THE CURIOSITIES OF " SPENT " LAWS.
ABILL introduced this Session into the House of Lords for the further revision of the Statutes, and for the repeal of "spent," "superseded," and obsolete laws, serves to remind us what an extraordinary museum of curious and delightful learning is that many-volumed work, "The Statutes at Large." Yet, entertaining and informing as are the Statutes, how few people have explored their treasures ! To the general -public, an Act of Parliament means one, and one thing only,—a aeries of dry, unintelligible facts, conveyed in bad, tedious, and unexpressive English, and totally devoid of light or interest. The idea that Statute Law ever was or ever could be readable, is one totally and absolutely inconceivable ; and the ordinary Englishman, rather than face so terrible an ordeal as its perusal, will wade through an infinity of dry little abstracts, be they never so incorrect and incomplete. No doubt people readily admit that the pedant and the historian will find important facts therein ; but this is not our point. It is that, putting aside all question of mere antiquarian lore, the Statutes at Large contain plenty of entertainment for those who like to see the amusing side of the life that was led in the days of our fore- fathers.
Among the Statutes now to be repealed, there are some very curious pieces of legislation. In the third year of Edward I. was passed what in effect is a primitive Press Law. It is directed against "the Devisors of Tales whereby Discord or occasion of Discord hath arisen between the King and his people or great men of this Realm;" and under it it is commanded that "henceforth none be so hardy" as to publish false news. The penalty under this Act is an extremely amusing one. The publisher of the false news is to be put in prison, and kept there " until he hath brought him into Court, which was the first author of the Tale." This sort of "Arabian Nights" justice would hardly suit the editors of our evening newspapers. This .enactment proved, however, not strong enough ; and in the second year of Richard II. a fresh Act, directed against "Horrible and False Lyes," had to be passed. The payment of tithe seems to have been an object of dislike as early as the time of Henry IV., for it is now sought to repeal an Act passed in his reign against "purchasing Bulls to be discharged of tithes." It appears from the Statute that certain religious men
—i.e., monks of the Order of Cisteux—bad obtained Papal Bulls for this purpose, and that to restrain them the useful penalties of
precmunire were brought into play. Perhaps the most important of all the Acts dealt with in the present revision is the Act of Henry VIII. "concerning the laws to be used in Wales,"—in
effect, the Act of Union between England and Wales—which is partly repealed. The preamble, which is still left in force, recites and enacts that, "Albeit the Principality of Wales justly and righteously is and ever hath been incorporated, subject to and under the Imperial Crown of this Realm, as a very member and joint of the same, yet notwithstanding because in the same Principality divers Rights, Laws, and Customs be far discrepant from the Laws and Customs of this Realm, and because the People do daily use a speech nothing like nor consonant to the natural mother tongue used within this Realm, some rude and ignorant People have made distinction and diversity between the King's subjects of this Realm and his subjects of the said Principality whereby great discord, variance, debate, division, murmur, and sedition hath grown between his said subjects. His Highness, of a singular zeal, love, dm, minding to reduce them to perfect order, notice, and knowledge of his laws, and utterly to extirp all and singular the sinister usages and Customs differing from the same, and to bring the said subjects of this his realm and of the said Principality to an amicable concord and unity, hath therefore by the deliberate advice, &a., ordained, &c., that the said Principality shall stand and continue for ever from henceforth incorporated, united, and annexed to and with this his realm of England." If Mr. Gladstone, in his recent studies of Welsh nationality, has come across this Act, he has no doubt found considerable comfort in the fact that those who wished in the sixteenth century to mark the " dis- tinction and diversity " of England and Wales were called " rude and ignorant people ;" for do not these expressions clearly show that the masses were held to be for Disruption, and the classes for Union P The Welsh Act, however, is not the only repealed. Statute which is of interest to Mr. Gladstone. That of George I. "to encourage the planting of Timber Trees, Fruit Trees, and other Trees for ornament, shelter, or profit, and for the better Preservation of the same," bears upon his well- known love of forestry. If people ask what is the use of repealing all these old laws, the promoters of the Bill can, we believe, draw a very good answer from the Statute of George III. to regulate "the making and vending of Metal Buttons." Of this Act is told a very celebrated Circuit story. Not very long ago, an action was brought by a manufacturer to recover the price of certain ordinary steel buttons sold to a dealer in such goods. The matter was one of simple contract, and there seemed no possible defence to the action. An ingenious counsel, however, discovered or remembered the Act of George IIL, and pleaded in defence that no action would lie for the price of the buttons, since the contract was altogether void, having been made in contravention of the Statute which in effect forbids the sale of metal buttons unless gilt or silver-plated. If the story is a tree one, it certainly gives a good reason for Statute revision.
