Medieval England is no different from the twenty-first century: people misbehave, act in an antisocial manner and break the law. Crime is a fact of life, and violence, I’m sorry to say, is an everyday occurrence. In 1202 in Lincoln, with a population of just 5,000 souls, 114 murder trials were held. Domestic violence, up to a point, is even considered quite acceptable. A man is reckoned to have the right to keep his wife in order by physical means and to punish his children is his expected duty. That said, ‘keeping the king’s peace’ is required by law, but what does that mean for you on your time-travelling adventure?
How would I behave as a citizen?
In the event of a crime, if you discover it first, whether a street mugging or a burglary – still known by the Anglo-Saxon infangenthef, or as ‘hedge-breaking’ – you are obliged to ‘raise the hue and cry’ by shouting, blowing a horn, banging on doors or clattering pots and pans; any means of rousing the neighbours and anyone within earshot. The idea is that everyone should give chase and apprehend the culprit, presuming they know his or her identity and can catch them. Only small children, the sick or the lame are excused from taking up the pursuit if they hear the cries of alarm. Otherwise, under a statute of 1275, they are considered to be aiding and abetting the criminal and could find themselves arrested. However, if someone raises the hue and cry unnecessarily, they have to pay a fine of sixpence.
Burglaries after curfew are frequent in London, despite this being a capital crime, carrying the death sentence. Shops are robbed of jewellery, cloth, shoes and blades – anything that might turn a profit when sold on – and private houses are burgled for items of value. Theft of all kinds goes on, just like today. In 1502 a man was arrested in Cornhill for being a ‘bribour and steler of pypes and gutters of lede by means of cutting of theym by nyghtes time’.
Cheating at games is also a crime. In December 1375 in London, Stephen Lalleford, a smith, was sent to prison, charged by the Alderman of Aldgate Ward as a ‘common gamester with dice and chequers,’ having cheated William Brounyng out of the huge sum of £17. He was released on bail, awaiting the jury’s verdict.1 Unfortunately, the jurors’ decision isn’t recorded.
If you go out after dark, as a good citizen you will have to carry a burning torch to light your way. This is so the watchmen will not mistake you for a villain, sneaking about and up to no good.
In the countryside, law and order is preserved by the county sheriff as the king’s representative, in conjunction with the local lords, each responsible for policing their own manor. Towns are usually more organised. London has two sheriffs, a number of magistrates – the Lord Mayor being the chief – a Coroner to look into unexpected deaths and each ward appoints a beadle who is answerable to the alderman of the ward and in charge of a couple of constables. The beadles of London take an oath before the Lord Mayor to be honest and vigilant, though their wages are small.
DID YOU KNOW?
Today, the Ward Beadles hold the oldest elected office in the city, although their duties are now largely ceremonial.
Described as the alderman’s watchdog, the beadle is usually the brains behind crime prevention and detection, knowing the unsavoury characters in his ward, such as thieves, cheats and women of ill repute, and sending a list of them to the alderman who then has fifteen days to act on the intelligence – as in Stephen Lalleford’s case. If the alderman fails to act, the beadle informs the mayor. If there is a fight with weapons or a riot in the ward the beadle must report it to a sheriff who will send sergeants to assist, though in lesser cases the beadle and his brawny constables deal with the situation. The beadle also draws up the rota for the watchmen, organises juries and sends out ‘skawagers’ to ‘inspect nuisances’ such as rubbish blocking the street. In 1489 skawagers were made specifically responsible for catching Londoners who threw rubbish into the Thames. London also has a ‘marching watch’ patrolling the streets at night in addition to the watchmen for each ward.
Most beadles seem to be honest fellows; at least the records contain few complaints against them. However, there was a case in 1388 when a beadle was arrested and dismissed from office for telling lies about an alderman and a sheriff. This arrangement is the nearest medieval London has to a police force.
Unfortunately, even lesser crimes, like falling into debt, can end in a gaol sentence. Prostitution is a serious matter, made more so because brothels are reckoned to be the places where criminals get together to organise their activities and lay low after the event. For this reason, London has banned brothels, or ‘stews’, to the south side of the bridge, in Southwark. Southwark is regarded as a nest of sin, despite the fact that many churchmen have their town houses there. The Bishop of Winchester even rents out his Southwark properties to known brothel-keepers, leading to their employees – those women of loose morals – becoming known as ‘Winchester geese’. Brothel-keepers are severely punished. For a first offence, a man has his hair and beard shaved off (for a woman, her hair is cut short) and taken to the pillory with minstrels playing for as long as the mayor orders. A second offence means imprisonment and a third results in banishment from the city.
