Part 69

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.