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names’, in Hubert N. Savory (ed.), Glamorgan County History, vol. 2: Early Glamorgan (Cardiff: Glamorgan County History Trust, 1984), pp. 456–92 (pp. 462–3). On sarn, see Melville Richards, ‘Welsh sarn “road, causeway” in place-names’, Études Celtiques, 11:2 (1966–7), 383–408. 27 C. T. Flower (ed.), Public Works in Medieval Law, 2 vols, Publications of the Selden Society 32 and 40 (London: Quaritch, 1915 and 1923), vol. 2, p. xvi. 28 David Harrison, The Bridges of Medieval England: Transport and Society 400–1800 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2004), pp. 222–3. 29
forms’.62 The practical result of this is that anyone who occupies any part of either the via regia or the via publica is considered to have made a purpresture against the king.63 In short, the via regia was a matter of ‘common welfare’, was ‘dedicated solely to some public use’, was ‘the common of all’ and could not be possessed by any individual. These ideas together imply that use defines status: if everybody uses a road in common, it is public and thus the king has jurisdiction over it as protector of the public welfare. And so, in late medieval law, the test of
because ‘at the very moment the colonial slave trade began to soar, feudal law and slavery were grouped together and identified as characteristic of Europe's past and of a non-European present’. 38 In the legal discussion of villeinage traced below the legal commentators and lawyers highlight the medieval law of villeinage to make a distinction between villeins and Africans caught in
dishonour’. 57 He accordingly concludes that a man who takes his opponent's nose wins the duel. For women, the slit nose was associated with sexual transgression. The provision of disfigurement for sexual impropriety in Ezekiel 23:25 was echoed through numerous medieval law codes. 58 Though it was removed from official early modern punishments, records studied by Laura Gowing show assailants threatening to ‘slitt your nose and mark you for a whore’. 59 In Richard Head's The Canting Academy (1673), a group of bawds who accuse a prostitute of withholding profits
–7 . See also the outline in Alan Harding , Medieval Law and the Foundations of the State ( Oxford , 2002 ), 38–42 . 107 Ordinatio imperii , c. 8: ‘…semper ad senioris fratris notitiam perferre non neglegant, ut ille
the zealous queen. 41 The ferocity of the Marian persecutions, and the willingness of the Crown to revive medieval laws against heresy and execute those found guilty, was indicative of the English monarchy’s concerted effort to secure Catholicism in England. 42 The multiple references to the ‘monstrous’ and ‘deformed’ minds of mid-century, ostensibly Reformed, English men and women, coupled with the unbridled praise of Spanish Catholicism, suggests an important function of Eden’s text was to educate the English about their sinful living, force them to see the
English population, see Anthony Musson, Medieval Law in Context: The Growth of Legal Consciousness from Magna Carta to the Peasants’ Revolt (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2001), pp. 84–134. On litigation and arbitration, see pp. 91–92. 36 Goldberg, Women, Work, and Life Cycle , pp. 336–337. 37 NA CA1279 rot. 8. The couple were found to owe nothing. 38 NA CA1374 pp. 13, 143. 39
reading too much into these descriptions; deviations from formula may in fact be more illustrative of what may have happened. As trespass complaints only recorded interpersonal relationships that broke down, we may be inclined to read them as evidence of a bloody, lawless society. However, it is thanks to the pervasiveness of medieval law that we are able to recover these offences at all, even at the local level. These records can be read as both evidence of almost constant misdemeanour, and the efforts of local governments and
. Duggan, ‘Ralf de Diceto, Henry II and Becket’, in Authority and Power: Studies on Medieval Law and Government in Honour of Walter Ullmann , eds B. Tierney and P. Linehan (Cambridge, 1980), pp. 59–81, repr. Charles Duggan, Canon Law in Medieval England (Variorum Reprints, 1982). 117
frenschype of other ys no les requyryd then ryches and abundaunce of other thyngys necessary. (Starkey 1871: 50; emphasis added) Early modern friendship: politics and law 101 Friendship thus appears as one of the basic legitimate tools that not only help to maintain the civic concord and integrity of the commonwealth, but also secure its survival in the external environment. The actualisation of friendship in moralist and juridical discourses points to its expediency while other instruments of medieval law and political order were fading away. The orderly and friendly