The anonymous London Lickpenny poem of 1420 tells of the experiences of a country lad from Kent who comes to the city hoping to bring a law suit. Sadly, he has no money to pay a lawyer, so his journey is wasted. Instead, he suffers at the hands of street thieves, as in these excerpts:
Stanza 2
And as I thrust the press among,
By froward chance my hood was gone,
Yet for all that I stayed not long
Till to the King’s Bench I was come.
Stanza 13
Then into Cornhill anon I yode, [the past tense of ‘go’ = went]
Where was much stolen gear among;
I saw where hung mine owne hood
That I had lost among the throng:
To buy my own hood I thought it wrong;
I knew it well as I did my Creed,
But for lack of Money I could not speed. [proceed]
Among the beadles’ duties is investigating immorality. In 1474 the beadle of the ward of Farringdon Without suspected that Joan Salman and Walter Haydon, neither of them wedded, were alone together in a house near the Old Bailey. With two burly neighbours acting as constables, the beadle approached the house. It seems the door wasn’t locked or barred from inside so the beadle and one of the neighbours went in, leaving the other neighbour at the door to prevent the couple making their escape. The two men crept quietly up the stairs to the bedchamber and caught Walter in bed with Joan – ‘a loose, immoral woman’ – there beside him. The pair were arrested and taken to the Counter (the sheriffs’ prison). All in a day’s work for the beadle.
With so many ways for tradesmen to cheat the customer, England has special courts, the piepowder courts, to deal swiftly with any crimes committed on the occasion of a fair or market. These courts have unlimited jurisdiction over events taking place in the market, including disputes between merchants, theft and acts of violence. Every town or village has its own piepowder court for the duration of the fair or market and cases must be heard on the spot and judgement passed on the same day, before tradesmen and customers go home.
London holds its piepowder court before the mayor, sheriffs and two or three aldermen. Punishments include fines and the possibility of being put in the pillory to humiliate the offender. More serious crimes are often reserved for the royal justices, but sometimes the jurisdiction is still held by the piepowder court. At the trial, both parties appear and the burden of proof is on the plaintiff, with documents and witnesses being called as evidence. After the plaintiff makes his case, the defendant has the right to respond to the accusation and counter with evidence of his own. This method of proof is quite advanced for the time compared to other courts. If the court rules against the defendant and the defendant can’t pay the fine, his property may be seized, appraised and sold to cover the costs. Courts of piepowder exist because speedy justice is needed when people aren’t permanent residents of the place where the market is held. In the case of London, few records remain of the court and later cases go to the more time-consuming mayor’s and sheriffs’ courts.
‘Piepowder’ originally referred to the dusty feet (in French, pieds poudrés) of travellers and is applied to the courts that had dealings with such people. Also, since the judges aren’t sitting on a bench, but walking around the fair or market, they too have dusty feet.
Surprisingly, private enterprise is considered selfish. There is a medieval principle that too much profit is immoral. Craftsmen and merchants ought to be happy with a reasonable profit and not take advantage of their neighbours in need. There is even the ‘scot and lot’ regulation, which requires that anyone who gets a real bargain is obliged to share it with others, letting them buy the surplus from him at the same excellent price, keeping only a ‘fair portion’ for himself.
In medieval England the law sometimes works quite differently from the way we expect today. In 1249 a gang of thieves was terrorising Winchester, Salisbury and Guildford, specialising in stealing expensive clothing and shoes. The gang was often violent and though folk in the area knew who they were, they were too scared to accuse them. Let’s speak to Walter Blowberme, a gang member:
Now Walter, you were caught in the act, I believe, and admitted your crimes. Tell us what you did.
Well, see, we stoled all this valuable stuff, didn’t we? Good cloth, shoes, some jewellery and silver cups. Made a fine profit ’til I got caught, filching a gold brooch. I knewed this meant a date wi’ the hangman for me so I told the sheriff I’d be an approver.
What is an approver?
You don’t know? What a dim-wit. It means my life’ll be spared if I telled the court the names of ten others involved in the crimes. I didn’t want t’ do it, ’cos they was my mates but a man has t’ lookout for hisself.
So you snitched on your fellows. What happened then?
