What resource remained for the unhappy William and Richard, authors of the petition? Resort to justice? This they wanted to do. But as they were going for this purpose to Stafford, chief town of the county, they found at the gates some retainers of their persecutors, who barred their passage and even attacked them so hotly that they had difficulty in escaping without grievous hurt. They returned to Lichfield, watched by their enemies, and led there a pitiable existence. “And, sir, the aforesaid William and Richard, and several people of the town of Lichfield, are menaced by the said robbers and their maintainers, so that they dare not go anywhere out of the said town.”[176]
This legal document, the original of which has been preserved, is, in many ways, characteristic, and shows us local tyrants not unlike the latter day ones in the Promessi Sposi and their terrible bravi. One may, especially, notice the coolness and determination of the knights, not disconcerted by the death of four of their number; the attack under cover of a wood; the selection of the victims, “garsuns” belonging to rich merchants; the request for hospitality in a priory under pretext of journeying in the king’s service; the expeditious justice of the bailiff, and the persistent surveillance to which the victims were subjected by their lordly robbers.
These, though remarkable, are not quite exceptional facts, and Robert of Rideware was not the only man on the look out in the copses along the roads. Other noblemen were, like him, supported by devoted retainers, ready for any enterprise. Capes and liveries of their masters’ colours were given to them, and they went about as the {153} uniformed soldiers of their chief; a lord well surrounded with his partizans considered himself as above the common law, and it was no easy matter for justice to make herself respected by him. The custom of having a number of resolute followers wearing one’s colours became universal at the end of Edward III’s reign and under Richard II; it survived in spite of statutes[177] during the whole of the fifteenth century, and contributed to render even more embittered and bloody the War of the Roses.
But even outside the periods of civil war, the misdeeds of certain barons and their retainers, or of retainers acting on their own account under cover of their lord’s colours—“notoirs meffesours et meintenours of meffesours,” the statute said of both,[178]—were at times so frequent and serious that parts of the country seemed to be in a state of war. Throughout the fourteenth century, the abuse called maintenance, which word meant in old French protection, was on the increase, in spite of all the efforts of king and Parliament. The great of the land, and some lesser people too, had their own men, sworn to their service and ready to do anything they were commanded, which consisted sometimes in the most monstrous deeds, such as securing property or other goods to which neither their masters, nor any claimant paying their master in order to be thus “protected,”[179] had any title. They terrorized the rightful {154} owners, the judges and the juries, ransoming, beating and maiming any opponent.[180]
Statutes were, as usual, numerous, well-meant, peremptory, and inefficient. The evil was so general that Edward III had to forbid the people nearest him, the chief officers of his court, his “dearest consort, the queen,” his son the prince of Wales, the prelates of Holy Church,[181] to thus interfere with the regular course of the law. The will of the king is that “the poor should enjoy their right just as the rich.”[182] But they do not; great ladies practice maintenance, one among others even dearer to the king than his dear consort, namely his mistress, Alice Perers.[183]
A new reign begins; maintenance flourishes better than ever before. The preamble of a statute of the second year of Richard II[184] gives a perhaps somewhat exaggerated picture of these disorders so as to better justify rigorous measures, but the description must have been at least partly true. We there see—and the king, it is stated, has learnt it both from the petitions addressed to parliament and by public rumour—that certain people in several parts of the kingdom claimed “to have right to divers lands, tenements and other possessions, and some espying women and damsels unmarried, and some desiring to make maintenance in their marches, do gather together to a great number of men of arms and archers, to the manner of war, and confederate themselves by oath and other confederacy.” These people, having no “consideration to God, nor to the laws of Holy Church, nor of the land, {155} nor to right, nor justice, but refusing and setting apart all process of the law, do ride in great routs in divers parts of England, and take possession and set them in divers manors, lands, and other possessions of their own authority, and hold the same long with such force, doing many manner apparelments of war; and in some places do ravish women and damsels, and bring them into strange countries, where please them; and in some places lying in await with such routs do beat and maim, murder and slay the people, for to have their wives and their goods, and the same women and goods retain to their own use; and sometimes take the king’s liege people in their houses, and bring and hold them as prisoners, and at the last put them to fine and ransom as it were in a land of war; and sometimes come before the justices in their sessions in such guise with great force, whereby the justices be afraid and not hardy to do the law; and do many other riots and horrible offences, whereby the realm in divers parts is put in great trouble, to the great mischief and grievance of the people.”