Talk:Assize of Arms of 1181

Copyvio
I imagine this has just been pasted from somewhere, so should probably be checked out for copyright violations. I suppose the text of the Assize could be considered Crown Copyright. Kurando | ^_^ 09:36, 29 June 2006 (UTC)


 * That sounds like a reasonable suspicion (I had the same), but I was unable to find any of this with Google, so I say "go with it" until someone claims a copyvio. - Eric 17:18, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

i think it would be nice if someone added a more comprehensive or a more explanatory explanation to the article so people who don't understand the older terms or what it means can still understand what was meant by this law. it's hard to understand what was meant by these laws (such as with the US constitution) so I think common interpretations would be very useful. if people understand what was meant by this, it would be very helpful if they explained it. could we do this and still remain in wikipedia's standards? —Preceding unsigned comment added by PrettyBwitty (talk • contribs) 09:44, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

Proposal to delete references to the English Bill of Rights and The United States Constitution.
The text currently says...

Having inherited the English common law legal system, the Assize of Arms formed part of the legal basis for the English Bill of Rights[citation needed] and the right to keep and bear arms contained in the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution.[citation needed]

I wish to take issue with several points.

1. (A minor point)  Its badly worded and wrongly uses the word inherit (certainly as far as the English Bill of Rights is concerned and makes a nonsensical use of the term common law legal system.

2. I see no reason for connecting the Assize of Arms to the Bill of Rights or the US constitution. They have completely different historical roots, veryy different purposes, and most of all, the Assize of Arms pre-dates these other documents by a very very long time.

3. If their is a claim that the Assize of Arms is somehow connected as a base in law to later documents then it should appear much later in the document. The connection needs to be explained properly with WP:RS. At the moment I see very little connection in law between the Assize of Arms and either the English Bill of Rights or the U.S. constitution. The main connection seems to be that some editor has decided to juxtapose these things.

4. From my recent edit experience at The right to keep and bear arms my guess is that it is be being done by certain editors who seem bent on linking a supposed legal right to bear arms with some form of ancient legal grant of rights. Such attempts are nonsense and rather amusing because they are putting the "right" back to 1181 when in fact, the right to bear and keep arms in English Law would have been a common law right way back in time immemoriable. It was not until parliament started passing legislation restricting that right that the right began to be restricted under statute law. Such things are nothing remarkable. It happens each time parliament passes a law on something that has not been legislated for previously. Almost every time a common law right of some persons is restricted or restrained, it is always done to protect a more important right of some other persons. That is what laws are for. The recent restraint on smoking tobacco in public buildings and workplaces in the United Kingdom is a clear case in point. The right to keep and bear arms in English law is no different to the right to smoke tobacco in the workplace. People who choose not to smoke should not have to breathe the tobacco smoke of those that do. In American law, the right to bear arms has been enshrined in constitutional law (with some doubt about it until recently) and this sets a different hurdle for legislative amendment, but in principle the same rule applies. The right can be extinguished by legislators who make changes to the law according to the rules set out in the national constitution.

5. I will wait a few days for editors to pass comment here. If none is forthcoming I will delete references to these much later acts by different national bodies.--Hauskalainen (talk) 01:36, 17 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Have restored the deleted passage with four reliable sources as citation. SaltyBoatr (talk) 02:37, 19 February 2009 (UTC)


 * I would favor deleting this incorrect WP:SYN linking of concepts. The linking was done by a certain Wikipedia editor who saw it as a way to deny a pre-existing common law right to self defense ever existed, and who pushed a militia-only, collective-only, right as being the only true interpretation, dating back to the Assize of Arms.  I have long tried to excise this false POV push among several Wikipedia articles, but have not been successful. Hope you have more luck in ridding Wikipedia of this false information by a well known "anti-rights" POV warrior.  He will add "cite" after "cite", most of which will be unrelated to the topic.  Check his "cites" carefully.  He has been warned about using sources improperly by admins previously.  Yaf (talk) 06:45, 17 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Except that there are plentiful reliable sources linking the Assize of Arms to both the English and the US Bills of Rights. This is clearly not WP:SYN.  See Hannis Tayler, page 232, and many many more. SaltyBoatr (talk) 16:23, 17 February 2009 (UTC


