Richard the lawmaker
Posted June 10th, 2012 at 12:47 PM by Crystal Rainbow
Richard III
VII
Richard had long campaigned to have laws passed which was fairer for the common man and he had long had many ideas that he had shared with his closest friends. As he had been on his progress he had listened to what the common people had to say. He had started to get a reputation for listening to people’s grievances and some petitions from religious establishments, which were from more humble in their interests. A request had come from the inhabitants of Croyland, which lay in the fen country, from time immemorial the Abbey had reared swans ‘from which a great part of their relief and living hath been sustained’. There was a bill from the previous Parliament was annulled which declared, that no one not a lord’s son or possessing lands worth five marks a year should possess any Marke or game of his own Swans’.
Richard was well aware of how socially unfair and unjust some punishments were in the justice system. The King and his council had worked hard to correct economic injustices and safeguarding the rights of the individual against abuses of the law in his realm.
During the wars over the years land and property had changed many times and the failure of the common law to keep pace with the various events. People had invented and fraudulently disposing of estates and thrown the traditional methods of conveying land into confusion. Men had found their property rights were contested by titles that they had never heard of and when they contested they face the brink of being homeless and penniless by endless lawsuits. The Paston Letters are evidence of how the law was abused during the Wars of the Roses. http://www.luminarium.org/medlit/Pastontext.htm One of Richard’s statutes had taken action against ‘privy and unknown feoffements.’ This was a practice that was used by the seller of land would concealed from the buyer that a part of the property had already had been disposed of to someone else. The Kings council had enacted that every estate feoffement, gift of land, ‘shall be good to him that it is made unto and against the sellers and their heirs’. The council had set another statute that sought to prevent the concealment of property transfers called ‘fines’. The court had set up a new system in which, was called the Court of Common Pleas, all fines had to proclaimed by the court and notices of transactions had to be sent to the court officials. A statute of limitations had made its appearance in this act: Any persons wishing to take action because of the proclamation of a fine were given five years in which to bring suit. The third statute had abolished as an economic injustice, which had happened to royal power itself. It had been recorded that Edward IV had made direct demands for money, which was called ‘benevolences’ this act was commend by Richard and his council. The right of the King to take exaction’s was ‘dampened and annulled forever’.
From this Richard had felt that when Edward was alive, the Woodvilles used his name to extract money from other nobles.
There were other laws that were needed to reform and refine justice, so some forms of law those were no longer to be used as instruments of extortion and oppression. The first statute was aimed at correcting abuses in the courts, which sat to determine offences committed at fairs, which was when everybody gathered from the neighbourhood to air out their grievances in front of a bailiff or steward on the land on where the fair was held. One of King Edward’s parliaments had authorised these officials to rule in matters, which did not originate at fairs.
The protection of innocent people was of prime importance to Richard’s new laws, before Richard had come to power the jury system was full of bribery and false verdicts and false evidence. Before Richard III law, bail was available to those who were convicted of a crime. Richard’s new laws were designed to protect innocent people against their predatory and malicious neighbours. Before hand those people would be assessed and given a fine and were released on payment. Therefore a trail would be avoided, and the person had avoided being imprisoned. Richard had passed a law for the less serious crimes as bail and the person would be free until the day of that person trail. Any sheriffs and bailiffs who failed to obey those laws were fined forty shillings. In Richards’s own words, “The law shall cease to be an instrument of oppression and extortion.” Whether this law had upset the landowners, as the people had been given a fairer laws and that Richard had lost his loyalty from some of his lords. As this was one of the chief reasons why Richard did not get the support from a number of nobility and the landed gentry. The new laws had curbed the practises that the ruling classes that had preyed on the more vulnerable people of society.
The import and export trade and trading standards had been abused over the ages and Richard had felt it necessary to put some legislation to stop certain deceitful practices. Such acts as stretching cloth, exporting the finest wool that was not up to its standard or grade and the use of cheap dyes that would fade. There was a new piece of legislation, which Italian merchants that brought goods into the realm must sell them wholesale and must do so within eight months and they must buy native commodities with the money that they had received. Rather than take their money from their trade and just leave the country. No foreign trader or in those days were called aliens were allowed to sell wool or woollen cloth and garments in England. They were also not allowed to set themselves up as handcrafters, they could only work as servants of native English manufacturers. This did make Richard very popular with the English merchants and traders, but it also fire up a bit of xenophobia. Richard and his councillors had devised the first piece of legislation as the Caxton printing press had not that long been in production. A new law was needed for the protection and fostering the art of printing and the learning by books. In his own words, he attached the following.