[185] Which shows how vainly the Good Parliament had worked, for, in 1376, the Commons had already made exactly similar complaints: “Now great riot begins anew by {156} many people in different parts of England who ride with a great number of armed men,” etc.[186]
Besides these organized and quasi-seignorial bands, there were ordinary robbers, numerous enough for chantries to have been founded “for the safety of travellers who were in danger from thieves.”[187] Against those people who impeded travelling much more grievously than ever the floods and broken bridges, Edward I had taken, in 1285, special measures in the Statute of Winchester. These men were described there as accustomed to crouch down in the ditches, coppice, or brushwoods near the roads, especially those linking two market towns. This was, of course, the passage-way of many easy victims, richly laden. The king orders therefore that, for a space of two hundred feet, the ground on each side of the road should be cleared in such a manner that there remain neither coppice nor brushwood, nor hollow nor ditch which serve as shelter for malefactors: “où leur peut tapir pur mal fere.” Only large trees such as oaks might be left. The owner of the soil had to do the work; if he neglected it, he would be responsible for robberies and murders, and have to pay a fine to the king. If the road went through a park, the same obligation lay on the lord, unless he consented to close it by a wall or a hedge so thick, or by a ditch so wide and deep, that robbers could not cross them: “qe meffesurs ne pussent passer ne returner pur mal fere.” The king sets the example and orders such clearings to be made at once on the lands belonging to the crown.[188]
After which, things continued pretty much as before: “Meanwhile,” writes a chronicler for the years 1303–05, {157} “certain malefactors, bound together, four, six, ten or twenty went in company to fairs and markets, rifled the houses of honest people and were not ashamed to capture through their misdoings the goods of the faithful and rich people.”[189] Worse than that: we find as we progress in the fourteenth century, that these common thieves had improved their methods and increased their profits. They allied themselves, sometimes secretly, sometimes openly, to the seignorial bands, and were not henceforward unticketed men for whom no one was responsible. The Commons were aware of the fact, and complained accordingly: “Whereas it is notoriously known throughout all the shires of England that robbers, thieves, and other malefactors on foot and on horseback, go and ride on the highway through all the land in divers places, committing larcenies and robberies: may it please our lord the king to charge the nobility of the land that none such be maintained by them, privately nor openly; but that they help to arrest and take such bad ones.”[190] In the preceding parliament the same complaints had been made, and the king had already promised that he would order “such remedy as should be pleasing to God and man.”[191] But neither God nor man had had apparently cause to be pleased.
In addition to the support of the great, these evildoers enjoyed various privileges. Some of them could be met along the roads, cross in hand; both king and church forbade seizing them, they were men who had forsworn the realm. When a robber, a murderer, or any felon found himself too hard pressed, he fled into a church and found safety. In almost all societies having reached a certain stage of civilization the same privilege has existed or still exists. It was known to the Romans, {158} was legislated about by Theodosius the Great, Justinian and the early councils,[192] and is still in constant use in many parts of the East. A church in the Middle Ages was an inviolable place: whoever crossed its threshold was under the protection of God, and many wonderful miracles, the history of which was familiar to everybody, attested with what particular favour the right of sanctuary was regarded especially by the Holy Virgin. At Walsingham, one of the most famous British pilgrimages, people never failed to go and see the “Gate of the Knight,” a gate which had stretched itself so as to give miraculous shelter to a man on horseback, hard pursued by his enemies, and who found himself thus opportunely placed beyond the reach of men as well as beyond the reach of law.
