ABJURATIONS OF THE REALM occurred throughout the kingdom, and residents of some populous localities, such as London or Bristol, could expect to see them and to hear of them far more often than elsewhere. But in most towns, even county seats, and in any and every village, to witness an abjuration was unusual; it was an event. A disreputable stranger was evading well-deserved punishment, saved by an unfathomable act of grace or even a double act—success at the ordeal and, by exile, avoidance of the people’s justice. Or, a neighbor was leaving who might never return, perhaps amid tears from loved ones, disdain from authorities, relief from clergy wishing to rid their churches of a confessed felon, and curses from those he or she had harmed. In the shadow of the church doors,1 the abjurer was to declaim, “Hear this, O ye coroners, that I will go forth from the realm of England and hither I will not return save by leave of the lord king or his heirs, so help me God.”2 Abjurers from other jurisdictions, such as Normandy, also had to offer such public vows.3
We may be misled by the early modern law book renderings or quaint translations of these oaths provided by recent authors who even now are influenced by such renderings. The truth is that the oaths, though formulaic, more likely came out of the mouths of unlettered men and women speaking crudely in the manifold dialects of medieval England. Might this not explain why there are variant versions of the oath in texts produced within the same jurisdiction?4 Perhaps something like the following invented dialog brings us nearer to the grittiness of reality. Eyes downcast or defiant, the voice weak or strident, the manner submissive or mulish, the abjurer stands at the authority’s side:
“NOW, TAKE THE OATH, REPEAT IT!”
“YOU HEARD ME, I PROMISE I’LL LEAVE THE KINGDOM.”
“SAY IT LOUDER AND SAY THE KINGDOM OF ENGLAND AND THE CORONERS.”
“I PROMISE YOU CORONERS I’LL LEAVE ENGLAND, THE KINGDOM OF ENGLAND.”
“AND YOU’LL NEVER RETURN AGAIN.”
“AND I WON’T EVER COME BACK UNLESS THE KING FORGIVES ME.”
“SAY ‘THE KING OR HIS HEIRS,’ FUTURE KINGS, IF THE KING DIES.”
“THE KING OR HIS HEIRS. I PROMISE.”
“SO HELP YOU GOD! SAY IT!”
“SO HELP ME GOD.”
Thereupon the abjurer received a public shaming, a civil anathema. At the rarest times this rite even included the torching of an abjurer’s home, if the crimes committed were enormities, disgusting or perverse beyond “run-of-the-mill” felonies, which were terrible enough, and if the dwelling was situated in a place where a fire could be contained. Where it could not be effectively contained, simple destruction of the house might ensue. The publicity value of such acts could, of course, advantage the crown by showcasing its moral indignation at the most malevolent criminal behavior, but in general property was too precious to be destroyed. Confiscation alone, properly managed, had considerable positive publicity value and would benefit the king materially, as well. Authorities typically therefore loudly cried out their decision to confiscate an abjurer’s property. And they might add, for effect and to endear the king to the community, that there was a chance their lord and master would donate as alms the proceeds realized from the confiscation.5 The sequence of these acts—humiliation in the sight of the community, forced public oaths, confiscations, and, in extreme cases, acts of punitive destruction—had the intention of fixing in popular memory the baleful consequences of crime, even in the absence of punishment by mutilation and death. The scenes played out were to be an example and terror for generations to come (ut nequicie eorum memoria futuris exemplum pariat et terrorem).6 Banishment everywhere, it is safe to say, was made audible and visible—in striking, disturbing, fearsome, memorable ways.7
Such memorable events served a more prosaic but important ancillary administrative function in providing information to answer future questions vital to the fair and efficient regulation of social relations. For example, when a local landholder’s heir came of age and should be entrusted with control of his landed property turned on the date of his birth, but neither parish nor civil registers of births or baptisms were being kept in a regular manner in our period. So witnesses were sworn and asked to recall the heir’s birth with reference to a contemporaneous event or events whose time of occurrence could be checked against dated government records. There were other reasons as well, too many to detail, to search memories in this manner. The answers were by and large straightforward, and what struck local people as worth recalling is revealing: a juror said in one case that he remembered something because it happened the same year that John Hardy abjured the realm from the church of Essendine in Rutland, which had occurred, as cross-checking confirmed, in 1336.8 I know quite well, said a juror asked about a date in another unrelated case, that the events at issue transpired the year William Norman abjured the realm from the parish church of Desborough in Northamptonshire. This was verified as having taken place in 1337.9
POINTS OF EMBARKATION
Abjurers quit the site of abjuration—in memorable ceremonies—but where did they go in order to depart the realm and how was the determination made? The evidence is ambivalent on whether abjurers chose their place of departure, had it imposed on them by crown authorities (considered an abuse by the author of the Mirror of Justice), or were, either by choice or assignment, encouraged to accept the port.10 Documents of practice speak in some cases of the abjurers’ choices, in others of their assignments; so far as I have been able to determine, there is no evident trend one way or another over the course of the long thirteenth century.11 Options were limited, or there would not have been prosecutions on occasion for sending abjurers to the wrong ports. Should the coroner have given Lyme as the port for the abjurer William Flambord? The authorities who looked into it did not see a sufficient reason: therefore, the coroner was to be tried for malfeasance.12 Was Portsmouth appropriate for William Barbe? The answer was no: to justice on the coroner.13
The documents, however, are not ambivalent on the favored port, whether chosen or assigned. This was Dover.14 The king, in particular Henry II, may not have favored Dover for other purposes quite so much as his successors.15 But for a multitude of reasons, in particular its proximity to the continent, it was a common embarkation site in the thirteenth century. Efforts in 1226 and as late as 1389 to compel travelers to the continent to embark on ships at Dover or a small set of seacoast towns that included Dover may have had more to do with being able to protect pilgrims efficiently in troublous times than with the economic centrality of the port.16 But it was the long and vigorous tradition of travel out of Dover which made the government’s choice of the town in 1226 and 1389 predictable.