‘Provided always that this act or any part thereof, or any other act made or to be made in the present parliament, in no wise extend…any let, hurt or impediment to any artificer or merchant stranger of what nation or country he be…for bringing into this realm, or selling by retail or otherwise, of any manner books written or imprinted, or for the inhabiting within the said realm for the same intent, or to any writer, limner, binder, or imprinter of such books, as he hath or shall have to sell by way of merchandise, or for their abode in the same realm for the exercising of the said occupations…’
Parliament had drawn to a close on 20th of February 1484 and Richard and his councillors had spent just under a month bring out new and revolutionary laws that had changed the way that justice and trade was regulated. As he bade his councillors, Lords and Commons, he had hoped to install law and order to his realm. He had felt that the kingdom had been wearied by years of turbulence and he had hoped that he was sending out a clear message that he really did care for his people.
After Richard had dismissed Parliament, He had been busy in talks with his one of his bitterest enemies, which had been residing in the Chapter House of Westminster Abbey. Elizabeth Woodville had been in sanctuary since Richard had delivered her son Edward to be crowned. He had managed to reach an agreement on the 1st of March; Richard had made no glowing promises. While the negotiations were in progress, the Parliament had enacted a statute, which had deprived her of her property and annulled all her letters patents. Richard had information that she was conspiring with Margaret Beaufort to marry her eldest daughter Elizabeth to Henry Tudor. It seemed they were hatching a plan to put Henry Tudor on the throne. Elizabeth Woodville had conspired against Richard from the time that Edward her husband had died. Richard had decided that he had to put her under close surveillance away from London. Richard had made a public announcement on 1st of March 1484, before an assembly of lords spiritual and temporal, with the Mayor and Aldermen of London.
I Richard, promise and swear, verbo regio, that if the daughters of Elizabeth Grey, late calling herself Queen of England…will come to me out of the Sanctuary of Westminster, and be guided, ruled, and demeaned after me, then I shall see that they shall be in surety of their lives and also not suffer any manner hurt…nor them nor any of them imprison…; but I shall put them into honest places of good name and fame, and them honestly and courteously shall see to be founden [supported] and entreated [treated], and to have all things requisite and necessary for their exhibitions and findings as my kinswomen; and that I shall do marry [arrange for the marriage of]…them to gentlemen born, and every of them give in marriage lands and tenements to the yearly value of 200 marks for term of their lives… And such gentlemen as shall hap to marry with them I shall straitly charge lovingly to love and entreat them, as wives and my kinswomen, as they will avoid and eschew my displeasure. And over this, that I shall yearly…pay…for the exhibition and finding of the said Dame Elizabeth Grey, during her natural life… to John Nesfeld, one of the esquires of my body, for his finding to attend upon her, the sum of 700 marks…; and moreover I promise to them that if any surmise or evil report be made to me of them by any person… that then I shall not give thereunto faith nor credence, nor therefore put them to any manner punishment, before that they or any of them so accused may be at their lawful defence and answer…
It seems that he had addressed Elizabeth as her widowed name of Grey and refused to acknowledge her marriage to Edward VI. This Statement is missing the fate of Edward V and his brother Richard. The Croyland Chronicler was Polydore Vergil had written this oath after Bosworth and this oath only suggests that Elizabeth’s daughters were under Richard’s care. It seems that Elizabeth had little choice but to retire to a country house, under the watchful eye of her warder, Nesfeld. Where she would live in seclusion and live under modest conditions on her annuity of 700 marks. There had been no mention of any complaint about the treatment that her daughters had received when they had been in Richard’s care and the Tudor chroniclers had not made any use of the daughter’s side of the story. It had seemed that Richard had someone in mind of marriage for Elizabeth’s eldest daughter later in Richard’s reign. He had found the son of Robert Stillington, Bishop of Bath and Wells a navel officer and considered him to be worthy match. The marriage was never to be as the young officer had been captured by the French along the coast of Normandy and was imprisoned in Paris where it was alleged that he had died of hunger and poverty. It could be when the Marquess of Dorset had learned of his mother had given up living in Sanctuary. That he had decided to make his peace with Richard and had fled from Paris to make his way to either Calais or Burgundy and was captured by Henry’s men and was kept hostage.
