THE KING’S PEACE
“Accident plays a greater part in the fourteenth century than perhaps at any other epoch.... At bottom society was neither quite calm nor quite settled, and many of its members were still half savage.”—Jusserand, “English Wayfaring Life.”
The key to these contrasts, and much else that we are slow to imagine in medieval life, lies in the comparative simplicity of that earlier civilization. We must indeed beware of exaggerating this simplicity; there were already many complex threads of social development; again, the subtle tyranny of custom and opinion has in all primitive societies a power which we find it hard to realize. But certainly work and play were far less specialized in Chaucer’s day than in ours; far less definitely sorted into different pigeon-holes of life. The drinking-bouts and rough games which scandalized the reformers of the 13th century had once been religious ceremonies themselves; and the two ideas were still confused in the popular mind. If, again, Justice was so anxious to forbid popular sports, this was partly because some of her own proceedings still smacked strongly of the primeval sporting instinct for which her growing dignity now began to blush. The scenic penances of the pillory and cucking-stool were among the most popular spectacles in every town; and a trial by battle “till the stars began to appear” must often have been a better show than a tournament, even without such further excitement as would be afforded by the match between a woman and a one-armed friar, or the searching of a bishop’s champion for the contraband prayers and incantations sewn under his clothes, or the miracle by which a defeated combatant, who was supposed to have been blinded and emasculated in due course of justice, was found afterwards to be perfectly whole again by saintly intercession. Still more exciting were the hue and cry after a felon, his escape to some sanctuary, and his final race for life or “abjuration of the realm.” What vivid recollections there must have been in Chaucer’s family, for instance, of his great-uncle’s death under circumstances which are thus drily recorded by the coroner (November 12, 1336): “The Jurors say that Simon Chaucer and one Robert de Upton, skinner, ... after dinner, quarrelled with one another in the high street opposite to the shop of the said Robert, in the said parish, by reason of rancour previously had between them, whereupon Simon wounded Robert on the upper lip; which John de Upton, son of Robert, perceiving, he took up a ‘dorbarre,’ without the consent of his father, and struck Simon on the left hand and side, and on the head, and then fled into the church of St. Mary of Aldermari-chirche; and in the night following he secretly escaped from the same. He had no chattels. Simon lived, languishing, till the said Tuesday, when he died of the blows, early in the morning.... The Sheriffs are ordered to attach the said John when he can be found in their bailiwick, ...” There was an evident sporting element in this race for sanctuary, and the subsequent secret escape; and we cannot help feeling some sympathy with the son whose dorbarre had intervened so unwisely, yet so well. But this affair, except for its Chaucerian interest, is commonplace; to realize the true humours of criminal justice one needs to read through a few pages of the records published by the Surtees Society, Professors Maitland and Thorold Rogers, Dr. Gross, and Mr. Walter Rye. We may there find how Seman the hermit was robbed, beaten, and left for dead by Gilbert of Niddesdale; how Gilbert unluckily fell next day into the hands of the King’s serjeant, and the hermit had still strength enough to behead his adversary in due form of law, the Northumberland custom being that a victim could redeem his stolen goods only by doing the executioner’s dirty work; how, again, Thomas the Reeve wished to chastise his concubine with a cudgel, but casually struck and killed the child in her arms, and the jury brought it in a mere accident; how an unknown woman came and bewitched John of Kerneslaw in his own house one evening, so that the said John used to make the sign of the cross over his loins when any man said Benedicite; how in a fit of fury he thrust the witch through with a spear, and her corpse was solemnly burned, while he was held to have done the deed “in self-defence, as against the Devil;” or, again, how Hugh Maidenlove escaped from Norwich Castle with his fellow sheep-stealer William the Clerk, and carried him stealthily on his back to the sanctuary of St. John in Berstreet, by reason that the said William’s feet were so putrefied by the duress of the prison that he could not walk.