MEDIÆVAL LATIN LAW TERMS.
The old charters and deeds of Manchester, Warrington, and other Lancashire towns, contain various words now obsolete, and amongst others the words namare and namium, which it is not easy to render accurately. The first may be translated to seize in pledge, to arrest, to distrain; the second is a pledge, or a distress, what is seized by distraint. In connexion with the substantive namium, the following anecdote of the great Sir Thomas More may be told, as illustrative of the obscurity of some of these ancient law terms. It is said that Sir Thomas, when travelling, arrived at Padua just as a boasting Professor had placarded the walls of that University with a challenge to all the world to dispute with him on any subject or in any art, and that Sir Thomas accepted the challenge, and proposed for his subject this question:—
"AN AVERIA CARUCÆ CAPTA IN VETITO NAMIO SINT IRREPLEGIBILIA?"
which, it is almost needless to add, proved such a stumbling-block to the challenger, who did not know even the very terms of the question, that he surrendered at discretion, and acknowledged himself vanquished.[223]
Perhaps the best way to English the puzzling question, would be to render it thus:—"Whether plough-cattle, taken in illegal distress, are irrepleviable?" But several of the words are susceptible of two meanings. Thus averia means goods, as well as cattle; caruca, a cart, as well as a plough; namium, a pledge, as well as a distress. It is not to be wondered at that the continental Professor found himself unable even to comprehend the terms of this perplexing question.
CUSTOMS [DUES] AT WARRINGTON.
Amongst the Tower records are three royal charters bearing date respectively 3 Edward II., 15 Edward II., and 12 Edward III. (1309-10, 1321-2, 1338), and granting, for the purpose of effecting repairs in the bridges and pavements, certain temporary customs on articles brought into Warrington for sale. In the two first of these charters, a custom of one farthing is imposed on every 100 faggots and every 1000 turves; and of one halfpenny on every cart-load of wood or wind-blown timber. The last of the charters imposes a custom of one penny on every 1000 faggots, one farthing on every 10,000 turves, one penny on every ship-load of turves, and one halfpenny weekly on every cart-load of wood and coals [carbonum, ? charcoal]. Amongst other articles, a custom was imposed on salt, on bacon, on cheese (probably from Cheshire), on butter, on lampreys, on salmon, on pelts of sheep, goats, stags, hinds, deer, does, hares, rabbits, foxes, cats, and squirrels; on cloths in the entire piece; on grice work (i.e., fur of the skins of blue weasels); on Cordovan leather, on oil in flasks (lagenas olei); on hemp, on linen webs; on Aylesbury webs and linen; on canvas, Irish cloths, Galways and worsteds; on silks, diapered with gold (de Samite) and tissue; on silks within gold; on sendal [or cendal, a kind of silk]; on cloth of baudekin [silk cloth, interwoven with threads of gold]; on gads of maple, and on Aberdeen gads; on every tun of wine (et cinerum—the ashes of burnt wine lees); on honey; on wool in sacks; on tin, brass, copper, iron, and lead; on alum, copperas, argil, and verdigris; on onions and garlic; and on stock-fish, salt mullet, herrings, and sea-fish, amongst a number of other articles.[224]
FOOTNOTES:
[202] Baines's Lancashire.