While Richard had been working hard dealing with troublesome matters with Elizabeth Woodville and her family, he had been sorting out the Duke of Buckingham debts. The Duke of Buckingham had notched up a lot of debt and innocent creditors of the late Duke of Buckingham livelihoods were threatened as they asked for repayment. The King had commissioned Sir William Husee, Chief Justice of the King’s bench, and William Catesby to forfeited lands of Buckingham’s in order to pay his debts. There had been one documented payment of £27 to a Richard and Roger Baker of Brecknock for bread and ale that had been delivered to the late Buckingham’s household.
Up and down the country Richard and his councillors had been busy dealing with ecclesiastical matters from priories in Carlisle to unfair dealing in the diocese of Exeter. On the 7th of February a document was issued, ‘a protection for requiring of alms by Edmund Filpot of Twicknam… Bricklayer, who by infortune and negligence had his dwelling house and place, with thirteen small tenements to the same annexed, and all his goods therein then being, suddenly burnt, to his utter undoing; who before, kept after his degree a great household, by the which many poor creatures were refreshed’.
During the first week of March, Richard and Anne had received bad news from Yorkshire, that there son, Edward; Prince of Wales health had been deteriorating as they had set of for Nottingham. Their son, Edward had never enjoyed good health and was always a constant worry to them. As the first few signs of spring in the air Richard had felt he could make his headquarters at Nottingham. He was mindful that his base was in Nottingham as it was half way from London to York. Richard had felt it was a good place if Henry had decided to invade England. Anne’s health had begun to deteriorate and they had to travel at a slower rate, and they began to wish that they did not like being king and queen had got in their way of being parents to their one and only child.
VII
Richard had long campaigned to have laws passed which was fairer for the common man and he had long had many ideas that he had shared with his closest friends. As he had been on his progress he had listened to what the common people had to say. He had started to get a reputation for listening to people’s grievances and some petitions from religious establishments, which were from more humble in their interests. A request had come from the inhabitants of Croyland, which lay in the fen country, from time immemorial the Abbey had reared swans ‘from which a great part of their relief and living hath been sustained’. There was a bill from the previous Parliament was annulled which declared, that no one not a lord’s son or possessing lands worth five marks a year should possess any Marke or game of his own Swans’.
Richard was well aware of how socially unfair and unjust some punishments were in the justice system. The King and his council had worked hard to correct economic injustices and safeguarding the rights of the individual against abuses of the law in his realm.
During the wars over the years land and property had changed many times and the failure of the common law to keep pace with the various events. People had invented and fraudulently disposing of estates and thrown the traditional methods of conveying land into confusion. Men had found their property rights were contested by titles that they had never heard of and when they contested they face the brink of being homeless and penniless by endless lawsuits. The Paston Letters are evidence of how the law was abused during the Wars of the Roses. http://www.luminarium.org/medlit/Pastontext.htm One of Richard’s statutes had taken action against ‘privy and unknown feoffements.’ This was a practice that was used by the seller of land would concealed from the buyer that a part of the property had already had been disposed of to someone else. The Kings council had enacted that every estate feoffement, gift of land, ‘shall be good to him that it is made unto and against the sellers and their heirs’. The council had set another statute that sought to prevent the concealment of property transfers called ‘fines’. The court had set up a new system in which, was called the Court of Common Pleas, all fines had to proclaimed by the court and notices of transactions had to be sent to the court officials. A statute of limitations had made its appearance in this act: Any persons wishing to take action because of the proclamation of a fine were given five years in which to bring suit. The third statute had abolished as an economic injustice, which had happened to royal power itself. It had been recorded that Edward IV had made direct demands for money, which was called ‘benevolences’ this act was commend by Richard and his council. The right of the King to take exaction’s was ‘dampened and annulled forever’.
