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| | | The Englishry of the English Law +
-Ryan Holmes - 28 Nov 2017 | | |
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> | SECOND PAPER
Introduction
Surveying the development of freedom in the English law over the course of several centuries, it becomes immediately apparent that there was no overarching plan or design that drove the process. It was a haphazard and decidedly uneven affair. Each of the incremental advancements in the freedom of land and people was in response to the events and circumstances of the day. These historical contingencies created tensions in society between various factions, whether they be the baronage and the Crown, mesne lords and their vassals, or the peasantry and the nobility as a whole. Change was largely brought about through compromise, but progress was rarely linear or guaranteed. Often, but not always, the faction attempting to maintain or reassert the status quo would make an initial attempt to resolve the tension through taking more restrictive measures, which frequently left land less freely alienable and individuals more bound to the land and their lords than before. When present, these restrictions usually precipitated a drastic reaction, either through violent uprising or legal innovation, that created the need for a new compromise. This grand bargain, or gradual evolution over time, generally left people freer and land more alienable. Tracing these patterns from the signing of the Great Charter through the Statute of Wills, it is clear that contingency, and response to it, are of paramount importance in the history of the English law.
Magna Carta
The 1215 signing of the Magna Carta is a textbook example of how an incremental increase in the freedom of people was brought about by an attempt to resolve the immediate social and political tensions of the age. John was an unpopular king buffeted by conflicts with an ever more assertive Church and almost constant military failure in France. Faced with rebellion by the baronage in the wake of the permanent loss of Brittany and Normandy in 1214, John’s hand was forced into making a series of guarantees to the nobility and the church that seemed to ensconce a modicum of due process in the English legal system. Though not considered a permanent settlement at the time, John’s untimely death and the subsequent repeated affirmation by later monarchs lead to the minimal guarantees of due process contained in the Magna Carta becoming the symbolic foundation of the English legal system.
The Crisis of the 14th Century: Plague, the Statute of Laborers, and The Peasant’s Revolt
Perhaps the most important and wide–reaching advancement in individual liberty during the medieval period was the gradual weakening of serfdom brought about by tumult of the second half of the fourteenth century. The immediate aftermath of the Black Death saw wages rise dramatically for agricultural laborers and increasing movement of people seeking work and demanding better conditions. Attempting to stem the tide and reassert the pre-plague status quo, Parliament passed the Statute of Laborers in 1351, which froze wages and prohibited the movement of workers. The Statute and its accompanying Ordinance were weakly enforced, but contributed to a general atmosphere of oppression of the working classes in the Second As the economic crisis deepened in the 1370s, peasant discontent rose, and coupled with new theological reform movements like Lollardy, exploded in the Peasant’s Revolt of 1381. Though the jacquerie was ultimately put down, it posed a significant shock to the system, threatening London and executing the Archbishop of Canterbury along the way. Despite remaining on the books, the Statute of Laborers proved ineffective in restoring pre-plague conditions in the fact of the demographic and economic pressures that were weakening serfdom. The Revolt did not bring an immediate end to the institution, but it withered away in its aftermath, becoming almost nonexistent as a personal status in England by the end of the fifteenth century. The importance of social and demographic forces in driving the process is perhaps the greatest example of contingency advancing the freedom of individuals in the English law.
Uses, Wills, and the Reformation: Land Reform in the Reign of Henry VIII
- ’s Statute of Wills marked the end of a decades long battle between landowners and the Crown over the ability to freely dispose of and control property after death and the Crown’s entitlement to its feudal incidences. Ultimately gaining the right to devise land through will, the landowners emerged victorious. Through a combination of legal innovation and outright rebellion, the landowners were able to free themselves from the strictures of mandatory primogeniture and excessive royal interference. The stage was set with the passage of the Statute of Uses in 1536, an attempt by the Crown to end abuses of beneficial ownership and stymie the avoidance of the payment of incidents. These goals were almost immediately undermined through clever lawyering and the development of the trust. Discontent over the Statute of Uses was a significant contributing factor the eruption of the Pilgrimage of Grace that fall. Gaining tens of thousands of followers and lasting for months, the rebellion was the most significant popular uprising against the religious and economic reforms of Henry VIII’s reign. Though royal authority was reestablished across Yorkshire in 1537, the Pilgrimage placed enormous political pressure on the Tudor state. This eventually led to the passage of the Statute of Wills in 1540, which enabled English landowners to devise their land through wills for the first time, gaining the freedom to dispose of their land as they saw fit, avoiding the specter of royal escheat. Through this political compromise, the landowners were able to secure a significant advancement in the freedom of land.
Conclusion
Taken as a whole, contingency played a decisive role in the development of freedom in medieval England. This halting path to liberty, created by compromise and driven by the needs and contingencies of a given generation, shows that freedom in the English law was brought about by an organic and all too uncertain process. The importance of events and the resolution of immediate social problem demonstrates that English liberty and was not the created through a grand design or derived from ancient indefinable rights, but the product of a centuries-long human struggle.
Post Script: I know it needs work, especially in the Magna Carta section, and some citing/ more of a legal dimension, but I was pressed for time this week. Will revisit in the next week or two.
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