or ran or else forfeit 50s.- 5 pounds. Ships on the
Thames River could take as ballast to stabilize a ship without cargo:
dung, compost, earth, or soil from laystalls in London. There was a toll
on ships entering the port of London to pay for repairs to its walls.
Many persons insuring ships for large premiums became bankrupt, thus
ruining or impoverishing many merchants and traders. So the king was
authorized to grant charters to two distinct corporations for the
insurance of ships, goods, and merchandise or going to sea or for
lending money upon bottomry [borrowing money and and pledging the ship
as security]. Each corporation had to pay 300,000 pounds to the
Exchequer and to have sufficient ready money to pay for losses insured
by them. They were to raise capital stock and could make calls of money
from their members in proportion to their stocks for any further money
required.
Any owner, master, or mariner who cast away, burned, or otherwise
destroyed a ship to the prejudice of underwriters of policies of
insurance or of any merchants whose goods have been loaded on the ship
was to suffer death.
The owners of ships were not liable for losses by reason of theft
without their knowledge by the master or mariners of goods beyond the
value of the ship. This was to prevent the discouragement of owning
ships.
The insurance of merchant ships must give salvage rights [rights to
take what may be left of the ships insured after paying the insurance on
them] to the insurer. A lender on bottomry had benefit of salvage. No
insurance could be for a greater amount than the value of one's interest
in the ship or in the goods on board.
No waterman carrying passengers or goods for hire e.g. by wherryboat,
tiltboat, or rowbarge, on the Thames River could take an apprentice
unless he was a housekeeper or had some known place of abode where he
could keep such apprentice or else forfeit ten pounds, and if he
couldn't pay, do hard labor at the House of Correction for 14-30 days.
Also he could not keep the apprentice bound to him. No apprentice could
be entrusted with a vessel until he was 16 if a waterman's son and 17 if
was he the son of a landman, and he had at least two years' experience.
None but freemen, i.e. one having served an apprenticeship of seven
years, could row or work any vessel for hire or be subject to the same
punishment. This was to avoid the mischiefs which happen by entrusting
apprentices too weak, unable, and unskillful in the work, with the care
of goods and lives of passengers. Later amendment required that
apprentices be age 14 to 20 and that there be no more than 40
passengers, with the penalty of transportation if there were over 40 and
one drowned.
No boat on the Thames River could be used for selling liquors, tobacco,
fruit, or gingerbread to seamen and laborers because such had led to
theft of ropes, cables, goods, and stores from the ships. Excepted were
boats registered at the guilds of Trinity and of St. Clement, but they
had to show their owner's name and could only operate in daylight hours.
The penalty was forfeiture of the boat.
All ships coming from places infected with the plague had to be
quarantined and any person leaving a quarantined ship had to return and
later forfeit 20 pounds, of which 1/3 could go to the informer, the rest
to the poor. This was later raised to 200 pounds and six months in
prison, and if the person escaped, he was to suffer death. Also later, a
master of a ship coming from infected places or having infected people
on board was guilty of felony and forfeited 200 pounds. If he did not
take his vessel to the quarantine area on notice, he forfeited a further
200 pounds (later 500 pounds) and the ship, which could then be burned.
The king was authorized to prohibit commerce for one year with any
country infected by the plague and to forbid any persons of the realm
from going to an infected place.
By 1714, there was a clear distinction between a king's private income
and the Crown's public revenue. From 1714, the king's Treasurer as a
matter of routine submitted annual budgets to Parliament. He was usually
also the leader of the House of Commons and the Chancellor of the
Exchequer.
Proclamations by the Crown were more restricted to colonial and foreign
affairs, to executive orders, and to instructions to officials. The high
offices included the Chancellor, Keeper, President of the Council, Privy
Seal, Treasurer, and two Secretaries of State, who were in charge of all
foreign and domestic matters other than taxation, one for the north and
one for the south. With Thomas More, the Chancellor had become more of
a judge and less of a statesman. Other offices were: Paymaster General,
Secretary of War, and Treasurer of the Navy. Starting with the monarch,
government positions were given by patronage to friends and relatives,
or if none, to the highest bidder. These offices were usually milked for
fees and employed deputies, clerks, and scribes who worked for long
hours at very modest wages. Most people believed that the offices of
power and influence in the realm belonged to the nobility and gentry as
indubitably as the throne belonged to the king. Assaulting, wounding,
striking, or trying to kill a member of the Privy Council engaged in his
duties was punishable by death without benefit of clergy. Civil and
military commissions, patents, grants of any office or employment,
including Justice of Assize, Justice of the Peace, court writs, court
proceedings continued in force for six months after a king's death,
unless superceded in the meantime.
The king's ministers were those members of his Privy Council who
carried out the work of government. By distributing patronage, the
ministers acquired the influence to become leading members of the House
of Commons or the House of Lords. They made policy, secured the king's
consent, and then put through the necessary legislation. The king was to
act only through his ministers and all public business was to be
formally done in Privy Council with all its decisions signed by its
members. The king gradually lost power. The last royal veto of a
Parliamentary bill was in 1708. By 1714, the Privy Council ceased making
decisions of policy. Instead a cabinet not identified with any
particular party was chosen by the Queen, who presided over their
meetings, which were held every Sunday. It dealt with Parliament. In
1720, the number of peers in the House of Lords was fixed, so that the
Crown could create no more. About 1720, Robert Walpole, son of a country
squire, who came to be first minister of the Crown and the leader of the
Whigs, organized the cabinet so that it was of one view. He led it for
twenty years and thus became the first prime minister. He was brilliant
at finance and lessened taxation. He restored trust in the government
after the South Sea bubble scandal. He was successful in preserving the
peace with other nations and providing stability in England that led to
prosperity. The Whigs opposed a standing army and over-reaching
influence of the Crown. They espoused the liberty of individual
subjects. Their slogan was "liberty and property". They generally
favored foreign wars.
Members of the Parliament felt responsible for the good of the whole
country instead of accounting to their electors, but self- interest also
played a part. Leading commercial magnates of the realm sought to be
members of Parliament or governors of the Bank of England so they could
take up government loans at advantageous rates, snap up contracts to
supply government departments at exorbitant prices, and play an
important part in deciding what duties should be charged on what goods.
About 5% of the population could vote. Voting was open, rather than by
secret ballot. Seats in Parliament could normally be bought either by
coming to an arrangement with some landowner who had the right to
nominate to a closed seat or by buying enough votes in constituencies
where the electorate was larger and the contest more open. Factory
owners and leading landowners sat together on committees drawing up
plans for public works such as canal building, obtained the necessary
permits from public authorities and organized the whole enterprise. In
1714, Parliament was allowed to last for seven years unless sooner
dissolved by the king because of the expense and tumult of elections,
which frequently occasioned riots, and sometimes battles in which men
were killed and prisoners taken on both sides. Politics had become a
career. Members of Parliament could not be arrested while Parliament was
in session.
As of 1710, electees to the Commons had to have 600 pounds annual
income for knights or 300 pounds annually for burgesses. This did not
include the eldest son or heir apparent of any peer or lord of
Parliament or any person with the above qualifications. The universities
were exempted.
As of 1729, a person electing a member of the Commons had to swear or
affirm that he had not received any money, office, employment, or reward
or promise of such for his vote. If he swore falsely, it was perjury and
he was to forfeit 500 pounds and his right to vote. Later, voters for
member of Parliament had to have residence for a year. Still later,
voters were required to have been freemen of the city or town for one
year or else forfeit 100 pounds, except if entitled to freedom by birth,
marriage, or servitude according to the custom of such city or town.
Voters were still required to have a freehold of land of 40s. a year
income, but holders of estates by copy of court roll were specifically
precluded from voting or else forfeit 50 pounds.
In 1724, since unauthorized persons had intruded into assemblies of
citizens of London and presumed to vote therein, the presiding officer
appointed clerks to take the poll and oath required for elections for
Parliament, mayor, sheriffs, chamberlains, bridgemasters, and auditors
of chamberlains. The oath was that one was a freeman of London, a
liveryman of a certain named company, had been so for 12 months, and had
named his place of abode. The oath for alderman or common council
elections was that the voter was a freeman of London and a householder
in a named ward who had paid scot of at least a total of 30s. and bore
lot. A list of the voters and of persons disallowed was given to
candidates by the presiding officer.
Soldiers could not be quartered within 20 miles of a place of election
so that the election was kept free.
Voters in public corporations must have held their stock for six months
before voting them to discourage splitting stock and making temporary
conveyances thereof to give certain people more of a vote, e.g. in
declaring dividends and choosing directors.
Ambassadors were made immune from arrest, prosecution and imprisonment
to preserve their rights and privileges and protection by the Queen and
the law of nations.
The Supporters of the Bill of Rights Society was founded and paid
agents to give speeches throughout the country and used the press for
its goals.
James Burgh demanded universal suffrage in his 1773 book: "Political
Disquisitions".
In 1707 there was union with Scotland, in which their Parliaments were
combined into one. The country was known as Great Britain. The last
Scottish rebellion resulted in attainder of its leaders for levying war
against the king. In 1746, they were given the chance to surrender by a
certain date, and receive a pardon on condition of transportation. In
1747, anyone impeached by the Commons of high treason whereby there
could be corruption of the blood or for misprison of such treason could
make his defense by up to two counsel learned in the law, who were
assigned for that purpose on the application of the person impeached. In
1748, counsel could interrogate witnesses in such cases where testimony
of witnesses were not reduced to writing.
There was a steady flow of emigrants to the American colonies,
including transported convicts and indentured servants. Delaware became
a colony in 1703. In 1729, the king bought Carolina from its seven
proprietors for 2,500 pounds apiece. Person having estates, rights,
titles, or interest there, except officers, were allowed by Parliament
to sue the king with the court establishing the value to be paid, but no
more than at a rate of 2,500 pounds per 1/8 of the property. Georgia was
chartered in 1733 on request of James Oglethorpe, who became its first
governor, as a refuge for debtors and the poor and needy. It established
the Episcopal Church by law. In 1730 Carolina and 1735 Georgia were
allowed to sell rice directly to certain lands instead of to England
only. Later, sugar was allowed to be carried directly from America to
European ports in English ships without first touching some English
port. Foreigners who had lived in the American colonies for seven years,
and later foreigners who served two years in the royal army in America
as soldiers or as engineers, were allowed to become citizens of Great
Britain on taking oaths of loyalty and Protestantism. This included
Quakers and Jews. The Jews could omit the phrase "upon the true faith of
a Christian."
In 1756, indentured servants in America were allowed to volunteer as
soldiers in the British army serving in America. If his proprietor
objected, the servant was to be restored to him or reasonable
compensation given in proportion to the original purchase price of his
service and the time of his service remaining.
There was much competition among countries for colonies. Quebec and
then Montreal in 1760 in Canada were captured from the French. About
1768 James Cook discovered New Zealand and Australia; his maps greatly
helped future voyages. The English East India Company took over India as
its Mogul Empire broke up.
Manufacturing in the American colonies that would compete with British
industry was suppressed by Great Britain. There were increasing duties
on goods imported into the colonies and restrictions on exports. In
1763, Parliament imposed duties on foreign imports going to America via
Britain: to wit, sugar, indigo, coffee, certain wines, wrought silks,
calicoes, and cambrick linen. Foreign vessels at anchor or hovering on
colonial coasts and not departing within 48 hours were made liable to be
forfeited with their goods. Uncustomed goods into or prohibited goods
into or out of the colonies seized by customs officials on the ship or
on land and any boats and cattle used to transport them occasioned a
forfeiture of treble value, of which 1/3 went to the king, 1/3 went to
the colonial governor, and 1/3 went to the suer. Any officer making a
collusive seizure or other fraud was to forfeit 500 pounds and his
office. In 1765, there was imposed a duty on papers in the colonies to
defray expenses of their defense by the British military. The duty on
every skin, piece of vellum [calf skin] or parchment, and sheet of paper
used in any law court was 3d.- 2 pounds. There were also duties on
counselor or solicitor appointments of 10 pounds per sheet. Duties
extended to licenses for retailing spirituous liquors and wines, bonds
for payment of money, warrants for surveying or setting out of any
lands, grants and deeds of land, appointments to certain civil public
offices, indentures, leases, conveyances, bills of sale, grants and
certificates under public seal, insurance policies, mortgages,
passports, pamphlets, newspapers (about 1s. per sheet), advertisements
in papers (2s. each), cards, and dice. The papers taxed were to carry a
stamp showing that the duties on them had been paid. Parliament thought
the tax to be fair because it fell on the colonies in proportion to
their wealth. But the colonists saw this tax as improper because it was
a departure from the nature of past duties in that it was an "internal
tax". All of the original thirteen American colonies had adopted Magna
Carta principles directly or indirectly into their law. The stamp duties
seemed to the colonists to violate these principles of liberty. Patrick
Henry asserted that only Virginia could impose taxes in Virginia.
Schoolmaster and lawyer John Adams in Massachusetts asserted that no
freeman should be subject to any tax to which he had not assented. In
theory, colonists had the same rights as Englishmen per their charters,
but in fact, they were not represented in Parliament and Englishmen in
Parliament made the laws which affected the colonists. They could not be
members of the House of Lords because they did not have property in
England. There were demonstrations and intimidation of stamp agents by
the Sons of Liberty. Merchants agreed to buy no more goods from England.
The stamp duty was repealed the same year it had been enacted because it
had been "attended with many inconveniences and may be productive of
consequences greatly detrimental to the commercial interests of these
kingdoms".
To counter the wide-scale running of goods to avoid the customs tax,
the customs office was reorganized in 1766 to have commissions resident
in the colonies and courts of admiralty established there to expedite
cases of smuggling. This angered the colonists, especially Boston.
Boston smuggling had become a common and respectable business. It was
the port of entry for molasses from the West Indies from which New
England rum was made and exported. The entire molasses trade that was
essential to the New England economy had been built upon massive customs
evasions; royal customs officials had participated in this by taking
only token customs for the sake of appearance in London and thereby had
become rich.
In 1766 Parliament imposed a duty of 3d. per pound weight on tea and
duties on reams of paper, glass, and lead into the colonies. These
import duties were presented as external rather than internal taxes to
counter the rationale the colonies gave against the stamp tax. But these
items were of common use and their duties raised the cost of living. The
king's customs officials were authorized to enter any house, warehouse,
shop, or cellar to search for and seize prohibited or uncustomed goods
by a general writ of assistance.
