Law amusements
Eccentric English Laws
All of these extracts have been taken directly from the old, dusty English Statute collection.
Fleshy incontinency
In 1485, King Henry VII approved a law with a self-explanatory title: AN ACT TO PUNISH PRIESTS FOR INCONTINENCY, with the proviso that incontinency did not have the same meaning as it does today.
This law had the unfortunate effect of shielding the clergy from the brunt of the criminal law in regards to sexual assault and left such clergy to be mildly punished by their peers:
"For the more sure and likely reformation of priests... and religious men, culpable, or by their demerits openly reported, of incontinent living in their bodies, contrary to their order, it is enacted and established that it be lawful to all archbishops and bishops and other ordinaries having Episcopal jurisdiction, as shall be convicted afore them by examination and other lawful proof requisite by the law of the Church, of adultery and fornication, incest or other fleshy incontinency, by committing them to prison, they are to abide for such times as shall be thought to their discretions convenient for the quality and quantity of their trespass."
Source: www.duhaime.org.