[269] Let us take in full, as throwing a more intimate light on law and police, another case with a different beginning and a different ending to Simon Chaucer’s (November 6, 1311). “It came to pass at Yelvertoft ... that a certain William of Wellington, parish chaplain of Yelvertoft, sent John his parish clerk to John Cobbler’s house to buy candles, namely a pennyworth. But the same John would not send them without the money; wherefore the aforesaid William waxed wroth, took a stick, and went to the house of the said John and broke in the door upon him and smote this John on the fore part of the head with the same stick, so that his brains gushed forth and he died forthwith. And [William] fled hastily to the Church of Yelvertoft.... Inquest was made before J. of Buckingham by four neighbouring townships, to wit, Yelverton, Crick, Winwick and Lilbourne. They say on their oath as aforesaid, that they know no man guilty of John’s death save the said William of Wellington. He therefore came before the aforesaid coroner and confessed that he had slain the said John; wherefore he abjured the realm of England in the presence of the said four townships brought together [for this purpose]. And the port of Dover was assigned to him.”[270]
This “abjuration of the realm,” a custom of English growth, which our kings transplanted also into Normandy, was one of the most picturesque scenes of medieval life. It was designed to obviate some of the abuses of that privilege of sanctuary which had no doubt its real uses in those days of club-law. What happened in fact to William of Wellington, we may gather not only from legal theorists of the Middle Ages, but from the number of actual cases collected by Réville.[271] The criminal remained at bay in the church; and no man might as yet hinder John his clerk from bringing him food, drink, or any other necessary. The coroner came as soon as he could, generally within three or four days at longest; but he might possibly be detained for ten days or more, and meanwhile (to quote from an actual case in 1348) “the parish kept watch over him ... and the coroner found the aforesaid William in the said church, and asked him wherefore he was there, and whether or not he would yield himself to the King’s peace.” The matter was too plain for William to deny; his confession was duly registered, and he took his oath to quit the realm within forty days.[272] Coming to the gate of the church or churchyard, he swore solemnly before the assembled crowd: “Oyez, oyez, oyez! Coroner and other good folk: I, William de Wellington, for the crime of manslaughter which I have committed, will quit this land of England nevermore to return, except by leave of the kings of England or their heirs: so help me God and His saints!” The coroner then assigned him a port, and a reasonable time for the journey; from Yelverton it would have been about a week. His bearing during this week was minutely prescribed: never to stray from the high-road, or spend two nights in the same place; to make straight for his port, and to embark without delay. If at Dover he found no vessel ready to sail, then he was bound daily to walk into the sea up to his knees—or, according to stricter authorities, up to his neck—and to take his rest only on the shore, in proof that he was ready in spirit to leave the land which by his crimes he had forfeited. His dress meanwhile was that of a felon condemned to death—a long, loose white tunic, bare feet, and a wooden cross in his hand to mark that he was under protection of Holy Church.
Such abjurations were matters of common occurrence; yet Dover beach was not crowded with these unwilling pilgrims. A few, of course, were overtaken and slain on the way, in spite of their sacred character, by the friends of the murdered man. But many more must have reflected that, since they would find neither friends nor welcome abroad, there was less risk in taking their chance as runaways at home. If caught, they were liable to be strung up out of hand; but how many chances there must have been in the fugitive’s favour! and, even in the last resort, some plausible excuse might possibly soften the captors’ hearts. One criminal, who might possibly even have rubbed shoulders with Chaucer in London, pleaded that he had taken sanctuary and been torn from the altar. This was disproved, and he took refuge in a convenient dumbness. For such afflictions the Middle Ages knew a sovereign remedy, and he was led forthwith to the gallows. Here he found his tongue again, and pleaded clergy; but he failed to read his neck-verse, and was hanged. Often the miserable homesick wanderers came back and tried to save their lives by turning approvers against fellow-criminals. In 1330 Parliament had to interfere, and ruled that John English [Lengleyse], who three years before had slain the Mayor of Lynn, taken sanctuary, and abjured the realm, could not now be suffered to purchase his own pardon by accusing others.