These writs of assistance had been authorized before and had angered
Bostonians because they had been issued without probable cause. In
Paxton's case of 1761, the Massachusetts Superior Court had declared
legal the issuance of general writs of assistance to customs officers to
search any house for specific goods for which customs had not been paid.
The authority for this was based on the Parliamentary statutes of 1660
and 1662 authorizing warrants to be given to any person to enter, with
the assistance of a public official any house where contraband goods
were suspected to be concealed, to search for and seize those goods,
using force if necessary. They were called "writs of assistance" because
the bearer could command the assistance of a local public official in
making entry and seizure. A "general" writ of assistance differed from a
"special" writ of assistance in that the latter was issued on a one-time
basis. The general writ of assistance in Boston was good for six months
after the death of the issuing sovereign. Authority relied on for such
writs was a 1696 statute giving customs officers in the colonies the
same powers as those in England, a 1699 act by the Massachusetts
Provincial Legislature giving the Superior Court of Massachusetts the
same such power as that of the Exchequer, and the Massachusetts'
Governor's direction about 1757 to the Massachusetts Superior Court of
Judicature to perform the function of issuing such warrants. The
Massachusetts court issued them in the nature of the writs of assistance
issued from the Exchequer court in England, but had issued them
routinely instead of requiring the showing of probable cause based on
sworn information that the Exchequer court required. Few judges in the
other American colonies granted the writ.
Seditious libel trials in England and the colonies were followed
closely and their defendants broadly supported. John Wilkes, a member of
the House of Commons, published a criticism of a new minister in 1763.
He called King George's speech on a treaty "the most abandoned instance
of ministerial effrontery ever attempted to be imposed on mankind".
After being found guilty of seditious libel, he again ran for the House
of Commons, and was repeatedly elected and expelled. He was subsequently
elected alderman, sheriff, and mayor of London. In 1770, Alexander
MacDougall was voted guilty of seditious libel by the New York Colonial
Assembly for authoring a handbill which denounced a collusive agreement
by which the assembly voted to furnish supplies for the British troops
in New York in exchange for the royal governor's signature to a
paper-money bill. When he was arrested, the Sons of Liberty rallied to
his support, demanding freedom of the press. Benjamin Franklin's brother
had been imprisoned for a month by the Massachusetts assembly for
printing in his newspaper criticisms of the assembly. He was forbidden
to print the paper. Benjamin supported him by publishing extracts from
other papers, such as "Without freedom of thought, there can be no such
thing as wisdom; and no such thing as public liberty without freedom of
speech... Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by
subduing the freeness of speech; a thing terrible to public traitors."
By statute of 1766, the New York house of representatives was
prohibited from meeting or voting until they provisioned the King's
troops as required by law.
In 1769, Harvard College seated its students in class in alphabetical
order instead of by social rank according to birth.
By 1769, the colonies' boycott of British goods in protest of the new
duties cause these imports to decline so much that British merchants
protested. So the duties were dropped, except for that on tea, which was
retained as a matter of principle to assert the power of the crown to
tax the colonies. Then in 1773 the East India Company was allowed to
sell tea directly to the colonies to help it avoid bankruptcy. The
effect of this was to lower the cost of tea in the colonies by avoiding
the English middleman, and the American middleman, but also to give the
East India Company a monopoly. The colonies felt threatened by this
power of Britain to give monopolies to traders. When the tea ships
arrived in Boston in late 1773, Bostonians held a town meeting and
decided not to let the tea be landed. They threw this cargo of tea,
worth about 18,000 pounds, overboard. This Boston Tea Party was a direct
challenge to British authority. In response, Parliament closed the port
of Boston until compensation was made to the East India Company. By
statute of 1774, no one was to enter or exit the port of Boston or else
forfeit goods, arms, stores, and boats that carried goods to ships.
Every involved wharf keeper was to forfeit treble the value of the goods
and any boats, horses, cattle, or carriages used. Ships hovering nearby
were to depart within six hours of an order by a navy ship or customs
officer or be forfeited with all goods aboard, except for ships carrying
fuel or victuals brought coastwise for necessary use and sustenance of
inhabitants after search by customs officers, and with a customs
official and armed men for his defense on board. This statute was passed
because of dangerous commotions and insurrections in Boston to the
subversion of the king's government and destruction of the public peace
in which valuable cargoes of tea were destroyed. Later, the Governor was
given the right to send colonists or magistrates charged with murder or
other capital offenses, such as might be alleged to occur in the
suppression of riots or enforcement of the revenue laws, to England or
another colony for trial when he opined that an impartial trial could
not be had in Massachusetts Bay. A later statute that year altered the
charter of Massachusetts Bay province so that the choice of its council
was transferred from the people to the King to serve at his pleasure,
and the appointment and removal of judges and appointment of sheriffs
was transferred to the Governor to be made without the consent of the
council. This was due to the open resistance to the execution of the
laws in Boston. Further, no meeting of freeholders or inhabitants of
townships was to be held without consent of the Governor after
expressing the special business of such meeting because there had been
too many meetings that had passed dangerous and unwarranted resolutions.
Also, jurors were to be selected by sheriffs rather than elected by
freeholders and inhabitants.
The commander of the British troops in North America was made Governor
of Massachuseetts. King George thought that the colonists must be
reduced to absolute obedience, even if ruthless force was necessary. The
people of Massachusetts were incensed. They were all familiar with the
rights of Magna Carta since mandatory education taught them all to read
and write. Mandatory education every township of fifty households had to
appoint one person to teach all children to read and write. Every one
hundred families had to set up a grammar school.) The example in
Massachusetts showed other colonies what England was prepared to do to
them. Also disliked was the policy of restricting settlement west of the
Allegheny mountains; the take over of Indian affairs by royal
appointees; the maintenance of a standing army of about 6,000 men which
was to be quartered, supplied, and transported by the colonists; and
expanded restrictions on colonial paper currencies.
The Virginia House of Burgesses set aside the effective date of the
port bill as a day of prayer and fasting, and for this was dissolved by
its governor. Whereupon its members called a convention of delegates
from the colonies to consider the "united interests of America". This
congress met and decided to actively resist British policy. As
opposition to British rule spread in the colonies, a statute was passed
stating that because of the combinations and disorders in Massachusetts,
New Hampshire, and Connecticut, and Rhode Island to the destruction of
commerce and violation of laws, these inhabitants should not enjoy the
same privileges and benefits of trade as obedient subjects and that
therefore no goods or wares were to be brought from there to any other
colony, and exports to and imports from Great Britain were restricted,
on pain of forfeiting the goods and the ship on which they were laden.
There vessels were restricted from fishing off Newfoundland. These
conditions were to be in force until the Governors were convinced that
peace and obedience to laws was restored. Later in 1775, these trade
restrictions were extended to New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland,
Virginia, and South Carolina. In 1776, since all the thirteen colonies
had assembled an armed force and attacked British forces, these trade
restrictions were extended to Delaware, New York, Georgia, and North
Carolina and expanded to prohibit all trade during the present rebellion
to prevent assistance to them. War had started; the new rifle was used
instead of the musket.
By statute of 1775, anyone harboring of army or marine deserters in the
colonies forfeited 5 pounds Anyone persuading a soldier or marine to
desert drew a forfeiture of 40 pounds or else up to six months in prison
without bail and one hour in the pillory on market day.
Bounties were made available to vessels from and fitted out in Great
Britain for Newfoundland fishing.
Any shipmaster carrying as passengers any fisherman, sailor, or
artificer to America forfeited 200 pounds because such men had been
seduced from British fishing vessels in Newfoundland, to the detriment
of the fishing industry.
The many years of significant achievements of the colonists, such as
taming the wilderness and building cities, had given them confidence in
their ability to govern themselves. The average colonial family had a
better standard of living than the average family in England. Many of
its top citizenry had reached their positions by hard work applied to
opportunities for upward mobility. With the confidence of success, the
American colonies in 1776 declared their independence from Britain,
relying on the principles stated by John Locke and Jean Jacques Rousseau
that man was naturally free and all men equal, and that society was only
created with their consent. Issac's Newtons's unified laws of the
universe had contributed to this idea of a natural law of rights of men.
Thomas Jefferson wrote a Declaration of Independence which listed the
colonies' grievances against the Crown which reiterated many of the
provisions of the Petition of Right and Bill of Rights, specifically
dispensing with and suspending laws, maintaining a standing army and
quartering troops without legislative consent, imposing arbitrary
taxation, encouraging illegal prosecutions in strange courts, and
corrupting the jury process. It was adopted about July 4, 1776.
Thereafter, the American colonies did not follow English law. Past
English law became the legal heritage of the United States of America.
- The Law -
Anyone who feloniously steals or aids in the stealing of goods, wares,
or merchandise over 5s. from a shop, warehouse, coach house, or stable,
by night or by day, whether the owner is present or not, whether there
is a break in or not, may not have benefit of clergy.
Anyone stealing goods of 40s. worth from a ship on any river or in any
port or creek or from any wharf may not have benefit of clergy.
Anyone receiving or buying goods they know to be stolen or who harbors
or conceals any burglars, felons, or thieves knowing them to be such
shall be taken as accessory to the felony and shall suffer death as
punishment if the principal felon is convicted.
A person taking money or reward for helping any other person to stolen
goods or chattels is guilty of felony unless he brings the thief to
trial.
As of 1717, any person convicted of grand or petit larceny or any
felonious stealing or taking of money, goods, or chattels, either from
the person or from the house of any person who is entitled to benefit of
clergy and who is liable only to whipping or burning in the hand may
instead be transported to the American colonies to the use of any person
who will pay for his transportation for seven years. Any person
convicted of an offense punishable by death and without benefit of
clergy and buyers and receivers of stolen goods may be given mercy by
the king on condition of transportation to any part of America to the
use of any person who will pay for his transportation, for fourteen
years or other term agreed upon. Returning before the expiration of the
term is punishable by death.
Anyone assaulting another with an offensive weapon with a design to rob
may be transported for seven years.
Any person armed with swords, firearms, or other offensive weapons and
having their faces blackened or otherwise being disguised, who appears
in any forest, park, or grounds enclosed by a wall or fence wherein deer
are kept (including the king's deer) or in any warren or place where
hares or conies are kept or in any high road, open heath, common, or
down, or who unlawfully hunts, wounds, kills, or steals any deer or
steals any hare or rabbit or steals any fish out of any river or pond or
who unlawfully and maliciously breaks down the head or mound of any fish
pond, causing the loss of fish, or who unlawfully and maliciously kills,
maims, or wounds any cattle, or who cuts down any trees planted in any
avenue or growing in any garden or orchard for ornament, shelter, or
profit, or who sets fire to any house, barn or out house [outer
building], hovel, or stack of grain, straw, hay or wood, or who
willfully and maliciously shoots any person in any dwelling house or
other place, or who sends any letter with no signature or a fictitious
signature, demanding money, venison, or other valuable thing, or who
forcibly rescues any person lawfully in custody for any of these
offenses, or who procures others by gift or promise of money or other
reward to join with him in any such unlawful act is guilty of felony and
shall suffer death without benefit of clergy. Persons abetting them are
also guilty of felony and shall suffer death without benefit of clergy.
Attainder shall not work corruption of the blood, loss of dower, or
forfeiture of lands, goods, or chattel. The persons sustaining damages
can recover 200 pounds or less from the hundred, with inhabitants paying
proportionately, unless one of the offenders is convicted within six
months. If other hundreds have not diligently followed the hue and cry,
they shall pay half such damages. In 1735, it was required that there be
notice to the constable or other officer or tythingman and public notice
in the London Gazette describing the robbery, offenders, and goods taken
before the hundred had to pay damages. Also, it did not have to pay
damages if one offender was apprehended with 40 days of publication in
the London Gazette, but did have to pay the apprehender 10 pounds. In
1754 was also included letters threatening killing people or burning
houses, barns or stacks of grain, hay, or straw, without any demand.
Also, persons who rescued such offenders from gaol were given the same
penalty.
Later, persons obtaining money or goods by false pretenses with an
intent to defraud or cheat or sending a letter without a true signature
threatening to accuse any person of a crime with an intent to extort
money or goods, are punishable by fine and prison, pillory, or whipping
or transportation for seven years.
Later, no person may recover more than 200 pounds after a hue and cry
unless there are at least two witnesses to the robbery.
No one may advertise a reward for return of things stolen or lost with
no questions asked, because this has resulted in thefts and robberies.
Anyone stealing sheep or cattle or parts thereof is a felon and shall
suffer death without benefit of clergy.
Persons who steal or aid in stealing any lead, iron bar, iron gate,
palisade, or iron rail fixed to any house or its outhouses, garden,
orchard, or courtyard is guilty of felony and may be transported for
seven years. In 1756 also included was copper, brass, bell-metal, and
solder; buyers and receivers; and mills, warehouses, workshops, wharves,
ships, barges, and other vessels. Search warrants were authorized in
case of suspicion. Officers and solicited buyers and receivers were
required to take persons who at night were reasonably suspected of
having or carrying such items, to an accounting before a Justice of the
Peace. Also a notice was put in the newspaper for any owners to claim
such. If the person did not give a satisfactory account of the items, he
was guilty of a misdemeanor punishable by forfeiture of 2 pounds or
prison up to one month for the first offense, 4 pounds or prison for two
months for the second offense, and 6 pounds or prison for any subsequent
offense (without bail). An officer or solicited buyer or receiver who
did not take a suspect to a Justice of the Peace was punishable by the
same penalties except the amounts of forfeiture were 1 pound, 2 pounds,
and 4 pounds respectively. A felon who brought two buyers or receivers
to justice was to be pardoned.
A description of any goods and the appearance of a rogue or vagabond or
idle and disorderly person shall be advertised in a public paper for
identification by the owner as stolen.
Pawning goods without consent of the owner is punishable by forfeiture
of 20s. or hard labor for fourteen days with whipping there.
Maliciously destroying river banks resulting in lands being overflowed
or damaged is a felony for which one shall suffer death without benefit
of clergy. Later, transportation for seven years was made an
alternative.
The punishment for forgery or counterfeiting or assisting in such or
claiming a counterfeit item is good while knowing that it is not, with
an intent to defraud is death without benefit of clergy. The punishment
for perjury or subordination of perjury is hard labor in the House of
correction for up to seven years or transportation for up to seven
years. The punishment for altering numbers on bills of exchange or other
payment papers is death.
