Arise, Sir Loin of Beef!
Ever seen a movie or TV show (or Bugs Bunny cartoon) where a guy is getting knighted by the monarch? You know the scene: the guy is kneeling before the King or Queen and she takes a big sword and lightly taps him on either show, proclaiming he is know ever afterward to be known as Sir So-and-So? That’s not just Hollywood; that’s imagery:
“And when any man is made a knight he kneeling downe is stroken of the prince, with his sworde naked vppon the backe or shoulder, the prince saying: sus or sois chiualier au nom de Dieu and (in times past) they added S. George, and at his arising the prince saith, auauncèr. This is the manner of dubbing of knights at this present"
Crimes and Special Punishments
Manslaughter, robbery, murder, rape and other capital crimes are explicitly mentioned as being those for which then-current laws of England demanded no punishment suitable other than hanging. However, it seems that there were a few quite special causes calling for punishments of a more peculiar nature:
“If the wife kill her husbande, shée shall be burned aliue. If the seruaunt kill his master, hee shalbee drawen on a hurdle to the place of execution: it is called petit trea∣son. Impoisoners, if the person die thereof, by a new lawe made in king Henrie the eights time shalbe boy∣led to death: but this mischiefe is rare and almost vnknowen in England.”
Goodbye to Maiden Names
In a chapter titled simply “Of Wives and Marriages” the author provides a peek into the history of something which was apparently not a convention of the time, but which is ingrained into the fabric of society today most do not even given a thought to its origin. The adoption by a woman of the last name of her husband upon marriage just seems like one of those things which has always been, but that is not the case:
“our daughters so soone as they be maried loose the surname of their father…and take the surname of their husbands, as transplanted from their family into an other. So that if my wife was called before Philippe Wilford by her owne name and her fathers surname, as soone as she is maried to me she is no more called Philippe Wylford, but Philippe Smith, and so must she write and signe: and as she changeth husbandes, so she chaungeth surnames, called alwaies by the surname of her last husbande”
What is a Tyrant?
A major theme of the text is the rejection of the concept of absolute monarchy in favor of a strong parliamentary legislature to act as a check and balance upon the ruthless ambition of the monarch. As a result, the characterization of a tyrant is definitively inscribed through a form of imagery:
“a tyrant is counted he, who is an euill king, & who hath no regard to the wealth of his people, but seeketh onely to magnifie himselfe and his, and to satisfie his vicious and cruell appetite, without respect of God, of right or of the law: because that for the most part they who haue had that absolute power haue beene such.”
