Our Legal Heritage Part 63

No fis.h.i.+ng 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 pa.s.s.

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 b.a.l.l.s, 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 b.a.l.l.s, ma.s.s 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 partic.i.p.ation in elections of too many people of little substance or worth had led to homicides, a.s.saults, 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 s.h.i.+ps 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 a.s.sist 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 ent.i.tled 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 t.i.tle, and not by joint t.i.tle, 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 t.i.tles, ..."

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 b.a.s.t.a.r.d 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 pa.s.s 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.