It is high treason to counterfeit the coinage. A person who tenders
coin, knowing it to be false, shall spend six months in prison and
acquire sureties for good behavior for the next six months. If he
offends again, he shall spend two years in prison and acquire sureties
for good behavior for the next two years. The third offense is felony
without benefit of clergy.
In 1773, making or possessing any frame, mould, or instrument for
forging paper notes of the Bank of England and putting this
identification thereon is felony with penalty of death without benefit
of clergy. Anyone who forges promissory notes, bills of exchange, or
inland bills of the Bank of England by engraving or etching on metal or
wood "Bank of England" or "Bank Post Bill" shall go to gaol for up to
six months.
Anyone selling gold or silver ware, vessel, plate or other item large
enough to be marked which has not been marked by its maker shall forfeit
10 pounds or be kept at hard labor up to six months. Anyone
counterfeiting such mark shall forfeit 100 pounds. Later, vendors of
these items were required to be licensed and the penalty for
counterfeiting was raised to felony for which one shall suffer death
without benefit of clergy. Later still, transportation for fourteen
years was allowed as an alternative. If an item was not all silver, e.g.
had metal underneath, 100 pounds was to be forfeited.
In 1769, receivers of stolen jewels and gold and silver plate and
watches knowing them to be stolen, in cases of burglary and highway
robbery, were subject to transportation for 14 years.
Anyone who willfully and maliciously set on fire any mine or pit of
coal is guilty of felony and shall suffer death without benefit of
clergy. Anyone who willfully and maliciously floods a coal work, mine
pit or who makes underground cavities or passages with intent to destroy
or damage such, or obstructs any sough or sewer made for draining such,
which has been held in common for 50 years, shall forfeit treble
damages. This is to deter these offenses, which have been done to
enhance the price of coals and gain a monopoly thereof.
If twelve or more people who riotously and tumultuously assemble and
disturb the peace, do not disburse within an hour of an order to
disburse by a justice or sheriff or mayor, they shall be deemed felons
without benefit of clergy. Any people pulling down or destroying a
church, dwelling house, barn, stable, or other out house; any mill; any
engine used for draining water from any coal, lead, tin, or copper
mines, or for drawing coals from mines; or bridge, wagon, or fences used
in such industry will be deemed felons without benefit of clergy and may
be transported for seven years. The cost of repair is to be borne by the
hundred or town.
The earlier statute that substituted burning in the cheek for burning
in the hand is repealed because this not only did not deter offenders,
but on the contrary, made them unfit for honest livelihoods and
therefore more desperate. Those convicted of theft or larceny shall be
burnt in the hand and may be kept at hard labor in a House of Correction
for 2-24 months, without bail.
Anyone stealing goods off shipwrecks, or putting out a false light to
bring a ship to danger, or beating or wounding with an intent to kill or
otherwise obstructing a person escaping from the ship to save his life
shall suffer death without benefit of clergy. Except that good of small
value taken without violence shall be punished as petit larceny. The
houses of suspect people may be searched by warrant. If there are goods
found or if people are found offering goods to sell, they may be ordered
by a justice to give an account of these goods. If the account is not
satisfactory, the punishment is forfeiture of treble their value or six
months in prison. A reasonable reward may be given to the discoverer.
Anyone assaulting a magistrate or officer involved in salvage work shall
be transported for seven years.
Armed persons up to three in number assembled to assist in illegal
exporting or running, landing, or carrying away prohibited or uncustomed
goods, and any person apprehended by any revenue officer, and anyone
with his face blackened or masked who obstructs, assaults, opposes, or
resists any revenue officer seizing such goods, or who shoots at or
maims or wounds any revenue officer attempting to go on any ship shall
suffer death as felons without benefit of clergy or serve as commons
sailors in the navy for at least one year. Harborers of such offenders
will be transported for seven years. The hundreds shall pay 100 pounds
for each revenue officer killed, and up to 40 pounds for each one
beaten, wounded, or maimed, and damages up to 200 pounds for goods,
unless an offender is caught and convicted in six months. There is a
reward of 500 pounds to an apprehender, and 50 pounds for an attempt to
apprehend in which one loses a limb or eye or is maimed or wounded, and
100 pounds to his family if he is killed. An offender who brings two of
his accomplices to justice will be acquitted and rewarded 50 pounds for
each such accomplice. Later, an incentive was given to customs officers
to have a portion of the proceeds of the sale of such goods seized by
them, such as 2/3 for wrought silks and calicoes, and 1/3 for tea,
coffee, foreign brandy, and rum. Still later, any person could seize
wrought silk, including ribbons, laces, and girdles containing it, from
the importer or retailer, and the importer was to forfeit 100 pounds,
and any import assistants 50 pounds, and retailers or concealers 50
pounds, with one half going to the suer. Also, the goods were to be
publicly burnt. Still later, the penalty was increased to forfeiture of
200 pounds for all offenders, but not including wearers, and the goods
were to be publicly sold for export rather than burnt. Then the import
of silk stockings, silk mitts, and silk gloves was prohibited for the
support of the English silk industry. Retailers, sellers, and concealers
of such were to forfeit the goods and 200 pounds. Search warrants could
be issued. In 1765, importers, sellers, and manufacturing users of most
foreign wrought silks or velvets were to forfeit the goods and 100
pounds. The goods were sold for export with the proceeds going 1/2 to
the king, and 1/2 to the seizing officer. The wearer was not liable. The
burden of proof of the place of manufacture was on the person prosecuted
rather than on the prosecutor. Persons breaking into houses or shops to
destroy any wool or silk being made or tools or racks used shall suffer
death as felons, to prevent combinations of workmen. In 1768, bounties
were made available to American exporters of raw silk to Great Britain,
whose climate was not conducive to the growing of mulberry trees on
which silk worms feed. In 1774, cotton printed, stained, or dyed that
has been manufactured in Great Britain may be worn and used, but must
have a mark woven in the warp that it was manufactured in Great Britain.
Persons importing other such cloth shall forfeit it and ten pounds per
piece. Persons selling such with a counterfeit stamp with an intent to
defraud shall suffer death without benefit of clergy. The protective
measures for English silk manufacture did not work well.
Any pirate, accessory to piracy, commander or master or other person of
any ship or vessel who trades with a pirate or furnishes him with
ammunition or provisions of fits out a ship to trade with pirates shall
suffer death and loss of lands, goods, and chattels. Seamen maimed in
fighting pirates may be admitted into Greenwich Hospital. (This hospital
received support from duties paid by vessels of the realm and of the
colonies.) Masters or seamen not fighting shall forfeit their wages and
spend 6 months in prison if the ship is taken. Masters shall not advance
to any seamen above half his wages since deserting is the chief occasion
of their turning into pirates.
In London penalties for crimes against property rose so that by 1740, a
child could be hanged for stealing a handkerchief worth 1s. from a
person's body.
Trade and the economy boomed in time of war, buttressed by the
increased production in the coal, iron, steel, shipbuilding, and cloth
industries. But peace brought depression and much misery, including the
imprisonment of many debtors. When very many were imprisoned, statutes
allowed release on certain conditions. After assets were paid to
creditors in proportion to the amounts owed to them, debtors could be
discharged from prison if they owed no party more than 100 pounds (later
no restriction and still later, 50 pounds, and even later, 500 pounds,
and in 1772, 1000 pounds, and in 1774, 2000 pounds) and take an oath
that they have less than 10 pounds (20 in 1772) worth of property
(including 40s. in money in 1774), because there were so many debtors in
prison who were impoverished by war losses and other misfortunes in
trades and professions, and were totally disabled from paying their
creditors, and they and their families either starved or became a burden
to their parishes and became an occasion of pestilence and other
contagious diseases. Exempted were those debtors for whom there was an
objection by one of their creditors who paid for the maintenance of that
debtor in prison. Prisoners discharged were also discharged from chamber
[cell] rent and gaolers' fees, but not from their debts to creditors.
During war, no male prisoner could be discharged unless he enlisted in
the royal army or navy until the end of the war. In 1774, the discoverer
of any asset of a debtor not listed by that debtor was to receive a
reward of 20 pounds per hundred, and anyone concealing an asset of a
debtor was to forfeit 100 pounds as well as double the value of the
asset.
A person declared bankrupt shall subsequently be examined from time to
time as to their goods, money, or other effects or estate to prevent the
frauds frequently committed by bankrupts. A default or willful omission
shall be deemed felony without benefit of clergy.
A bankrupt or other person concealing goods to the value of at least 20
pounds or his books with intent to defraud is a felony without benefit
of clergy.
A debtor refusing to come to court for examination or hiding assets of
more than 20 pounds is guilty of felony and his goods and estate shall
be divided among his creditors.
Later, a bankrupt coming to an examination was allowed to keep 5 (or 7
1/2 or 10) pounds per 100, up to a maximum of 200 (or 250 or 300,
respectively) pounds if he paid his creditors 10s. (or 12s.6d. or 15s.
respectively) per pound. His future estate was still liable to
creditors, excepting tools of trade, necessary household goods, bedding,
furniture, and wearing apparel of the family up to 10 pounds, if it
could pay every creditor 15s. per pound. If he didn't pay this, he could
be imprisoned. Bankrupts excepted from the benefits of this act are
those who lost 5 pounds in any one day or 100 pounds in the preceding
year from gambling or wagers.
No goods or chattels on lands or tenements which are leased for life or
lives or term of years or at will or otherwise "shall be liable to be
taken by virtue of any Execution on any pretence whatsoever unless the
party at whose suit the said Execution is sued out shall before the
removal of such goods from off the said premises by virtue of such
Execution or Extent pay to the landlord" all money due as rent. If the
lessee fraudulently or clandestinely conveys or carries off his goods or
chattels with intent to deprive the landlord or lessor from distraining
the same for arrears of such rent, the lessor or landlord may, within
five days, seize such goods and chattels as a distress for the arrears
of rent and may sell them as if actually distrained on the premises.
Every person under 21 and every woman-covert who is entitled by descent
or will to be admitted tenants of any copyhold lands or hereditaments
may be ordered to appear by a guardian or attorney to be compelled to be
so admitted and to pay such fines as are owing by the lands. If one is
so admitted, but does not pay, the lord may enter the lands and receive
its rents, but not sell timber, until the fine and costs are satisfied,
after which the land is to be given back and may not be forfeited to the
lord.
Tenants holding over any lands after their term expired and after
demand for possession was made shall pay double the yearly value of such
to the landlord. The landlord may reenter and eject a tenant if rent is
in arrears for 1/2 year.
Landlords may distrain within 30 days and sell goods and chattels
fraudulently or clandestinely carried off the premises by renters in
arrears of rent. This applies to goods sold to others privy to the
fraud. They may use force if necessary to break open houses upon giving
a Justice of the Peace reasonable grounds to suspect and to break open
other buildings in the presence of a constable. The renter is to forfeit
double the value of such. The landlord may distrain the renter's cattle
on any common or any growing grain, roots, or fruit. Attornments of
renters made to strangers who claim title and turn the landlord out of
possession are void.
Chief leases may be renewed without surrendering all the under leases.
This is to prevent subtenants from delaying the renewal of the principal
lease by refusing to surrender their leases, notwithstanding that they
have covenanted to do so. But the rents and duties of the new subleases
may not exceed those of their former leases.
Any person claiming a remainder, reversion, or expectancy in any estate
upon a person's death, who has cause to believe that that person is dead
and that the death is being concealed by the person's guardian, trustee,
husband, or other person, may request yearly an order in chancery for
the production of such tenant for life. Upon refusal, the tenant for
life shall be deemed dead.
As of 1752, all devices, legacies, and bequests made by will in Great
Britain or the colonies had to be in writing and witnessed by three
witnesses, or would be held void. No witness was to receive anything by
the will that he witnessed.
An accessory before or after the fact of felony may be prosecuted and
tried not only if the principal accused felon has been convicted, but
even if he stood mute or peremptorily challenged over 20 persons to
serve on the jury. The accessories shall be punished the same as if the
principal had been attainted. Buyers and receivers of stolen goods may
be prosecuted and punished if they knew the goods to be stolen, even if
the principal felon has not been convicted. The punishment will be as
for misdemeanor by fine and imprisonment. This is to deter the
counselors and contrivers of theft and other felonies and the receivers
of stolen goods from taking advantage of the former rule that an
accessory could not be convicted or punished unless the principal had
first been attainted. And if any captain or mariner or other officer
belonging to any ship willfully casts away, burns, or otherwise destroys
that ship to the prejudice of its owners or merchants loading goods onto
the ship, he shall suffer death as a felon.
Journeymen shoemakers or employees of such who sell or pawn boots,
shoes, slippers, cut leather or other materials for making such goods
which are not his proper goods, or exchange for worse good leather which
has been entrusted to them, shall for the first offense, recompense the
injured person, or if his goods are insufficient for distress, may be
whipped. For the second offense, he shall be sent to hard labor in a
House of Correction for 14-30 days. A person who buys or receives or
takes in pawn such goods shall suffer the same penalties. Justices of
the Peace may issue warrants to search houses and buildings in the
daytime if there is "just cause to suspect" such goods therein based
upon information given to him under oath.
Anyone employed in the working up of woolen, linen, fustian, cotton, or
iron manufacture who embezzles or purloins any materials for their work
shall forfeit double the value of the damages done and anyone convicted
thereof may be put into the House of Correction until he pays, or if he
can't pay, to be publicly whipped and kept at hard labor for no more
than 14 days. Persons convicted of buying or receiving such materials
shall suffer like penalties and forfeitures as one convicted of
embezzling or purloining such materials. Laborers employed in such
manufacture must be paid in coin and not in cloth, victuals, or
commodities in lieu thereof. Leatherworkers were added with a penalty of
up to double the value. Later this statute was amended to include a
penalty for the second offense of forfeiture of four times the value, or
else hard labor at a House of Correction for 1-3 months and whipping
once or more in the market town. Like penalties were given for buyers of
such material knowing it to be false. One who neglected finishing and
delivering such goods because he was leaving this employment was to be
sent to the House of Correction for up to one month.
The penalty for possessing or offering to sell any hare, pheasant,
partridge, moor or heath game or grouse by any carrier, innkeeper,
victualer, or alehouse keeper is 5 pounds, 1/2 to the informer, and 1/2
to the poor of the parish. If unable to pay, the offender shall be
placed in the House of Correction for three months without bail.