Other ports chosen by or assigned to abjurers departing for Ireland or the European mainland included Bristol, Portsmouth, Southampton, Harwich, Bawdsey and so forth.17 (Abjuration to Scotland was overland or, typically but not exclusively, via northern English ports until complications arose in the later Middle Ages.18) Usually these secondary ports—secondary with respect to the transport of abjurers—were enlisted when there were simultaneous multiple abjurations from a single location.19 So one abjurer chose or would be given Dover while the other(s) had to use a different embarkation point.20 In this way, many dreaded gangs and smaller criminal partnerships were broken up and hindered from reconstituting themselves later on. The practice was too common to reflect merely the idiosyncratic imposition of a few creative coroners pace J. Charles Cox. 21 But this gets us a little ahead of the story. We need to establish the literal and mental cartography of abjuration, the roads that abjurers followed and the fortunes and misfortunes they experienced on the way to port.
Depending in part on distance, abjurers were told how long they could take to get to the chosen port, and they were instructed as well as to how far they had to travel each day.22 (The English system was not unique in this.23) Walter the son of Beatrice Gomme abjured from London and was allotted four days to travel to Southampton. At the end of the first day he was to have reached Cobham, at the end of the second, Farnham, and at the end of the third, Winchester. He finished his journey to Southampton the following day. In the meantime his accomplice in crime, William le Soutere the son of William le Lede of York, who also abjured, was assigned Dover. It was somewhat unusual for the authorities to give William three days instead of four to reach the port, the interim destinations being Singlewell and Ospringe.24 Adam Nouneman and John of Great (or Little) Bedwyn each received four days to reach Dover and Southampton when they abjured from London.25 William le Toliere of Manby in Lincolnshire abjured London in the early summer of 1325 for Dover and parts overseas. His partner in crime (homicide), Roger le Leche, the son of Roger le Walshe of Wellington-under-Wrekin in the Shropshire-Wales borderlands, abjured from the metropolis on the same day, but he was allotted three days to travel to the port of Harwich (Essex).26
Quite out of the ordinary, one John of Wheatley, a homicide who abjured in London in 1324, was permitted to choose Bristol. But the authorities offered him a mere five days to travel there.27 Each leg of his journey was therefore almost forty kilometers. Had he chosen Dover, it would have been closer to thirty kilometers per day. This mattered when traveling barefoot, as abjurers did. Royal messengers, who of course wore shoes, made about thirty miles per day when traveling on foot.28 So, thirty kilometers (18.6 miles) was a genuine concession to the abjurer’s difficult circumstances. For John to choose instead to do forty kilometers (24.9 miles) a day—and he had to have had some general sense of what he was letting himself in for—he must have been motivated by a strong attachment to Ireland. Or perhaps the sanctuary historian Cox is right that an element of vindictiveness moved some coroners to mandate travel to very distant ports.29
Although the custom was to give those who abjured from London four days or at least three to reach Dover, the person’s physical condition or other circumstances could lead to a prescribed slackening of the pace. Thomas Weyland, the disgraced Chief Justice, was allowed nine days from London to Dover in short stages of about fourteen and a half kilometers per day, because his health had become fragile from being starved out of sanctuary.30 How merciful this was is a legitimate matter of dispute. The ailing Thomas made his nine-day barefoot journey in the beastly month of February.31 John de Malton and his concubine Juliana Aunsel both abjured from London and both were allowed to choose Dover. Yet, the authorities found an alternative way to sunder the pair, by specifying notably different timetables rather than separate ports. John got the usual four days to reach Dover going along the road to Dartford, then Newington, and on from there to Canterbury and then the port. Juliana had five days; she was with John until Dartford, at which point she followed a different timetable requiring her to stop at Rochester, Sittingbourne, and Canterbury before reaching Dover.32
By and large those who abjured elsewhere than London also traveled the sometimes long distance to Dover, although a few abjurers, for reasons not always clear now, obtained leave to depart from ports nearer to where they took their oaths. Thus, when Richard the son of Picot of Norton abjured in Oxfordshire in 1230, he obtained leave to take ship from far more convenient Portsmouth. That he was given eight days to reach the port instead of the customary four suggests that he, like Thomas Weyland, was in a bad physical state.33 The system and the men who ran it intended a confessed felon like Richard to suffer a good bit on his last journey in England, but they had little or no desire that he die, a consequence that would oblige them to see to his obsequies and burial. The next year, William of Bray, who also abjured in Oxfordshire, received the same favor, a Portsmouth embarkation.34 In 1356 the authorities assigned John Somer of Kent, who abjured from Suffolk, to the port of Bawdsey, within the same county.35
THE CIRCUMSTANCES OF THE JOURNEY
It has long been assumed that the abjurers, almost penniless, barefoot, bareheaded, and carrying their simple wooden crosses (much later these seem to have been colored white36) set out on their own, under the solemn and intimidating admonition not to leave the king’s highway until they reached their destinations. The eccentric commentator who wrote the late thirteenth-century Mirror of Justice thought some of these provisions to be abusive, which is to say inhumane.37 But his opinion on these matters carried little weight. Abjurers were garbed as penitents, their garments sometimes crudely marked with the sign of the cross.38 They set out with a minuscule portion of their chattels, if they possessed any, or alms that were made over to them for the purchase of food for the journey.39 Their counterparts banned from jurisdictions in France were treated in similar fashion: one set of instructions directed that they be granted nothing beyond a loaf, a pint of wine, and a bundle of sticks to make a small fire as they commenced their lives as exiles.40 The English were also warned in express terms that if they deviated from the highway, they would incur the status of outlaw and be liable to immediate execution by anyone upon their capture—“quasi-legal lynching,” in T. B. Lambert’s words.41 This last rule was mitigated solely by the necessities of nature. One could take a brief rest off-road to urinate and defecate in relative privacy or to shelter from a storm as long as one remained visible at least in part from the thoroughfare.42 But the regulations in general were strict. Even when abjurers reached the interim stops on the way to their port of embarkation, they could not shelter themselves in inns or houses and could not have an extended rest, unless they were suffering dire debilitation.43 Once again, continental practice was similar. The Custom of Normandy forbad any abjurer from remaining more than one night in any stopping place unless he or she was in a grievous state ([n]isi gravi et evidente infirmitate teneatur).44
