Our Legal Heritage, 5th Ed. | Page 2

"Our Legal Heritage" is dedicated to the faculty of Vassar College,
without whom it would never have been written. Much appreciation
goes to Professor Lacey Baldwin Smith of Northwestern University's
History Department and to Professor James Curtin of Loyola Law
School for their review and comments on this book: The Tudor and
Stuart periods: Chapters 11-17, and the medieval period: Chapters 4-10,
respectively. Thanks also go to fellow Mensan William Wedgeworth
for proof-reading.

Table of Contents
Chapters
:
1. Tort law as the first written law: to 600 2. Oaths and perjury:
600-900 3. Marriage law: 900-1066 4. Martial "law": 1066-1100 5.
Criminal law and prosecution: 1100-1154 6. Common Law for all
freemen: 1154-1215 7. Magna Carta: the first statute: 1215-1272 8.
Land law: 1272-1348 9. Legislating the economy: 1348-1399 10.
Equity from Chancery Court: 1399-1485 11. Use-trust of land:
1485-1509 12. Wills and testaments of lands and goods: 1509-1558 13.
Consideration and contract Law: 1558-1601 14. Welfare for the poor:
1601-1625 15. Independence of the courts: 1625-1642 16. Freedom of

religion: 1642-1660 17. Habeas Corpus: 1660-1702 18. Service of
Process instead of arrest: 1702-1776 19. Epilogue: 1776-2000
Appendix: Sovereigns of England
Bibliography

- - - Chapter 1 - - -

- The Times: before 600 A.D. -
The settlement of England goes back thousands of years. At first,
people hunted and gathered their food. They wore animal skins over
their bodies for warmth and around their feet for protection when
walking. These skins were sewn together with bone needles and threads
made from animal sinews. They carried small items by hooking them
onto their belts. They used bone and stone tools, e.g. for preparing
skins. Their uncombed hair was held by thistlethorns, animal spines, or
straight bone hair pins. They wore conical hats of bound rush and lived
in rush shelters.
Early clans, headed by kings, lived in huts on top of hills or other high
places and fortified by circular or contour earth ditches and banks
behind which they could gather for protection. They were probably dug
with antler picks and wood spades. The people lived in rectangular huts
with four wood posts supporting a roof. The walls were made of
saplings, and a mixture of mud and straw. Cooking was in a clay oven
inside or over an open fire on the outside. Water was carried in animal
skins or leather pouches from springs lower on the hill up to the
settlement. Forests abounded with wolves, bears, deer, wild boars, and
wild cattle. They could more easily be seen from the hill tops.
Pathways extended through this camp of huts and for many miles
beyond.
For wives, men married women of their clan or bought or captured

other women, perhaps with the help of a best man. They carried their
unwilling wives over the thresholds of their huts, which were
sometimes in places kept secret from her family. The first month of
marriage was called the honeymoon because the couple was given
mead, a drink with fermented honey and herbs, for the first month of
their marriage. A wife wore a gold wedding band on the ring finger of
her left hand to show that she was married.
Women usually stayed at home caring for children, preparing meals,
and making baskets. They also made wool felt and spun and wove wool
into a coarse cloth. Flax was grown and woven into a coarse linen cloth.
Spinning the strands into one continuous thread was done on a stick,
which the woman could carry about and spin at anytime when her
hands were free. The weaving was done on an upright or
warp-weighted loom. People of means draped the cloth around their
bodies and fastened it with a metal brooch inlayed with gold, gems, and
shell, which were glued on with glue that was obtained from melting
animal hooves. People drank from hollowed- out animal horns, which
they could carry from belts. They could tie things with rawhide strips
or rope braids they made. Kings drank from animal horns decorated
with gold or from cups of amber, shale, or pure gold. Men and women
wore pendants and necklaces of colorful stones, shells, amber beads,
bones, and deer teeth. They skinned and cut animals with hand-axes
and knives made of flint dug up from pits and formed by hitting flakes
off. The speared fish with barbed bone prongs or wrapped bait around a
flint, bone, or shell fish hook. On the coast, they made bone harpoons
for deep-sea fish. The flint ax was used to shape wood and bone and
was just strong enough to fell a tree, although the process was very
slow.
The king, who was tall and strong, led his men in hunting groups to kill
deer and other wild animals in the forests and to