 * SaltyBoatr: What does he say on page 232?  I cannot get access to it.--Hauskalainen (talk) 17:22, 17 February 2009 (UTC)


 * It is a shame your web browser doesn't allow reading this in Google Books. That book is public domain, and fully readable online.  Too many words to re-type them all, but the key passage says "The roots of this article (the 2A) strike down into the past until they reach the Assize of Arms of Henry II, (1181), whereby the old constitutional force was reorganized by the duty being imposed on every free man, for the defense of the state, to provide himself with arms according to his means."  SaltyBoatr (talk) 04:38, 18 February 2009 (UTC)


 * It is indeed a puzzle why I cannot read this. All I get is a very tiny snippet. Thanks for typing that key bit out. I am not at all clear what he means by "the old constitutional force". In those days, people (kings and others) built armies by co-operating with others and that was as true in the civil war hundreds of years after the Assize of Arms as it was when an earlier English King Harold II was defeated by Henry II's great grandfather 115 years before this document. He is however saying that certain citizens had an OBLIGATION to be armed according the king's dictat and use them to serve the king. Decreeing an obligation or duty is not the same as decreeing a right, which is what the article says currently. The right to bear arms was there before. There had been armies long before Henry I and they were all men carrying private arms owing loyalty to their king. The only thing that probably really marks the Assize of Arms out is that it was around Henry II's time that the law started to be formalised and written down. (Incidentally Henry II was brought up in France and spoke mainly French. Very few of his English subjects at the time did. And its because of this that most of the words used by lawyers have their origins in French. It was not until the Provisions of Oxford in 1258 that laws started to be written in English.) As I say, this document is not very significant either in English Law or in English History (as far as I can tell). Why US constitutional historians have endowed it with so much significance (if as you say they have), is a bit of a puzzle. It links only because the legal duty for certain citizens to be armed may have carried over in the early U.S. I am not aware of any document telling how well the order was enforced or indeed if it was ever enforced. There were certainly rebellions against the King, as was not uncommon in those days. Kingly power was often very fragile.--Hauskalainen (talk) 07:24, 18 February 2009 (UTC)


 * I think when Tayler writes "the old constitutional force" it is used in the same vein as Bodenhammer ISBN 9780253351593, pg 73 "...the Second Amendment was an attempt to secure an existing right. ... part of the English constitutional heritage. ...over five centuries old governing both the right and the duty to be armed... The Assize of arms..."  (See the full text for what is obscured by the ellipsis, the gist of the paragraph is clear that the tradition that led to the US Bill of Rights what the British tradition marked by the codification of the militia with the Assize of Arms.)  SaltyBoatr (talk) 16:15, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

The references describe the Assize of Arms as codifying a militia duty, they also describe the Assize of Arms as at the beginning of the English tradition which evolved over the centuries into a duty and right to bear arms. I am aware of no one reliable that says the Assize of Arms guaranteed a right. What is the controversy here? SaltyBoatr (talk) 15:04, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

Proposed change to the header and a new background section
Here is my first stab at improving this article. I have deleted reference to the Bill of Rights and the US constititution. If anyone objects to what I have written please let me know. If anyone proposes to make additions to include references to the Bill of Rights and the US constitution please let me know what that text should be and where it should be. I own several books on English medieval history from 1066 through to the 17th and 18th century. None of them refers to the Assize of Arms. Blackwells commentaries (available on the net) make reference to this document, but only in the context of the formation of the military and the duty of the citizen to defend the king and the nation. I still see no connection to the rights of men. I have not found references for all the statements in the background section but any editor can challenge them. I do believe that they are broadly correct.--Hauskalainen (talk) 17:08, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

Revised Header
The Assize of Arms of 1181 was a proclamation of King Henry II of England concerning the obligations of certain classes of persons to have arms, and of their obligation to swear allegiance to the king.