What is untrue is that abjurers set out by themselves. In fact, low-level police-type officials accompanied them and kept them under surveillance.45 This is implicit, first, in the provision under which abjurers might answer the calls of nature: to be visible from the highway was to be visible by someone in particular, not by a random traveler but by an overseer. It is explicit in a record pertaining to the thief and jail breaker Roger le Cornur, who abjured from Surrey in 1220 and was taken (ductus) to his embarkation point, Shoreham, in Sussex per conductum quatuor hominum, that is, with a four-man escort.46 A few years later Henry de Capella, a royal sergeant, and two of his aides received 20s. for their expenses in accompanying the abjurer William Aguillon to Dover, another explicit proof.47 To say that this evidence points to the exceptional rather than the regular use of transit guards is arbitrary.48 What is exceptional is the crown paying for it—and thus notice of it surviving in royal records. It also fails to consider the routine and thus suggestive evidence of such practices in continental jurisdictions.49 To say that the occurrence of escapes along the route supports the traditional scholarly opinion is insufficient. We have no idea of the proportion of successful escapees.
Yes, there were escapes. The four transit guards who led Roger le Cornur to port and the three who led William Aguillon must have had a large number of abjurers under their oversight, not just the two individuals mentioned. For consider the fact that a great many crimes were committed at times of the year when it was out of season for maritime travel to the continent.50 A man might commit a crime in winter and stay the maximum of forty days in sanctuary but still be kept in custody after his abjuration, the intent being to hold him until the spring or summer when regular shipping between Dover and the continent picked up in frequency. Such was the case with John Philpot in the mid-fourteenth century. He managed to escape the town guards of Northampton assigned by the coroner to guard him in the monastic church of Saint Andrew following his forty days of sanctuary. The royal official’s intent was to keep him in custody much longer.51 A native of Canterbury, John atte Loke the son of Richard atte Crouche, committed an act of homicide at Christmastime 1321 for which he abjured at London, but he did not begin his assigned four-day journey to Dover until 20 July 1322.52 The most plausible explanation is that John was held with other abjurers until Channel crossings were frequent and a sufficient number of abjurers could be gathered for the journey—not too large to be considered unmanageable by two, three, or four transit guards, but neither so small as to result in an inefficient use of these men, who were otherwise ordinary local beadles. (That ex–Chief Justice Thomas Weyland’s journey was not delayed in order to fulfill either of these conditions is another indication of how “political” his abjuration was, and how inflamed Edward I was against him.)
Did the authorities’ best-laid plans sometimes fail? No doubt, but it was not always because the number of transit guards necessary to prevent escapes was being underestimated. John of Bradford, for example, abjured for homicide in Nottinghamshire in 1284, but the men of Robert de Brus, the lord of Annandale, either prevented him from beginning his journey or managed to get hold of him once he set out. In their lord’s name they laid claim to him for another felony, that of severing the hand of one of Robert’s yeomen, committed in the Brus liberty of Annandale. Lord Robert thought or pretended that he had a right to have justice done on John, despite his abjuration, but the crown was not pleased by the nobleman’s reluctance to release the abjurer from prison so he could make his way into exile.53
In a way this John was lucky. At least Robert de Brus did not take summary vengeance. Not so lucky was another John, John Dobyn, who abjured the realm in Reading for homicide in 1241. Soon after he set out, relatives of the victim frightened him by raising the hue and cry and pursuing him as he fled. Whoever was guarding him either chose not to try to rescue him for fear of the overwhelming force or was constrained by the need to control other abjurers in the party. When John was caught by the victim’s kinfolk, he was taken to Charlton, not back to Reading, and there accused of homicide. The local authorities entertained the charge, having no evidence that he had earlier abjured for the crime. The local bailiff and representatives of Charlton and the surrounding townships decided to try John as if the hue and cry had been in pursuit of a criminal caught in the act.54 As Frederick Pollock and Frederic William Maitland wrote, a man caught in the hue and cry “will be brought before some court (like enough it is a court hurriedly summoned for the purpose), and without being allowed to say one word in self-defence, he will be promptly hanged, beheaded or precipitated from a cliff.”55
Although frightened, threatened, and abused, John Dobyn must have struggled to protest that these men could not do justice on him, because he had already abjured. The local authorities did not take him at his word and hanged him anyway. When royal officials got wind of the story (perhaps from the transit guards) and followed up, they were incensed. They may have been impressed by the audacity of the claim the locals made to them, but they were not persuaded by it. It was, the locals said, the custom in the fee of the abbot of Reading, where the church from which John abjured was located, to limit the protection of abjuration. The inviolability of abjurers’ bodies lasted as long as they traveled within the abbot’s franchise. Once they passed its bounds, they were fair game for vigilantism. It comes as no surprise that those who claimed this absurd defense of their actions were amerced.56
A Huntingdonshire abjurer whose name is now unknown and who is said to have opted to leave the kingdom from Dover in 1267 did not even have the summary trial of John Dobyn. Not far from Sudbury in Suffolk, his enemies, who had been following at a distance, saw their chance and made their move, inflicting terrible punishment on him for his crimes. They “assaulted him with swords and wounded him in the heart, so that he fell at once. Afterwards in the king’s highway outside of Sudbury, they decapitated him with an axe.” Leaving his dismembered body on the royal thoroughfare where he was supposed to be safe during his journey was a ritual affront to the mercy of abjuration and thus to the royal majesty. And it provoked the expected response. The crown issued an order to track down the pursuers and bring them to justice.57 I do not know whether in this difficult period of post–civil war guerrilla disruptions in England anything much came of the supposed royal wrath.
