Life in a Medieval Village (22 page)

The priest’s instruction of adults came largely through confession, in which he not only examined the penitent’s morals but his religious knowledge:

Believest thou in Father and Son and Holy Ghost…
Three persons in Trinity,
And in God (swear thou to me)?
That God’s son mankind took
In maid Mary (as saith the Book),
And of that maid was born:
Believest thou this?…
And in Christ’s passion
And in His resurrection…?
That He shall come with wounds red
To judge the quick and the dead,
And that we each one…
Shall rise at the day of Doom And be ready when he come…?
⁴⁹

The manuals coached the priest to interrogate the penitent about his behavior: “Have you done any sorcery to get women to lie with you?” “Have you ever plighted your troth and broken it?” “Have you spent Sunday in shooting, wrestling, and other play, or going to the ale house?” “Have you stolen anything or been at any robbing?” “Have you found anything and kept it?” “Have you borrowed anything and not returned it?” “Have you ever claimed any good deed of charity that was another man’s doing?” “Have you been slow to teach your godchildren Pater Noster and Creed?” “Have you come late to church?” “Have you without devotion heard any sermon?” “Have you been glad in your heart when your neighbor came to harm, and grieved when he had good fortune?” “Have you eaten with such greed that you cast it up again?” “Have you sinned in lechery?” “If your children are shrews, have you taught them good manners?” “Have you destroyed grain or grass or other things that are sown? Are you wont to ride through grain when you could go to one side?”
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The penitent must confess his sins completely and without reservation. If he killed a man, he must say who it was, where, and why. If he “sinned in lechery,” he must not give the name of his partner, but he should tell whether she was married or single, or a nun, where the sin was committed, and how often, and whether it was on a holy day. The penance should fit the sin, light for a light sin, heavy for a heavy, but never too heavy for the penitent to perform, lest he ignore it and be worse off than if he had not gone to confession. “Better a light penance to send a man to purgatory,” wrote John Myrc, “than a too heavy penance to send him to hell.” Even more sagely, a woman’s penance must be such that her husband would not know about it, lest it cause friction between them.
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Above all, the priest must teach by example. His preaching was worth little if he lived an evil life. The sins he was especially
warned against indicate those he was most likely to fall into. He should be chaste; he should be true; he should be mild in word and deed. “Drunkenness and gluttony, pride and sloth and envy, all these thou must put away.” The priest must forsake taverns, trading, wrestling and shooting, hawking, hunting, and dancing. “Markets and fairs I thee forbid.” He must wear “honest clothes,” and not knightly “basinet and baldric.” His beard and crown must be shaven. He must be hospitable to rich and poor. And finally,

Turn thine eye that thou not see
The cursed world’s vanity.
Thus this world thou must despise
And holy virtues have in vise [view].
⁵²

T
WICE OR MORE EACH YEAR THE VILLAGERS
gathered for the hallmote: hall, meaning manor house, and mote, meeting. The records of this legal body provide unique insights into the relationship between lord and village community, and at the same time demonstrate the frictions and stresses of everyday village life.

The hallmote was the lord’s manorial court, presided over by his steward, and transacting primarily the lord’s business: collecting merchet, heriot, entry fees, and other manorial dues, enforcing labor services, electing manorial officers, granting seisin (legal possession) to heirs and receiving fealty from them, and providing the lord with substantial profits from its fines and confiscations.

Yet the principal actors in the hallmote were villagers, who in effect served as prosecutor, legal authority, witnesses, and judge. Much of the court’s business had nothing to do with the lord, but was concerned with interaction among the villagers. Finally, the hallmote’s proceedings were ruled not by the lord’s will but by the ancient and powerful body of tradition known as the custom of the manor.

The hallmote, furthermore, was a legislative as well as a judicial body, promulgating the bylaws that governed field, meadow, pasture, and woods from Michaelmas to Michaelmas, sending the men to work and the animals to graze in strict concert, stipulating who should harvest, who should glean, when, and for how long. Surviving Elton court rolls record no bylaw enactments, only references to infractions of existing bylaws, but elsewhere they are recorded as enacted by the “community,” the “homage,” the “tenants,” or the “neighbors.” The lord is rarely mentioned in their framing, though the security of his demesne cultivation was a primary object.
¹

A fragmentary document records the itinerary of the Ramsey Abbey steward for the twenty-three manorial courts of early 1294. Holding court first at Ramsey itself on Thursday, January 7, he rode to the nearest manors—Broughton, Wistow, Ripton, Stukeley, and Gidding—reaching Elton on January 16, a Saturday. Thence he proceeded to Weston on Monday the eighteenth, finished off the Huntingdonshire manors, rode south to Therfield in Hertfordshire, then turned back northeast and held court in the Ramsey manors of Cambridgeshire and Bedfordshire, the last session falling on February 19. Nine of the courts required a second day’s sitting, the others were all concluded in a day.
²