Unauthorized persons keeping or using greyhounds, setting dogs, or any
engine to kill game shall suffer the same penalties. In 1770, anyone
killing hare at night or using any gun, dog, or other engine to take or
kill or destroy any hare, pheasant, partridge, moor game, heath game, or
grouse in the night shall be whipped and also go to gaol or the House of
Correction for 3-6 months without bail for the first offense, and for
6-12 months without bail for any further offense. If such occurs on a
Sunday, the offender must forfeit 20-30 pounds or go to gaol for 3-6
months. In 1773, no one may kill or take or possess any heath fowl or
any grouse except at a limited period during the year.
Each manor may have only one gamekeeper allowed to kill game such as
hare, pheasant, partridge and only for his household's use. This
gamekeeper must be either qualified by law or a servant of the land's
lord. Other persons possessing game or keeping a greyhound or setting
dogs or guns or other devices to kill game must forfeit them and five
pounds.
Anyone killing or attempting to kill by shooting any house dove or
pigeon shall forfeit 20s. or do hard labor for one to three months.
Excepted are owners of dove cotes or pigeon houses erected for the
preservation and breeding of such.
A gamekeeper or other officer of a forest or park who kills a deer
without consent of the owner must forfeit 50 pounds per deer, to be
taken by distress if necessary, and if he can't pay, he is to be
imprisoned for three years without bail and set in the pillory for two
hours on some market day. A later penalty was transportation for seven
years. Anyone pulling down walls of any forest or park where deer are
kept, without the consent of the owner, must forfeit 30 pounds and if he
can't pay, he is to be imprisoned for one year without bail and spend
one hour in the pillory on market day. Later, the killing of deer in
open fields or forests was given the same penalties instead of only the
monetary penalty prescribed by former law (former chapter). The penalty
for a second offense was given as transportation for seven years. Anyone
beating or wounding a gamekeeper with an intent to kill any deer in an
open or closed place was to be transported for seven years.
Anyone who apprehends and prosecutes a person guilty of burglary or
felonious breaking and entering any house in the day time shall be
rewarded 40 pounds in addition to being discharged from parish and ward
offices.
Justices of the Peace may authorize constables and other peace officers
to enter any house to search for stolen venison. Any person apprehending
an offender or causing such to be convicted who is killed or wounded so
as to lose an eye or the use of a limb shall receive 50 pounds. Any
person buying suspect venison or skin of deer shall produce the seller
or be punished the same as a deer killer: 30 pounds or, if he couldn't
pay, one year in prison without bail and one hour in the pillory on
market day. An offender who discloses his accomplices and their
occupations and places of abode and discovers where they may be found
and they are subsequently convicted, shall be pardoned.
All persons pretending to be patent gatherers or collectors for prison
gaols or hospitals and all fencers, bearwards, common players of
interludes, minstrels, jugglers, and pretended gypsies, and those
dressing like Egyptians or pretending to have skill in physiognomy,
palm-reading, or like crafty science, or pretending to tell fortunes,
and beggars, and all persons able in body who run away and leave their
wives or children to the parish shall be deemed rogues and vagabonds.
Apprehenders of such persons bringing them before a Justice of the Peace
may be rewarded 2s. Any constable not apprehending such shall forfeit
10s. Persons wandering outside the place determined by a Justice of the
Peace to be his settlement may be whipped on the back until it is bloody
or sent to hard labor at a House of Correction. If he was dangerous and
incorrigible, for instance as indicated by swearing falsely before a
Justice of the Peace, he could suffer both punishments with the whipping
being on three market days. If he escaped from the House of Correction,
it was felony. If he has been absent for more than two years, he could
be put out as an apprentice for seven years in the realm, in the
colonies, or in a British factory beyond the seas. Included later were
performers for gain from outside their parish of any play, tragedy,
comedy, opera, farce or other entertainment of the stage, including
performances in public places where wine, ale, beer, or other liquors
are sold, or else forfeit 50 pounds. Exempted were performances
authorized by the king in Westminster.
Unlicensed places of entertainment are deemed disorderly (like bawdy
houses and gaming houses) because they increase idleness, which produces
mischief and inconvenience. Persons therein may be seized by a
constable. Persons keeping such a place shall forfeit 100 pounds. No
licensed place of entertainment may be opened until 5:00 p.m.
Later there was an award of 5s. for apprehending a person leaving his
wife and children to the parish, living idly, refusing to work at going
rates, or going from door or placing themselves in the streets to beg.
This includes begging by persons who pretend to be soldiers, mariners,
seafaring men, or harvest workers. These rogues and vagabonds shall be
sent to hard labor at a House of Correction for up to one month. The
real soldiers, mariners, seafaring men, and harvest workers shall carry
official documents indicating their route and limiting the time of such
passage.
Persons pretending to be lame who beg are to be removed. If he comes
back to beg, his back may be whipped until bloody. If a constable
neglects this duty, he shall forfeit 10s.
Masters of ships bringing in vagabonds or beggars from Ireland or the
colonies shall forfeit five pounds for each one. This money shall be
used for reconveying such people back at a price determined by a Justice
of the Peace. A master of a ship refusing to take such a person shall
forfeit five pounds. These vagabonds and beggars may be whipped.
Anyone who profanely curses or swears shall suffer the following
penalties: day laborer, common soldier, common sailor, common seaman -
1s., anyone else below the degree of gentleman - 2s., gentlemen and
above - 5s., and for the second offense, a double fine, for further
offense, a treble fine. If a person can't pay, he shall be put to hard
labor at a House of Correction for ten days, or if a common soldier,
common sailor, or common seaman, he shall be set in the stocks for 1-2
hours. This is to prevent the provocation of divine vengeance.
Anyone setting up or maintaining lotteries or deceitful games must
forfeit 200 pounds, or go to prison up to 6 months. Any one who plays at
such, such as by drawing lots or using cards or dice, must forfeit 50
pounds. Sales of lottery items, such as houses, lands, plate, jewels, or
ships, are void and these items will be forfeited to any person who
sues. Such have caused many families to become impoverished, especially
through their children or through the servants of gentlemen, traders,
and merchants. Backgammon games are exempt. Later, People who lost up to
ten pounds in deceitful gaming were allowed to sue to recover this money
from the winners. Also, anyone winning or losing ten pounds at one time
or twenty pounds within 24 hours shall be fined five times the value of
such. Offenders discovering others, who are convicted, are indemnified
from all penalties and shall be admitted to give evidence.
No one may run more than one horse, mare, or gelding in a horse race.
No prize may be under 50 pounds value. This is because a great number of
horse races for small prizes have contributed to idleness, to the
impoverishment of the meaner sort of people, and has prejudiced the
breed of strong and useful horses.
Wagers and agreements in the nature of puts and refusals relating to
prices of stocks or securities are void. Those making or executing such
agreements must forfeit 500 pounds. Those selling stock which one does
not possess must forfeit 500 pounds. Brokers negotiating such agreements
must forfeit 100 pounds.
Only a person with an interest in the life or death of another may have
insurance on this other, to prevent the mischievous kind of gaming that
has been introduced.
Apples and pears may not be sold by any measure other than a standard
water measure, or else forfeit 10s., one-half to the informer, and
one-half to the poor, except for measures sealed by the Company of
Fruiterers. This is to decrease the suits between buyers and sellers.
There shall be enough silver and gold on silver and gold plated silk
thread and wire so that it does not crumble off, thereby wasting the
bullion of the nation. This is also to encourage its export by making it
competitive in trade with such foreign articles, which may not be
imported.
Malt to be sold or exported must not be fraudulently mixed with
unmalted grain to lower duties payable or else forfeit 5s.
Any one who adulterates coffee with water, grease, butter, and such
shall forfeit 20 pounds, 1/2 to the king, and 1/2 to the suer.
Walnut tree leaves, hop leaves, sycamore leaves and such may not be
made to imitate tobacco leaves for sale or else forfeit 5s. per pound.
Persons near London may not make unsound, hollow, or improperly heated
bricks.
Makers of narrow woolen cloths must weave or set in the head of every
piece his initials or else forfeit one pound. This is to prevent frauds
and abuses, particularly in stretching and straining the cloth. The
fulling mill owner must append his seal of lead with his name and with
his measurements. The searcher to be appointed must measure such cloths
when wet for conformity to standard measurements and append his seal
with his measurements. He may also inspect any places he chooses.
In 1774, any wool-making employee not returning all working tools and
implements and wool and all materials with which entrusted back to his
employer, or who fraudulently steams, damps, or waters such wool, or who
takes off any mark on any piece of cloth, shall go to the House of
Correction for one month. If he absconds with or sells such or anyone
fraudulently buys or receives such from him, a search warrant may be
issued to seize any other such tools or material. If found, the
possessor may be brought to account before a Justice of the Peace, and
if his account is not satisfactory, he shall forfeit such. A search
warrant may also be issued for houses on "just cause to suspect" by oath
of a credible witness. For a second offense, the penalty is up to three
months in a House of Correction. For a third offense, the penalty is up
to six months in a House of Correction and public whipping.
Bakers must mark their bread with W for white, WH for wheaten, and H
for household or else forfeit 20s. to the informer. In 1758, a new
assize of bread set prices for rye, barley, oats, and beans by the
bushel. The prices for the three qualities of wheat, for wheaten (prized
and unprized), and for household grain by the bushel were to be
determined from within a statutory range by the local Mayor or Justice
of the Peace. Mayors and Justices of the Peace were to determine a fair
profit for their local bakers for all the types of bread. A miller,
mealman, or baker adulterating bread was to forfeit 40s. 10 pounds, part
of which money could be used in publishing his name, abode, and offense
in the local newspaper. Later, there was a forfeiture of 1-5s. for every
ounce underweight. Household bread was to be 1/4 cheaper than wheaten or
forfeit 10-40s. Bread inferior to wheaten was not to be sold at a price
higher than household or else forfeit up to 20s. If the forfeiture was
not paid, it could be levied by distress, or otherwise the offender was
to spend one month in gaol or a House of Correction.
Straw to be sold in London must be sound, firmly bound in a truss, and
of a given weight or else forfeit it and 20s. if no truss, and 1s. if in
truss but underweight or of mixed quality. Handlers must keep registers
of sellers, buyers, weights, dates of sale, and prices or else forfeit
10-20s.
Frame-work knitted pieces and stockings shall be marked with the
correct number of threads by the master, frame-work knitter, or master
hosier, or forfeit the goods and 5 pounds. If a journeyman apprentice,
or servant employ does not mark correctly, he shall forfeit the goods
and 5s.-40s. Sellers of such shall forfeit the goods and 5 pounds per
piece.
At every fishing season, the quantity of salt, foreign or domestic,
used by a proprietor for curing fish for export shall be accounted and
sworn to so that it can be compared with the quantity of fish exported
by the proprietor to ensure that the salt duties are fully paid, or else
forfeit 40 pounds. If such salt is sold for other uses than curing fish,
the proprietor is to forfeit 20s. per bushel sold and the users thereof,
to forfeit 20s. per bushel bought, delivered, or used. If one can't pay,
he is to be whipped and put to hard labor in a House of Correction for
up to three months.
Agreements between coal owners, lightermen, fitters, master or owners
of ships, hindering the free sale, loading, and unloading, navigating,
or disposing of coals are illegal, null, and void. This is engrossing
and has caused the price of coals to go up.
No coal trader or dealer may use his own lighters, barges, or other
vessels to carry coals on the Thames River to and from any ship and to
and from any wharf, dock, or creek because this has impaired the
business of the watermen and wherrymen, whose vessels must now be
registered and display such mark on their hulls. No lightermen nor
buyers of coals may act as agent for any master or owner of a ship
importing coals into London or else forfeit 200 pounds, because this
combination has caused the price of coal to go up. Selling one sort of
coal for another is punishable by forfeiture of 500 pounds. Only
standard size coal sacks may be used for selling coal and they must be
sealed and stamped by an official at the Guildhouse before sale. The
mayor and aldermen of London may set the price of coals coming into this
port. In other areas, Justices of the Peace set the prices of coals
which allowed "a competent profit". If a merchant refused to sell at
that price, the Justice of the Peace could authorize seizure and sale by
officers.
Later, coal measurers must give the coal cart driver a ticket with the
name of the sellers and consumers, the quantity and quality of the coal,
its price, the date of sale, and the name of the cart driver or else
forfeit 5 pounds. The cart driver must give this ticket to the consumer
or forfeit 5 pounds. If coal is carried by cart without a ticket, the
seller forfeits 50 pounds and the driver 5 pounds.
Any owner of timber trees, fruit trees, and other trees used for
shelter, ornament, or profit, which are cut down or otherwise destroyed
shall be made good by his parish or town, as is an owner of hedges and
dikes overthrown by persons in the night. In 1765, anyone cutting down
or destroying any oak or other timber trees at night shall forfeit up to
20 pounds for the first offense, up to 30 pounds for the second offense,
and shall be transported to the colonies for seven years for any further
offense. Anyone digging up or destroying or carrying away any root,
shrub, or plant worth up to 5s. in a garden, nursery, or other enclosed
ground at night shall forfeit up to 2 pounds for the first offense, up
to 5 pounds for the second offense, and shall be transported to the
colonies for seven years for any further offense. Anyone not paying is
to be gaoled. Aiders and buyers who know the item was stolen shall incur
the same penalties. Later, many other types of trees, such as beach,
ash, elm, cedar, and walnut were included as timber trees, and hollies,
thorns, and quicksets included as plants.
Any person using violence to hinder the purchase or transportation of
grain, e.g. by beating or wounding a buyer; beating or wounding the
driver or horse of a cart loaded with wheat, flour, meal, malt, or other
grain, or cutting the harness of or driving away the horse, or cutting
or carrying away the sacks of grain is to be put in the common gaol or
House of Correction with hard labor for 1-3 months, and whipped in the
market place between 11:00 and 2:00. The penalty for a second offense or
for destroying a storehouse or granary where grain is kept to be
exported or for taking or spoiling such grain, or for throwing such off
a ship or vessel is transportation for seven years. The hundreds
concerned are to pay damages up to a total of 100 pounds, but only if
notice is given to the constable within two days and there is an oath
and examination before a Justice of the Peace within ten days of the
owner or his servants. If any offender is convicted within a year, the
hundreds are released.