Around 1342 an abjurer by the name of Philip Hodynet, who was assigned Dover, was said to have been caught off the royal highway. The bailiff referred to in the case, his transit guard, had laid a plot in which he induced Philip under some pretext to deviate from the highway. He was preparing an excuse for exercising his own summary justice on Philip. Fortunately, he did not have the full opportunity to pull it off. An observer’s suspicions were aroused and the plot was interrupted. Thereafter Philip was allowed to put himself before a jury where he pleaded coercion to leave the highway on the part of the bailiff. There turned out to be enough supporting evidence to suggest that Philip was telling the truth, and he was saved from court-ordered capital punishment for the alleged attempt at escape. The victory before the jury also saved Philip from the summary fate the bailiff had intended for him. This was all very well and all very good, though it must be added that it had no effect on Philip’s abjuration per se. The sheriff of Staffordshire saw to his restoration to the royal highway for the resumption of his journey to Dover.58
Genuine attempts at escape that succeeded were abetted on occasion by abjurers’ friends and neighbors, who rescued them, hid them, and gave them sustenance. (French officials faced the same sort of problems with their bannis.59) Whenever the English crown concluded that local authorities were complicit, either by not delivering the escapees or by failing to inform on them, there was the devil to pay, with the emphasis on pay. Several townships are known to have suffered the punishment of royal amercement for these offenses.60 Understandably, unsuccessful escapes had severer consequences for abjurers. In the spring of 1276 a hayward named John, the son of William of Westfield, abjured for theft from the village of Houghton in Bedfordshire. The transit guards were natives of Houghton, including one William, who took his surname from the place. On his way to Dover the hayward tried to make his getaway, but the men of Houghton led by William pursued him, raising the hue and cry for additional aid. They caught him. They beheaded him.61
John the Franklin committed homicide in Cirencester in the county of Gloucester in 1287. He fled and was outlawed, but for whatever reason he risked his security further by returning—further, I say, because being an outlaw was already a precarious status. Matters did not go well. He found it expedient to seek sanctuary in a Cirencester church, where he confessed to the homicide and flight. Officials then permitted him to abjure. But the truth was that he did not wish to leave England or even his local patria. He risked his life again by fleeing the route that was assigned him; yet, he did not choose the life of an outlaw this time either. He once more sneaked home. Spotted, he was pursued by a posse from nearby Erlingham. They apprehended him, and, as in the previous case described, they beheaded him.62
This was all quite legal, as was the treatment meted out to the confessed robber John of Ditchford. On the day that he abjured from the parish church of Wooton in Northamptonshire, the first day of spring in 1322, he tried to make his escape. He threw down his penitent’s cross as he fled from the royal highway, but the pursuing guards were dogged and in time overcame him “until he was beheaded while still fleeing.” They left him where they had caught him and went back to report on their work. The coroner directed them to retrieve John’s severed head for a special purpose: to wit, for transport by representatives of the neighboring four townships to the royal castle at Northampton as proof of justice well done.63 It was, to repeat, all quite legal, and all quite memorable, too.64
This is not to say that the exercise of capital justice on captured escapees was encouraged heedless of all other circumstances. This is a bit tricky. For the men whom I have called transit guards, it was an obligation to enforce the king’s peace and exercise justice on would-be escapees. But what if the runaways eluded the guards and the news spread? Any tramp, though innocent, might arouse suspicions, leading to vigilante justice and in its wake the crown’s retribution. The colorful and unchanging rhetoric of bearing the wolf’s head masked practices that became less esteemed with every instance in which it turned out that an innocent person had been targeted. Better to let a magistrate decide and follow the prescribed procedures. In the special commissions to deal with rampant crime, known as the London Trailbaston trials of 1305–06, there is a case which evokes this set of considerations. Word had spread that an abjurer had escaped his initial pursuers after abandoning the route to Dover. A furtive-looking wanderer was espied and suspected of being that man, but restraint was exercised. Spared immediate beheading, the suspect was taken and delivered to the authorities for considered judgment. This fortunate reprieve, if one wishes to call it that, did not save him in the longer term, however, for in the course of the inquest, his judges did determine that he was the escapee and in consequence handed him over to the hangman.65
A happier ending awaited one Walter Haket, who abjured from Worcestershire in the summer of 1233. It appeared that Walter was reconciled to obeying the command not to break away from the king’s highway as he headed off to port. Then, all of a sudden, he made a dash toward the woods. Later he proffered an explanation: something had struck him as suspicious, something requiring instant action. So, not taking time to explain himself, he pursued a man whom he recognized as a notorious criminal. Barefoot though he was, Walter caught up with the man and in the course of the confrontation killed him. These facts, having been reported to those who had been in pursuit, were reported to the king, whose initial response was ambivalent. No abjurer was to flee the king’s highway without permission; yet, Walter’s action could be construed as justifiable in the circumstances, for the man whom Walter pursued was in truth an infamous felon. The abjurer’s family and friends pleaded; they offered ten marks to buy a pardon for Walter. The crown agreed, bestowed the pardon, forgiving his flight and setting aside his abjuration, and as an additional act of grace restored some of Walter’s chattels.66
Notwithstanding the happy outcome for Walter Haket and the relatively few instances where successful escapes can be documented in the whole universe of tens of thousands of abjurations, there is every reason to believe that the presence and charge of transit guards, together with the fear of consequences from victims’ kin and friends, were sufficient to discourage most abjurers from making last-ditch en-route efforts to avoid deportation. One other piece of evidence strengthens this inference. It should be recalled that branding of abjurers was virtually nonexistent in thirteenth-century England but common on the continent, for across the Channel the abiding fear was that exiles would easily make their way back along myriad roads to the jurisdictions that expelled them. When this happened the authorities needed to be able to identify them as recidivists. But the absence of branding in England suggests that there was not much apprehension that the poor human dross they intended to deposit in France would escape en route to the port of embarkation or ever have the means to return over sea to the island kingdom once they left it. Branding was perhaps an option but it was not considered a necessity in English sensibilities of the time.
