Life in a Medieval Village - Frances Gies [81]
As the clergy formed the main clientele of the Church courts, the free men of the kingdom formed that of the royal courts, and the villeins, subject to the “customary law” of their own manors, that of the manorial courts. But the royal courts also held a monopoly on felony, sometimes known as “high justice,” and defined as homicide, rape, larceny, burglary, arson, and petty treason (a crime by a servant or apprentice against a master).72 Trespass, the other major category of crime, which included assault, breaking and entering, theft of goods worth less than twelve pence, issuing threats, abduction, extortion, false weights and measures, and other petty offenses, was left to the manorial courts in cases involving villeins, and was awarded to the royal courts in those involving free men.73 Rape was also sometimes dealt with in the manorial court.
The division of function was never as neat as theory suggested. Many lords enjoyed “high justice” as a result of some past concession by the monarch. The abbot of Ramsey held what amounted to exclusive judicial power within his banlieu, a radius of one league (three miles) from the high altar of the abbey church. Lords often held rights to special kinds of crimes, such as “infangenethef,” the thief caught in the act within the manor, whose belongings could be confiscated when he was hanged.
Thus any villager who committed homicide or any other felony and was apprehended by the hue-and-cry was subject to the jurisdiction of the royal courts. The case was likely to be given a preliminary investigation by the coroner’s court, which held an inquest whenever a death was either accidental, sudden, or in suspicious circumstances. The coroner was a knight or a substantial freeholder, elected in the county court by other knights and freeholders. His jury was made up of twelve freeholders of the hundred where the death had occurred.74 The coroner examined the body for signs of violence, and questioned neighbors and witnesses, with particular attention to the person or persons who discovered the body. In cases of accidental death, the object that had caused the accident was adjudged the “deodand” (gift to God) and was sold and the price given to the king—a Norman adaptation of an old Anglo-Saxon custom of selling the deodand to buy prayers for the soul of the victim. The deodand might be a horse that threw its rider, the timber of a wall that collapsed, a cart that ran over a man, or a vat of boiling water that overturned.75
In cases of murder, the coroner’s jury appraised the chattels of the accused, with a view to later confiscation by the king. Sometimes it reported that “nothing could be discovered about his chattels,” or that “he had no chattels,” but often they were listed in detail: animals, household goods, grain, and tools, with their monetary value. Sometimes only the value was recorded. One such list turns up in the Elton records because the hanged man’s forfeited property had disappeared. The villagers (villata) were “commanded to answer for the chattels of Richard son of Thomas Frelond of Pappele who was hanged at Peterborough,” said chattels consisting of boots, harness, knife, belt, dog collar with silver fittings, gloves, wooden chest, and slippers—total 18 pence 2 farthings.76
The prisoner was turned over either to the itinerant justices of the royal eyre, or to the shire or hundred courts, where trial was usually by jury. Jury trial was not, however, perceived as especially protective. Early in the thirteenth century, a prisoner could be tried by jury only with his consent, but the principle was annulled by Edward I in the First Statute of Westminster (1275) mandating jury trial