From this Richard had felt that when Edward was alive, the Woodvilles used his name to extract money from other nobles.
There were other laws that were needed to reform and refine justice, so some forms of law those were no longer to be used as instruments of extortion and oppression. The first statute was aimed at correcting abuses in the courts, which sat to determine offences committed at fairs, which was when everybody gathered from the neighbourhood to air out their grievances in front of a bailiff or steward on the land on where the fair was held. One of King Edward’s parliaments had authorised these officials to rule in matters, which did not originate at fairs.
The protection of innocent people was of prime importance to Richard’s new laws, before Richard had come to power the jury system was full of bribery and false verdicts and false evidence. Before Richard III law, bail was available to those who were convicted of a crime. Richard’s new laws were designed to protect innocent people against their predatory and malicious neighbours. Before hand those people would be assessed and given a fine and were released on payment. Therefore a trail would be avoided, and the person had avoided being imprisoned. Richard had passed a law for the less serious crimes as bail and the person would be free until the day of that person trail. Any sheriffs and bailiffs who failed to obey those laws were fined forty shillings. In Richards’s own words, “The law shall cease to be an instrument of oppression and extortion.” Whether this law had upset the landowners, as the people had been given a fairer laws and that Richard had lost his loyalty from some of his lords. As this was one of the chief reasons why Richard did not get the support from a number of nobility and the landed gentry. The new laws had curbed the practises that the ruling classes that had preyed on the more vulnerable people of society.
The import and export trade and trading standards had been abused over the ages and Richard had felt it necessary to put some legislation to stop certain deceitful practices. Such acts as stretching cloth, exporting the finest wool that was not up to its standard or grade and the use of cheap dyes that would fade. There was a new piece of legislation, which Italian merchants that brought goods into the realm must sell them wholesale and must do so within eight months and they must buy native commodities with the money that they had received. Rather than take their money from their trade and just leave the country. No foreign trader or in those days were called aliens were allowed to sell wool or woollen cloth and garments in England. They were also not allowed to set themselves up as handcrafters, they could only work as servants of native English manufacturers. This did make Richard very popular with the English merchants and traders, but it also fire up a bit of xenophobia. Richard and his councillors had devised the first piece of legislation as the Caxton printing press had not that long been in production. A new law was needed for the protection and fostering the art of printing and the learning by books. In his own words, he attached the following.
‘Provided always that this act or any part thereof, or any other act made or to be made in the present parliament, in no wise extend…any let, hurt or impediment to any artificer or merchant stranger of what nation or country he be…for bringing into this realm, or selling by retail or otherwise, of any manner books written or imprinted, or for the inhabiting within the said realm for the same intent, or to any writer, limner, binder, or imprinter of such books, as he hath or shall have to sell by way of merchandise, or for their abode in the same realm for the exercising of the said occupations…’
Parliament had drawn to a close on 20th of February 1484 and Richard and his councillors had spent just under a month bring out new and revolutionary laws that had changed the way that justice and trade was regulated. As he bade his councillors, Lords and Commons, he had hoped to install law and order to his realm. He had felt that the kingdom had been wearied by years of turbulence and he had hoped that he was sending out a clear message that he really did care for his people.
After Richard had dismissed Parliament, He had been busy in talks with his one of his bitterest enemies, which had been residing in the Chapter House of Westminster Abbey. Elizabeth Woodville had been in sanctuary since Richard had delivered her son Edward to be crowned. He had managed to reach an agreement on the 1st of March; Richard had made no glowing promises. While the negotiations were in progress, the Parliament had enacted a statute, which had deprived her of her property and annulled all her letters patents. Richard had information that she was conspiring with Margaret Beaufort to marry her eldest daughter Elizabeth to Henry Tudor. It seemed they were hatching a plan to put Henry Tudor on the throne. Elizabeth Woodville had conspired against Richard from the time that Edward her husband had died. Richard had decided that he had to put her under close surveillance away from London. Richard had made a public announcement on 1st of March 1484, before an assembly of lords spiritual and temporal, with the Mayor and Aldermen of London.