AT THE PORT
The brunt of the evidence therefore suggests that most abjurers arrived at their ports of embarkation without adventures, albeit with fear never far from their minds and rather the worse for wear given the circumstances of their journeys. And most, as we know, arrived at one port in particular, Dover, where they had to stay until taking ship to France. Where were they “housed” in the interval? (I do not believe that they treated “the beach” as their “resting place,” the claim of one otherwise perceptive scholar.)67 I shall argue later that Dover Castle, the imposing emblem of royal authority in the port town, served this function, much as the Tower of London, another imposing medieval edifice—or rather, set of edifices—was enlisted to hold more than one thousand exiled Jews who were awaiting transport to Normandy in 1290.68
Upon being immured temporarily, the abjurers, I believe, relinquished their crosses to the transit guards who had accompanied them to the port. The latter would have returned home with them (as blessed objects) and given them back to the churches where the abjurers had obtained sanctuary, so that they could be stored in the sacristies or in a cabinet until needed again. It is not likely that such simple artifacts, despite the important role they played in protecting the abjurers’ lives, have left much of a trace in medieval church inventories, which tend to enumerate precious, elaborately crafted objects—sacramental vessels (chalices, monstrances [ostensories], cruets, and patens), altar cloths, reliquaries, ornamental and processional crosses, and the like.69 On occasion, however, I have come across continental inventories which make reference to small lots of undescribed crosses which might have been used and reused by abjurers there, although it almost goes without saying that portable crosses served multiple needs (Holy Cross Sunday and Palm Sunday processions being two).70 These inventories, like one from Millau dated 1271, otherwise specify the decorative aspects of the artifacts surveyed, including ornamental crosses.71 So, it might be worthwhile to do a systematic search of English ecclesiastical inventories. An alternative theory is that abjurers from England kept the crosses until reaching their port of entry across the Channel. It has been presumed that possessing such an object, given their quasi-penitential garb, would have aided the exiles in soliciting alms.72
For most abjurers this would have been the first—and last—time they ever saw Dover, its castle, and the chalky cliffs that give the location such a distinctive mien. The castle’s imposing presence was still a somewhat new sight in the early thirteenth century, for the structure had been enhanced in a building campaign completed late in the reign of Henry II (1154–89).73 As Charles Coulson has observed, “[d]onjon towers preceded and long outlasted the twelfth century. Henry II’s ‘keep’ at Dover (1179–88) is of them all the grandest.”74 It has been deemed in another scholarly analysis, “preeminent.”75 Yet, maintaining its greatness and preeminence was no easy task. The castle needed frequent repair, as voluminous records for the allocation of funds for labor and materials such as iron, lead, steel, and timber indicate.76
A constable governed the castle.77 Contingents of royal guards protected it and performed other related tasks such as keeping tabs on the building repair materials that were delivered to maintain the castle works (opus).78 These guards were provided in part through direct employment and payment by the king.79 The town of Faversham, or rather the abbot of Faversham and those living in the town who held property of the king, also provided guards—sometimes in a begrudging manner but as an obligation of their tenure.80 Indeed castle guard service at Dover was owed by many entities in the region and beyond.81 In times of war or credible threats of war or invasion, as in 1204–5, mercenary troops supplemented the regular guards. Their wages appear in the instance referred to on the Pipe Rolls.82 These rolls also provide abundant evidence of large purchases of food, fodder, and military equipment.83
Dover Castle also had containment areas, secure facilities sufficient in size to hold prisoners of war during the French invasion under Prince Louis in 1217.84 These are the same facilities referred to as the “king’s prison at Dover” (prisona regis apud Dovor’) in some sources and were used for the incarceration of both common criminals and political enemies.85 Available holding areas were so extensive that they could double as muster sites for whole companies of armed men during wartime—civil or foreign.86 All of this leads to the conclusion that there were ample facilities in the castle to accommodate any number of abjurers as they awaited transportation—and plenty of security.
I am aware that this opinion, granted the special dignity accorded Dover Castle, will not meet acceptance from every scholar, but I am not persuaded that there is a better one.87 True, the obvious alternative to the Castle was another substantial building, specifically a church. But is it likely that churchmen would have desired or could have been coerced to shelter the whole range of felons in the abjuring population who passed through Dover, including murderers and thieves? Were clerics prepared, even with their vocation as caretakers of the poor and vulnerable, to feed and nurse these criminals, many of whom after their harsh journey to the port were suffering physically? If worship services continued during the interval of their presence, how could the church deny entrance to friends and kin who had followed the abjurers to the port? What sort and level of security were required to prevent the former, if they got in, from rescuing the latter or, alternatively, to prevent the abjurers’ enemies from seizing them? Surely, the imprecations of the authorities would have been insufficient. After a few threats, the most conscientious priest or sacristan might stand aside to save himself and simply curse the intruders under his breath. Finally, even in the absence of friends, kinfolk, or enemies to compromise the situation, was there sufficient security to prevent escapes, and would not any number of potential escapees, many of whom were thieves and all of whom were desperate, have tried to help themselves to church plate or other treasures that could be fenced later on? (Many of them had abjured for the crime of robbing churches.) These questions and observations raise, to my mind, insurmountable doubts about churches as holding pens in Dover.
