e it and to
force out the hard, brittle impurities. Blast furnace heat was
maintained by bellows worked by water wheels. Alchemists sought to
make gold from the baser metals and to make a substance that would
give them immortality. There was some thought that suffocation in
mines, caverns, wells, and cellars was not due to evil spirits,
but to bad air such as caused by "exhalation of metals".

In 1502, German Peter Henlein invented the pocket watch and the
mainspring inside it.

There were morality plays in which the seven deadly sins: pride,
covetousness, lust, anger, gluttony, envy, and sloth, fought the
seven cardinal virtues: faith, hope, charity, prudence,
temperance, justice, and strength, respectively, for the human
soul. The play "Everyman" demonstrates that every man can get to
heaven only by being virtuous and doing good deeds in his
lifetime. It emphasizes that death may come anytime to every man,
when his deeds will be judged as to their goodness or sinfulness.
Card games were introduced. The legend of Robin Hood was written
down.

The Commons gained the stature of the Lords and statutes were
regularly enacted by the "assent of the lords spiritual and
temporal and the commons", instead of at the request of the
Commons.

- The Law -

Royal proclamations clarifying, refining or amplifying the law had
the force of parliamentary statutes. In 1486, he proclaimed that
"Forasmuch as many of the King our sovereign lord's subjects
[have] been disposed daily to hear feigned, contrived, and forged
tidings and tales, and the same tidings and tales, neither
dreading God nor his Highness, utter and tell again as though they
were true, to the great hurt of divers of his subjects and to his
grievous displeasure: Therefore, in eschewing of such untrue and
forged tidings and tales, the King our said sovereign lord
straitly chargeth and commandeth that no manner person, whatsoever
he be, utter nor tell any such tidings or tales but he bring forth
the same person the which was author and teller of the said
tidings or tales, upon pain to be set on the pillory, there to
stand as long as it shall be thought convenient to the mayor,
bailiff, or other official of any city, borough, or town where it
shall happen any such person to be taken and accused for any such
telling or reporting of any such tidings or tales. Furthermore the
same our sovereign lord straitly chargeth and commandeth that