Life in a Medieval Village - Frances Gies [73]
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.”8
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.9
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