Boroughs held court on trading and marketing issues in their towns
such as measures and weights, as well as issues between people who
lived in the borough. The borough court was presided over by a
reeve who was a burgess as well as a royal official.
Wealthy men could employ professional pleader-attorneys to advise
them and to speak for them in a court.
The ecclesiastical courts dealt, until the time of Henry VIII,
with family matters such as marriage, annulments, marriage
portions, legitimacy, undue wife-beating, child abuse, orphans,
bigamy, adultery, incest, fornication, personal possessions,
defamation, slander which did not cause material loss (and
therefore had no remedy in the temporal courts), libel, perjury,
usury, mortuaries, sacrilege, blasphemy, heresy, tithe payments,
church fees, certain offences on consecrated ground, and breaches
of promises under oath, e.g. to pay a debt, provide services, or
deliver goods. They decided inheritance and will issues which did
not concern land, but only personal property. This developed from
the practice of a priest usually hearing a dying person's will as
to the disposition of his goods and chattel when he made his last
confession. It provided guardianship of infants during probate of
their personal property. Trial was basically by compurgation, with
oath-helpers swearing to or against the veracity of the alleged
offender's oath.
Pages:
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179