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And would you have us now yield up our rights, privileges, and immunities, our outfang and infang, our handhaband, our back bearand, and our blood suits, and amerciaments, escheats, and commodities, and suffer an honest burgess's house to be assaulted without seeking for redress? No, brave citizens, craftsmen, and burgesses, the Tay shall flow back to Dunkeld before we submit to such injustice!"
Herewithal every married man was expressly and rigorously commanded to reverence, honour, and worship him, to celebrate and solemnize his festival with twice more respect than that of any other saint or deity, and to immolate unto him with all sincerity and alacrity of heart the above-mentioned sacrifices and oblations, under pain of severe censures, threatenings, and comminations of these subsequent fines, mulcts, amerciaments, penalties, and punishments to be inflicted on the delinquents: that Monsieur Cuckoldry should never be favourable nor propitious to them; that he should never help, aid, supply, succour, nor grant them any subventitious furtherance, auxiliary suffrage, or adminiculary assistance; that he should never hold them in any reckoning, account, or estimation; that he should never deign to enter within their houses, neither at the doors, windows, nor any other place thereof; that he should never haunt nor frequent their companies or conversations, how frequently soever they should invocate him and call upon his name; and that not only he should leave and abandon them to rot alone with their wives in a sempiternal solitariness, without the benefit of the diversion of any copes-mate or corrival at all, but should withal shun and eschew them, fly from them, and eternally forsake and reject them as impious heretics and sacrilegious persons, according to the accustomed manner of other gods towards such as are too slack in offering up the duties and reverences which ought to be performed respectively to their divinities as is evidently apparent in Bacchus towards negligent vine-dressers; in Ceres, against idle ploughmen and tillers of the ground; in Pomona, to unworthy fruiterers and costard-mongers; in Neptune, towards dissolute mariners and seafaring men, in Vulcan, towards loitering smiths and forgemen; and so throughout the rest.
AND FURTHER, Our Will and Pleasure is, and by these Presents, for Us, Our Heirs and Successors, WE DO grant unto the said Governor and Company, and to their Successors, that it shall and may be lawful, to and for the said Governor and Company, and their Successors, from time to time, to assemble themselves, for or about any the Matters, Causes, Affairs, or Businesses of the said Trade, in any Place or Places for the same convenient, within our Dominions or elsewhere, and there to hold Court for the said Company, and the Affairs thereof; and that also, it shall and may be lawful to and for them, and the greater Part of them, being so assembled, and that shall then and there be present, in any such Place or Places whereof the Governor or his Deputy for the Time being to be one, to make, ordain, and constitute, such, and so many reasonable Laws, Constitutions, Orders and Ordinances, as to them, or the greater part of them being then and there present, shall seem necessary and convenient for the good Government of the said Company, and of all Governors of Colonies, Forts and Plantations, Factors, Masters, Mariners, and other Officers employed or to be employed, in any of the Territories and Lands aforesaid, and in any of their Voyages; and for the better Advancement and Continuance of the said Trade, or Traffic and Plantations, and the same Laws, Constitutions, Orders and Ordinances so made, to put in Use and execute accordingly, and at their Pleasure to revoke and alter the same, or any of them, as the occasion shall require: And that the said Governor and Company, so often as they shall make, ordain, or establish, any such Laws, Constitutions, Orders, and Ordinances, in such Form as aforesaid, shall and may lawfully impose, ordain, limit and provide, such Pains, Penalties and Punishments upon all Offenders, contrary to such Laws, Constitutions, Orders and Ordinances, or any of them, as to the said Governor and Company for the Time being, or the greater Part of them, then and there being present, the said Governor or his Deputy being always one, shall seem necessary, requisite, or convenient for the Observation of the same Laws, Constitutions, Orders and Ordinances; and the same Fines and Amerciaments shall and may by their Officers and Servants, from time to time to be appointed for that Purpose levy, take and have, to the Use of the said Governor and Company, and their Successors, without the Impediment of Us, Our Heirs or Successors, or of any the Officers or Ministers of Us, Our Heirs or Successors, and without any Account therefore to Us, Our Heirs or Successors, to be made.
And in many other statutes passed after Magna Carta, the terms fine and amercement seem to be used indifferently, in prescribing the punishments for offences. St. 2 and 3 Philip and Mary, Ch 8, uses the terms, "fines, forfeitures, and amerciaments" five times. St. 5 Elizabeth, Ch. 13, Sec. 10, uses the terms "fines, forfeitures, and amerciaments."
The leet is a court of record for the cognizance of criminal matters, or pleas of the crown; and necessarily belongs to the king; though a subject, usually the lord of the manor, may be, and is, entitled to the profits, consisting of the essoign pence, fines, and amerciaments "It is held before the steward, or was, in ancient times, before the bailiff, of the lord."
The son of a bitch was fed with costs, for he lived on a multiplicity of fine amonds and amerciaments by order of their worships, to each of whom the monster was worth more than the best farm in the land. In their tongue of ignorance they called him Twofold. His dam lay by him, and her hair and shape was like her whelp's, only she had four heads, two male and two female, and her name was Fourfold.
If the heir were a female, the king was entitled to offer her any husband of her rank he thought proper; and if she refused him, she forfeited her land. Fines, amerciaments, and oblatas, as they were called, were another considerable branch of the royal power and revenue.
All unjust and illegal fines made by us, and all amerciaments imposed unjustly and contrary to the law of the land, shall be entirely given up, or else be left to the decision of the five-and-twenty barons hereafter mentioned for the preservation of the peace, or of the major part of them, together with the aforesaid Stephen, Archbishop of Canterbury, if he can be present, and others whom he shall think fit to invite; and if he cannot be present, the business shall notwithstanding go on without him; but so that if one or more of the aforesaid five-and-twenty barons be plaintiffs in the same cause, they shall be set aside as to what concerns this particular affair, and others be chosen in their room, out of the said five-and-twenty, and sworn by the rest to decide the matter.
Finally there were the profits of the manor courts. As has been seen, these consisted of a great variety of fees, fines, amerciaments, and collections made by the steward or other official. Such varied payments and profits combined to make up the total value of the manor to the landowner.
And a villein shall be amerced after the same manner, saving to him his wainage, if he falls under our mercy; and none of the aforesaid amerciaments shall be assessed but by the oath of honest men in the neighbourhood. Earls and barons shall not be amerced but by their peers, and after the degree of the offence.
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