I named six fellows from Guildford who was all members of the gang. They was all arrested, tried and condemned. I didn’t feel too bad about them ’cos I never liked most of ’em, except Tom. It was a shame about him. But I still needed another four fellows convicted to save my own neck, so I accused three from Hampshire. They wasn’t in the gang; just fellows I knowed and didn’t like much. They was found not guilty and released so I had t’ name four others as gang members. It’s a good thing I know so many folk and don’t like none of ’em. These four was nasty bits o’ work, I can tell you, but when the sheriff tried to take ’em, three managed to escape. But because they never turned up in court, they was found guilty anyway. The fourth fellow, Hamo Stare – my sister’s husband what I never liked – was brung to trial but things was so complicated, the judge offered Hamo a trial by ordeal.
I thought trial by ordeal was made illegal by the Church?
Don’t ask me; I’m not the judge. Anyhow, Hamo chosed trial by combat and I, as his accuser, had to be his opponent. We had wooden clubs and shields and fighted ’til we was both bloody but Hamo gave in first. The judge declared God had gived me most strength, so I must have spoke truly against Hamo. Hamo was hanged – good riddance – and I’d managed to get ten fellows convicted, so my life was spared but I got banished from the district forever ’cos I admitted being guilty of so many crimes.
But you didn’t mend your ways, Walter?
Nay. Couldn’t resist some silver bits, could I? I comed t’ London and just six months later I got caught, thieving a chalice and candlesticks from St Mary-le-Bow church.
And this time there is no second chance for you, is there, Walter?
Nay. This time it’s the gallows for me. T’morrow. Pray for me soul, won’t you?2
Judicial tests and ordeals had been abolished at that important Lateran Council meeting in 1215, stating that churchmen may ‘neither pronounce nor execute a sentence of death. Nor may they act as judges in extreme criminal cases, or take part in matters connected with’. This meant trial by ordeal no longer had God’s sanction – a priest had to be present as His representative – since it was God who determined the outcome. Obviously, however, such trials continued over thirty years later.
Church men cannot sit in judgement, but neither can they be tried in a state court. Only church courts can try clerics and can never pass a death sentence, even for murder. So, if you can prove you’re a man of the cloth, or a nun, then you can, literally, get away with murder. Here’s how: only trained clerics can read Latin; so if the accused can read the Bible – always in Latin – he must be a churchman. To prove you can read, the same passage is always required to be read aloud from the Bible: ‘Oh loving and kind God, have mercy. Have pity upon my transgressions’ (Psalm 51, Verse 1).
Walter (left) fighting Hamo (right) and Hamo being hanged after he lost.
Top tip
Learn this ‘Neck-Verse’ by heart, in Latin. It’s saved the necks of many criminals who learned it by heart even if they could not read. It could get you out of trouble.
For common folk arrested in London, there is every chance they’ll be remanded in one of the city’s many prisons: the Fleet, the King’s Bench, Ludgate or the Tower (for more important political prisoners), or the Clink or the Marshalsea across the Thames in Southwark. All are dreadful places where the inmates are as likely to die at the hand of a fellow prisoner or of disease before coming to trial as of execution afterwards.
Perhaps the worst outcome for anyone arrested is to be remanded to Newgate Gaol in London. The first mention of prisoners in Newgate dates to 1218. Dick Whittington left a bequest in his will to pay for the infamous hell-hole to be rebuilt in 1423. The fine new gaol was jokingly called ‘Whittington’s Palace’, a title soon reduced to ‘the Whit’ as the place descended into an abysmal state every bit as terrible as its forebear.
The prison is managed by the two annually elected sheriffs who, in turn, hand over the running of Newgate to private gaolers (or keepers) for a price. The keepers make a handsome profit by exacting payment directly from the inmates, so the position is one of the most lucrative in London. The keepers can be very cruel, charging the prisoners for everything from entering the gaol to having their chains put on and taken off. Among the most notorious keepers were the fourteenth-century gaolers Edmund Lorimer, who was infamous for charging inmates four times the legal limit for the removal of irons, and Hugh de Croydon, who was eventually convicted of blackmailing prisoners in his care.
While imprisoned a person’s property is unprotected. If found innocent and released after trial, they might discover their property has been confiscated or their house rented out to someone else. All this is quite legal, so King Richard III, in his Parliament of January 1484, introduced the possibility of bail for those accused of non-capital crimes so their property can’t be taken over in their absence. King Richard III isn’t everyone’s favourite monarch, but in the single Parliament of his short two-year reign, assembled on the 23 January 1484, a number of statutes were passed that clearly show his progressive and liberal attitude towards law and order.
One ploy being used by lords who covet their neighbour’s prime piece of land is to have the neighbour arrested and imprisoned on a trumped-up charge, and in his absence shift the boundary fences to include the land desired. Then, even when the neighbour is found innocent and released, it will take an expensive court case for him to prove that land is really his; if he can afford a good lawyer. Otherwise, possession, as they say, is nine-tenths of the law and the lord has got what he wanted. Bail protected suspects from imprisonment before trial.
