Life in a Medieval Village - Frances Gies [80]
There is also evidence of a more modern system of appeal. This was one made from the hallmote to the honor court, the court of the whole estate (honor), which for Ramsey Abbey met at Broughton, with suit owed by the free tenants of Elton and the other manors. A case of 1259 involved a dispute among the villagers about repairs to the millpond after flooding. The twelve jurors of the Elton hallmote, all villeins, accused five free tenants—Reginald Benyt, Ralph Blaccalf, Andrew L’Hermite, Henry Miller, and Henry Fraunceys—of refusing to help, the accused claiming that they were not obligated because of their free status.68 The case may have been referred to the court at Broughton because of the defendants’ allegiance to that court, but in other instances Broughton seems to have acted as a true court of appeal, with villeins summoned thither from their hallmotes. The principal function of the Broughton honor court, however, was not judicial but administrative, the arrangement of the military service owed by the abbey.69 Elsewhere, the central court of an estate is known to have acted at times as an appeals court. The court of St. Albans, assembled under its famous ash tree, regularly heard cases forwarded to it by the other St. Albans manors, returning its interpretation to the local courts.70
For the typical villein tenant, nearly any offense he might commit, from default of his work obligations to hamsoken against his neighbor, brought him to the hallmote, attended by his fellow villagers acting as his judges. Members of his tithing supported his appearance in court. Twelve villagers examined and discussed his case, made accusation against him, and found him guilty or not guilty. If he was required to corroborate his defense or his claim, he called on friends and neighbors to give him oath-help so that he could “be at his law six-handed.” When he was fined he appealed to a fellow villager to act as his pledge and guarantee his payment. Rarely was he subjected to either imprisonment or corporal punishment, though aggravated assault might land him in the stocks on the village green.
Fundamental to the system of justice was the inequality between lord and villager. If the villager missed an autumn boon-work, neglected his demesne plowing, or defaulted on any of his other obligations, he was certain of being fined. The system was onerous and exploitative, yet it apparently felt less oppressive to those who lived under it than it appears to modern eyes. The villager knew the rules and could rely on them. If they were not equal for everybody, they were the same for all villeins, a fact which doubtless contributed to the success with which they were applied—“neighbors” who turned out for the harvest boon would feel little sympathy for one who did not.
The hallmote’s emphasis on the united voice of the community in judgment reflected the need of a weakly policed society for acceptance of its judicial decisions by all parties. No single individual or small group could be blamed by a losing party in court when his fate had been pronounced per totum halimotum.
The apparatus of the law was certainly the more readily accepted because it was operated by the villagers themselves. As Paul Vinogradoff says, in the hallmote, “customs are declared by [the villagers] and not [by the lord]; inquests and juries are empaneled from among them; the agrarian business of the customary court is entirely of their making.”71
The hallmote was the sole court with which most villeins ever had contact. It belonged to one of the three great medieval systems of justice, the manorial, or seigneurial, courts, the other two systems being the Church courts and the royal courts. Though the three overlapped in some degree, each had its own clientele and its own law. Church courts dispensed canon law in cases either