What happened, it may be asked, if William refused either to acknowledge his guilt or to stand his trial, and simply clung to the sanctuary? At least half the criminals thus refused; and here even theory was uncertain. If, at the end of his forty days of grace, the lay authorities tore him from the altar, then they were pretty sure of excommunication from the bishop. The lawyers held, therefore, that it was for the Ordinary, the Archdeacon, the Parson, to expel this man who had outstayed even the ecclesiastical welcome; but we all know the risk of dragging even a good-tempered dog from under a chair where he has taken refuge; and how could the poor bishop be expected to deal with this desperado? The matter was thus, like so many others, left very much to chance. The village did its best to starve the man out, and meanwhile to watch him night and day. One offending William, whose forty days had expired on August 12, 1374, held out against this blockade until September 9, when he fled. Then there was a hue and cry of the whole village; he might indeed run the gauntlet and make good his escape, leaving his quondam neighbours to prove before the justices that they had done all they could, or to pay a fine for their negligence. Often, however, a stick or stone would bring him down at close quarters, or an arrow from afar; then in a moment he was overpowered and beheaded, and that chase was remembered for years as the greatest event in Yelvertoft.
There was indeed one gross irregularity in the case of Sir William de Wellington, but an irregularity which modern readers will readily pardon. Becket had given his life for the freedom of the Church as he conceived it, and especially for the principle that no cleric should be punished by the lay courts for any offence, however heinous. The death of “the holy blissful martyr” did indeed establish this principle in theory; and, with the most powerful corporation in the world to protect it, it was, in fact, kept far more strictly than most legal theories. William, therefore, after dashing John the Cobbler’s brains upon the floor, might well have found it necessary to take refuge in the church from the blind fury of summary and illegal vengeance; but he need not have abjured the realm. In theory he had simply to confess his offence, or to stand his trial and suffer conviction from the King’s judges; then the bishop’s commissary stepped forward and claimed the condemned clerk in the name of the Church. The bishop, disregarding the verdict of the jury, would try him again by the primitive process of compurgation; that is, would bid him present himself with a specified number of fellow-clergy or persons of repute, who would join William in swearing on the Bible to his innocence. In this particular case William would probably have failed to find proper compurgators, and the bishop might, if he had chosen, have imprisoned him for life. But this involved very considerable expense and responsibility; it was a more invidious and costly matter than to prosecute nowadays for alleged illegal practices, and the documents show us very clearly that only the smallest fraction of these criminous clerks were imprisoned for any length of time. Indeed, for any such strict system, the episcopal prisons would have needed to be ten times their actual size. Equally seldom do we find notices of the next drastic punishment in the bishop’s power—the total degradation of the offender from his Orders, after which the lay judges might punish him unchallenged for his second crime. Many of the guilty parties did, in fact, “purge” themselves successfully, and were thus let loose on society as before; this we have on the unimpeachable testimony of the Oxford Chancellor Gascoigne, even if it were not sufficiently evident from the records themselves. The notoriously guilty received more or less inadequate punishments, and were sometimes simply shunted on to another diocese, a shifting of responsibility which was practised even by the strictest of reforming prelates. The curious reader may trace for himself, in the English summaries from Bishop Giffard’s register, the practical working of these clerical privileges.[273] First, there are frequent records of criminous clerks handed over to the bishop, in the ordinary routine, by the lay justices. Sometimes the bishop had to interfere in a more summary fashion, as when he commissioned four rural deans “to cause Robert, rector of the Church of the Blessed Mary in the market of Bristol, to be released, he being suspected of homicide having fled to the church, and having been besieged here; and to excommunicate all who should oppose them” (49). Robert had not yet gone through any formal trial; the bishop apparently rescued him merely from the fury of the people; but, even if he had been tried and condemned by the King’s courts, he had still a liberal chance of escape. A few pages further in the register (79) we find a declaration “that whereas William de Capella, an acolyte, was accused and condemned for the death of John Gogun of Pershore, before the justices itinerant at Worcester, and was on demand of the bishop’s commissary delivered up by the same justices, the same William being afterwards examined before the sub-prior of Worcester and Geoffrey de Cubberlay, clerk, solemnly declared that he was in nowise guilty; and at length upon proclamations, no one opposing, with four priests, two sub-deacons, and six acolytes, his compurgators, he was admitted to purgation and declared innocent of the said crime; and