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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.)
A vagabond or mighty strong beggar [able to work] shall be
whipped.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
If a person marries a second time while the first spouse is still
living, it shall be a felony and thus punishable by death.
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.
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.
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.
Pawn brokers accepting stolen goods shall forfeit twice their
value to the owner from whom stolen.
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.
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.
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.
Tonnage [tax per ton] and poundage [tax per pound] 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:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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].
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.
- Judicial Procedure -
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.
No 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.)
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.
Benefit of clergy may not be had for stabbing a person who has no
weapon drawn, if he dies within six months.
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.