I Richard, promise and swear, verbo regio, that if the daughters of Elizabeth Grey, late calling herself Queen of England…will come to me out of the Sanctuary of Westminster, and be guided, ruled, and demeaned after me, then I shall see that they shall be in surety of their lives and also not suffer any manner hurt…nor them nor any of them imprison…; but I shall put them into honest places of good name and fame, and them honestly and courteously shall see to be founden [supported] and entreated [treated], and to have all things requisite and necessary for their exhibitions and findings as my kinswomen; and that I shall do marry [arrange for the marriage of]…them to gentlemen born, and every of them give in marriage lands and tenements to the yearly value of 200 marks for term of their lives… And such gentlemen as shall hap to marry with them I shall straitly charge lovingly to love and entreat them, as wives and my kinswomen, as they will avoid and eschew my displeasure. And over this, that I shall yearly…pay…for the exhibition and finding of the said Dame Elizabeth Grey, during her natural life… to John Nesfeld, one of the esquires of my body, for his finding to attend upon her, the sum of 700 marks…; and moreover I promise to them that if any surmise or evil report be made to me of them by any person… that then I shall not give thereunto faith nor credence, nor therefore put them to any manner punishment, before that they or any of them so accused may be at their lawful defence and answer…
It seems that he had addressed Elizabeth as her widowed name of Grey and refused to acknowledge her marriage to Edward VI. This Statement is missing the fate of Edward V and his brother Richard. The Croyland Chronicler was Polydore Vergil had written this oath after Bosworth and this oath only suggests that Elizabeth’s daughters were under Richard’s care. It seems that Elizabeth had little choice but to retire to a country house, under the watchful eye of her warder, Nesfeld. Where she would live in seclusion and live under modest conditions on her annuity of 700 marks. There had been no mention of any complaint about the treatment that her daughters had received when they had been in Richard’s care and the Tudor chroniclers had not made any use of the daughter’s side of the story. It had seemed that Richard had someone in mind of marriage for Elizabeth’s eldest daughter later in Richard’s reign. He had found the son of Robert Stillington, Bishop of Bath and Wells a navel officer and considered him to be worthy match. The marriage was never to be as the young officer had been captured by the French along the coast of Normandy and was imprisoned in Paris where it was alleged that he had died of hunger and poverty. It could be when the Marquess of Dorset had learned of his mother had given up living in Sanctuary. That he had decided to make his peace with Richard and had fled from Paris to make his way to either Calais or Burgundy and was captured by Henry’s men and was kept hostage.
While Richard had been working hard dealing with troublesome matters with Elizabeth Woodville and her family, he had been sorting out the Duke of Buckingham debts. The Duke of Buckingham had notched up a lot of debt and innocent creditors of the late Duke of Buckingham livelihoods were threatened as they asked for repayment. The King had commissioned Sir William Husee, Chief Justice of the King’s bench, and William Catesby to forfeited lands of Buckingham’s in order to pay his debts. There had been one documented payment of £27 to a Richard and Roger Baker of Brecknock for bread and ale that had been delivered to the late Buckingham’s household.
Up and down the country Richard and his councillors had been busy dealing with ecclesiastical matters from priories in Carlisle to unfair dealing in the diocese of Exeter. On the 7th of February a document was issued, ‘a protection for requiring of alms by Edmund Filpot of Twicknam… Bricklayer, who by infortune and negligence had his dwelling house and place, with thirteen small tenements to the same annexed, and all his goods therein then being, suddenly burnt, to his utter undoing; who before, kept after his degree a great household, by the which many poor creatures were refreshed’.
During the first week of March, Richard and Anne had received bad news from Yorkshire, that there son, Edward; Prince of Wales health had been deteriorating as they had set of for Nottingham. Their son, Edward had never enjoyed good health and was always a constant worry to them. As the first few signs of spring in the air Richard had felt he could make his headquarters at Nottingham. He was mindful that his base was in Nottingham as it was half way from London to York. Richard had felt it was a good place if Henry had decided to invade England. Anne’s health had begun to deteriorate and they had to travel at a slower rate, and they began to wish that they did not like being king and queen had got in their way of being parents to their one and only child.
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