Page:Ruffhead - The Statutes at Large - vol 9.djvu/16

x a Piece with these Retaliations, are several Clauses of this Act, which confound all Degrees of Offence, and all Distinctions of Morality. By the 8th Clause it is enacted, " That if any Priest keep or use any Woman, to whom he is, or hath been married, or with whom he hath contracted Matrimony ; every such carnal Use, open Conversation, &c. shall be adjudged Felony, as well against the Man, as against the Woman." But,

the 9th Clause it is enacted, " That if any Priest do carnally use, and accustom any Woman, or keep her as his Concubine, as by paying for her Board, maintaining her with Money, Array, or any Gifts, &c. that then he shall forfeit all his Goods, Chattels, and Benefices, &c. and suffer Imprisonment : And offending after Conviction, shall be adjudged guilty of Felony."

we find that a Priest cohabiting with a Wife, [the Malum Prohibitum by this Statute] was deemed guilty of Felony in the first Instance : Whereas by cohabiting with a Concubine, he only incurred the Forfeiture of Goods and Imprisonment for the first Offence ; and was not deemed guilty of Felony until the second. So that an Offence against the Resolutions of the Convocation and Parliament, was deemed of a more heinous Nature than a Violation of the Laws of Religion and Morality.

now come to the Consideration of the First of Edward VI. for the Punishment of Vagabonds, and for the Relief of poor and impotent Persons. The Preamble recites,. "That idle and vagabond Persons, being unprofitable Members, or rather Enemies of the Commonwealth, have been suffered to remain and increase, whom, if they should be punished with, Whipping, Imprisonment, and other corporal Pain, it were not without their Deserts, for the Example of others." Having in this Manner declared, that these wretched Vagabonds deserved Death, &c. (though their Idleness was probably more the Fault of the State than of themselves) the Enacting-part of this severe Statute was doubtless deemed merciful: For it only enacts, that the Offender there described to be an idle Person, shall be taken before a Justice of Peace, who shall cause him to be marked with a hot Iron in the Breast, the Mark V, and adjudge him to be a Slave to the Person presenting him for two Years, to be fed with Bread and Water, and to be put to Work (how vile soever it be) by beating, chaining, &c. and if he runs away, the Justice, on Conviction, shall cause such Slave to be marked on the Forehead, or Ball of the Cheek, with the Sign of an S, and shall farther adjudge him to be his Master's Slave for ever: And if he again run away, he shall suffer Death as a Felon. There is likewise a Proviso in this Act, by which they might be sold or bequeathed by Will, as any other moveable Goods or Chattels. By the 39 Eliz. c. 4. also printed in this Appendix, they were to be whipped until their Bodies were bloody, or to be banished the Kingdom, or adjudged perpetually to the Gallies of the Realm.

Editor however is sensible that the Inhumanity of these Laws will admit of some Palliation, when we confider the Time when they were made, which was soon after the Dissolution of the religious Houses, which afforded an Asylum for all poor and impotent People, When these therefore were set at large, without the Means of gaining a Live-