The Pillars of the Earth - Ken Follett [311]
Prior Philip held court in the crypt once a month. In the old days it had been once a year, and even then the business rarely took all day. But when the population trebled, law-breaking had increased tenfold.
The nature of crime had changed, too. Formerly, most offenses had to do with land, crops or livestock. A greedy peasant would try surreptitiously to move the boundary of a field so as to extend his land at the expense of a neighbor; a laborer would steal a sack of corn from the widow he worked for; a poor woman with too many children would milk a cow that was not hers. Nowadays most of the cases involved money, Philip thought, as he sat through his court on the first day of December. Apprentices stole money from their masters, a husband took his wife’s mother’s savings, merchants passed dud coinage, and wealthy women underpaid simpleminded servants who could hardly count their weekly wages. There had been no such crimes in Kingsbridge five years ago, because then nobody had much cash.
Philip dealt with nearly all offenses by a fine. He could also have people flogged, or put in the stocks, or imprisoned in the cell beneath the monks’ dormitory, but these punishments were rarer, and reserved mainly for crimes of violence. He had the right to hang thieves, and the priory owned a stout wooden gallows; but he had never used it, not yet, and he cherished a secret hope that he never would. The most serious crimes—murder, killing the king’s deer, and highway robbery—were dealt with by the king’s court at Shiring, presided over by the sheriff, and Sheriff Eustace did more than enough hanging.
Today Philip had seven cases of unauthorized grain grinding. He left them until the end and dealt with them all together. The priory had just built a new water mill to run alongside the old one—Kingsbridge needed two mills now. But the new building had to be paid for, which meant that everyone had to bring their grain to be ground at the priory. Strictly speaking, that had always been the law, as it was in every manor in the country: peasants were not allowed to grind grain at home; they had to pay the lord to do it for them. In recent years, as the town grew and the old mill began to break down frequently, Philip had overlooked a growing amount of illicit grinding; but now he had to clamp down.
He had the names of the offenders scratched on a slate, and he read them out, one by one, beginning with the wealthiest. “Richard Longacre, you had a large grindstone turned by two men, Brother Franciscus says.” Franciscus was the priory’s miller.
A prosperous-looking yeoman stepped forward. “Yes, my lord prior, but I’ve broken it now.”
“Pay sixty pence. Enid Brewster, you had a handmill in your brewery. Eric Enidson was seen using it, and he is charged too.”
“Yes, lord,” said Enid, a red-faced woman with powerful shoulders.
“And where is the handmill now?” Philip asked her.
“I threw it in the river, Lord.”
Philip did not believe her, but there was not much he could do about it. “Fined twenty-four pence, and twelve for your son. Walter Tanner?”
Philip went on down the list, fining people according to the scale of their illegitimate operations, until he came to the last and poorest. “Widow Goda?”
A pinch-faced old woman in faded black clothes stepped forward.
“Brother Franciscus saw you grinding grain with a stone.”
“I didn’t have a penny for the mill, lord,” she said resentfully.
“You had a penny to buy grain, though,” Philip said.
“You shall be punished like everyone else.”
“Would you have me starve?” she said defiantly.
Philip sighed. He wished Brother Franciscus had pretended not to notice Goda breaking the law. “When was the last time someone starved to death in Kingsbridge?” he said. He looked around at the assembled citizens.