Peasants and the manor court: gossip and litigation in a Suffolk village at the close of the thirteenth century

Past & Present, May, 1998 by R. Schofield

I

INTRODUCTION

In a court held on 5 April 1296, on the Bury St Edmunds manor of Hinderclay in north Suffolk, Nicholas le Wodeward was brought to respond to Robert the son of Adam in a plea of trespass.(1) Robert claimed that on Wednesday before the feast of St Thomas the Apostle last, 14 December 1295, Nicholas, through the emissary of his son, John, invited Robert to his house. Robert, `confident of the good faith and will of Nicholas's, went and Nicholas persuaded him to stay and to sleep in John's bed. Immediately after they had gone to bed, Nicholas came with the pole of a cart (baculus ad carectatem) and attacked Robert where he lay in bed, beating him so that the blood ran. And not content with this, he seized Robert, bound him hand and foot, and detained him thus bound for the whole night, threatening with a knife to kill him unless he promised to return both eight acres of arable and two of meadow, which he had leased from Nicholas, and to relax debts of 40s. and five quarters of wheat for one sowing (ad i semen) which Nicholas owed him. Thus confined, Robert granted everything Nicholas wanted and in the morning Nicholas sent for his neighbours and made Robert acknowledge this contract, in their presence, to Robert's resultant damage of 100 [pounds sterling].

Nicholas offered a defence. He said that, contrary to Robert's story, he had found Robert, at night, in bed with his wife (whose name, which was not given in this plea, was Alice) and at the head of the bed there had been an unsheathed sword. Nicholas acknowledged that he had attacked Robert and bound him as Robert had claimed, as a result of which Robert, together with Nicholas's wife, had attacked him and attempted to kill him. It was because of this that Nicholas, with God's help (deo dante), had knocked Robert to the floor and beat him, simply because he felt Robert would kill him otherwise and for no other reason. Both men sought an inquest. The jurors found that, at the instance of Nicholas, Robert had come to Nicholas's house to spend the night, had slept in John's bed, had not been found by Nicholas in bed with his wife as Nicholas had claimed, and had been badly treated by Nicholas (malicione hospitavit) in order to relax the debts and the lease. Robert was allowed to recover damages of half a mark; Nicholas was amerced -- fined -- 10s.

Nicholas immediately offered a counter-plea.(2) The irony of Nicholas's defence in the previous plea, which would not have been lost on the jurors and which Nicholas's own plea makes clear to us, was that Robert was in fact having an affair with Nicholas's wife and had been so involved for years. Nicholas claimed that nine years previously when he was away in the presence of the justices at Cattishall at the eyre (the court of the itinerant justices who exercised the delegated powers of the king's courts) and on another occasion at Norwich, also in the presence of the justices,(3) Robert came to his house and violated (violavit) his wife, as a result of which she gave Robert goods belonging to Nicholas, and continued to that day to do so, on account of which Nicholas had suffered and had sustained damage of 100 [pounds sterling]. Robert came and defended himself, saying that the scandal which Nicholas had heaped upon him and upon Alice had worked and continued to work against him, on account of which common fame (fama) he had frequently to swear his innocence, legitimately, in the presence of the ordinary -- someone having immediate jurisdiction in an ecclesiastical case, most probably the archdeacon, rural dean or their official -- and in proof of his good name he produced a (written) `instrument of purgation' issued by the ordinary.(4) As to the question of whether Nicholas's wife had alienated or carried off any of Nicholas's goods to his use as was charged, Robert sought an inquest, and so did Nicholas. The inquest jury, in apparent disregard of Robert's defence and the evidence of the instrument of purgation, found that Robert had been having an affair (inepta continentia) with Nicholas's wife at the above time, but it was with the will and assent of Nicholas, and `that, on many occasions, Robert fornicated (incontinenter se habuit) with Nicholas's wife to Nicholas's damage'. Because of his knowledge and consent, Nicholas's damages were assessed at only 10s.; Robert was amerced 20s. and told not to consort with Nicholas's wife in the future under penalty of the court.(5) The issue put to the jury -- the alienation of Nicholas's property by Alice -- does not seem to have been considered.

This was not an isolated incident, even in the record, but involved a series of legal and extra-legal interactions which extended back over at least a decade and would continue for a decade more. This article aims to examine the litigation between the two men both in terms of the wider literature concerning dispute settlement in past societies and, also, in terms of the recent literature concerning developments in the manor court, notably the debate concerning the nature of customary law.