EGISLATION IN MEDIAEVAL ENGLAND

(1275) The Statute of Westminster I has sometimes been termed a great
English code; it is certainly a comprehensive statement by statute of
a considerable portion of existing law. In our consideration of
labor and conspiracy laws we have had to include statutes of later
centuries. Now, returning to the year of the Statute of Westminster,
we found, in 1275, also the Statute of Bigamy, aimed against priests
with more than one wife. It is to be noted that this was centuries
before the celibacy of priests became one of the doctrines of the
Roman Catholic Church. It is also interesting that this early statute
refers to the pope as "the Bishop of Rome"--but only as printed since
1543.

(1279) The Statute of Mortmain, aimed at the holding of land in large
quantities by religious corporations, was a true constructive statute,
and the principle it establishes has grown ever since. The law
regards with jealousy the ownership of land by any corporation;
the presumption is against the power, and it extends to-day to all
corporations, and particularly to alien corporations (see chapter 7);
and in 1283 came the Statute of Acton Burnel, re-enacted in 1285 and
called the "Statute Merchant," equally important. It provides for the
speedy recovery of debts due merchants, and is the foundation of all
our modern law of pledge, sales of collateral, etc. It is distinctly
an innovation on the common law; for in those days there was no method
of collecting ordinary money debts. You could levy on a man's land,
but there really seems to have been no method of recovering a debt
contracted in trade; and this is the first of many statutes adopting
foreign ideas as to matters of trade, and the customs of merchants,
drawn frequently from the Lombard or Jew traders of the Continent,
which, by statute law, custom, or court decision, has since become
such a considerable body of the English law as to have a name
to itself--the "Law Merchant." This first statute provides for
imprisonment for debt; "if he have no goods to be seized the debtor is
to be imprisoned, but the creditor shall find him bread and water."
A foreigner coming to England to recover a debt may also recover the
expenses of his trip; and the statute is further liberal in that it
does away with the _Droit d'Aubaine_, that narrow-minded custom by
which the goods or personal property of any person who died passing
through the kingdom were seized by the aut