If there is curious matter to be found in the Acts just repealed, in a much greater degree is there matter of interest discoverable in those either repealed before or still adorning the Statute- Book. What, for instance, could be more delightfully naive than the Bill preferred by the Upholsterers' Company in the reign of Henry VII., discussing "what stuff Upholsterers shall put in Bolsters, Feather-beds, and Pillows" P The Com- pany, we are informed in the recital, are much horrified to find that certain people, to the "great jeopardy, lose, and deceit" of the King's subjects, are making feather-beds and bolsters "of two manner of corrupt stuffs,—that is to say, scalded Feathers and dry pulled feathers together, which is contagious for man's body to lie on." It must be admitted that the mixture does not sound a very fearful one. The Company, however, wax very wroth at the notion, and go on to explain how, "by the heat of man's body the savour and taste is so abominable and contagions that many of the King's subjects have been thereby destroyed." It is evidently hard work enough for the draftsman to keep his language within bounds when he is describing "the deceitful making of this corrupt and unlawful stuff." When he gets to the remedies and the operative part of the Act, he becomes completely incoherent with rage, and enacts not only that no person shall make, utter, or sell any of the" corrupt and unlawful stuff," but that it shall be " utterly damned for ever." Even nowadays, when a private Member, newly elected, drafts one of those small Bills to redress a local inconvenience, which unwittingly repeal by implication the vital parts of Magna Charta or the Statute De Donis, he seldom breaks out so furiously in his excessive zeal for reform. The last clause of the Bolster Act is curiously English, and was evidently inserted in Committee by some Lord Wemyss or Lord Bramwell of the day. It is a proviso to the effect that any one who likes may make or cause to be made "for their own proper use in their houses, any of the aforesaid corrupt and unlawful stuff." Acts of this kind abound in the reigus of Henry VII. and his son. They are all of them extremely enter. tabling, on account of the querulous eagerness with which the perplexed Legislature rushed into law-making directed against manufacturing deceits. The Statute called "A remedy to avoid deceitful sleights used upon Fustian" is quite melodramatic in the way in which it describes how " divers persons by subtil and undue sleights and means have deceivably imagined and con- trived Instruments of Iron with the which Irons in the most highest and secret places of their houses they strike and draw the said irons over the said notions unshorn, by means of which they pluck off the nap and cotton of the same Fustians, and break commonly both the ground and threads in sunder." Why these evilly disposed persons should thus have sat up in their attics utterly spoiling good fustian in the way described, does not appear, but stringent provisions are enacted to prevent the practice. It is curious to find in the legislation of the sixteenth century, Acts regulating trades and professions in very much the same spirit in which we regulate them ourselves. The Bill for the appointing of physicians and surgeons of Henry VIIL is a case in point. The recital waxes very indignant over the fact that " Physick and Surgery " is practised by persons " who have no manner of insight in the same," and "common artificers as Smiths, Weavers, and Women boldly and accustomably take upon them great cures and things of great difficulty in the which they partly use sorcery and witchcraft, partly apply such medicines as be very noions and nothing meet thereof, to the high Displeasure of God, great infamy of the Faculty, and the grievous hurt, damage, and destruction of many of the King's liege people, most especially of them that cannot discern the cunning from the uneunning." Certainly the notion of a smith attempting to effect a cure by a mixture of sorcery and " noions " drugs is not a very pleasant one, and we do not wonder that after such a recital Parliament proceeded to enact the holding of the first of a long series of medical examinations. When the Government is obliged to drop legislation much needed by the country simply because Members will not stay in town, the Statute entitled "An Act that no Knights of the Shire nor Burgesses depart before the End of Parliament," has a peculiar interest. The Act states that though "commonly in the end of every Parlia- ment divers many great and weighty matters " are still to be settled, Members leave town, and it therefore inflicts penalties on their doing so without the leave of the Speaker. However, even though the Act were still in force, it would not be available for Mr. W. H. Smith, for under it the punishment is the losing by the Member of " all those sums of money which he or they should or Might to have had for his or their w ages." Strange and fussy are the Acts " concerning outlandish people calling themselves Egyptians." These people, complains the Act, " using no craft nor feat of Merchandise, have gone from Shire to Shire and place to place in great companies, and used great subtil and crafty means to deceive the people, bearing them in hand that they by palmistry could tell Men's and Women's fortunes, am" From an Act of the sort passed in the time of Elizabeth, we gather that "this sort of counterfeit rogue," as the old law-books call them, had already began to attract to themselves—as in Mr. Mathew Arnold's poem of "The Scholar-Gipsy "—native Englishmen of wandering habits, who learnt their language and adopted their nomadic and predatory ways.
To make anything like a real examination of the curiosities of the Statutes would far outrun the space at our disposal. We cannot stop to tell our readers how one of Henry VIII.'s Parlia- ments passed an Act against crows and rooks in which the cross and spiteful tone of the language caused by "the innumerable number of Rooks, Crows, and °houghs which daily breed and increase throughout the Realm," and by "the wonderful and marvellous great quantity of grain they consume," is extremely funny. "If," says the Statute, "the said Crows, Rooks, and Choughs should be suffered to breed and continue," the country will utterly go to ruin. We wish we could introduce our readers to some most amusing pieces of colloquial socialism to be found in the Statute called " Concerning the number of sheep one should keep." In the recitals Mr. Conybeare could, we should imagine, find the very greatest solace and comfort, notwith- standing that the answer to the question propounded by the Legislature is ' not above two thousand.' As it is, we must leave the subject of " Spent Laws" with a recommendation to any one who has access to a public library to acquire the art of reading the Statutes at Large. If a man once gets the taste, he will find a new and most delightful field of reading open to him.
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