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. 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. 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 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 girdle-makers 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 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 return to the
subscribers of the capital put in plus an appropriate share of any
profits made on the voyage. I.e. the money was divided up. 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.
The knights had 70% of the land, the nobles 10%, the church 10%,
and king 5%.
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 organ and the harp, precursor to the piano, were played.
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 cidar, 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.
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. 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.
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 blood-letting 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. He started clinical
diagnosis and treatment by highly specific medicines, instead of
cure-alls. For instance, he used alkalies to treat disease, such
as gout, indicated by certain substances in the urine, which also
started urinalysis. He perceived that syphillis 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.
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 planetary movements 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
regarded it as 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.
- The Law -
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 offence. 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 offence. 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
offence. 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 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 hand-gun or cross-
bow 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 book-binders 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 of 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.