The Act also establishes certain antisemitic provisions, terms of inheritance, export controls on chain mail, wooden ships, gambesons, iron caps, helmets, lances, and shields, as well as further autarky.

It is not clear to what extent the Assize of Arms helped to consolidate kingly power, or to what extent the proclomation was enforced.

Background
Henry II, came from a Norman line of kings and inherited the kingship of England which had fallen into Norman hands after the Battle of Hastings in 1066. This turned out to be the last successful foreign invasion of England.

England had been a unified nation for only a short time prior to this. It had been successfully invaded and conquered with military power from Roman Empire, with periodic incursions from Gaul, over about 400 years. This was followed with periodic waves of Viking invasions. It was not until the end of the first millennium that England had become unified by the conjoining of various local kingdoms and defeat of the many kingdoms in Northern and Eastern England paying Danegeld and having some ties (which became quite loose over time) to Viking kings on the continent. It is not clear cut who was the first King of England. Offa and Athelstan are strong candidates. History would have told Henry of the earlier Viking invasions along the North Sea, the English Channel (including Normandy) and the Irish Sea (Ireland and Wales). Because his immediate ancestors had themselves conquered England, he was well aware of the potential for external threats to his kingdom, as well as the more common risk of divided loyalties among those beneath him.

The Norman invasion of 1066 led to the introduction to England of a very structural form of feudalism. This was a strong social hierarchy with the king at its apex with most people owing fealty to another. The Norman and Viking armies had been very loose gatherings of fighting men, and looting and pillage was common among them, and therefore, as far as their kings were concerned, had only loose loyalties to them. Their armies did not match the power, might and discipline of the Roman army that had been formed a thousand years earlier.

The power of the Norman kings ruling at that time in England was not founded on any form of standing army. If a king needed to raise forces this would often have to be mercenary forces paid for by the king or his followers. The Assize of Arms needs to be seen in this context. Although it did not create a standing army in the modern sense, it did lay down conditions which would enable the King to call up a fighting force at any time which would be adequately armed to preserve the social order within the country and to ward off any external threat, and did not require any formal form of taxation to achieve this.