The idea of ‘bail’ had existed for centuries but Richard’s Parliament set the law down in such a form that it applied to lords and labourers alike:
Because various people are arrested and imprisoned daily on suspicion of felony, sometimes out of malice and sometimes on vague suspicion, and thus kept in prison without bail […] to their great vexation and trouble; be it therefore ordained […] that no sheriff or bailiff or any other person shall seize the goods of any person arrested on suspicion of felony before the person has been convicted or attainted of the felony according to the law. Upon pain of forfeiting double the value of the goods thus taken to the person harmed in that respect.3
In the twenty-first century we think of a forest as a place full of trees but in medieval England ‘forest’ meant an area reserved for royal hunting. A forest could include entire villages and parishes, as well as woodlands, marshes and heathland (See Chapter 1). William the Conqueror was so keen on hunting that he created the New Forest in Hampshire in 1079 with special Forest laws to protect the ‘venison and vert’: the beasts of the chase and the greenery they depended upon.
Depending on when and where you arrive in medieval England, these harsh laws may be enforced by the king’s verdurers; literally wardens caring for the greenery. Common folk aren’t allowed to hunt in the forest, even for a rabbit or pigeon for the pot, and their dogs are required to have parts of their paws amputated or ‘expedited’ so they cannot chase after game. However, the verdurers can only legally arrest you in four situations, so make sure you understand these:
1. Stable stand. That is, found with a long-bow or cross-bow bent at the ready or with dogs on a leash ready to let them off.
2. Dog draw. That is, discovered with a wounded deer or wild boar or found using a dog to follow its scent in order to catch it.
3. Back bear. That is, carrying away a slain animal on your back.
4. Bloody hand. That is, being caught in the forest ‘red handed’ with your hands covered in blood.
Caught in any of these situations, you can be arrested and imprisoned to await trial at one of a complicated system of courts, depending on the seriousness of your alleged crime. The Court of Attachment is held every forty days and presided over by verdurers and the warden. This court deals with the hearing and doesn’t have the power to try or convict. If the case is serious enough, it passes on to the more senior Swainmote. This court tries offenders before a jury of freemen and is held three times a year. Cases of persistent poaching and further offences committed can be brought before the highest-ranking Court of Justice Eyre, which is only held every three years or more. This could mean a long spell in prison awaiting trial, unless it’s after 1484 and you can get bail. Otherwise, you may not survive to meet the judge. You have been warned.
After reading one of my novels recently, a reader contacted me to tell me my medieval character would not have been hanged, drawn and quartered for having committed murder since this horrific punishment was reserved solely for the crime of treason. The reader was correct up to a point, but the medieval definition of treason was then much wider.
In medieval England treason isn’t only a crime perpetrated against the king or the state; it includes any kind of serious rebellion that upsets the law and what is seen as the ‘natural’ order of things as God has created them. Forging coins corrupts the country’s financial system, so that counts as treason. The punishment for the crime of ‘petty’ treason is the same as for treason proper and such law-breaking includes the killing of a husband by his wife – but not vice versa – of a lord by his servant, of an ecclesiastic by a subordinate or a layman, or, as in my novel, the murder of a master by his journeyman or apprentice. It also includes having knowledge of someone plotting to commit treason but not informing the authorities of their heinous plans. For anyone found guilty of petty treason, it can be the full penalty inflicted, as described, or some lesser degree, if there are reasons for clemency. If a woman is found guilty of petty treason, perhaps for killing her abusive husband, she may be condemned to suffer burning at the stake, though this is usually commuted to hanging which is thought to be a kinder death.
However, any woman thus condemned may claim to be pregnant – midwives are brought in to check this out if it isn’t obvious – and sentence is delayed until after the birth, if she’s telling the truth, so the innocent babe doesn’t suffer for its mother’s crime. Unsurprisingly, rather a lot of women use this as a reason to put off the inevitable and it’s known that seducing the gaoler in the hope of getting pregnant does happen.
In 1316 Juliana Gayton was accused of having persuaded her servants to kill her husband and was arrested. She seems to have used her feminine charms, firstly on the Sheriff of Staffordshire, and then on the Sheriff of Warwickshire. She avoided no fewer than five appearances at the Court of King’s Bench in London by claiming she was pregnant. Not until 1321 was she finally tried, found guilty of petty treason and sentenced to be burned, though this was commuted to hanging at the last minute.