A hallmote held in January pretty surely met inside the manor house. In warmer seasons courts often met in the open air, that of St. Albans assembling under an ancient ash tree.
³
The hall must have been crowded and noisy, with all the villeins gathered, reinforced by a few freeholders whose charters stipulated suit, or whose grandfathers had owed it. Though the steward presided, he did not act as judge. Rather, he lent the authority of the abbot to the judgment rendered by the jury. These twelve (sometimes six or nine)
jurati,
sworn men, whose oath extended to periods between court sessions, could be fined substantial sums for “concealment,” not bringing cases to court, and for “bad answering and false presentment,” as happened to Elton jurors on several occasions.
⁴
They collected and presented evidence, along with the appropriate law, the custom of the manor
and the village bylaws. In modern parlance, it was a grand jury, and in fact was sometimes so called, but the commoner term was jury of presentment. The jury’s verdict was recorded as, “It is found by the jurors that…”, “The jurors say that…”, or “And they say that…”, followed by the facts of the case and concluding, “Therefore…” and the assessment of fine and damages. The jury’s findings received the backing not only of the lord’s steward but of the assembled villagers. Their concurrence was usually expressed tacitly, but on certain occasions actively, when plaintiff or defendant or both “put themselves upon the consideration of the whole court.” In such a case, the village’s assent was inscribed in the court record as
villata dicit
(the village says), or
coram toto halimoto
(in the presence of the whole hallmote), or
per totum halimotum
(by the whole hallmote). In either case, the endorsement of the jury’s findings by the assembly at large was of utmost importance.
⁵

Sometimes either a plaintiff or a defendant or both asked for an inquest by a special panel, paying for the privilege. Whatever nuances of favor or knowledgeability a litigant hoped to get from one group or the other of his fellow villagers, his fate was nearly always, for better or for worse, in the hands of people who knew him, knew his adversary, knew the circumstances of the case, knew the relevant law and custom, and had talked it over among themselves.

The court’s record was kept by the steward’s clerk, on a long strip of parchment about eight inches wide, its segments stitched end to end. At its top he inscribed the place and date: “Aylingtone, on the day of St. Clement the Pope in the 12th year of W[illiam] the Abbot”—in other words, Elton, November 23, 1279. Less accomplished than the clerk of the accounts, he left a record in not very elegant Latin, with many errors in syntax and employing numerous abbreviations. In the left margin he noted the category of case, the judgment, and the amount of the fine. At the end of the record of each court he totaled the fines, exactly as the clerk of the accounts did at the end of the reeve’s demesne account. Whatever else the court was, it was part of the lord’s business enterprise. By the late thirteenth century, the
court records were carefully preserved and often consulted for precedents.
⁶

The court’s appearance, whether indoors or out, was informal, the crowd of villagers standing before the seated steward and clerk, but court procedure was formal and order strictly enforced. At St. Albans in 1253 a man was fined for cursing the twelve jurors, and many cases are recorded of punishment meted out for false accusations against officials and jurors, for abuse of opposing litigants, and for making a disturbance:
“Fecerunt strepitum, in curia garrulando”
(“they made a racket, talking much in court”).
⁷
In Elton in 1307, John son of John Abovebrook, haled into court for a debt of 32 pence owed to Robert of Teyngton, failed to make good his promise to pay, and the following year was again cited, but “immediately in contempt of the court withdrew without finding pledges.” The court ordered that the 32 pence be levied from him, and that he be fined a stiff 40 pence for his behavior. “And afterwards he came and made fine for 40 pence…and…he will be obedient henceforth to the lord and to his neighbors.”
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A fourteenth-century manual for the instruction of novice stewards called
The Court Baron
(another name for the manorial court) prescribes a formality of procedure amounting to ritual. It pictures the clerk commencing by reading aloud a model presentment, a charge of battery done by a villager against an outsider:

Sir steward, Henry of Combe, who is here [pointing], complains of Stephen Carpenter, who is there [pointing], that as he was going his way in the peace of God and in the peace of the lord through this vill which is within the surety of your franchise, at such an hour on such a day in the last year, there came this Stephen Carpenter and encountered him in such a place [naming it], and assailed him with evil words which were undeserved, insomuch that he called him thief and lawless man and whatever other names seemed good to him except only his right name, and told him that he was spying from house to
house the secrets of the good folk of the vill in order that he might come another time by night with his fellows to break [into] their houses and carry off their goods larcenously as a felon; whereupon this Henry answered him civilly and said that he was good and lawful in all things and that [Stephen] was talking at random; whereupon the said Stephen was enraged and snatched his staff of holly out of his hand and gave it to him about his head and across his shoulders and his loins and elsewhere all over his body as he thought fit and then went off. This trespass did the said Stephen wrongfully and against reason and against the peace of the lord and of you, who are charged to guard and maintain the peace, to his damage 20 shillings and shame a half-mark.
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The accused then answered the charge with as nice a regard for the proper formula as the clerk had shown, taking each accusation in order:

