Part 33

Goods which could only be sold by the standard weights and measures (such as ounces, pounds, gallons, bushels) included sacks of wool, leather, skins, ropes, glass, iron, lead, canvas, linen cloth, tallow, spices, confections cheese, herrings, sugar, pepper, cinnamon, nutmeg, wheat, barley, oats, bread, and ale. The prices required for bread and ale were based on the market price for the wheat, barley, and oats from which they were made.

The punishment for repeated violations of required measures, weights, or prices of bread and ale by a baker or brewer; selling of spoiled or unwholesome wine, meat, fish by brewers, butchers, or cooks; or a steward or bailiff receiving a bribe was reduced to placement in a pillory with a shaven head so that these men would still be fit for military service and not overcrowd the gaols.

Forest penalties were changed so that "No man shall lose either life or member for killing of our deer. But if any man be taken and convicted for taking our venison, he shall make a grievous fine, if he has anything. And if he has nothing to lose, he shall be imprisoned for a year and a day. And after that, if he can find sufficient sureties, he shall be delivered, and, if not, he shall abjure the realm of England."

The Forest Charter provided that: Every freeman may allow his pigs to eat in his own wood in the King's forest. He may also drive his pigs through the King's forest and tarry one night within the forest without losing any of his pigs. But people having greyhounds must keep them out of the forest so they don't maim the deer.

The Forest Charter also allowed magnates traveling through the King's forest on the King's command to come to him, to kill one or two deer as long as it was in view of the forester if he was present, or while having a horn blown, so it did not seem to be theft.

After a period of civil war, the following statutes were enacted:

"All persons, as well of high as of low estate, shall receive justice in the King's Court; and none shall take any such revenge or distress by his own authority, without award of our court, although he is damaged or injured, whereby he would have amends of his neighbor either higher or lower." The penalty is a fine according to the trespass.

A fraudulent conveyance to a minor or lease for a term of years made to defraud a Lord of a wardship shall be void. A Lord who maliciously and wrongfully alleges this to a court shall pay damages and costs.

If a Lord will not render unto an heir his land when he comes of age or takes possession away from an heir of age or removes anything from the land, he shall pay damages. (The king retained the right to take possession of an heir's land for a year or, in lieu of this, to take one year's profit from the land in addition to the relief.)

Kinsmen of a minor heir who have custody of his land held in socage shall make no waste, sale, nor destruction of the inheritance and shall answer to the heir when he comes of age for the issues of the land, except for the reasonable costs of these guardians.

No lord may distrain any of his tenants. No one may drive animals taken by distraint out of the county where they have been taken.

"Farmers during their terms, shall not make waste, sale, nor exile of house, woods, and men, nor of any thing else belonging to the tenements which they have to farm".

Church law required that planned marriages be publically announced by the priest so that any impediment could be made known. If a marriage was clandestine or both parties knew of an impediment, or it was within the prohibited degrees of consanguinity, the children would be illegitimate. According to church rules, a man could bequeath his personal property subject to certain family rights. These were that if only the wife survived, she received half the property. Similarly, if children survived, but no wife, they received half the property. When the wife and children survived, each party received one third. The church hoped that the remaining fraction would go to the church as a reward for praying for the deceased's soul. It taught that dying without a will was sinful. Adults were to confess their sins at least yearly to their parish priest, which confession would be confidential.

Henry de Bracton, a royal justice and the last great ecclesiastical attorney, wrote an unfinished treatise: A Tract on the Laws and Customs of England, systematizing and organizing the law of the court rolls with definitions and general concepts and describing court practice and procedure. It was influenced by his knowledge of Roman legal concepts, such as res judicata, and by his own opinions, such as that the law should go from precedent to precedent. He also argued that the will and intent to injure was the essence of murder, so that neither an infant nor a madman should be held liable for such and that degrees of punishment should vary with the level of moral guilt in a killing. He thought the deodand to be unreasonable.

Bracton defines the requirements of a valid and effective gift as: "It must be complete and absolute, free and uncoerced, extorted neither by fear nor through force. Let money or service play no part, lest it fall into the category of purchase and sale, for if money is involved there will then be a sale, and if service, the remuneration for it. If a gift is to be valid the donor must be of full age, for if a minor makes a gift it will be ineffective since (if he so wishes) it shall be returned to him in its entirety when he reaches full age. Also let the donor hold in his own name and not another's, otherwise his gift may be revoked. And let him, at the least, be of sound mind and good memory, though an invalid, ill and on his death bed, for a gift make under such conditions will be good if all the other [requirements] of a valid gift are met. For no one, provided he is of good memory, ought to be kept from the administration or disposition of his own property when affected by infirmity, since it is only then that he must make provision for his family, his household and relations, given stipends and settle his bequests; otherwise such persons might suffer damage without fault. But since charters are sometimes fraudulently drawn and gifts falsely taken to be made when they are not, recourse must therefore be had to the country and the neighborhood so that the truth may be declared."

In Bracton's view, a villein could buy his own freedom and the child of a mixed marriage was free unless he was born in the tenement of his villein parent.