The town and port of Dover had their own institutions and facilities, separate from those of the castle, which to a considerable extent were relevant to the experience of the soon-to-be exiles, relevant because of the temporary presence of some of their kinfolk and friends at the place.88 The town was mid-sized for a medieval settlement, with a population estimated at 3,000.89 It had an intimate political relationship with the crown as one of the Cinque Ports (on which, more later), but it nonetheless had its own sophisticated and independent-minded municipal government.90 It was a government administered by the “barons of the port,” men who were jealous of the town’s liberties and dignity and of their own, and were willing to contest and even defy royal claims they thought to be excessive, inappropriate, or unjustified.91
The provision of welfare was an important aspect of urban life in Dover. There were two hospitals.92 One, Saint Bartholomew’s, a daughter house of Dover Priory, had come over time to concentrate on ameliorating the lives of lepers; the other, the Maison Dieu, served a more diverse clientele.93 There was also the so-called “almonry gate of Dover Priory,” a site where servants of the priory offered victuals for the poor and for pilgrims heading abroad or recently arrived in England to visit its shrines or return home. Both Saint Bartholomew’s and the Maison Dieu engaged in similar kinds of almsgiving.94 The latter complained in the year 1315 that another obligation the crown was imposing on it, the housing and sustenance of government pensioners, was undercutting its ability to give traditional charity. The clerk who received and endorsed the Maison’s petition characterized the complaint as an excuse, while acknowledging as was typical that the matter was for the king to decide.95
It is altogether reasonable to suppose—and indeed it has long been accepted in the literature—that the poorest of the men and women who chose to follow their abjured kinfolk and friends into exile appealed for alms and succor from the institutions listed, money that would be useful later on when, having debarked on the continent, they could at last freely communicate with the abjurers.96 It could also be expected that prosperous travelers would, before they took ship, distribute alms to the poor, including the abjurers’ followers, as a gesture that might please God and garner His protection for their own voyages. When Edward III’s sister Eleanor departed the port on 5 May 1332 en route to her wedding at Nijmegen, she responded by offering one penny each to twenty-four poor folk who sought alms from her (pauperibus petentibus elemosinam).97
Dover, like all ports, was notorious rather as a cesspit of sin than as a philanthropic center of poor relief or a locus of religiosity, though the description “port of dogs” may evoke the abjurers frequently passing through rather than the permanent residents.98 Stereotypes aside, there was another side to its reputation. A female recluse, Emma of Sheppey, resided immured in the castle church of Saint Mary for decades in the thirteenth century.99 In a practice not unlike that followed in France, royal alms of one and one-half pennies per day were supposed to be allotted to her each quarter. (The contemporary continental rate of six French pence per day for holy hermits, to judge from royal payments to Saint Yves of Brittany, was identical in value.100) Emma’s alms from the king were often in arrears, once for 450 days, another time for 320, the equivalent of more than 56s. and 40s. respectively.101 The delays in payment had more to do with Henry III’s political and financial troubles than with indifference; and locals would not have let her go hungry. The support of anchoresses bestowed a patina of virtue on donors, who were rewarded with highly valued intercessions, and their presence imparted a modicum of holiness to the places where they made their abode, a fact that may help explain the diffuse practice of naming places with reference to the quondam residence of a recluse.102 The self-sacrifice of women such as Emma of Sheppey was in general a living critique of the greed and chicanery that were believed to accompany commercial life.103 Some time after Emma passed away another hermit came to dwell on the outskirts of the port and filled the void created by her demise. Embarking for the continent, the aforementioned Princess Eleanor favored this recluse with a gift of 6s. 8d. (half a mark) on the day of her sailing.104
During the time sojourners were at the port, there were also the formal institutions of the Catholic faith to help sustain them.105 The four parish churches were dedicated to Saint Peter, Saint James, Saint Mary, and Saint Martin, the last of which, known as Saint Martin-le-Grand, served three parishes. They addressed both the inhabitants’ and the transients’ spiritual needs, including the provision of significant alms in the form of food to those in need. (Saint Mary’s did so on seven special days in the year, including the Feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin, 8 September.)106 Another church of Saint Mary existed in the castle, and the priory church was dedicated to Saint Martin. Ordinary travelers would not have been given access to these two, apart from the alms at the gate of the latter. But the lesser clergy of the castle church, perhaps in concert with parish clergy,107 could have attended to the immured abjurers’ most serious spiritual and, to some extent, material needs. Moreover, this sacred space would have provided the continued penumbra of sanctuary, which may be what is meant when prescriptive texts speak of a return to sanctuary in port while awaiting departure. Many scholars note this without explaining it.108
For travelers who had a little extra money, such as some of the abjurers’ friends, there were also inns and taverns.109 The owners of four taverns are known by name (John Giles, Henry Blank, John Monin, and John Atte Halle) from the mid–fourteenth century Dover Chamberlains’ Accounts, but there were many more drinking houses in the town, not counting hostelries.110 At these establishments troubled travelers could drown their sorrows, at least for a while, and even indulge in amusements that helped pass the time.
