Law ammusement
Eccentric English Laws
All of these extracts have been taken directly from the old, dusty English Statute collection.
Until their former wives and former husbands be dead
In 1604, James I had been king for but a year when his Parliament decided to act against bigamy and polygamy in a statute which had the quaintest name: AN ACT TO RESTRAIN ALL PERSONS FROM MARRIAGE UNTIL THEIR FORMER WIVES AND FORMER HUSBANDS BE DEAD.
You just can't find statute names like that anymore!
"Forasmuch as divers evil disposed persons being married, run out of one County into another, or into places where they are not known, and there become to be married, having another husband or wife living, to the great dishonour of God, and utter undoing of divers honest men's children and others"
"Be it therefore enacted by the King's Majesty, with the consent of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and of the Commons in this present Parliament assembled, that if any person or persons within his Majesty's Dominions of England and Wales, being married, or which hereafter shall marry, do at any time after the end of the session of this present Parliament, marry any person or persons, the former husband or wife being alive; that then every such offence shall be felony, and the person in persons so offending shall suffer death...."
Odious and loathsome
Three years into the reign of James I, his Parliament decided to act in regards to a growing social problem and enacted, in 1606, AN ACT FOR REPRESSING THE ODIOUS AND LOATHSOME SIN OF DRUNKENNESS in the usual style of a preamble, which stated the reason for the law, followed by the actual law itself.
"Whereas the loathsome and odious sin of drunkenness is of late grown into common use within this Realm, being the root and foundation of many other enormous sins, as a bloodshed, stabbing, murder, swearing, fornication, adultery and such like, to the great dishonour of God, and of our nation, the overthrow of many good arts and manual trades, the disabling of divers workmen and the general impoverishing of many good subjects abusively wasting the good creatures of God.
"Be it therefore enacted by the King's most Excellent Majesty, the Lords Spiritual and Temporal and Commons, in this present Parliament assembled and by the authority of the same, and all and every person or persons which after 40 days next following the end of this present session of Parliament, shall be drunk, and of the same offence of drunkenness shall be lawfully convicted, shall for each such offence forfeit and lose five shillings of lawful money of England to be paid within one week next after his, her or their conviction thereof...."
"If the offender or offenders be not able to pay the said some of five shillings, then the offender or offenders shall be committed to the stocks for every offence, they are to remain by the space of six hours."
Source: www.duhaime.org.
