CURIOUS LAWS.
Mr Lecky, the historian, gives the following examples of carious obsolete and forgotten laws. In 1761 we find a lady tried at Westminster, to recover a penalty of £2O, under a law of Elizabeth, because she had not attended any authorised place of worship for a month previously, and acquitted by the juryon the ground of her ill-health. In 1772 a vicar was fined £lO and his curate £5 for not reading in church an old Act against cursing and swearing. The vicar, it appears, had dismissed his curate, and the sons of the latter, having discovered the existence of this long-forgotten law, brought the action in revenge, not knowing that their father would be involved in the condemnation. Two statutes of Charles 11. requiring that the dead should be buried in woollen, and imposing a fine of £5 on clergymen who neglected to certify to the churchwardens any instances in which this Act was not complied with, were only repealed in 1814 on account of the number of actions being brought by a common informer to recover the penalties.
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Southern Cross, Volume 2, Issue 19, 4 August 1894, Page 3
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182CURIOUS LAWS. Southern Cross, Volume 2, Issue 19, 4 August 1894, Page 3
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