INTERIOR OF THE GUILDHALL
Now and then the list of fines makes one wonder what story is hidden behind them. For instance, why was the wife of Hugh de Nevill fined for permission to stay one night with her husband? Was he in prison? Again, Reginald de Tewarden is fined twenty marks for permission to keep his lands after he had undergone the ordeal of hot iron unsuccessfully, and had abjured the country. He was proved guilty apparently. And was the fine of twenty marks thought the kind of penalty that would meet the case? William de Thievespathe—ominous name!—makes the same request for the same cause and with the same result. The iron, therefore, was sometimes hot. Another man, one Gospatric, pays twenty marks as a fine to escape the ordeal of hot iron. William of Sixteen Tale pays the large fine of £80 for wounding a priest: Robert, son of Hugh, gets off with £7: 2: 9—enough, however, to break a craftsman—for wounding “a man”; observe the difference between a man and a priest. Lawrence the Priest has to pay twenty marks “pro homine ementulato.” Who, again, was “Jeremy of London”? He took sanctuary, he refused to come out, they fined him a hundred shillings, and then? There is no more. Margaret FitzRoger has to pay a fine of £1000 before she can get at her inheritance, to wit, her father’s estate, her husband’s, her own dower, which her son has got, and be released from certain debts to the Jews. Sometimes the fine took the form of a bribe, as when Nathaniel Leveland, hereditary keeper of the King’s houses at Westminster and on the banks of the Fleet, sent in a fine of sixty marks for permission to keep that office, and Osbert de Longchamp paid the same fine for permission to take over those offices.
Every fine, whatever the amount, was either increased by a small sum or contained that small sum, which was called Aurum Reginæ, the Queen’s Gold. Thus when Thomas FitzAnther was forgiven his fine of ten marks, the Aurum Reginæ was at the same time remitted. In the year 1253 the City of London was called upon to pay up the Aurum Reginæ, part of the fine for receiving back their liberties, and in 1254 the Sheriffs were ordered to distrain for the amount.
Now the method of promoting virtue and filling the coffers was by the misericordia or amercement. I cannot understand the difference between the two. But that matters little, they both meant a fine. By studying the long list of cases furnished by my authority, Madox,[14] I arrive at a theory, not a conclusion, that the amercement was a punishment for offences which could not be tried in a criminal court, yet were real offences. Thus, for false or unjust accusations or plaints, a man was amerced, or for unjust detainer, for offences in the forests, trespass, etc., for making a man fight two duels in one day, a thing manifestly unfair, for “ill keeping” a duel, i.e., not observing all the rules respecting duels, for claiming to be a free man when one was but a villein, for detaining sheep, for harbouring a man who was not in frank-pledge, for making again a dyke which the King had caused to be levelled, for using twice in ordeal an iron which had been heated only once, gross injustice to the second man, for burying a drowned man without the view by the King’s servant, for putting a man to the ordeal of water (was it then forbidden?), for trespass, and in the case of a rebellious bride, for not coming to be married on the day appointed. For these, and similar offences, the citizens suffered amercement and misericordia.
More formidable than any of these, more dreaded than fine, amercement, or misericordia, were the Aid, the Relief, the Scutage, and the Tallage.
There were three principal kinds of aid. (1) The aid pur fille marier, or the occasion of the marriage of the King’s daughter. Henry the First took for his daughter’s marriage three shillings on each hide. Henry the Second, for his part, imposed a tax under this name of one mark for every knight’s fee. As great lords might hold many knights’ fees, the tax was considerable. (2) The aid pur faire chevaler, on the occasion of conferring knighthood on the King’s son. This tax was the same in amount as the preceding. The third kind of aid was the raising of money if necessary for the King’s ransom.
A TALLY FOR 6S. 8D. ISSUED BY EDWARD I.’S TREASURER TO THE SHERIFF OF LINCOLNSHIRE
Reliefs were simply arbitrary sums exacted by the King. The relief of the knight’s fee in the reign of Henry the Second was five pounds; that of a baron one hundred pounds. Scutage was, as its name denotes, an assessment of the knights’ fees.