Tort and force and all that is against the peace of God and the peace of the lord and of you, who are charged to guard and maintain the peace, and his [Henry’s] damages of 20 shillings and shame of a half-mark and every penny of it, Stephen defends, who is here, and all manner of evil words against Henry of Combe, who is there, and against his suit and all that he surmises against him, that never he called him thief nor gave him evil word, nor surmised evil slander against him, nor with staff of holly nor other staff beat him across the head or shoulders or loins or any part of his body as he surmises; and that this is true, he is ready to acquit himself in all such wise as this court shall award that acquit himself he ought.
¹⁰

It may be doubted that hallmotes insisted on such exquisite perfection of jargon, but it is known that defendants and litigants in serious cases were often alert to slips of language by which technical flaws could be imputed and judgment perhaps evaded.
¹¹

The steward in
The Court Baron
next addresses the accused: “Fair friend Stephen, this court awards that you be at your law six-handed at the next court to acquit yourself,” to which the defendant replies, “Willingly, sir.”
¹²
“Be at your law six-handed” meant that Stephen was to bring with him five men who would join him in swearing either that his account of the case was true or that he was himself a trustworthy person. In cases of more serious character or when there was reason to doubt the accused, he might be called on to “be at your law twelve-handed,” requiring him to find eleven “oath helpers.” Oath helping, or compurgation, was by 1300 a basic element of medieval jurisprudence. The sense of it was that several men who attested the truth of their statements on the holy relics would be unlikely to swear their souls away simultaneously.
¹³

At this point a uniquely medieval step in the court’s procedure took place: both plaintiff and defendant were ordered to “find pledges,” persons to act as sureties to guarantee their appearance in court. Such personal pledging was also used to guarantee fulfillment of a promised obligation, or even that the pledge’s subject would behave himself. Pledges were held accountable by the court and were liable to fine: “John Page and John Fraunceys were pledges of Henry Smith for the payment of two shillings to John son of Alexander in the Lane…and nothing is paid. Therefore both of them in mercy [fined]…Better pledges are William of Barnwell and Reginald son of Benedict.”
¹⁴
Those needing pledges sought them among the better class of fellow villagers, those with substantial holdings, who served in village offices. Reeves and beadles were especially in demand. Pledges’ fines were usually three pence, half the standard fine for most offenses. Husbands commonly acted as pledges for wives, but otherwise most pledging was extra-familial.
¹⁵

The Court Baron
stipulated a particular order in which cases should be heard. In real life the hallmote heard cases by category, but the categories followed no discernible order. The invariably lengthy list of fines for the ale brewers sometimes led off the Elton calendar, sometimes concluded it, and sometimes
came in the middle. In 1279, twenty-three violations of the assize of ale were recorded at the end of the court record, just before the selection of new ale tasters. Prior to the brewing violations, thirty-four cases were presented. Ten dealt with defaults of harvest or plow work, three with chevage, the rest with a variety of offenses, from the diversion of a watercourse by a neighboring village to a theft of furrows by a villager.
¹⁶
The dispatch with which cases were handled compared with that of a modern traffic court. Yet “the law’s delay” was already an established judicial feature. Most defendants were permitted three summonses, three distraints (for failing to appear), and three essoins (excuses for non-appearance), making nine successive postponements.
¹⁷

Litigations between villagers began with a complaint: “John Juvet complains of John Hering.” “Robert Maynard complains of Gilbert de Raundes.” “Thomas Clerk complains of Nicholas son of Richard Smith.” The complainant brought suit—in other words, he brought men with him to vouch for the truth of his complaint. Both he and the defendant were then ordered to find pledges.

Once the suit was initiated, if the complainant did not carry it through, he and his pledge were fined. “From Ralph Hert and Isolda his wife and their pledge, namely Reginald Child, for their non-suit against Richard Reeve and John Abovebrook, six pence.”
¹⁸
The defendant might wage his law, as John of Elton did “sufficiently” in 1294 against Emma Prudhomme, who had made accusations against him, and who was herself consequently fined.
¹⁹
Or the case might be postponed. The delay might result in settlement, either through the defendant’s offering to pay a fine or through the two litigants reaching an out-ofcourt agreement. Such compacts were encouraged by the judicial device of the “love-day”
(dies amoris)
, on which the parties to a dispute were directed to try to reconcile their differences.
²⁰
An out-of-court settlement, however, could not be allowed to become an out-of-pocket settlement for the lord. The parties still owed a fee, in this case recorded under the title of “license to agree”: “From John son of John of Elton for license to agree with
John of Langetoft and Alice his wife sixpence.” “From Nicholas le Rous for license to agree with Henry Daysterre and Emma his wife four pence.”
²¹
Part of the agreement was the determination of which of the two parties would pay the fine.