after giving security to answer any accusers if required, he was permitted to depart freely. And it is forbidden under pain of anathema to any one to lay such homicide to the charge of the said William.” Sometimes, however, the scandal was too notorious; and, though no mere layman had the least legal right to interfere with the bishop’s own private justice, the King would apply pressure in the name of common sense. So on page 408 we find a “letter from King Edward I. to John Peckham, Archbishop of Canterbury, desiring him to refuse purgation to Robert de Lawarre, a clerk accused of theft and homicide and in the gaol of Worcester;” and a few months later the same strenuous champion of justice sent a more general warning to the Bishop of Worcester, “forbidding him to take the purgation of clerks detained in his prison, whose crimes are notorious; but with regard to others he may take such purgation” (410). The system was, indeed, notoriously faulty, and did much to encourage that venality in the clerical courts which moved Chaucer’s laughter and the indignation of his contemporaries. The clergy, says Gower, are judges in their own cause, and each shields the other: “My turn to-day; to-morrow thou shalt do the like for me.” In vain did councils decree year after year that they should bear no arms; rectors (as we have seen in Chapter VIII.) imperturbably bequeathed their formidable daggers by will, and duly registered the bequest in the Bishop’s court. “O Priest, answer to my call; wherefore hast thou so long a knife dangling at thy belt? art thou armed to fight in God’s quarrel or the devil’s?... The wild beast in rutting-season becomes fiercer and more wanton; if ever he be thwarted, forthwith he will fight and strike; and that is the same cause why the priests fight when they turn to lechery like beasts; they wander idly everywhere seeking and hunting for women, with whom they corrupt the country.”[274] A century later the Commons pressed the King for fresh and more stringent laws to remedy the notorious fact that “upon trust of the privilege of the Church, divers persons have been the more bold to commit murder, rape, robbery, theft, and other mischievous deeds, because they have been continually admitted to the benefit of the clergy as often as they did offend in any of the [aforesaid].”
This petition of the Commons and the Act which resulted from it, had already often been anticipated by the rough-and-ready justice of the people themselves. In 1382, the citizens of London took these matters into their own hands, and Chaucer had probably seen more than one unchaste priest marched with his guilty partner to the common lock-up in Cornhill, to the accompaniment of derisive music, and amid the jeers of the populace. Eight years after his death, the city authorities began to keep a regular record of such cases, and “Letter-Book,” I, “contains some dozens of similar charges, mostly against chaplains celebrating in the city, temp. Henry IV. to Henry VI.”[275] This lynch-law is abundantly explained by the very disproportionate numbers of criminous clerks whom we often find recorded in coroners’ or assize rolls, and who were frequently no mere shavelings, but priests and substantial incumbents.[276] In 1200 these men were almost above the law; in 1600 they were amenable to justice as though they had not been anointed with oil; in 1400 it depended (as in London and in this Yelvertoft case) whether the popular indignation was strong enough to beat down the clerical privilege.
“Accident plays a more important part in the 14th century than in any other age,” and in many ways England was no doubt the merrier for this. Prosaic and uniform modern Justice, bewigged as well as blindfolded, could no more have been foreseen by Chaucer than railways or life insurance. First of all, there was the chance of bribing the judge in the regular and acknowledged way of business.[277] Then, the prospect of a Royal pardon; Edward III. more than once proclaimed such a general amnesty; and a petition of the Commons in 1389, forthwith embodied in an Act of Parliament, is eloquent on the “outrageous mischiefs and damages which have befallen the Realm because treasons, murders, and rapes of women are too commonly perpetrated; and all the more so because charters of pardon have been too lightly granted in such cases.” The terms of the petition and bill, and the heroic measures of remedy, are sufficiently significant of the state of things with which the reformers had to contend.[278]
Moreover, justice offered at every point a series of splendid uncertainties, and a thousand giddy turns of fortune’s wheel. Apart from the practical impunity of the powerful, even the poorest felon had more chances in his favour than the modern plutocrat; for there is no higher prize than a man’s own life, and no American millionaire enjoys facilities for homicide equal to those of our 14th-century villagers. Such regrettable incidents, as reckoned from the coroners’ rolls, were from five to forty times more frequent then than in our days—it depends whether we count them as mere manslaughters or, according to the stricter idea of modern justice, as downright murders. No doubt stabbing was never so frequent or so systematic in England as at Naples; but thousands of worthy Englishmen might have cried with Chaucer’s Host, “for I am perilous with knife in hand!” Many readers have doubtless noted how, in this very passage, Harry Bailey reckons as probable punishment for homicide not the gallows, but only outlawry—