Edward Chamberlayne

Edward Chamberlayne (13 December 1616 – May 1703) was an English writer, known as the author of Anglicæ Notitia or The Present State of England.

Quotes

Angliæ Notitia, 1676, 1704

Angliæ Notitia, title page

• The fields are sufficiently full of tares, vetches, clover-grass, hop-clover, sanfoil, ray-grass, trefoil, cinquefoil, hops, wood, flax, hemp, rape-seed, lucern, Dantzick flax, canary seed, mustard seed, &c.
  • p. 40; Cited by Patrick Edward Dove, Elements of Political Science. Edinburgh, 1854. p. 406

• The Commons of England for Hereditary Fundamental Liberties and Propertiesy are blest above and beyond the Subjects of any Monarch or State in the World.
  First, No Freeman of England ought to be imprisoned, or otherwise restrains, without Cause shewn, for which by Law, he ought to be so imprisoned.
  • p. 302: Cited in: Gerald Stourzh. "Liberal Democracy as a Culture of Rights: England, the United States, and Continental Europe." Bridging the Atlantic. (2002) p. 11

• Forth, no Soldiers can be quartered in the House of any Freeman in time of Peace, without his will...
  • p. 302.

• Fifth, every Freeman hath such a full and absolute property in Goods, that no Taxes, Loans, or Benevolences ordinarily and legally can be imposed on them, without their own consent by their Representatives in Parliament...
  • p. 302.

• The King hath his forests, chases, and parks, full of variety of game, for hunting red and fallow deer, foxes, otters, hawking; his paddock courses, horse-races &c. abroad and at home; tennis, balloon, billiards, interludes, balls, masks, &c. The nobility and chief gentry have their parks, warrens, decoys, paddock courses horse-races, hunting, coursing, fi shing, fowling, hawking, setting dogs, tumblers, lurchers, duck-hunting, cock-fi ghting, tennis, bowling, billiards, tables, chess, draughts, cards, dice, catches, Questions, Purposes, stage-plays, dancing, singing, all sorts of musical instruments, &c. The citizens and peasants have hand-ball, foot-ball, skittles or nine-pins, shovelboard, stow-ball, golf, troll-madam, cudgels, bear-baiting, bull-baiting, bow and arrow, throwing at cocks, bowlings, quoits, leaping, wrestling, pitching the bar, and ringing of bells, a recreation used in no other country in the world.
  Amongst these, cock-fighting seems to all foreigners too childish and unsuitable for the gentry, and for the common people bull-baiting and bear-baiting seem too cruel, and for the citizens foot-ball very uncivil, rude, and barbarous within the city
  • p. 319-320; Cited in: Jeffrey L. Forgeng. Daily Life in Stuart England, p. 169-170