- Judicial Procedure -

The Royal Court split up into several courts with different specialties and became more like departments of state than offices of the King's household. The justices were career civil servants knowledgeable in the civil and canon law. The Court of the King's Bench (a marble slab in Westminster upon which the throne was placed) traveled with the king and heard criminal cases and pleas of the Crown. Any use of force, however trivial, was interpreted as breach of the royal peace and could be brought before the king's bench. Its records were the coram rege rolls. The title of the Chief Justiciar of England changed to the Chief Justice of England. The Court of Common Pleas heard civil cases brought by one subject against another. Pursuant to the Magna Carta, it sat only at one place, the Great Hall in Westminster. It had concurrent jurisdiction with the King's Bench over trespass cases. Its records were the de banco rolls. The Court of the Exchequer with its subsidiary department of the Treasury was in almost permanent session at Westminster, collecting the Crown's revenue and enforcing the Crown's rights.

Appeals from these courts could be made to the king and/or his small council, which was the curia regis and could hear any plea of the land. In 1234, the justiciar as the principal royal executive officers and chief presiding officer over the curia regis ended. In 1268, a chief justiciar was appointed the hold pleas before the king. Henceforth, a justiciar was a royal officer who dealt only with judicial work. About the same time the presiding justice of the court of common pleas also came to be styled justiciar or chief justice. Justices were no longer statesmen or politicians, but simply men learned in the law.

Membership in or attendance at the great council or parliament no longer rested upon feudal tenure, but upon a writ of summons which was, to a degree, dependent on the royal will.

Crown pleas included issues of the King's property, fines due to him, murder (a body found with no witnesses to a killing), homicide (a killing for which there were witnesses), rape, wounding, mayhem, consorting, larceny, robbery, burglary, arson, poaching, unjust imprisonment, selling cloth by non-standard widths, selling wine by non-standard weights. Crown causes were pled by the king's serjeants or servants at law, who were not clerics. Apprentices at law learned pleading from them.

Between the proprietary action and the possessory assizes there is growing use in the king's courts of writs of entry, by which a tenant may be ordered to give up land, e.g. by a recent flaw in a tenant's title, for a term which has expired, by a widow for her late husband's land, or by an heir who has become of full age from his guardian. For instance: " ...Command Tertius that ... he render to Claimant, who is of full age, as it is said, ten acres ...which he claims to be his right and inheritance and into which the said Tertius has no entry save by Secundus, to whom Primus demised [gaged] them, who had only the wardship thereof while the aforesaid Claimant was under age, as he says...". But most litigation about land is still through the writ of right for proprietary issues and the assizes of novel disseisin and mort d'ancestor for possessory issues.

Royal itinerant justices traveled to the counties every seven years. There, they gave interrogatories to local assizes of twelve men to determine what had happened there since the last eyre. All boroughs had to send twelve burgesses who were to indict any burgesses suspected of breaking the royal law. Every crime, every invasion of royal rights, and every neglect of police duties was to be presented and tried. Suspects were held in gaol until their cases could be heard and gaol breaks were common. Punishment after trial was prison for serious crimes, expulsion from the realm for less serious crimes, and pledges for good behavior for lesser crimes. The visitation of these justices was anticipated with trepidation. In 1237, the residents of Cornwall hid in the woods rather than face the itinerant justices.

Royal coroners held inquests on all sudden deaths to determine whether they were accidental or not. If not, royal justices held trial. They also had duties in treasure trove and shipwreck cases.

Justices of assize, justices of the peace, and itinerant justices operated at the county level. The traditional county courts had lost much jurisdiction to the royal courts and were now limited to personal actions in causes involving usually no more than 40s. There were pleas of trespass and debt, unjust seizure and detention of beasts, rent collection, claims of fugitive villeins and their goods, nuisances, and encroachments. The sheriff still constitutes and conducts the court. The county court met every three or four weeks, usually in the sheriff's castle located in the chief borough of the county, but some met in the open air.

Twice a year the sheriff visited each hundred in the county to hold a turn [court for small offenses, such as encroachment of public land, brewing and baking contrary to government regulations, and use of dishonest weights and measures.]. Everyone who held freehold land in the hundred except the greater magnates had to attend or be fined for absence. The sheriff annually viewed frankpledge, in which every layman without land that could be forfeited for felony, including villeins, were checked for being in a tithing, a group of neighbors responsible for each other's good conduct. This applied to every boy who had reached the age of twelve. He had to swear on the Bible "I will be a lawful man and bear loyalty to our lord the King and his heirs, and I will be justicable to my chief tithing man, so help me God and the saints." Each tithing man paid a penny to the sheriff.

The hundred court decided cases of theft, viewing of boundaries of land, claims for tenurial services, claims for homage, relief, and for wardship; enfeoffments made, battery and brawls not amounting to felony, wounding and maiming of beasts, collection of debts, trespass, detinue [detention of personal property which originally was rightfully acquired] and covenant, which now requires a sealed writing; defamation, and enquiries and presentments arising from the assizes of bread and ale and measures. A paid bailiff had responsibility for the hundred court, which met every three weeks.

Still in existence is the old self-help law of hamsocne, the thief hand-habbende, the thief back-berend, the old summary procedure where the thief is caught in the act, AEthelstan's laws, Edward the Confessor's laws, and Kent's childwyte [fine for begetting a bastard on a lord's female bond slave]. Under the name of "actio furti" [appeal of larceny] is the old process by which a thief can be pursued and goods vindicated. As before and for centuries later, deodands were forfeited to the king to appease God's wrath. These chattel which caused the death of a person were usually carts, cart teams, horses, boats, or mill-wheels. Then they were forfeited to the community, which paid the king their worth. Sometimes the justices named the charitable purpose for which the deodand was to be spent, such as the price of a boat to go to the repair of a bridge.