The Time Traveler's Guide to Medieval England: A Handbook for Visitors to the Fourteenth Century (36 page)

There are very few checks or balances in this system. Hence there is a great deal of blatant corruption. The sheriffs and those acting under their authority can easily abuse the system. It is by no means unknown for a sheriff to let an approver appeal a dozen of his enemies of involvement in some crime or other, and, having hanged him, to extort a sum of money from each of the dozen accused people, to secure their bail.
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They pay, of course, to avoid long stays in the county gaol. Thus the sheriff does very nicely out of what is, in every respect, an injustice.

There are worse cases. Torture is supposed to be against the law in England, and so it is—apart from a brief period in 1311, when Edward II acquiesces to the pope’s request to torture the Knights Templar. But the law means little to a powerful sheriff. In 1366 the sheriff of Yorkshire, Thomas Musgrave, is accused of malicious arrest, wrongful imprisonment, extortion, and the entrapment of an innocent man through employment of a packed jury. What he is up to is an old game played by sheriffs for centuries. He has seized one of his enemy’s servants, tortured the man until he is almost dead, and forced him to confess to a series of felonies. He has then forced him to turn approver, appealing his master of complicity in all his crimes, allowing the sheriff to proceed legally against the master, his enemy
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This is hardly justice. Nor is it justice when a woman who is accused of murder has to hide from the law for fear of her gaoler. One poor woman hides when summoned because the sheriff’s clerk in charge of Newcastle Gaol where she will be imprisoned has promised to rape her and pull out all her teeth when he has got her in his power.
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One cannot help but sympathize with women in such a position. If they are caught
evading arrest, they may find themselves being outlawed in the county court. If they submit to the law, the indignities forced upon them might be greater than the crimes they have supposedly committed. Nor is it just women who are vulnerable to such humiliations. Sheriffs have been known to have men stripped naked and tied to a post in a miserable gaol pit and left there for days, freezing, in their own urine and excrement, in order to extort payments from them.

And so it goes down the social line. Beneath sheriffs, bailiffs of hundreds abuse their powers in similar ways, waking people up in the middle of the night and carrying away their goods and chattels if they refuse to pay bribes. Some bailiffs make themselves wealthy by ordering townships to have a jury empaneled and then charging the township for organizing that empanelment. They then make even more money by accepting bribes from those who do not wish to serve. Constables of townships might do the same—even tithing-men accept bribes from their fellows for not reporting crimes or reporting false ones. Arguably the most corrupt of all the officers involved in local justice are those who act as gaolers. You can tell that things are fundamentally wrong when a statute has to be passed (in 1330) to stop gaolers refusing to accept certain prisoners. It seems they are refusing to imprison criminals who are not rich enough to bribe them.

Justice is a relative concept in all ages. The fourteenth century is no exception.

The manorial court is not always held in a manor house but often meets out of doors, by a specific tree, if the weather allows. The abbot of St. Albans holds his court “under the ash tree in the middle courtyard of the abbey.” At Moulsham (Essex) the court is held outside the manor house, under the boughs of the Court Oak.
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In bad weather, however, it might be adjourned to a manorial hall or barn.

The court’s purpose is the safe and efficient running of the manor. Thus you will find all the villeins in attendance (including all the chief tithing-men and all those belonging to their tithings) and a few of the freemen.
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Cases include simple managerial aspects, such as cattle and pigs straying; infringements of the lord’s land and rights, ownership of land; or responsibilities for maintaining paths, lanes, and hedges.

Any trespasses and nuisances which fall wholly within the bounds of the manor, such as wrongly appropriated cattle, poaching, and blocked streams, are settled here. If a villein has extended his land by turning unused or “waste” ground into farmland (known as “assarting”) he will pay an agreed sum for the right to farm the new land and a rent will be settled. Disturbances of a minor nature concerning the villeins will also be dealt with; these may include fistfights and cases of slander. Heriots are paid (if a tenant has died), and a whole welter of small fines are payable, from women brewing poor ale to the fine of “leyrwite”: a charge for adultery among men and fornication among unmarried women.

