Medieval Laws

Test your knowledge of obscure medieval laws with these 13 tricky questions from Legal Historian William Eves.

1 In what year was football first banned in London?

Answer: (As far as we know) 1314, following a proclamation of Edward II, who wanted to maintain peace and good order while he was away fighting the Scots. Notably, 1314 was also the year of his disastrous defeat at Bannockburn.

3 Following 1463 legislation, what was the maximum length that the toes of a commoner’s shoes could be?

Answer: Two inches: ‘No knight under the rank of a lord, esquire or gentleman, nor any other person, shall wear any shoes or boots having spikes or points which exceed the length of two inches’.

4 Bakers could be fined, and perhaps put in the pillory, for selling bread that was too light. True or false?

Answer: True. Following the 1266 Assize of Bread and Ale, the weight of a loaf of bread was set according to the price of wheat.

5 Forest Law from the year 1198 ordered what punishment for hunting deer in a royal forest?

Answer: Blinding and castration. This was reduced in the 1217 Forest Charter to a fine, or imprisonment.

6 If you catch or find a sturgeon, who should you offer it to?

Answer: The Queen, who has a right to it according to the 1322 Statute Prerogativa Regis. She probably won’t want it, but it’s nice to offer.

7 Which king enacted the legislation in 1313 preventing anyone entering Parliament bearing arms and armour?

Answer: Edward II. In this period Edward was teetering on the brink of being deposed by a group of powerful nobles, so it was probably a sensible enactment.

9 What were the local visitations undertaken by royal justices from the mid-twelfth to the late-thirteenth centuries known as?

Answer: Eyres. The name comes from the Latin verb ‘errare’, ‘to wander’. By extension, this Latin word can also mean ‘to make a mistake’ because the person making this mistake has wandered away from the right path (or as we say in English has ‘made an error’). People who knew Latin in the twelfth century very much enjoyed making this pun at the expense of the ‘justices of error’.