Anyone who steals at night any cloth or wool or woolen goods set out to
dry on racks shall forfeit treble damages, or if he can't pay, be sent
to prison for three months without bail. For the second offense, he
shall forfeit treble damages and be sent to prison for six months
without bail. For the third offense, he shall be transported for seven
years. Upon complaint, a Justice of the Peace may authorize a constable
or other peace officer to enter and search houses, outhouses, yards, and
gardens of a person suspected by the owner. This person shall account to
the Justice of the Peace and may bring a witness to his purchase of the
items. If the account is unsatisfactory, he shall be penalized.
Anyone taking linens, fustians, or cottons set out for whitening,
bleaching, or printing up to the value of 10s. in lands, grounds, or
buildings may be transported for seven years. Later, this penalty was
increased to death without benefit of clergy or transportation for
fourteen years.
Anyone stealing or maliciously pulling up or destroying any turnips on
a person's land must pay damages or go to gaol for up to one month. He
may be whipped. The penalty for a second offense is three months in a
House of Correction. This statute of 1750 was, in 1773, extended to
include potatoes, cabbages, parsnips, peas, and carrots. A penalty up to
10s. was added. Evidence of the owner was to be taken.
In 1769, anyone who steals a dog or receives such knowing it to be
stolen shall forfeit 20-30 pounds for the first offense, and 30-50
pounds for the second offense or go to gaol or the House of Correction
for 12-18 months and be publicly whipped there. Search warrants may be
issued to search for stolen dogs or their skins. One-half of the
forfeiture will go to the informer.
Officers of the revenue who collude with importers to return to them
goods which have been seized for nonpayment of duties shall forfeit 500
pounds and lose office, unless they disclose their accomplices within
two months. The importer shall forfeit treble the value of such goods.
Any ship not more than 50 tons hovering on the coast with customable or
prohibited goods may be boarded by a customs officer, who may demand
bond for treble the value of the goods.
In 1724, persons contracting with artificers and manufacturers of wool,
iron, steel, brass, and other metals, clockmakers, or watchmakers, to go
to a foreign country and there receive greater wages and advantages
shall forfeit 100 pounds and spend 3 months in prison for the first
offense, and shall forfeit a sum determined by the court and spend 12
months in prison for the second offense. An artificer or manufacturer
not returning after warning is given by the ambassador is to forfeit
hereditaments, goods, and lands and to be deemed an alien. Later, in
1750, cotton and silk were included and the penalty was increased to 500
pounds and 12 months in gaol for the first offense, and 1000 pounds and
2 years in prison for the second offense. Also, anyone exporting tools
of wool or silk manufacture was to forfeit the tools and 200 pounds.
This statute was strictly enforced. In 1774, tools of cotton and linen
manufacture were included.
In 1772, all statutes against engrossing, forestalling, and regrating
were repealed because they had prevented free trade and tended to
increase prices, e.g. of grain, meal, flour, cattle, and other victuals.
Anyone assisting a felon (except for petty larceny) to try to escape
from gaol, is guilty of felony and shall be transported for seven years.
Anyone assisting a person who owes or is to pay 100 pounds to try to
escape from gaol is guilty of a misdemeanor. In 1772, prison keepers
were indemnified from creditors for any escapes of debtors due to
conspiracy and break out with weapons and firearms rather than due to
negligence of the prison keeper, as had been occurring.
No more than 600 pounds of gunpowder may be kept in any building in
London or Westminster or suburbs thereof. Later, no more than 200 pounds
of gunpowder were allowed to be kept therein for more than 24 hours.
Buildings may be searched on "reasonable cause" shown to a Justice of
the Peace. Later, no more than 400 pounds of gunpowder could be kept for
more than 24 hours near any town, or more than 300 pounds for more than
24 hours in any place. Then no gunpowder could be conveyed by land over
25 barrels or by water over 200 barrels.
It was customary for officers to take the oaths of allegiance and
supremacy to any new monarch. When George I became king in 1714, all
civil and military officers, clergy, schoolmasters, and lawyers,
solicitors, clerks, etc. living within 30 miles of London had to take an
oath of allegiance and a new oath that the person was not Papist and
agreed that no foreigners had jurisdiction in the realm, such as to
excommunicate someone and thus declaring he could be legitimately
killed. Soon after, it was required that Papists had to register their
names and real estates. Commissioners were appointed to make inquiries.
If a person did not take the oaths or did not register, he was to
forfeit 2/3 of his land to the king and 1/3 to a Protestant who sued for
such. This was in order to deter future rebellions against the king and
efforts to destroy the Protestant religion.
As late as 1722, there was a Papist conspiracy to take the Tower of
London and the King, and make a Catholic king. This resulted in the
imprisonment of the conspirators and a new statute: Persons not taking
the oath of allegiance and above oath that they were not Papist shall
register their lands and yearly rents and pay double the land tax and
100,000 pounds. After payment, they are discharged from forfeiting 2/3
of their lands' rents for one year.
Papists enlisting in the army are liable to corporal punishment, but
not death, as determined by a court martial.
Any mayor, bailiff, or other magistrate who is present at any meeting
for public worship other than the Church of England will lose office and
is barred from any public office or employment.
Jews may not refuse suitable maintenance to their children who are
Christian to pressure them to convert back to Judaism.
Black slaves were common for a time in London. This was a result of the
voluminous triangle trade of manufactured goods from England, slaves
from West Africa, and sugar and tobacco from the West Indies. Slavery
was largely abolished by judicial decision of Chief Justice Mansfield in
1772.
If a sheriff does not answer for money collected for the Exchequer, he
shall forfeit treble damages to the aggrieved person, double the sum
missing to the aggrieved person, 100 pounds to the king, and 100 pounds
to the party who sues. If a sheriff take a fee for levying or collecting
money due to the king (except 4d. for an acquittance) or take a sum for
not levying money due, he is guilty of extortion, injustice, and
oppression and shall forfeit treble damages and costs to the aggrieved
person, and double the sum extorted to the aggrieved person. A sheriff
may not levy more than 12d. for every 20s. of yearly income of any manor
for up to 100 pounds of income, and 6d. for value over 100 pounds.
No one may cut pine trees that are fit for masts of ship in New England
without license by the Queen or else forfeit 100 pounds. Later, pine
trees on private property were exempted.
Citizens of Great Britain may sue colonial debtors by oath before
British magistrates and a debtor's colonial lands and houses and negroes
may be used to satisfy his debts.
Anyone pretending to act under a charter and taking subscriptions in
Great Britain or the colonies must forfeit treble damages.
No hats, including beaver hats, may be exported from any colony even to
another colony because this has hurt British hat manufacture. The
penalty is 500 pounds. No one in the colonies except present hatmakers
who are householders and journeymen may make hats unless they serve a
seven year apprenticeship. No hatmaker in the colonies may have more
than two apprentices at once.
Whaling ships near Greenland were prohibited from returning until their
hulls were full. Vessels built or fitted out in America may engage in
whaling.
Pig iron from the colonies may be imported free, but there may be no
mill for slitting or rolling iron and no plateing-forge or other engine
to work with a tilt hammer and no furnace for making steel erected or
used in the colonies or else forfeit 200 pounds.
No paper bills of credit may be used in New England because such have
depreciated.
William Blackstone lectured on law at Oxford University in 1753. As a
result, the first professorship of English law was established. His
lectures were published in 1769 as the "Commentaries on the Laws of
England". They greatly influenced the American colonists and were the
basis of legal education in England and America for years. They were
comprehensive and covered real property, crime and punishment, court
procedure, contract, corporations, and commercial law. He wrote "The
Great Charter and Charter of the Forest" in 1759.
- Judicial Procedure -
For actions under 10 pounds in a superior court and actions under 40s.
in an inferior court, the offender shall be served with process to
appear in court rather than being arrested. For money at issue, an
affidavit shall be taken. No more money may be taken for bail than the
amount at controversy. This is to prevent frivolous and vexatious
arrests. Perjurers, forgers, those involved in barratry or suborning
perjury, and pretenders practicing as attorneys or solicitors in the
courts of law or equity shall be transported for seven years to the
American colonies. Unqualified people acting as attorneys or solicitors
in the county court shall forfeit 20 pounds.
No one may practice as an attorney in the courts of King's Bench,
Common Pleas, or Exchequer until he has been examined by a judge of such
court on his fitness and qualifications and has taken the oath to
honestly demean himself and practice according to his best knowledge and
ability. The same applies to a solicitor in the equity courts. This
shall not exclude persons who have been bound to an attorney or
solicitor for four years. Attorneys and solicitors, with consent of an
attorney of another court, may participate in proceedings of such other
court. No attorney may have more than two clerks bound to him at one
time. Attorneys may be admitted as solicitors and vice-versa.
There were twelve common law justices of the Court of the King's Bench,
Court of Common Pleas, and Court of the Exchequer. The Chief Justices of
all of these courts were paid partly from fees paid to the court. The
other Justices of these courts were paid completely by salary, which in
1759 was well over 500 pounds per year. These justices were to continue
in office even after a king died and could be removed only for good
cause upon the address of both houses of Parliament. The officers of
these courts were attorneys. There was one justice at Doctors' Commons.
The two chancery justices (since Edward I) were the Lord Chancellor and
the Master of the Rolls. The salary of the eleven masters of the court
of chancery in 1765 was 400 pounds per year. The officers of this court
were solicitors.
Appeals from the Exchequer could be made to a court of the King's Bench
and Common Pleas combined. Appeals from Common Pleas could be made to
the King's Bench. Decisions of the King's Bench and other common law
courts could be appealed to Parliament.
The common law courts rode circuit twice a year in five circuits and
once a year in the north circuit. So an accused person could spend up to
a year in gaol waiting for trial. Few prisoners were granted bail. In
each common law court, the law justices in banc would hear demurrers
[contentions that the other party was wrong in the law]. No one with an
interest in a suit, including the plaintiff and the defendant, could
give evidence. There was no power to amend pleadings, so misspelling of
the defendant's name, for instance, could result in dismissal of the
suit. In 1730, the pleadings and indictments ceased to be in Latin.
Compurgation still existed for debt and detinue.
Writs of error at variance from the original record or otherwise
defective may be amended to correct the defect by the court where such
writ is returnable. No judgment is to be reversed for any defect in any
bill or writ, excepting an appeal of felony or murder, or misdemeanor.
This is to prevent delays of justice. Justices of the Peace may correct
defects of form on appeals to them.
Plaintiffs neglecting to go to trial after an issue has been joined may
be nonsuited.
The qualification for jury service is having land with an income over
rents of at least 20 pounds, with leases for 500 years or more, or 99
years, or any term determinable on one or more lives. Being a freeholder
is not necessary. In London, the qualification is being a householder
and having lands to the value of 100 pounds. No sheriff may excuse a
qualified person from jury service for money or other reward. Selection
of jurors for each case is to be done by some impartial person pulling
their names from a box. Later, persons refusing jury service could be
fined.
Poor persons may be paid up to 6d. to give evidence against felons.
Pirates may not be tried again for the same crime or for a certain
crime and high treason. When the marine force was raised, the marines
were also given protection from double jeopardy.
In Chancery, a plaintiff filed a complaint and interrogatories prepared
by counsel. Only in Chancery could there be discovery, such as
interrogatories [written questions]. Court officials asked the questions
of witnesses without the presence of the parties or their lawyers.
Officials wrote down the answers in their own terms So there was no
cross-examination possible. Most decrees took many years to be made.
The ordinary administrative court of first instance is that of one or
two Justices of the Peace who issued orders in matters of public safety,
public order, public morals, health, the poor, highways, water, fields,
forests, fisheries, trade, building, fire, begging, and vagrancy. They
examined suspicious persons and issued warrants for the removal of any
person likely to become a public charge. The Justice of the Peace also
regulated wages, servants, apprentices, and day laborers. In his
judicial capacity, he tried all crimes and felonies except treason,
though in practice death penalty cases were transferred to the assize
justices. The Justices of the Peace of a hundred hold special sessions
such as for appointment of parochial officers, highway disputes, and the
grant of wine, beer, and spirit licenses. The appointment of overseers
of the poor, authorization of parish rates, and reading of the Riot Act
to mobs to disperse them, required more than one of the Justices of the
Peace of the hundred to participate. All the Justices of the Peace of
the county met four times a year at Quarter Sessions to hear appeals
from penal sentences, to determine the county rate of tax, to appoint
treasurers of the county and governors of the county prison and house of
correction, to issue regulations on prices of provisions and on wages,
to settle fees of the county officials, to grant licenses for
powder-mills and other industries, to hear nuisance complaints such as
those against parishes failing to keep their roads in repair, to make
regulations for the holding of markets, to hear complaints concerning
local government, and to register dissenting chapels. In more and more
matters specified by statute, the Quarter Sessions heard appeals from
the orders of individual Justices of the Peace instead of common law
courts hearing them by writ of certiorari. The writ of certiorari
allowed administrative decisions to be reviewed by the common law courts
for compliance with law, competency of the court, and interpretation of
the administrative law. The writ of habeas corpus appealed
administrative decisions to imprison not only after arrest for criminal
proceedings, but any coercive measure for enforcing an administrative
order. The writ of mandamus was available for enforcing the injunctions
of administrative law against towns, corporations, and all other
authorities and private persons, where the ordinary punishments were
insufficient. Justices of the Peace in rural areas were squires and in
towns aldermen.
In 1747, Justices of the Peace were authorized to decide issues between
masters and mistresses and their employees who were hired for at least
one year. If a servant misbehaved, they could authorize reduction of
wage, discharge, and hard labor at a house of Correction up to one
month. If a servant was not paid, he could authorize payment of wages up
to 10 pounds for an agricultural servant, and up to 5 pounds for an
artificer, handicraftsman, miner, collier, keelman, pitman, glassman,
potter, or ordinary laborer. Later, tinners and miners were added to the
last category. In 1758, employees of less than a year were included.
In 1775, Justices of the Peace were authorized to administer any oath
for the purpose of levying penalties.
To be a Justice of the Peace, one must have income of 100 pounds a year
from a freehold, copyhold, or customary estate that is for life or for a
term of at least 21 years, or be entitled to a reversion of lands leased
for 1 or 2 or 3 lives, or for any term of years determinable on the
death of 1 or 2 or 3 lives. Excepted were peers, justices, and heads of
colleges or vice chancellors at the universities. The Justices of the
Peace were selected by the superintending Sheriffs and Lords Lieutenant,
the latter of whom were usually peer with a ministers' office or a high
court official. No attorney or solicitor or proctor could be a Justice
of the Peace unless the locality had Justices of the Peace by charter.
