Quote:
Originally posted by Grungi:
theres no laws in england even town bylaws predating about the 17th century.
|
Sorry but that's bollocks.
There was plenty of legislation when Britannia was a province of the Roman Empire. After that we had Saxon laws. During the later medieval period there were laws and courts.
We also have a long tradition of Trial by Combat in England, which is of course not used now. The charter of Henry I exempted citizens (freemen) of London from having to engage in trial by combat.
This following reference to trial by combat in use in England is taken from the Leicester Borough archives and dates from AD 1253 (transcribed from Latin by Mary Bateson, ed. Records of The Borough Of Leicester):
"Inquisition made by the jurors named below, that is, William of St. Laud, Willard de Lincoln, William Baudewin, Alexander Debonere, James Motun, William Gamel, William Hod, Peter Palmar, Nicholas le Burgeis, Robert Drueri, William Loueman, William Balle, Henry fitz Richard, Ralph Fode, William le Chapmon, and Thomas Geram, concerning the payments called gavelpence and pontage, by what right and for what reason they were first given and taken.
Who say under oath that, in the time of Robert de Medland, earl of Leicester, it happened that two kinsmen – that is, Nicholas son of Hakon and Geoffrey son of Nicholas of Leicester – made wager of battle for a certain piece of land, concerning which they were in a legal dispute. They fought from just after dawn until noon and beyond. As they were engaging in combat together in this way, one of them drove back the other as far as a certain small ditch and, as [the other] stood at the edge of the ditch and risked falling into it, his kinsman said to him: "Careful you don't fall into the ditch that is behind you". And there was at once such a great outcry and uproar from those sitting and standing around that their noise was heard by the earl as far away as the castle; he then made enquiry why there was such a clamour, and was told that two kinsmen were engaged in judicial combat over a piece of land and that one had driven the other back as far as a certain small ditch, and as the one stood at the edge of the ditch and risked falling into it, the other warned him."