Life in a Medieval Village - Frances Gies [72]
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