A request for Certiorari for removal of convictions, judgments, orders
made by Justices of the Peace must be made within six months and after
notice to the Justice of the Peace who may argue cause against granting
certiorari.
In the common law courts, trespass in ejectment served the purposes of
most of the actions involving land. Assumpsit covered the whole province
of debt, and much more. Trover more than covered the old province of
detinue. Trespass still served for all cases in which the defendant had
been guilty of directly applying force to the plaintiff's body, goods or
chattels. Trespass on the case covered miscellaneous torts. Replevin was
still used. Covenant remained in use for the enforcement of promises
under seal. Account gradually came under the equity jurisdiction of
Chancery. Common law writs of dower are largely superseded by the relief
given to the doweress in the courts of equity, where new and valuable
rights were given to her and to her personal representatives against the
heir and his representatives. The actions of indebitatus assumpsit is
being extended to actions upon quasi-contract, in which the element of
contract is not required e.g. quantum meruit, where a contract is
implied from the facts of the case.
Mercantile law was developed by the common law courts, especially the
King's Bench.
The king was to appoint the marshal of the King's Bench. The marshal
was to select his inferior officers to hold office as long as they
"behave themselves well within". These offices had been sold by James I
to a certain person, his heirs, and assigns. The marshal was to keep the
prison of this court in good repair from his fees and profits of office.
The office of sheriff was now an accessory department of the common law
courts for summons, executions, summoning the jury, and carrying out the
sentence of the law.
Summons for excise offenses may be left at a person's abode, workhouse,
or shop as well as on his person.
The coroner's office now investigated unusual deaths with a jury from
the neighborhood elected by county freeholders.
The last beheading was of a Scottish lord in 1747; he had been involved
in an attempt to restore the Stuarts to the throne. So many people came
that some overcrowded bleachers fell down and crushed about 20
spectators. Henceforth, every sentence of death was by hanging, even for
peers.
In 1772, the process of pressing a man to death, if he refused to plead
to an indictment was abolished. Instead, persons accused or indicted, in
Great Britain or America, of felony or piracy who stand mute shall be
convicted of such charge. Property of a felon was still forfeited to the
crown.
From 1749 on were established special procedures for speedy decisions
in local courts in some areas for debts or damages under 40s. and
imprisonment for such was limited for up to three months. Otherwise,
sentences were longer, and debts grew during the time in prison. When
prisons were overcrowded, Parliament let the inmates out if they gave up
their possessions. They could go to Georgia.
In 1763, the homes of John Wilkes and others were searched for a
seditious and treasonous published paper and all related papers because
they had been rumored to have some relationship to the conception,
writing, publication, or distribution of the paper. Wilkes had such
papers and was convicted of libel. He countersued for damages due to
criminal trespass. The court held that general search warrants were
subversive of the liberty of the subject of the search in violation of
the British Constitution, declared the statute void, and found for
Wilkes. The Court of Common Pleas agreed on appeal and put the burden of
proof on the persons searching to justify the search warrant. His
decision gave support to William Pitt's assertion that "every man's home
is his castle".
There were felons' prisons and debtors' prisons. Sometimes they were
one and the same. There was much fighting among inmates. The inmates
slept on hay if lucky. There were no washing facilities and little
light. Counties or friends paid for their bread. They were also sold
beer, which made them drunk and riotous. The sale of beer was a
recognized and legitimate source of profit to the keeper. This was
remedied by statute of 1760 that no sheriff or other officer may take an
arrested person to a tavern or other public house or charge him for any
wine, beer, ale, victuals, tobacco or other liquor without his consent
and shall allow prisoners to be brought beer, ale, victuals, bedding,
and linen as the prisoner sees fit. Sheriffs often kept people
imprisoned unless and until they paid all their fees due to the sheriff.
In 1772 was founded the Society for the Discharge and Relief of Persons
Imprisoned for Small Debts for those inmates unfortunate instead of
fraudulent or extravagant. Legacies were often made to debtors. There
was much Gaol Distemper fever with fatal consequences. When John Howard,
a grocer who had inherited wealth, but poor health, became a sheriff, he
visited many gaols. When he saw the squalid conditions there, he
advocated hygienic practices. In 1774, Justices of the Peace were
authorized to order walls and ceilings of gaols to be scraped and
washed, ventilators for supplies of fresh air, a separate room for the
sick prisoners, commodious bathing tubs, provision of clothes for
prisoners, keeping of prisoners not below the ground, and apothecaries
at a stated salary to attend and to report the state of health of
prisoners.
In 1773, clergymen were employed in gaols to alleviate the distress of
prisoners and to contribute to morality and religion. Also, no longer
may any fees be taken by gaol keepers or sheriffs because persons not
indicted or found not guilty have been kept in prison pending payment of
such fees. Instead, the counties shall pay to gaol keepers up to 13s.4d.
per prisoner so discharged.
Colonials acts which infringed upon the English common or statutory
law, or were against the interests of other American colonies were
submitted to the Privy Council, which allowed or disallowed them.
Appeals from the colonial courts came to the Privy Council.
Judges in the colonies were appointed by royal governors and paid by
colonial legislatures. They served at the pleasure of the king. Colonial
courts included superior courts of judicature, courts of assize, general
gaol delivery, general sessions of the peace, inferior court of common
pleas, and commissions of Oyer and Terminer. There were also Justices of
the Peace, marshals, provosts, and attorney generals. There were few
cases of vagrancy, theft, or homicide. This may have been because the
people were few and dependent on each other, and economic opportunities
were great.
In 1735 John Peter Zenger, printer of the New York Weekly Journal, was
tried for seditious libel for its criticisms and satire of the New York
governor, who exceeded his powers, such as by demanding that bills from
the assembly be presented to him before the council, and by arbitrarily
displacing judges. Seditious libel was defined as "false, scandalous,
and seditious" writings. Traditionally, this word "false" could mean
"disloyal". The prosecution argued that truth of such criticism was an
aggravation of the crime because it was more provoking of sedition, as
found by Star Chamber cases. The defense argued for a right publicly to
remonstrate abuses of power by public officials to guard against
violence and destruction of liberties by men in authority. The American
jurors, who were supposed to be familiar with the facts pertinent to the
case, knew the truth of the paper's criticisms. They agreed with the
defense that the word "false" in the definition: "false, scandalous, and
seditious" writings, to mean "untrue" instead of "disloyal". So truth
became a defense to seditious libel. Pamphletts describing the Zenger
trial and acquittal were published and republished in London and the
colonies.
Benefit of clergy for certain crimes was available in the American
colonies to all who could read and write. For instance, t could be used
in trials for manslaughter.
- - - Chapter 19: Epilogue - - -
In the time period after 1776, there developed the fuel-saving kitchen
range with closed-in-fire between oven and hot-water tank, hot and cold
running water, the use of flushing toilets, Edmund Cartwright's power
weaving machine, Samuel Crompton's mule for spinning many threads by
waterpower in 1779, James Watt's steam engine with steam pushing the
piston both ways as well as rotary motion and used in many kinds of
factories instead of water power, Henry Bessimer's inexpensive low
carbon steel in 1856, iron and steel bridges and ships, drilling and use
of oil and natural gas as fuel, Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations" opining
that competition of the market could distribute resources best, Thomas
Paine's "Rights of Man", free trade, democracy, popular elections,
secret ballots, universal suffrage, civil service without patronage,
Mary Wollstonecraft's "Vindication of the Rights of Women", university
education for women (University of London), policemen (in London in
1829), clipper ships (the final development of sailing before steam),
percussion caps on guns, Periodic Chart of chemical elements, college
degrees in biology, chemistry, and physics, geology, Maxwell's theory of
electromagnetism, Albert Einstein's theory of relativity, quantum
theory, laws of thermodynamics that the energy of the universe is a
constant amount but entropy always increases, computers, decoding of the
DNA sequence, Charles Darwin's evolution, Joseph Lister's disinfectant
in 1867, Edward Jenner's smallpox vaccine, Louis Pasteur's germ theory
of disease, anesthetics, aspirin, insulin, penicillin, antibiotics,
surgery to replace body parts, tampon, contraceptive pill, discovery of
planet Uranus by observation and thence of Neptune and Pluto by
calculation from discrepancies in Uranus' orbit, Hubble space telescope,
Big Bang Theory, buses (horse-drawn from 1829 with 18 passengers),
subways, trains (1804), public railway (1825, goods drawn by engine and
passengers by horse), steam ships, steel ships, aircraft carriers,
submarines, tanks, friction matches, chewing gum, pajamas, gas street
lamps, traffic lights and signs, ambulances, concrete and asphalt
highways, census in 1801, children's playgrounds, knee length dresses,
chemical artificial fertilizers, substitution of steel for iron, trade
unions, digital watches, wrist watches, compact disks, intelligence
tests, personality tests, wool-combing machine, statistical analysis,
Bell curves, standard deviations, United Nations, carpet sweeper, vacuum
cleaner, central heating, apartment high rises, business skyscrapers,
electricity, electric lights, sewing machines, water closets in richer
houses (after 1778), cholera epidemics, sewers for waste disposal,
industrial revolution factories, labor strikes, cars, tractors, Charles
Dickens, ice boxes and refrigerators, telephones, central heating with
radiators, hot water heaters by gas, gas ovens, humidifiers, canned
food, four- pronged forks, suits of matching jackets and trousers,
zippers, velcro, wall-to-wall carpeting, popular elections, airplanes,
photography, record players, frozen food; cast iron kitchen range for
cooking, baking, and boiling; radio, television, plastics, submarines,
economics, multinational corporations, weather forecasting, Braille,
airplanes, space ship to moon, factory assembly lines, washing machines,
dishwashers, sewing machine, microwave ovens, copier machines, DNA
evidence, nuclear bomb and nuclear energy, guided missiles, quartz
watches, bicycles, artificial insemination and invitro fertilization,
investment advice, retirement planning, amusement parks, catalogue
buying, labor contracts, childrens' summer camps, teenage culture,
synthetic materials, typewriters, cardboard boxes, marketing studies,
factory assembly line, gene-mapping, animal cloning, Internet, hiking
and camping trips, world travel vacations, telegraph, word processing,
gas, oil, research, credit cards, dental floss, camcorders, mass
production, nursing homes, cameras, copy machines, wheelchairs, hospital
operations, artificial limbs, organ transplants, pharmacies, public
circulating libraries, children's playgrounds, cosmetic surgery,
physical exercising equipment, vitamin pills, sports clubs,
condominiums, molecules, chromosomes, observatories, radar, sonar,
nutrition, supermarkets, disability insurance, liability insurance,
chemical fertilizers, DDT, record players, video tape recorders,
retirement homes, movies;, planned obsolescence, box-spring mattresses,
brain scans, x-rays, organized professional sports, dry cleaners,
foreign embassies, psychiatry, veterinarians, drug abuse, wage
garnishment, tractors, lawnmowers, breeding zoos, world wars, nuclear
deterrence, fingerprinting, forensic evidence, toxic waste, acid rain,
elevators, picture windows, sewing machines, automation, cybernetics,
pizza delivery, health insurance, Walt Disney, satellite transmission,
radiocarbon dating, ice cream, air conditioning, ball point pens, school
blackboards, bullets in 1890s, electronic mail, first law of
thermodynamics: the conservation of energy, the second law of
thermodynamics: potential energy turns into high-temperature thermal
energy and finally into low-temperature thermal energy, but these
processes are not reversible. The science of philology, on the meaning
and history of words began the concept of a natural development of
languages which conflicted with the theological view that God had
created all the different languages when he punished man for trying to
build an edifice to heaven by destroying the Tower of Babel and
dispersing the people into all parts of the world with different
languages derived from the original: Hebrew, so that they could not
communicate with each other. The science of geology developed the
concept of tremendous changes in the earth's surface which altered
horizontal layers of deposits, in which there were fossils, which
challenged the biblical notion of a world and all its animals created in
a week. In 1784, Lord Henry Cavendish proved that the sole result of
mixing hydrogen with oxygen was water, thus disproving the theory of the
four elements of air, earth, fire, and water. In the United States,
there was no king, a separation of the executive, the legislative, and
the judicial; a separation of church and state, and no aristocratic
titles.
In this time period the development of law includes abandonment of
common law crimes such as seditious libel in the United States,
negligence and duty of due care in the United States replacing the
English strict liability for torts, substitution of the caveat emptor
doctrine for the English sound price doctrine in contract law in the
United States, truth as a defense to charge of libel in the United
States, repeal in England of seven year requirement for apprentices in
1814, married women's property acts beginning 1839: (1. right to sue and
be sued, 2. right to her own earnings, 3. right to own real and personal
property, 4. right to make contracts 5. right to stay in family
homestead with children, right to custody of children if husband
abandons her), divorce in England by courts in 1857, in United States
extension of grounds for divorce beyond adultery, bigamy, and desertion
to cruel treatment, habitual drunkenness, and conviction of a felony and
finally no-fault divorce, decline of father's paramount claim to the
custody of his minor children in the absence of a strong showing of
misconduct or unfitness, tender years doctrine (in England in 1839
mother to have custody of child under seven and to have access over
seven) and then best interests of child doctrine in custody disputes,
legal obligation for parents to support their minor children, adoption
about the 1850s; in England allowance of women attorneys in 1922, women
to vote in 1928, adultery by a husband to be adjudged as culpable as
adultery by a wife in 1923, the rights of a mother over her child to be
equal to those of a father in 1924, and the rights of a woman to
property to be the same as those of a man in 1926; child labor laws,
full religious freedom with admission of nonconformists to the two
universities in England in 1871, probable cause instead of suspicion for
search and seizure, mandamus, rule against perpetuities, mandatory
secondary education, kidnapping, false impersonation, liens, obscenity,
estoppel for detrimental reliance on a promise, unjust enrichment,
pensions, trademarks and unfair competition, antitrust, privacy, freedom
of thought, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, bankruptcy, civil
rights, union organizing laws, laws on discrimination due to race, sex,
ethnic or national origin, disability, age, and sexual preference;
sexual harassment and stalking laws, product liability, international
law, environmental laws protecting air and water quality, workers
compensation, unemployment compensation, controlled substances,
intellectual property law; and contingency fees only in the United
States,
In England, there was an end of trial by combat in 1819, of compurgation
in 1833, and of benefit of clergy. In 1820, there were 160 offenses in
England with the death penalty, including stealing from a dwelling house
to the value of 40s., stealing from a shop to a value of 5s., and
stealing anything privily from the person. The penalty for treason was
still drawing and quartering. It was a privilege of the peerage to be
immune from any punishment upon a first conviction of felony. As of
1823, church courts could no longer decide cases of perjury; as of 1855,
no cases of defamation, but only church matters. Hearsay rules and
exceptions were developed in the 1800s. In 1816, jurors were to have no
knowledge except the evidence accepted at court. In 1837, counsel for a
person indicted for high treason could examine and cross- examine
witnesses. In 1839, a defendant could see the written record of evidence
against him. In 1898, the accused was allowed to give evidence. Pleaders
do not have to specify the form of action relied on, but rather give
facts which give rise to a cause of action.
