[229] “Clamor patriæ” in the Latin texts, “Fleta” for example; “clameur de haro” in France, where the practice existed even before the time of Childebert, sixth century, and was still in use, in Normandy at least, until the Revolution. See above, p. 114, [note 1].
[230] This power of running down the first comer was, like many practices of the time, at once a guarantee for public safety and a dangerous arm in the hands of felons. Robbers used it, and it happened sometimes that they imprisoned by this means their own victims. Alisot, wife of Henry of Upatherle, sets forth to the king that her husband was made prisoner by the Scotch at the battle of Stirling, remained their captive more than a year, then returned after having paid forty pounds ransom. In his absence, Thomas of Upatherle and Robert of Prestbury seized on the fields which he possessed at Upatherle, divided them, pulled down the houses and acted as the owners, taking to their own homes all the goods they could move. The prisoner’s return surprised them; as soon as they knew that he had re-appeared on his lands, “the said Thomas, by false agreement between him and the said Robert, raised hue and cry on the said Henry and put upon him that he had robbed him (Thomas) of his chattels to the value of £100.” They were believed; “the said Henry was taken and imprisoned in Gloucester castle for a long time,” waiting for the coming of the justices, exactly as the statute said. Henry recovered his liberty in the end, and obtained a writ against his enemies; but they brought force and came to meet their victim, “and beat the said Henry in the town of Gloucester, that is they bruised his two arms, both his thighs, and both his legs, and his head on both sides, and quite wrecked and vilely treated his body, so that he barely escaped death.” The king’s reply is not satisfactory: “If the husband be alive, the plaint is his, if he be dead the wife’s plaint is nothing.” “Rolls of Parliament,” vol. ii. p. 35, A.D. 1330.
PART II — LAY WAYFARERS
[231] “Diz de l’Erberie.” “Œuvres complètes de Rutebeuf,” Jubinal’s edition, 1874, vol. ii. p. 58.
[232] Isambert, “Recueil Général des anciennes lois Françaises,” vol. iii. p. 16, and iv. p. 676.
[233] “The Play of the Sacrament,” “Philological Society Transactions,” ed. Whiteley Stokes, 1860, p. 127.
[234] “Let scarlet cloth be taken, and let him who is suffering small-pox be entirely wrapped in it or in some other red cloth; I did thus when the son of the illustrious King of England suffered from small-pox; I took care that all about his bed should be red, and that cure succeeded very well.” Original in Latin, “Joannis Anglici, Praxis Medica Rosa Anglica dicta,” Augsburg, 1595, lib. ii. p. 1050.
To which Gaddesden, I now make humble apologies: for since the above lines were written years ago, modern discoveries, those especially of Niels Finsen, of Copenhagen, a man of the truest worth, whom I saw at work, have justified him. Red light, it has been found, really has an influence on the healing of the scars left by small-pox, and even of the disease itself. So, biding the time when his beetle remedy, mentioned next, may prove operative too, I hold Gaddesden justified in turning, from above, the laugh on his deriders: and I submit to the penance in the same contrite spirit as Dr. Johnson once did at Uttoxeter.
[235] “Rosa Anglica,” vol. i. p. 496.
[236] A remedy for diseases of the spleen (“Rosa Anglica”).