SUNDAY LEGISLATION AND ITS OBSERVANCES. 231 



Sunday, by his lord's command, he shall be free, and his lord forfeit 

 30s.; if he work, without his lord's testimony, he shall lose his hide.* 

 If a freeman work on the Lord's day, he shall lose his freedom.f 

 King Alfred, about 872, enacts, that if any person presume to trans- 

 act business on this day, he shall lose his chattels [captali], and in- 

 cur a double penalty to the Danes and English. J The laws of Athel- 

 stan, 929, prohibit business and forensic pleadings, under a similar 

 penalty. Sunday, by the laws of Edgar, 959, commenced at the 

 ninth hour of Saturday (our three o'clock, P.,M.), and continued till 

 day-light on Monday. [| Canute, 1017, prohibits public markets, 

 conventicles of pleaders, sales, and other secular transactions, except 

 upon urgent necessity.** 



The Norman Conqueror enacted some laws for the observance of 

 particular festivals, but Sunday is not specifically named in them.-j"{" 

 The people seem to have neglected it under the princes of this line: 

 we find the monkish historians relating visions, which have for their 

 object the enforcing of its solemn observance, as the especial command 

 of heaven. On Low-Sunday, 1154, says Knyghton, a tall, thin, 

 yellow man, with round tonsure, bare-footed, and clothed in white, 

 addressed Henry II., in the Teutonic language, as the " Gode olde 

 kyng," and told him that Christ and his pious mother, St. John the 

 Baptist, and St. Peter, sent him their respects (" te salutat ") firmly 

 commanding him to prohibit markets and servile labour on Sundays, 

 and assuring him of success in all his undertakings, accordingly as 

 he obeyed this mandate. J{ 



At the latter end of the reign of Richard II., Fulc, a prophet in 

 France, busied himself in correcting religious abuses, and in 1197, 

 sent Eustace, abbot of Flay, into England, for the purpose of sup- 

 pressing the traffic, in which the people were engaged on Sundays. 

 What he did in this particular respect is not recorded ; we are only 

 informed, that on his arrival, he betook himself to the working of 

 miracles, || || not one of which appears to have had any reference to the 

 object of his mission. If he did not fail entirely, his success was of 

 very short duration ; for having returned to France, we find him, in 

 1201, under the necessity of again visiting England for the same pur- 

 pose.*** On this occasion he pretended to have received a commission 

 immediately from heaven, and itinerated from city to city, York 

 among others, preaching up the strict observance of the day of our 



* Corium perdat ; i. e. be severely whipped. 



t Lei. hi. Sax. 3. apud Johan. Bromton. Chron. 761. 



J Lel.x. Sax. 7- Bromt. 830. 



Lei. xxxi. Sax. 23. Bromt. 844. 



|| Lei. yi. Sax. 5. Bromt. 871. 



** Nisi pro magna necessitate, Lei. xvii. Sax. 14. Bromt. 920- 



j-f- Cap. xi. de temporibus et diebus packs domini regis. Sunday, however, is in- 

 cluded in the following prolongation of Saturday to Monday : " Item omni- 

 bus sabbatis ab hora nona usque ad diem Lume.'"' Roger de Hoveden, p. 601. 



Henr. de Knyghton, Lib. ii. col. 2395. 



Bromton, col. 1274. 



(Ill Roger de Hoveden, p. 804. 



*** Id. p. 820. 