Perhaps more important, people in need of information could seek it both from parishioners in and about the churches and from local patrons of the taverns, information that might be valuable later on when they reunited with their exiled loved ones after the journey to the continent—or, if feasible, illegally even before. There were important things to learn. Where in Dover could travelers exchange coins to get the kind of money that was used in France? Where was the best place, after they reached France, to make contacts with people who could facilitate finding shelter and work for them and for their kinsmen or friends who had abjured? Had anyone heard any stories about what life was like for an exiled Englishwoman in France? They might pose a guarded question to people thought to have contacts with or be members of the “criminal underworld,” which Henry Summerson describes as “a milieu inhabited by professional criminals with their own operating methods, meeting places and skills”: 111 Might there be ship captains who could be persuaded, by whatever means, to smuggle their kinfolk back into England or employ them in the piracy for which many Dover shipmen were noted?112
One may doubt whether the modern saying, “Dover, a Den of Thieves,” which lays stress on at least one aspect of the underside of life in the port, has its remote ancestor in the pirates and the unscrupulous men and women who peddled information to distressed travelers for more than it was worth.113 But many Dover shipmen in the Middle Ages did exploit unfortunates by charging exorbitant fares. The practice is well attested because wealthier travelers who had the means and time to protest it did so.114 Con men got their hands on good English pennies from travelers in exchange for what the former said were sound French coins but which in reality turned out upon arrival in France to be worthless tokens and counterfeits. This was a longstanding problem. On 20 May 1299 Edward I tried to address it by licensing trustworthy “merchants of Lucca to keep a table at Dover for changing money of persons coming into the realm or going out.”115 The context—it comes as no surprise—was the concern over false money.116 Never ceasing were efforts like Edward I’s to regularize currency exchange.117
But the crown addressed a myriad of other problems at Dover and throughout the Cinque Ports, the cluster of Channel settlements and their limbs (smaller, dependent settlements) which girded the southeastern coast.118 To serve as constable of Dover Castle or as warden of the Cinque Ports was to enjoy prestige but also to incur burdensome responsibilities. Scholars have sometimes written about the latter as if they were limited to the wartime services of the ports. This in turn has given rise to the common belief that the Channel ports played a crucial, perhaps the most crucial, role in England’s medieval naval warfare, a contested opinion in the specialized scholarship.119 What is true and what at first sight may seem to support this assertion is that wartime naval obligations were recorded in meticulous detail, as, for example, in a charter of Edward III of 1342, and that the material, financial, and labor obligations owed the crown, given the size of the settlements, were heavy.120 Whether or not the Cinque Ports were the backbone of naval defense in wartime, however, remains uncertain. In the period of the thirteenth-century peace with France, it is also irrelevant. In this interval their ships’ primary use was to ferry non-military travelers (including high-born men and women) and trade goods to and from the continent. It was a bustling industry and had scores upon scores of ships and barges at its disposal. Something like a fleet was assembled from the local carriage alone for the transport of Eleanor, Edward III’s sister, and her entourage across the sea for her marriage to the count of Guelders in 1332.121 It was this industry far more often than war service that demanded the most attention from royal and municipal administrators.
Part of this industry serviced abjurers. After they arrived at Dover, the abjurers were supposed to wade into the sea and plead for transport. Accounts and evidence differ as to the height the water was to reach—to the knees or neck. They differ too on how long the abjurers should cry out. One treatise alleges that they should continue to do so until a ship picked them up.122 These apparent discrepancies reflect, I think, changes over time, rather than simultaneous practices and, thus, confusion. In any case, entering the sea was read as confirming the confessed felons’ willingness to adhere to their promise to leave the kingdom. It was as if they were checking the shore and searching the horizon for ships that would bear them away into a new life.123 To analogize it with baptism and its hope of salvation is suggestive. More so, as it is worth thinking about the symbolism and perception of this obviously liminal rite in the broader penitential character of the journey from abjuration into exile.124
I have some doubt, however, that these ritual prescriptions were expected, let alone followed every day at Dover, even though they were perceived by authorities to have value in humiliating the abjurers in the sight of kinfolk and friends who had followed them and could observe the spectacle at a safe distance. “[A]bjurers,” it has been remarked with justice, “were well guarded” in Dover.125 But organizing the transfer of groups of them from the castle, even smallish groups over the short distance to the shore, and monitoring their wading would require close supervision and the occasional rescue of the old, weak, and sick. (Think of how lifeguards need to be alert.) Allowing the “prisoners” to spend time outside the castle walls was also an invitation to the strongest or most desperate of them to make one last attempt at escape. (There would have been less danger of this at the alternative ports, which handled one or only a few abjurers at any one time and that seldom.) This is not to say that movements back and forth between Dover Castle and the shore were never undertaken, but the occasions for them were also limited. In general, abjurers arrived in spring and summer. Outfitted ships were everywhere, and the ships meant for them were always or soon at the ready.
To be sure, problems on occasion compromised travel. Gales, heavy rains, and thick fogs slowed or even prevented passage to the continent or the return of passenger ships from it. Bracton seems to have had Dover in mind when he acknowledged that storms and contrary winds caused delays for which there was no alternative but endurance.126 A great storm in 1287 wreaked havoc on all the Channel ports, and “Dover was forced to rebuild its harbour.”127 Sometimes political and economic disputes interrupted the flow of seaborne traffic. The Annales Paulini record that during the spring and early summer of 1324 a dispute came to a head “between mariners of Dover and of the French port of Wissant, so that ships did not ply the sea route between them or provide passage for a long time.”128 This was important to the abjurers’ story because Wissant was the principal destination of ships from Dover to the continent in the long thirteenth century, indeed until England’s seizure of Calais in 1347 during the Hundred Years’ War.129 Yet, when the weather calmed or disputes were settled, regular shipping recommenced.
