Church law provided that only consent between a man and woman was necessary for marriage. There needn't be witnesses, ceremony, nor consummation. Consent could not be coerced. Penalties in marriage agreements for not going through with the marriage were deemed invalid. Villeins and slaves could marry without their lords' or owners' permission. A couple living together could be deemed married. Persons related by blood within certain degrees, which changed over time, of consanguinity were forbidden to marry. This was the only ground for annulment of a marriage. A legal separation could be given for adultery, cruelty, or heresy. Annulment, but not separation, could result in remarriage. Fathers were usually ordered to provide some sustenance and support for their illegitimate children. The court punished infanticide and abortion. Counterfeiters of money, arsonists, and robbers of pilgrims and merchants were to be excommunicated. Church sanctuary was to be given to fugitives of violent feuds until they could be given a fair trial.
- Judicial Procedure -
Courts extant now are the Royal Court, the King's Court of the Exchequer, county courts, and hundred courts, which were under the control of the King. His appointed justices administered justice in these courts on regular circuits. The sheriff now only produced the proper people and preserved order at the county courts and presided over the nonroyal pleas and hundred courts. He impaneled recognitors, made arrests, and enforced the decisions of the royal courts. Also there are manor courts, borough courts, and ecclesiastical courts. In the manor courts, the lord's reeve generally presided. The court consisted of the lord's vassals and declared the customs and law concerning such offenses as failure to perform services and trespass on manorial woods, meadow, and pasture.
The King's Royal Court heard issues concerning the Crown and breaches of the King's peace, which included almost all criminal matters. The most serious offenses: murder, robbery, rape, abduction, arson, treason, and breach of fealty, were now called felonies. Other offenses were: housebreaking, ambush, certain kinds of theft, premeditated assault, and harboring outlaws or excommunicants. Henry personally presided over hearings of important legal cases. He punished crime severely. Offenders were brought to justice not only by the complaint of an individual or local community action, but by official prosecutors. A prosecutor was now at trials as well as a justice. Trial is still by compurgation. Trial by combat was relatively common.
These offenses against the king placed merely personal property and sometimes land at the king's mercy. Thus the Crown increased the range of offenses subject to its jurisdiction and arrogated to itself profits from the penalties imposed. A murderer could be given royal pardon from the death penalty so that he could pay compensation to the relatives.
The Royal Court also heard these offenses against the king: fighting in his dwelling, contempt of his writs or commands, encompassing the death or injury of his servants, contempt or slander of the King, and violation of his protection or his law. It heard these offenses against royal authority: complaints of default of justice or unjust judgment, pleas of shipwrecks, coinage, treasure trove [money buried when danger approached], forest prerogatives, and control of castle building.
Slander of the king, the government, or high officials was punishable as treason, felony, misprision of treason, or contempt, depending on the rank and office of the person slandered and the degree of guilt.
Henry began the use of writs to intervene in civil matters, such as inquiry by oath and recognition of rights as to land, the obligations of tenure, the legitimacy of heirs, and the enforcement of local justice. The Crown used its superior coercive power to enforce the legal decisions of other courts. These writs allowed people to come to the Royal Court on certain issues. There was a vigorous interventionism in the land law subsequent to appeals to the king in landlord-tenant relations, brought by a lord or by an undertenant. Assizes [those who sit together] of local people who knew relevant facts were put together to assist the court. Henry appointed some locally based justices, called justiciars. Also, he sent justices out on eyres [journeys] to hold assizes. This was done at special sessions of the county courts, hundred courts, and manor courts. Records of the verdicts of the Royal Court were sent with these itinerant justices for use as precedent in these courts. Thus royal authority was brought into the localities and served to check baronial power over the common people. These itinerant justices also transacted the local business of the Exchequer in each county. Henry created the office of chief justiciar, which carried out judicial and administrative functions.
The Royal Court retained cases of gaol delivery [arrested person who had been held in gaol was delivered to the court] and amercements. It also decided cases in which the powers of the popular courts had been exhausted or had failed to do justice. The Royal Court also decided land disputes between barons who were too strong to submit to the county courts.
The King's Court of the Exchequer reviewed the accounts of sheriffs, including receipts and expenditures on the Crown's behalf as well as sums due to the Treasury, located still at Winchester. These sums included rent from royal estates, the Danegeld land tax, the fines from local courts, and aid from baronial estates. Its records were the "Pipe Rolls", so named because sheets of parchment were fastened at the top, each of which dropped into a roll at the bottom and so assumed the shape of a pipe.