Our Legal Heritage by S. A. Reilly
page 261 of 410 (63%)
page 261 of 410 (63%)
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No one may enter another's land and tenements by strong hand nor
with a mob, upon pain of imprisonment and ransom at the King's will. Charters, releases, obligations, [quit-claim deeds] and other deeds burnt or destroyed in uprisings shall be reissued without fee, after trial by the King and his council. Manumissions, obligations, releases and other bonds and feoffments in land made by force, coercion or duress during mob uprisings are void. Men who rape and women consenting after a rape shall lose their inheritance and dower and joint feoffments. The husbands, or father or next of kin of such women may sue the rapist by inquisition, but not by battle. The penalty is loss of life and member. The Statute of Laborers of 1351 required all workers, from tailors to ploughmen, to work only at pre-plague wage rates and forced the vagrant peasant to work for anyone who claimed him or her. It also encouraged longer terms of employment as in the past rather than for a day at a time. Statutory price controls on food limited profits to reasonable ones according to the distance of the supply. Later, wages were determined in each county by Justices of the Peace according to the dearth of victuals while allowing a victualler a reasonable profit and a penalty was specified as paying the value of the excess wages given or received for the first offense, double this for the second offense, and treble this or forty days imprisonment for the third offense. |
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