It was the authorities’ expectation that the time spent awaiting embarkation would be short. Record evidence makes clear that no abjurer was supposed to stay in Dover—or in any other port of embarkation—beyond the coming of the first favorable tide.130 Twice a day tides come in and go out, but whether a tide is favorable is a more complicated question, for conditions beyond the cyclic gravitational pull of the moon (and its alignment with the sun) can affect the height of tides. Surges in the Atlantic may accentuate a high tide in the Channel by as much as a meter, and strong winds can prevent the full recession of an ebb tide.131 Still, every competent sailor and fisherman had a sensible knowledge of the tides in the main shipping season and expected them to be favorable unless affected by out-of-the-ordinary meteorological or oceanic conditions. When those abjurers, the unmarried lovers John of Malton and Juliana Aunsel, departed London for Dover in June of 1324, the first having been given four days to the port, the latter, five, a reasonable person would expect that John would take ship before Juliana arrived.132 Little did the abjurers know—little did even London coroners know—that a shipping embargo, the result of a commercial dispute, had just been imposed on passage between Dover and Wissant that would last all summer.133
THE SHIPS AND THE CONDITIONS OF TRAVEL
Sooner or later abjurers boarded the ships designated for them. A few scholars have assumed that they had free choice in booking passage, but this assumption raises insurmountable problems, well evidenced in the following quotation. “It seems difficult to believe,” one scholar has written, “that any but an exceptional few [abjurers] could find means of transport [in a free-choice system]. They had no money, and could not buy a passage. They could not all work their passage across; and least of all the women. What became of them?” Faced with the conundrum the author of these words, William Bolland, came up with an explanation even more difficult to accept: that the authorities were indifferent. Having rendered the abjurers penniless, miserable, and vulnerable, they had forced them to migrate to Dover and hang around in the port with no means of passage available to them. This, he speculated, was considered punishment enough—sufficient atonement, in his phrase—whereupon the abjurers were allowed with a blind eye from the authorities to drift back into English society! “It seems as though something of this kind must have happened” (my emphasis).134 Of course, this is nonsense.
A different scenario is equally farfetched, namely that the abjurers could compel shipmen to ferry them to the continent.135 Dover shipmen were many things, but they were not likely to be compelled by the mere sight of a ragtag abjurer or two to offer a ride to France free or in return for unskilled labor, as R. F. Wright supposed.136 Yet there is a nugget of truth in the use of the word “compel,” if one identifies a different and far more plausible compeller. Like many ports (Sandwich is an example), Dover owed annual ship services to the king, twenty vessels in number (known as passagers), each with twenty-one men, for fifteen days per year.137 This was three hundred ship-days. If two ships operated each day, with one going out of Dover to Wissant and one returning, then the season would last for some hundred and fifty days. This maps well onto the period from late spring, the end of May, to very early autumn, the beginning of September, the height of the shipping season. The crews were of sufficient size for a few men to double as guards, oversee the exiles (given my earlier calculations perhaps never more than a half dozen or so on any one voyage), and prevent them from seizing the ship during the hoped-for short journey to the mainland, which was about forty kilometers and took a few hours under ideal conditions. Persistent contrary winds and even brief squalls could delay departure or after embarkation blow the ships far off course and lengthen the distance and the time considerably. Contrary winds delayed Anselm, the archbishop of Canterbury, for two weeks from taking ship at Dover for Wissant—and he had every inspiration to depart in haste, considering that agents of his enemy, King William II Rufus, were trying to (and did) overtake him.138
Any of the abjurers’ friends and family members who were determined to link up with them on the continent would have made their own arrangements for cheap passage in other ships. What was in it for the captains and crews of these other ships? So far as I can tell there was no sharp distinction between cargo ships such as La Nicholas, which transported grain, and the many other kinds of Channel craft.139 At least, the carriers were comfortable with ferrying both goods and people. Captains and crews craved profits and went to dangerous lengths to obtain them.140 One way to boost profits was by the crowding of low-paying passengers into cargo ships and the overcrowding of passenger ships. Entrepreneurship was a notable quality of shipmen.141 This did not always express itself in reputable activities. It would be wonderful to know more about the culture and practices of shipmasters and crews.142
Many ferrymen were honest and forthright or at least commanded respect. Cok Bretun was a crewman in the 1260s and once had the prestige job of transporting a cardinal-legate and his entourage on the sea lane from Wissant to Dover. Cok rose to become a baron of the port of Dover by 1278 and proved himself to be a stalwart defender of the town’s privileges, while also being well-esteemed by the king.143 Other ferrymen, on the contrary, including those who dealt with poor passengers needing to get to Wissant, such as the abjurers’ friends and kin, were unsparing. The crown sought to regulate the ferrymen’s fares and prevent the intimidation they sometimes practiced on susceptible travelers as well as bring an end to the overcrowding of people, animals (horses), and goods, which put the ships at risk, but which also promised the handsomer profits I have hypothesized to the mariners upon successful journeys.
The rolls of complaint are long and grim. One observer noted in the summer of 1315 that the shippers “load more horses into the ship through greed, so that at times some of the horses are crushed to death, and others maimed and killed: for whereas a sufficient load would be a ship containing 24 horses, or 26, they put 40 and at times 50 horses in a ship.”144 One wonders what the cramped human passengers remarked among themselves as they suffered similar conditions aboard ships christened with such reassuring yet misleading names as La Charité, La Gracedieu, and La Trinité, La Welyfare, La Bien Venu, and De la Swan, La Jolivette, La Lightefote, and La Blithe.145 Surely the bitter irony struck home to someone. Surely. Yet no one could afford to linger much on ironies. A new and unpredictable world awaited everyone in Wissant and beyond.