Part 74

Houses of correction shall be built in every county.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Mothers concealing the death of a bastard baby shall suffer as for murder, unless one witness proves the child was born dead.

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.

In 1604 it was decided that it was not necessary to prove witchcraft caused the death of a person for there to be punishment for it. 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.

As Attorney General, 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 systemized 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 as 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."

- 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 offences both of clergy and laity, and simony, 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. 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 are 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, tenant by elegit statute merchant and staple of lands or tenements.

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.