Judicial procedure includes grand juries, which hear evidence, court
transcript by court stenographers, discovery, depositions, and
presumption of innocence (after Salem witch trials in the United
States). The United States changed judicial procedure in several
respects: parties were allowed to testify, writ pleading was abandoned,
and prisons were used for reforming prisoners. Debtors prisons were
abolished. Also, the law was seen not as divinely inspired eternal law
to be found by judges, but law made by man to suit the times. State
judges served for life during good behavior; they could be removed by
the procedure of impeachment. In some states, judges were elected. There
were privileges on testimony such as attorney-client, priest-confessor,
and husband- wife.
- - - Appendix: Sovereigns of England - - -
Accession - Name -
871 Alfred the Great
899 Edward the Elder son of Alfred
924 AEthelstan son of Edward the Elder
939 Edmund son of Edward the Elder
946 Eadred son of Edward the Elder
955 Eadwig son of Edmund
959 Edgar son of Edmund
975 Edward the Martyr son of Edgar
978 AEthelred the Unready son of Edgar
1016 Edmund Ironside son of AEthelred the Unready
1016 Canute
1035 Harold I Harefoot son of Canute
1040 Hardicanute son of Canute
1042 Edward the Confessor son of Aethelred the Unready
1066 Harold II
1066 William I, the Conquerer
1087 William II son of William I
1100 Henry I (and Matilda) son of William I
1135 Stephen 1154 Henry II (and Eleanor) grandson of Henry
I
1189 Richard I, the Lion-Hearted son of Henry II
1199 John son of Henry II
1216 Henry III son of John
1272 Edward I (and Eleanor) son of Henry III
1307 Edward II son of Edward I
1327 Edward III son of Edward II
1377 Richard II grandson of Edward III
1399 Henry IV
1413 Henry V son of Henry IV
1422 Henry VI son of Henry V
1461 Edward IV
1483 Edward V son of Edward IV
1483 Richard III
1485 Henry VII (and Elizabeth)
1509 Henry VIII son of Henry VII
1547 Edward VI son of Henry VIII
1553 Mary daughter of Henry
VIII
1558 Elizabeth I daughter of Henry
VIII
1603 James I
1625 Charles I son of James I
1649 Oliver Cromwell
1660 Charles II son of Charles I
1685 James II son of Charles
I
1689 William and Mary
1694 William III
1702 Anne granddaughter of
James II
1714 George I
1727 George II son of George I
1760 George III son of
George II
- - - Bibliography - - -
1. Ancient Laws and Institutes of England, Printed by command of his
late majesty King William IV under the direction of the Commissioners
of the Public Records of the Kingdom, Vol 1; 1840.
2. The Laws of the Kings of England from Edmund to Henry I, A.J.
Robertson, 1925.
3. The Statutes of the Realm
4. Statutes at Large
5. A Treatise of the Lawes of the Forest, John Manwood, 1615
6. History of English Law; William Holdsworth
7. History of English Law, Pollack and Maitland, 1895
8. Anglo-Saxon Charters, A. J. Robertson, 1939
9. Franchises of the City of London, George Norton, 1829
10. Borough Customs Vol. 1, Selden Society, 1904
11. Royal Writs in England from the Conquest to Glanvill, Selden
Society, 1959
12. Lawsuits in time of Wm I, Selden Society
13. Treatise on the laws and customs of the realm of England, Ranulph
D. Glanvill, 1189
14. Calendar of Wills, Court of Husting, London; Ed. Reginald R.Sharpe
15. Calendar of Early Mayor's Court Rolls of the City of London, AD
1298-1307, Ed. A. H. Thomas
16. Legislation of Edward I, T.F.T. Plunkett, 1949
17. English Historical Documents, Ed. David Douglas
18. Bracton on the Laws and Customs of England, Henry of Bratton,1257
19. Chaucer's World, Edith Richert, 1948
20. John, King of England, John T. Appleby, 1958
21. A Collection of Eighteen Rare and Curious Historical Tracts and
Pamphletts, Edinburgh, Priv. Print.
22. Doctor and Student, Christopher St. Germain, 1518
23. Readings in Western Civilization, George Kuoles, 1954
24. Social England, Ed.: H.D. Traill, St. John's College, Oxford; Vol.
1 and 2, 1894.
25. Augustine of Canterbury, Margaret Deanesly, 1964
26. The Venerable Bede, Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation
27. Political History of England; T. Hodgkin
28. Alfred the Great, Helm, 1965
29. Domesday, A Search for the Roots of England, M. Wood, 1988
30. The English Church 1000-1066; F. Barlow, 1979
31. Life on the English Manor; H.S. Bennet; 1967
32. The English Medieval Town; Colin Platt; 1976
33. London Weavers' Company, Francis Consitt, 1933
34. The Gild Merchant, Charles Gross, 1890
35. Life and times of Roger Bacon
36. Oxford Book of Oxford, Jan Morris, 1978
37. A History of Oxford University, Vivian Green, 1974
38. Lives of the Lord Chancellors, Campbell, 1880
39. Gilds and Companies of London, George Unwin, 1966
40. A History of Technology, Charles Singer, 1954-1978
41. Edward I, Michael Prestwich, 1988
42. Franchises of the City of London, George Norton, 1829
43. The Works of Alfred
44. Salisbury Plain, R. Whitlock, 1955
45. William the Conqueror, F.M. Stenton, 1967
46. Life of William the Conqueror, T. Roscoe, 1846
47. Elizabeth I, Anne Somerset, 1992
48. Queen Elizabeth, Katherine Anthony, 1929
49. Industry in England, H.deB. Gibbons, 1897
50. Henry II, W. L. Warren, 1973
51. Edward I, L.F. Salzman, 1968
52. The Yorkist Age, Paul Kendall, 1962
53. Edward the Confessor, Frank Barlow, 1970
54. The Livery Companies of the City of London, W. Carew Hazlitt, 1892
55. Parliamentary Representation of the City of Coventry, Thomas
Whitley, 1894
56. The Government of England under Henry I, Judith Green, 1986
57. Lives of the Queens of England, Agnes Strickland, 1878
58. The Oldest Version of the Customs of Newcastle, C. Johnson, 1925
59. Charter of Henry II to the Burgesses of Newcastle, A. M. Oliver,
1175
60. The Charters and Letters Patent Granted by the Kings and Queens of
England to Bristol, Samuel Seyer, 1812
61. Magna Carta, Legend and Legacy, William Swindler, 1965
62. Chronicles and Memorials of Great Britain and Ireland During the
Middle Ages: Letters and Papers of Richard III and Henry VII
63. Sons of the Conqueror, G. Slocombe, 1960
64. The Spirit of the Classical Canon Law, Richard Helmholz, 1996
65. Open Fields, Charles Orwin, 1938
66. The Medieval Foundation of England, Arthur Bryant, 1967
67. From Alfred to Henry III, 871-1272, Christopher Brooks, 1961
68. The Anglo-Norman Nobility in the Reign of Henry I: The Second
Generation, Charlotte Newman, 1988
69. The Birth of Britain Vol. 1, Winston S. Churchill, 1956
70. Medieval London, Gordon Hoime, 1927
71. A History of London, Stephen Inwood, 1998
72. Tudor England, John Guy, 1988
73. Reign of Henry VII, R. Storey, 1968
74. Elizabethan Life in Town and Country, M. St. Claire Byrne, 1925
75. The Elizabethan World, Edited by Norman Kotner, 1967
76. The Evolution of Modern Medicine, William Osler, 1921
77. Shakespeare's England, Oxford University Press, 1916
78. The Lion and The Throne, Catherine Bowen, 1956
79. Johnson's England, Ed. A.S. Turberville, 1933
80. Education in Renaissance England, Kenneth Charlton, 1965
81. The Scholastic Curriculum of Early Seventeenth-Century Cambridge,
William Costello, 1958.
82. English People on the Eve of Colonization 1603-1630, Wallace
Notestein, 1954
83. Sir Walter Ralegh, Willard Wallace, 1959
84. Sir Walter Ralegh, Robert Lacey, 1974
85. Constitutional Documents of the Reign of James I, J.R. Tanner, 1961
86. History of the English People, Volumes III and IV, Green 1890
87. Hume's History of England, Volumes V and VI, David Hume
88. English Society 1580-1680, Keith Wrightson, 1982
89. The Century of Revolution 1603-1714, Christopher Hill, 1961
90. Charles I and the Puritan Upheaval, Allen French, 1955
91. Charles I, Christopher Hibbert, 1968
92. Constitutional Documents of the Puritan Revolution 1625-1660,
Samuel Gardiner, 1927
93. Life and Work of the People of England in the 17th Century, Dorothy
Hartley et al, 1929
94. Home Life under the Stuarts, Elizabeth Godfrey, 1903
95. Cromwell the Lord Protector, Antonia Fraser, 1973
96. The Greatness of Oliver Cromwell, Maurice Ashley, 1957
97. Acts and Ordinances of the Interregnum 1642-1660, C.H.Firth &
R.S.Rait, 1911
98. History of the English People, John R. Green, 1916.
99. A Social and Industrial History of England, F.W. Tickner, 1929
100. A History of Everyday Things in England, Marjorie and CHB Quennell,
1919
101. The English, Norman F. Cantor, 1967
102. A Concise Economic History of Britain, John Clapham, 1951
103. World Book Encyclopedia
104. Encyclopedia Britannica
105. History of the English Constitution, Rudolph Gneist, 1889
106. The Life of the Law, Alfred Knight, 1996
107. Norton Anthology of English Literature, Ed. M.H.Abrams, 1962
108. The Bank of England, John Clapham, 1945
109. The Honorable Company, A History of the East India Company,John
Keay, 1991
110. A History of British India, W.W. Hunter, 1966
111. The Bank of England, John Clapham, 1945
112. Early Speculative Bubbles and Increase in the Supply of Money, M.A.
thesis, Douglas E. French, 1992
113. Royal Charles, Antonia Fraser, 1980
114. Charles II, Ronald Hutton, 1989
115. The Life and Times of Charles II, Christopher Falkus, 1972
116. Life in a Noble Household 1641-1700, Gladys Thomson, 1959
117. The Weaker Vessel, Antonia Fraser, 1984
118. A Constitutional and Legal History of Medieval England, Bryce Lyon,
1960
119. The Laws Respecting Women, J. Johnson, 1777
120. Mediaeval England, Mary Bateson, 1904
121. Elizabeth: The Struggle for the Throne, David Starkey, 2001
122. A Social History of England, Asa Briggs, 1983
123. The Year 1000, Robert Lacey, 1999
124. A History of Chemistry, Charles-Albert Reichen, 1963
125. John Locke, Economist and Social Scientist, Karen Vaughn, 1980
126. Becoming Visible, Women in European History, ed. Bridenthal &
Koonz, 1977
127. Wonder Book of the World's Progress; Inventions and Customs, Henry
Williams, 1935
128. Industrial Revolution in the Eighteenth Century, Paul Mantoux, 1961
129. Eighteenth Century England, Dorothy Marshall, 1962
130. Georgian England, A.E. Richardson, 1931
131. The Pageant of Georgian England, Elizabeth Burton, 1967
132. The Georgian Gentleman, Michael Brander, 1973
133. England in the Eighteenth Century, J.H. Plumb, 1950
134. London Life in the Eighteenth Century, M. Dorothy George, 1925
135. Law and Jurisprudence in American History, Stephen Presser & Jamil
Zainaldin, 1995
136. England in the Age of Hogarth, Derek Jarrett, 1974
137. The First Four Georges, J.H. Plumb, 195
138. The Review of American Colonial Legislation by the King in Council,
Elmer Russell, 1915
139. Select Pleas of the Crown, F.W. Maitland, 1888
140. Select Pleas in Manorial and Other Seignorial Courts, F.W.Maitland,
1889
141. The Forms of Action at Common Law, F.W. Maitland, 1909
142. Equity, F.W. Maitland
143. The Story of the Declaration of Independence, Ira G. Corn, Jr.,
1977
144. Internet Medieval Sourcebook
145. Out of the Fiery Furnace video, Robert Raymond
146. A History of Chemistry, Charles Reichen, 1963
147. Seven Ideas that Shook the Universe, Nathan Spielberg, 1987
148. A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom,
Andrew White, 1955
149. American Political and Social History, Harold Faulkner, 1941
150. Essays in Science, Albert Einstein, 1934
151. The Character of Physical Law, Richard Feynman, 1965
152. Dictionary of National Biography, George Smith, 1882
153. Elizabeth I: Collected Works, ed. Leah Marcus et al, 2000
154. The Crime of Galileo, Giorgio de Santillana, 1955
155. From Copernicus to Einstein, Hans Reichenbach, 1942
156. The Horizon Book of the Elizabethan World, Ed. Richard Ketchum,
1967
157. Tower of London, Christopher Hibbert, 1971
158. Tudor Royal Proclamations, Ed. P.L. Hughes & J.F. Larkin,
1964
159. Selected Historical essays of F.W.Maitland, Ed. Helen Cam, 1957
160. Lloyd's of London, Raymond Flower & Michael Jones, 1974
161. Weather, Philip Thompson etc., 1965
162. Constitutional History of England, William Stubbs, 1891
163. Hillforts of England and Wales, James Dyer, 1981
164. The Last Two Million Years, Reader's Digest Association, 1973
165. London: The Civic Spirit, Robert Goldston, 1969
166. Domestic Life in England, Norah Lofts, 1976
167. Descartes, Tom Sorell, 1987
168. Life in the English Country House, Mark Girouard, 1978
169. Extraordinary Origins of Everyday Things, Charles Panati,1987
170. God's Peace and King's Peace: The Laws of Edward the Confessor,
Bruce O'Brien, 1999
171. The Bill of Rights, Irving Brant, 1965
172. Issac Newton, Adventurer in Thought; A. Rupert Hall, 1992
173. The Life of Issac Newton, Richard S. Westfall, 1993
174. A History of the Circle, Ernest Zebrowski, 1999
175. The World of Water, J. Gordon Cook, 1957
176. The Western Intellectual Tradition, J. Bronowski & Mazlish, 1960
177. Human Accomplishment, Charles Murray, 2003
178. Magic, Myth and Medicine, D.T.Atkinson, M.D., 1956
179. Scientists Who Changed the World, Lynn and Gray Poole, 1960
180. The New Treasury of Science, Ed. Harlow Shapley, etc., 1965
181. Food in History, Reay Tannahill, 1973
182. Home, A Short History of an Idea, Witold Rybczynski, 1986
183. English Villagers of the Thirteenth Century, George C. Homans, 1941
184. Pelican History of England:
1. Roman Britain, I.A. Richmond, 1955
2. The Beginnings of English Society, Dorothy Whitelock, 1952
3. English Society in the Early Middle Ages, Doris Stenton, 1951
4. England in the Late Middle Ages, A.R. Myers, 1952
5. Tudor England, S.T. Bindoff, 1950
6. England in the Seventeenth Century, Maurice Ashley, 1952
THE END
INDEX
abbey; abbot, abbess; abduction; accessory; account; administrator;
admiralty; adultery; adverse possession; adulterated; advowson;
AEthelbert; AEthelred; affidavit; agreement; agriculture; Augustine.