“What?” you ask. “The manorial lord has a right to administer the behavior of his villeins too?” Although these are moral crimes, and thus punishable in the church courts, the fines levied on the villeins by those courts can be considered fines against the lord (as the villein’s property is technically that of his lord). Take the case of John Monk, for example. He is a villein on a manor held by the abbot of Ramsey in the reign of Edward II. John is rather keen on Sarah, the wife of Simon Hewen. In fact, he cannot keep his hands off her. So ardent are they in their lovemaking that John has been fined and admonished several times already by the church courts for adultery. Nevertheless they carry on shamelessly. The abbot’s steward, in despair, eventually commits John to the stocks until he agrees to desist and pays the massive fine of one mark in compensation to the lord.
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Where a lord of a manor holds his land by a charter which states he has the right of “infangenthef,” the manorial court has another, darker dimension. Infangenthef is the right to hang a thief caught red-handed on the manor. Sometimes it is accompanied by “outfangenthef”: the right to hang the thief even if he or she is apprehended elsewhere.
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In this context, “red-handed” includes being in possession of stolen chattels. Lords of these manors, like lords of hundreds, are supposed to wait until the coroner has arrived before hanging the culprit, but very often they—or, rather, their bailiffs—do not bother. In 1313 a man of Bodmin wakes to find that one of his horses has been stolen in the night. The next morning he sees his horse in Bodmin marketplace, in the possession of a man called Robert. He raises the hue and cry, and both men are arrested and ordered to appear in court. The lord of the manor, the prior of Bodmin, who has the right of infangenthef,
orders a court leet (a jurisdictional manorial court) to sit straightaway, and when Robert confesses, he is hanged without more ado. Although the prior should rightly have summoned the coroner, Robert’s fate is sealed by his having the horse in his possession.
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Coroners do not stop men being hanged; they simply make sure the value of any chattels or fines which should go to the king are not appropriated by the lord.

The right of infangenthef in some manors leads to thresholds for hanging men and women being set locally. The abbot of Crowland will hang you for stealing sixteen eggs, worth about 2d to 3d, whereas other lords will not hang you for far worse crimes.
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In Sowerby Yorkshire, in 1313 there is a man called Roger son of Amabel who twenty years ago burgled a house and stole oatmeal, salt, and loaves. Although he was indicted at the hundred court at the time, and was bailed, he has never actually been acquitted. Moreover, he still has in his possession the chattels of his brother, John, who was hanged eighteen years ago for stealing six sheep and five quarters of oats. These should have been surrendered to the king on John’s execution. Although Roger is thus guilty of two capital offenses—theft and receiving the goods of a criminal—he is not hanged but declared a common thief and fined 2s.
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In London, there is no messing about. The city itself has the rights of infangenthef and outfangenthef, and its mayor has permanent judicial authority, so it has the necessary powers to deal speedily with all wrongdoers. On February 2, 1337, John le Whyte of Cambridge is presented by the sheriffs to the mayor and aldermen. He is accused of breaking into the shop of a mercer at night and stealing gold and silver rings, pearls, linen thread, and bracelets to the value of £5. Found guilty by a jury he is ordered to be hanged immediately at Tyburn. On May 19 this same year, Desiderata de Toryntone is accused of stealing thirty dishes and twenty-four saltcellars of silver, worth £40, from Lady Alice de Lisle, when she was staying at the bishop of Salisbury’s house in Fleet Street. Fourteen of the dishes and twelve of the saltcellars have been found in her keeping. She too is dragged off to be hanged at Tyburn straightaway
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This brutally efficient system of punishment is how the dream of finding wealth in London ends for so many young men and women who have come in from the country. You might think that Gilbert son of Gilbert of Stapleford, Wiltshire, is a lucky boy to have been placed apprentice to a London spicemonger,
Geoffrey Adrian, in 1341. His father has taken considerable effort on his son’s behalf and can be sure that the lad is on the path to prosperity. But on June 17 of that year, young Gilbert is found with £40 of his master’s money in his pockets. Poor Gilbert is taken by his outraged master before the mayor and aldermen that same day. He confesses his deed. Within a few hours of his giving in to temptation, he is dead. Despite all his father’s efforts to give him a good start in life, his corpse is twisting on a rope at Tyburn.

Most chartered towns by 1350 have sets of local bylaws or “ordinances.” These govern the behavior of traders as well as visitors. Every set includes articles concerning the baking of bread and the brewing of ale, the use of weights and measures, and the penalties for shedding blood in a fight. More interesting are the differences between the various regulations. In London, for instance, it is forbidden to play dice while wearing a mask (as a result of a bylaw of 1343). In 1359 the mayor of London forbids begging within the city Able-bodied beggars are to be placed within the stocks on Cornhill for half a day the first time they are caught and a whole day the second time. The third time, they are imprisoned for forty days. The fourth time they are banned from the city forever.

The sets of ordinances drawn up for the towns in the marcher lordship of Glamorgan around 1330 (based on those for Hereford) include some interesting clauses. Cows may not be milked in the High Street. No one shall play at dice or bowls within the town (penalty 12d). Butchers may not throw the heads and feet of animals into the High Street or any other lane within the town walls. No one shall cast dung or any other filth into the streets or the town ditch, or within forty feet of the town gates, or near any part of the walls. No taverner may open his tavern after ten p.m., or nine p.m. in the case of an alewife. To this last regulation, one is tempted to ask, “Why the difference?” But your curiosity about the various closing times of drinking establishments run by men and women will probably be overcome when reading this ordinance: “If any woman be found guilty by six men of scolding or railing any townsman or his wife, or any of their neighbors, then she is to be brought at the first fault to the cucking stool [a seat with ankle fastenings, pivoted on a pole, like a seesaw] there to sit one hour, at the second fault two hours. And at the third fault to let slip” with the result that the woman is dropped into deep water.
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