| Date: 28 April 2011, 04:32
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Scripta Diversa (History Series)
By G.O. Sayles
* Publisher: Hambledon & London
* Number Of Pages: 384
* Publication Date: 2003-11-01
* ISBN-10 / ASIN: 0907628125
* ISBN-13 / EAN: 9780907628125
FOREWORD
To read documents that have not been read, much less studied, since
they were written six hundred years or more ago has always had for me
an irresistible fascination. It will be observed that most of the papers
here printed are in the nature of trouvaille, accidental discoveries that
illumine facets of the history of England, Scotland and Ireland from
unexpected and even unorthodox view-points. There is so much more
that could be told about the problems and pleasures of people long
dead and forgotten. We recall the desperate entreaty of the mayor of
London to the keeper of the rolls early in Edward I's reign, asking him
for a replacement of letters patent and close (as listed) which a court
messenger had left on a couch in his house and which had been gobbled
up by a pet doe. Or the long items in 1281 of purchases made in Paris
on behalf of Queen Eleanor, coming to the huge total of ?378. 3s. 6d.
and including a copy of the romance of Isembart (a chanson de geste,
the tale of a French knight who fought alongside a pagan king and,
wounded to the death, was reconciled with Mother Church) costing 20
shillings as well as a new copy of it, illuminated and bound, for which
37s. 5d. was required. Or the detailed description of the royal jewelry
sent to Flanders in 1297, presumably as security against loans. Or the
long topographical survey in 1298 to distinguish the territorial
jurisdictions of St. Augustine's Abbey and of the city of Canterbury. Or
the minute description of the cocket seal newly fashioned for
Hartlepool in March 1305. We may consider the implications arising out
of the three Lincolnshire villeins who sought in 1331 to obtain their
freedom from their lord and master by a process of legal harassment:
each sued him in court for novel disseisin, made the usual excuse for
non-appearance on the first term-day and at the next withdrew from
their action, but only to begin it all over again; of the long deliberations
by justices and others skilled in the law as to whether bastardy should
be determined by a bishop's certificate or by a jury, with in the end a
decision in favour of a jury; of the abbot of Selby's claim to a right of
patronage where the arguments against him are set down seriatim in the
record and each of them followed by his counter-arguments. We recall
an indictment for murder, made before the coroner of Middlesex,
which for special reasons was sent to the king's bench, where in 1420 a
jury found the accused not guilty and were then asked to name the
guilty man, which they did. Juries in their search for and examination
of evidence were often censured by the court for breaking the rules and
might be examined individually, as in 1334, at the bar of the court for
inconsistent statements, or to answer exhaustive questions put to them
by the court in 1373 regarding an assault upon a keeper of the peace in
Lancashire. We must sympathise with them in 1390: they had left the
court to consider their verdict but committed an offence by admitting
into their room a 'stranger' called Stratton to give them information
and 'inasmuch as they did not know how to read or understand the
deeds delivered to them in evidence, one of them gave the stranger a
deed to read, and he read it to them and explained it in the
mother-tongue and handed it back'. It was safer for them to seek
direction from the court, as the jurors did in 1355 when the bishop of
Hereford was charged with illegally excommunicating poachers: asked
if he had ' fulminated' the sentence, they say that they do not know
what "fulminated" means, but if "fulmination" and "denunciation" are
one and the same thing, then they say he did "fulminate" the sentence
of excommunication'. Indeed, in a case of bastardy in 1380 the jurors
'declared that the matter contained in this plea is so obscure,
complicated and unknown that they for the time being cannot act in
accordance with their conscience and discretion in the action for which
they have been sworn and charged, and they are afraid to deliver any
verdict with assurance unless they receive fuller information on the
king's behalf and that of the parties'. For, as they went on, others who
had been empanelled with them and, not being selected, had gone away
'are more trustworthy, more capable and wiser than they and have
fuller and better information than they themselves have at present'. The
king's attorney, the king's Serjeants and the parties agreed to an
adjournment until the next law-term and to allow the supplementation
of jurors as requested.
These are seeming trifles but it is in their light that we must view
great events. As St. Jerome put it, ‘Non sunt contemnenda quasi parva
sine quibus magna constare non possunt'. Furthermore, they make the
past live and without them the story would be repellently dull.
It should be added that the Introduction to this volume under the
title 'Clio's Web' has not previously been printed and that other papers
of mine have recently been published in Richardson and Sayles, The
English Parliament in the Middle Ages (1981).
It is inevitable, in reading proofs and making indexes, that Homer
should sometimes nod, and I am most grateful to my daughter, Hilary,
at the Kunsthistorisch Instituut in Utrecht, for so expertly keeping that
propensity firmly in check. It is entirely proper to end by saying that
without the zest and encouragement and technical knowledge of Mr.
Martin Sheppard of the Hambledon Press this book would not have
appeared.
Warren Hill, G.O.S.
Crowborough, Sussex.
CONTENTS
Acknowledgements vii
Foreword ix
1 Clio's Web 1
2 The Household of Chancery 17
3 The Date of the Second Marriage of Robert Bruce 23
4 The English Company of 1343 27
5 A Dealer in Wardrobe Bills 56
6 Local Chanceries 63
7 The Dissolution of a Gild at York in 1306 65
8 The Formal Judgement on the Traitors of 1322 81
9 The Vindication of the Earl of Kildare from Treason, 1496 89
10 Ecclesiastical Process and the Parsonage of Stabannon in 1351 99
11 Medieval Ulster 123
12 A Reputed Royal Charter of 1218 129
13 The Changed Concept of History: Stubbs and Renan 133
14 Contemporary Sketches of the Members of the Irish
Parliament in 1782 151
15 The Siege of Carrickfergus, 1315-16 212
16 The Court of King's Bench in Law and History 219
17 The Rebellious First Earl of Desmond 239
18 The Battle of Faughart 267
19 King Richard II of England: A Fresh Look 277
20 The Royal Marriages Act/1428 285
21 Richard II in 1381 and 1399 291
22 A Fifteenth-Century Law Reading in English 301
23 The Deposition of Richard II: Three Lancastrian Narratives 313
24 Modus Tenendi Parliamentum: Irish or English? 331
Index 361
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