Re - paper 1: From my research of 16th c. English S.L., I would say that they didn't even work as regulatory/licensing environment. While there are a lot of laws passed in this period, court cases about enforcement of law either as a civil or criminal matter are vanishingly rare, while the presence of prohibited items are not uncommon in wills and estate records.
It's back to the one civil case I ever found in the Leet Court records, of a mayor's wife taking the former mayor's wife to court for dressing above the former mayor's wife's new station. The judge ruled that the current mayor's wife needed to calm down, and she couldn't expect that the former mayor's wife would throw away all the clothing she had acquired in her former position. Also, what is the mayor's wife doing bringing frivolous suit about clothing? The implication was that the judge wasn't going to enforce anyone breaking sumptuary laws.
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Date: 2012-05-11 03:42 pm (UTC)It's back to the one civil case I ever found in the Leet Court records, of a mayor's wife taking the former mayor's wife to court for dressing above the former mayor's wife's new station. The judge ruled that the current mayor's wife needed to calm down, and she couldn't expect that the former mayor's wife would throw away all the clothing she had acquired in her former position. Also, what is the mayor's wife doing bringing frivolous suit about clothing? The implication was that the judge wasn't going to enforce anyone breaking sumptuary laws.