Re write
This is an important event in English history the current article misses all the important points. I am going to dump some sources in case some one wants to help:
 * pre1181 at questia
 * text english]
 * "The text of this assize was recorded by the twelfth-century chronicler Roger of Howden (fl. 1170-1201) in his Gesta Regis Henrici Secundi. The assize is usually thought to date from the autumn of 1181 and it was seemingly preceded by the issuance of a similar document in King Henry II’s continental lands earlier in the same year. The assize is concerned with the obligations and rights to bear arms, stipulating precisely the military equipment that each man should have according to his rank and wealth." also link to Latin text.
 * {http://www.penultimateharn.com/history/armsassize.html} full text english
 * Henry II made an Assize of Arms in 1181. It bound all freemen of England to swear on oath that they would possess and bear arms in the service of king and realm. The assize stipulated precisely the military equipment that each man should have according to his rank and wealth. The assize, frequently renewed, effectively revived the old Anglo‐Saxon fyrd duty.
 * 
 * Full text
 * Short and sweet
 * Free at questia
 * In the year before the promotion of Thomas to the primacy, king and chancellor had dealt one direct blow at all feudal ideas. In the war of Toulouse the scutage was ﬁrst devised; a money payment was accepted instead of personal military service. The money was of course spent in hiring mercenaries; and it was largely by the help of mercenaries that Henry subdued his rebels in England. But later in his reign, by the Assize of Arms (1181), he regulated the old constitutional force of the country, and enjoined that every free Englishman should be ready to serve with the weapons belonging to his rank.
 * ''An arrangement that only provided for an army composed of smaller armies, each drilled and each equipped according to the capacity or the mood of its manorial lord, could not for ever satisfy the growing needs of a nation that more and more was emerging from the isolation of its storm-swept shores, and was more and more making its being felt in the councils of kings and the destinies of mankind. It was essential that the men who for three parts of the year were well content to bide at home and know its joys, to dig the fields or guide the plough, to strew the golden corn and reap the gleaming harvest, but who at blaze of beacon or word of messenger riding in hot haste, must don the steel harness and seize the trusty weapon and haste against the Scot upon the border, or cross the waters and confront the chivalry of France — it was essential, I say, that such men should be welded into cohesion,and that some uniformity of equipment, some instruction in the art of common and concerted action, should be provided. It is doubtless to a perception of this truth that we owe the first statutes of Assize at Arms. They show that the armed forces of the land were to be, in future, not the mere retainers of powerful lords but the forces of the Crown, the defenders of the nation, the soldiers not of duke or baron, but the soldiers of their country and their king. Thus the Assize of Arms of 1181 provided that every military tenant, that is every tenant holding by service, then deemed the most honourable tenure, if not the only one that conferred honour, dignity and esteem, should be armed, not, as theretofore, just as completely, or as slenderly, as his caprice, his pride, or his parsimony inclined him, but should be furnished with a coat of mail, a shield, (on which, be sure, his coat of arms was picked with all points of heraldry), and a lance, and that the followers he led in his train, should be clad in habergeon,• an iron skull cap, and bear a lance. Itinerant judges of the Assize at Arms visited each manor and saw to it that each freeman had been mindful to equip himself in conformity with his rank and means ; a system of visitation which may serve to remind us that the volunteers in the first days of what is distinctively termed the Volunteer Movement, had ancestors, many centuries ago, who suffered the same grievances and no doubt made the same complaints as they. A similar enactment of Philip and Mary required every man, according to his position, to keep a sufficiency of arms ; the household armoury was to be equipped with the weapons then in use, and penalties were imposed upon those who absented themselves from the musters of the Sovereign or his Lieutenant. This mention of the Lord Lieutenant of the County, who once bore so prominent a part in connection with our modern Volunteers, points to the supersession in matters military of the Sheriff, who in former days had been responsible for the levy of the posse comitatus or levy of the County.''
 * 23. The Assize of Arms. 1181. — In September 1174 there was a general peace. In 1181 Henry issued the Assize of Arms,organizing the old fyrd in a more serviceable way. Every English freeman was bound by it to find arms of a kind suitable to his property, that he might be ready to defend the realm against rebels or invaders. The Assize of Anns is the strongest possible evidence as to the real nature of Henry's government. He had long ago sent back to the Continent the mercenaries whom he had brought with him in the peril of 1174, and he now entrusted himself not to a paid standing army, but to the whole body of English freemen. He was, in truth, king of the English not merely because he ruled over them, but because they were ready to rally round him in arms against those barons whose ancestors had worked such evil in the days of Stephen. England was not to be given over either to baronial anarchy or to military despotism.''
 * The Assize of Arms, —1181. Regulated the National fryd (or militia.) ; Fixed the way in which every Freeman, according to his means, was bound to arm himself for the defence of his country, when summoned by the king.
 * (s) “ The Assize of Arms restored the National Militia to the place which it had lost at the Conquest. Every knight was forced to arm himself with coat of mail, and shield and lance ; every freeholder with lance and. hauberk, every burgess and poorer freeman with lance and iron helmet. This universal levy of the armed nation was wholly at the disposal of the king for the purposes of defence." “By his Assize of Arms Henry restored the Ancient Anglo-Saxon Militia System, and supplied the requisite counterbalance to the military power of the great feudatories, which, notwithstanding the temptation to avoid service by payment of scutage, they were still able and too willing to maintain. ”—-( Early Plantagenets. ) “ In all these measures (Assize of Arms, &c.) we may trace one main object, the strengthening of the Royal power, and one main means, or directing principle—the doing so by increasing the safety and security of the people. Whatever was done to help the people, served to reduce the power of the great feudal baronage, to disarm their forces, to abolish their jurisdictions, to diminish their chances of tyranny.”—(Early Ptamtagenets. )


 * Points for the lede: Reviving the Fyrd, This is universally recognized as a duty and a check on the powers of the Barons

More to come J8079s (talk) 01:20, 2 January 2014 (UTC)

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