St.; aids; alderman; ale; alehouses; Alfred; alienate; aliens;
allegiance; alms; amerce; America; Anabaptist; ancient; Anglo-Saxons;
Anglo-Saxon Chronicles; annulment; apothecaries; apparel laws; appeal;
appellate; apprentices; appurtance; archbishop; architect; Aristotle;
Arkwright, Richard; arraign; arson; Arthur; Articles of Religion;
artificer; artisan; assault; assay; assign; assize; assizes; assumpsit;
astrology; at pleasure; atheism; attainder; attaint; attorneys; babies;
bachelor; Bachelor of Arts; back-berend; Bacon, Francis; Bacon, Roger;
bacteriology; bail; bailiff; baker; ballads; Bank of England;
bankruptcy; Baptist; bar; barber; barber-surgeon; bargain and sale;
barons; baron court; barristers; bastard; bath; battery; beadle;
beating; Becket; beer; beggar; benefit of clergy; benevolence; Beowulf;
bequeath, bequest; Bible; bigamy; bill; bill of attainder; bill of
exchange; Bill of Rights; billet; Birmingham; bishops; Black Death;
Blackstone, William; blinding; blodwite; blood-letting; Book of Common
Prayer; bordars; borough; Boston; bot; Boyle, Robert; Bracton, Henry de;
brass; brawling; breach; breach of the peace; bread; Brewster; bribery;
brick; bridge; Bristol; brokers; Bullock, case of; burgess; burglary;
burh; burial; burning; butcher; butler; Calais; Calvin; Cambridge
University; canals; cannon; capitalism; carbon dioxide; carpenter;
carriages; carucage; carver; castle; castle-guard; cathedral; Catholics;
cattle; cavaliers; Cecil, William; censorship; ceorl; certiorari;
challenge; champerty; chancellor; chancery; Chancery Court; charter;
chattel; Chaucer, Geoffrey; chemistry; chevage; Chief Justice; Chief
Justiciars; child; child abuse; children; childwyte; Christian;
chivalry; Christmas; church; Church of England; church sanctuary;
Cicero; circuit; citizen; city; civil; civil courts; civil war; claim;
clans; class; clergy; clerics; cloth-maker; coaches; coal; coffee
houses; coin; Coke, Edward; College of Physicians and Surgeons;
colonies; commission; common land; common law; Commons, House of;
Commonwealth; compurgation; compurgator; confession; Congregationalists;
Conqueror; consideration; constable; constitution; contract; conventile;
conveyance; conviction; cooper; Copernicus; copper; copyhold;
copyrights; cordwainer; Coronation Charter; coroner; corporation;
corruption of the blood; council; counterfeit; county; county courts;
courtesy; Court of Common Pleas; Court of High Commission; Court of
King's Bench; courtesy; court martial; covenant; coverture; Coventry;
craft; craft guild; Cranmer, Thomas; creditor; crime; criminal;
Cromwell, Oliver; Cromwell, Thomas; crown; cupbearer; curfew; currier;
custody; customary tenant; customs; damages; danegeld; Danes; darrein
presentment; daughter; death; death penalty; debt, debtors; deceased;
decree; deed; deer; defamation; defendant; demesne; denizen; deodand;
descendant; Descartes, Renee; desertion; detinue; devise; dispensary;
disseisin; dissenter; distraint; distress; divorce; doctorate; dog;
Doomsday Book; doublet; dower; dowery; Drake, Francis; drover;
drunkenness; duel; during good behavior; duties; dwelling; dyers; earl;
East India Company; Easter; ecclesiastic; Edith; education; Eleanor,
wife of Edward I; Eleanor, wife of Henry II; election; electricity;
Elizabeth, wife of Henry VII; embroiderer; enclosure; English; engrose;
Episcopal Church; equity; equity court; Erasmus; escape from gaol;
escheat, escheator; escuage; esquire; established church; estate; estate
administration; estate tail; Euclid; Exchequer; excommunication; excise
tax; executor; export; extent; eyre; factory; fair; father; fealty; fee;
fee simple; fee tail; felony; feme covert; feme sole; feoff; Fermat,
Pierre; feudal; feudal tenures; fihtwite; fine; fire; fire-fighters;
fishermen, fishmonger; flint; flogging; flying shuttle; folkmote; food
riots; footmen; forced loans; forced marriage; forestall; Forest
Charter; forestall; forests; forfeit; forgery; forms of action;
fornication; fortifications; foster-lean; France; frank-almoin;
Franklin, Benjamin; frankpledge; fraternity; fraud; freedom of speech;
freehold, freeholder; freeman; freemason; freewoman; friar; frith guild;
fuller; fustian; fyrd; fyrdwite; gage; Galilei, Galileo; gambling;
games; gaols; Gaol Distemper; Gawaine; gentleman; gentry; geology;
Georgia; German, Christopher St., gift; Gilbert, William; guildhall;
guilds; gin; Glanvill; glass; Glorious Revolution; gloves; God;
godfather; gold; Goldsmiths; Good Parliament; goods; government; grain;
grammar schools; grand assize; grand jury; Grand Tour; grants; grave;
gravitation; Greek; Gresham, Thomas; grithbrice; guardian, guardianship;
Guenevere; hair; hall; Halley, Edmond; hamsocne; hand-habbende;
harboring; Harrington, James; Harvard College; health; heir; heresy;
heriot; hidage; hide; High Commission Court; Hilda; hillforts; holidays,
holydays; homage; homicide; Hooke, Robert; horse; horse racing;
hospitals; house-breaking; house-holder; House of Commons; House of
Lords; houses; houses of correction; hue and cry; humanism, humors;
hundred rolls; Huygens, Christian; hundred; hundred courts; hunt;
husband; hustings court; hut; illegitimacy; illness; illuminators;
impeach; import; imprisonment; incest; income tax; Independents;
indenture; indictment; industry; infangthef; inflation; inheritance;
innkeeper; Inns of Court; inoculation; inquest; insurance; interest;
interrogatory; intestate; iron; itinerant; jail; Jesus; Jews; Joan of
Arc; joint tenants; joint-stock companies; jointure; Jones, Inigo;
journeyman; judge; jurisdiction; jurors; jury; justice; justices in
eyre; justices of assize; Justices of the Peace; justiciar; Kent county;
Keplar, Johannes; kill; kin, kindred; king; King Alfred the Great; King
Charles I; King Charles II; King Edward I; King Edward the Confessor;
King George III; King Henry I; King Henry II; King Henry VII; King Henry
VIII; King James I; King James II; King John; King Richard the
Lion-Hearted; King William and Mary; King William I, The Conqueror;
king's peace; knight; knight's fee; knights' guild; knitting; laborer;
ladies; land; landlord; land-owner; larceny; lastage; Latin; law
merchant; lawsuit; lawyer; Laxton; lay; leap year; lease; leather; leet
court; legacy; legislation; legitimacy; Leibniz, Christian; Leicester;
letters; libel; Liberi Quadripartitus; library; license; life;
life-estate; lighthouse; limb; linen; Lion of Justice; literacy;
literature; Littleton, Thomas; livery; Lloyds; Locke, John; London; Long
Parliament; longitude; lord; Lords, House of; loriner; lottery; loyalty;
machine; magistrates; Magna Carta; magnate; maiden; mail; majic;
malicious prosecution; maintenance; Manchester; manor; manor courts;
manufacturing; manumission; Marco Polo; market; marriage; marriage
agreement; marriage portion; marshall; marquise; Massachusetts; Master
of Arts; masters; Matilda; Mayflower; mayor; Maypole; mead; measures;
meat; medicine; melee; member; merchandise; merchant; merchant
adventurers; merchant guilds; merchet; Merciless Parliament; mercy;
Merton; mesne; Methodists; microscope; Middlesex; midwives; military
service; militia; miller; minister; minor; minstrels; miskenning; moat;
Model Parliament; monarchy; monasteries; money; moneyer; monks;
monopoly; moot; More, Thomas; morgen-gift; morning gift; mort
d'ancestor; mortgage; mortmain; mother; murder; mutilation; Napier,
John; navy; Newcastle- on-Tyne; New England; New Model Army; newspapers;
Newton, Issac; New World; nobility; noblemen, nobles; nonconformists;
Normans; novel disseisin; nuisance; nun; Oakham, William; oaths;
offender; oil; one hundred year war; open field system; ordeal;
ordinance; orphans; outlaw; Oxford University; oxygen; papists; parent;
parishes; Parliament; Parliament of Saints; partition; party; Pascal,
Blaise; passport; patents; pauper; pawn; Peasant's Revolt; peers; peine
forte et dure; penalty; penitentiary; Penn, William; Pennsylvania;
penny; per stirpes; perjury; personal injury; personal property; petit
serjeanty; petition; Petition of Right; physicians; Piers Plowman;
pigherds; pilgrim; pillory; pipe rolls; piracy; pirate; plague;
plaintiff; Plato; plays; pleading; pleas; police; pontage; poor; pope;
popery; population; port; portreeve; portsoken ward; posse; possess;
postal system; post mortem; pottery; praecipe in capite; pressing;
Presbyterians; prescription; presentment; priest; printing; prison;
Privy Council; privy seal; probable cause; probate; proclamation;
promise under seal; promissory note; property; prosecutor; prostitutes;
protectorate; Protestants; Puritans; purveyance; putting out system;
Quakers; quaranteen, quarter sessions; queen; Queen Elizabeth I; Queen
Mary; Queen's Bench; quo warranto; rack; Ralegh, Walter; rape; Ray,
John; real action; recognition; reeve; reformation; regrate; release;
relief; religion; remainder; renaissance; rent; replevin; residence;
Restoration; reversion; revolt; reward; rights; riot; riot act; roads;
robbery; Robin Hood; Roemer, Olaus; Roman law; Root and Branch Petition;
roundheads; royal court; Royal Navy; Royal Society; royalists; Rump
Parliament; Russia; sacrament; sacrifice; sailor; sake and soke; sale;
salt; saltworks; sanctuary; Sandwich; Saxon; scaetts; scavage; scholar;
school; science; scolds; scot; scrofula; scutage; seal; seamen;
searchers; search warrant; sedition, seditious; seisin; self- defense;
self-help; Separatists; serf; serjeanty; servant; service; servitude;
settlement; sewer; Shakespeare, William; shaving; sheep; Shelley's case;
sheriff; sheriff's turn; shillings; ships; shipwreck; shire; shire
courts; shire-gemot; shoemaker; Short Parliament; shrine; sickness;
silver; Slade's case; slander; slave; slingshot; smallpox; smith;
Smithfield; socage; sokemen; soldiers; solicitor; son; Spanish Armada;
speedy pursuit; spinning; spinning jenny; spinning wheel; spinsters;
spouse; St. Augustine; St. Germain; St. Lazarus; St. Paul's Church;
statute of laborers; squire; staple; Star Chamber Court; strangers;
steam; steel; stengesdint; Stevinus; steward; stock-and-land lease;
stocking-frame knitters; stocks; stolen goods; stone; Stonehenge; straw;
streets; subtenants; successor; sue; suit; summary; summon; Sunday;
Supporters of the Bill of Rights Society; surety; surgery; surname;
swearing; swords; tale; tallage; tanner; tavern; tax; tea; team; Ten
Commandments; tenancies; tenancy, tenant; tenants in common; tenement;
tenure; term; testament; Thames, River; theft; thegn; Theodore;
theology; theow; thermometer; Thirty Years' War; tile; tiler; tin;
title; tolls; tories; Torricelli, Evangelista; tort; torture;
tournament; Tower Hill; Tower of London; town; town-reeve; trades,
tradesmen; transportation; treason, high and petit; treasure trove;
treasury; trespass; trespass on the case; trial by combat (battle);
trover; turnpike; twelve; tyne; umbrella, Unitarians; university; usury;
use-trust; vagrants, vagrancy; vassal; verderer; verdict; vessels;
vikings; vill; villages; villeinage; villeins; vintner; Virginia; wall;
Wallis, John; War of the Roses; ward, wardship; wardmoot; wardrobe;
warrantor, warranty; waste; water; watermen; watermill; waterwheel;
Watt, James; wealthy; weapon; weaving, weavers; webs; wed; wedding;
weights; weir; well; wer, wergeld; Wesley, John; Westminster; whigs;
whipping; White Tower; Whitsuntide; widows; wife; wife-beating; wills;
Winchester; windmills; window tax; wine; witch; witchcraft; wite; witan;
witanagemot; witnesses; wives; Wolsey, Thomas; Wyclif, John;
woman-covert; women; wool; wounding; writs; writs of assistance; writs
of error; Year Books; yeomanry, yeomen
*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Our Legal Heritage - June 2011 (Sixth) Edition" ***
Copyright 2023 LibraryBlog. All rights reserved.