Other women had their ruse discovered. On a September day in the fourteenth century (year not given), Elizabeth Taillour and Alice Rolff, both silkwomen of London, attacked a rival, Elizabeth Knollys. They grabbed Knollys and drowned her in a wash tub. Trying to conceal the crime, they then burned the body and threw the remains into a latrine pit. Not until November was the corpse discovered and the truth revealed. Taillour confessed and was sentenced to hang, but Rolff said she was pregnant. However, a jury of midwives determined that Rolff was lying about her condition and she hanged with her partner in crime.4
If all else fails, there is the possibility of claiming sanctuary in a church. The Eyre Roll for Kent records that in 1314 a pregnant woman condemned for larceny (theft of personal property) was kept in prison to await the baby’s birth, but managed to escape and sought sanctuary in a church nearby. Unlawfully, the gaoler dragged her out and took her before the justices. They decided she should be allowed her forty days of sanctuary in the church and then be forced to ‘abjure the realm’; i.e., be banished from England. The gaoler was tried for having broken her right to sanctuary.5
A more unusual case was recorded by the Sussex coroner in July 1490. Let’s ask him what happened in this case:
Good Sir Coroner, can you tell us about this recent and most unusual case?
What business is it of yours?
We are interested is all. Curious.
Nosey, you mean. Ah, well, I suppose … The case concerned Margaret, wife of Ralph Derbye, a labourer, on her way to Petworth market. She was riding her husband’s grey mare and was in a hurry when, in Shopton Lane in Sutton, she found the king’s highway blocked by a cart belonging to John Brownyng, a yeoman. Not wanting to waste time, waiting for the cart to be moved, Margaret threw caution to one side and forced the mare to climb a four-foot high embankment, in order to pass by the cart. But the embankment was too steep. Margaret slipped from the mare’s back, fell to the ground on her neck, receiving a large wound on the neck of which she immediately died.
Sounds like an unfortunate accident to me: what you coroners call a case of “misadventure” wasn’t it?
Which just shows how ignorant you are. It wasn’t a case of misadventure at all. The mare was guilty of murdering her!
But the horse could hardly have intended to kill Margaret.
Can a dumb animal be guilty of malice aforethought? Isn’t that what makes a crime of murder?
Be silent. My verdicts are final – always, you impertinent jackanapes.
So, did the poor horse have to stand trial?
The verdict of my inquest was sufficient. The mare is yet deodand.
Whatever does that mean, Sir Coroner?
It means the horse is forfeit to the king, if he ever has a use for it. However, since the wretched beast is worth no more than five shillings, I cannot imagine the king will ever want it, so, for the time being, it remains with Ralph Derbye. Thus he has to feed it and care for it, all the while reserving it for the king’s use.
At least you didn’t hang the poor thing. Good day to you, Sir Coroner.6
Although this guidebook is concerned with medieval England, you may wish to travel overseas during your visit. Therefore, it is as well to be aware of some oddities concerning crime and punishment in France. These cases are difficult to take seriously in the twenty-first century, but they were of great concern at the time. The French seem to be even more especially keen to prosecute animals than the English. Pigs are given a particularly hard time, but lesser creatures are not let off lightly either, as in these three cases.
In 1386, in Falaise in Normandy, a pig was accused of murdering an infant. She was tried and convicted by a court and hanged at the gallows by the village hangman. Her six piglets were charged with being accessories to the crime but were acquitted ‘on account of their youth and their mother’s bad example’.
The Grand Vicar of Valence, who must surely have been quite mad, brought a case against some caterpillars. They were accused of wilfully destroying his crops and summoned to appear in court. When the malefactors didn’t appear to defend themselves, a lawyer was appointed for them. However, he failed to make an adequate case for the caterpillars and the court found them guilty as charged and banished them from the diocese. No doubt they complied, eventually, turning into innocent butterflies and flying away from that mad place.
A pig stands trial for murder.
Finally, the rats of Autun in France had a gifted lawyer to defend them. The rats were accused by the local barley growers of thieving their grain. The lawyer, Chassenee, claimed that the case could only proceed if every rat in the diocese was summoned to court so that those that were guilty – if any were – could be divided from the innocent rodents. So all rats were duly ordered to appear. Non-appearance was usually taken as an admission of guilt but when the rats didn’t come to court, clever Chassenee argued that every felon was deserving of safe conduct to and from the trial. Since the rats couldn’t be certain of not being eaten by the local cats on their journey, they were too afraid to appear. The rats were therefore acquitted in their absence and Chassenee became the lawyer of choice for all local felons, two-legged, four-legged or winged.