Abstract
In early April 1360, Henry Peverell, royal keeper of the town of Southampton, received a writ from Westminster instructing him to look into the state of the town’s defenses.1 War with France had broken out once again, and Norman ships had been spotted recently near Winchelsea. Southampton had suffered devastating destruction earlier in the Hundred Years War and suddenly seemed vulnerable once again: On a recent visit to the town, Thomas of Woodstock, the king’s son and guardian of the realm, had come away with serious misgivings about the town’s ability to withstand an assault. Combatants on both sides of the English Channel knew that without Southampton’s extensive shipping and port facilities, England’s military fortunes would be seriously impaired.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsPreview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
1. Calendar of Inquisitions Miscellaneous ( Chancery) Preserved in the Public Record Office, (London, 1937), vol. 3, no. 425, pp. 154–55.
Ibid.
Francis Palgrave, The Rise and Progress of the English Commonwealth, 2 vols. (London, 1832), vol. 1, pp. 239–77.
Heinrich Brunner, Die entstehung der schwurgerichte (Berlin, 1871).
Frederick Pollock and Frederic William Maitland, The History of English Law before the Time of Edward I, 2nd ed., 2 vols. (Cambridge, 1898), vol. 1, pp. 138–44; William Stubbs, The Constitutional History of England, 3rd ed., 3 vols. (Oxford, 1880), vol. 1, pp. 608–22.
Charles Homer Haskins, Norman Institutions (Cambridge, MA, 1918), chap. 6.
R. C. Van Caenegem, Royal Writs in England from the Conquest to Glanvill, Selden Society, vol. 77 (London, 1959).
Doris M. Stenton, English Justice between the Norman Conquest and the Great Charter, 1066–1215. The Jayne Lectures for 1963 (London, 1965), pp. 13–21.
E.g., W. L. Warren, “The Myth of Norman Administrative Efficiency,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th ser., 34 (1984): 123–32; James Campbell, The Anglo-Saxon State (London, 2000).
Mike Macnair “Vicinage and the Antecedents of the Jury,” Law and History Review 17 (1999): 537–90.
David Roffe, Domesday. The Inquest and the Book (Oxford, 2000), pp. 64–66, 251.
Patrick Wormald, The Making of English Law: King Alfred to the Twelfth Century (Oxford, 1999).
On Anglo-Saxon influences on later Common Law forms, see Wormald, Making of English Law, and Paul R. Hyams, Rancor and Reconciliation in Medieval England (Ithaca, 2003). On early Anglo-Norman influences, see John Hudson, Land, Law, and Lordship in Anglo-Norman England (Oxford, 1994). Bloch’s admonition is in The Historian’s Craft, trans. Peter Putnam (Manchester, 1992), pt. 1, sec. 4.
C. P. Lewis, “The Domesday Jurors,” Haskins Society Journal 5 (1993): 17–44; Robin Fleming, Domesday Book and the Law: Society and Legal Custom in Early Medieval England (Cambridge, 1998); Roffe, Domesday, chap. 3.
Jurors are documented more consistently in the Domesday satellites than in Domesday Book itself. Lewis, “Domesday Jurors,” pp. 18–19; Roffe, Domesday, pp. 122–23, 186–87.
The close association between juries and royal power is discussed in Paul Brand, “The Formation of the English Legal System, 1150–1400,” in Legislation and Justice, ed. Antonio Padoa-Schioppa (Oxford, 1997), p. 107.
C.A.F. Meekings, The 1235 Surrey Eyre, 2 vols., Surrey Record Society, vols. 31–32 (Guildford, 1979–83), vol. 1, p. 33.
Curia Regis Rolls, ed. C. T. Flower and Paul Brand, 19 vols. (London, 1922- ), vol. 13, no. 237. A similar procedure can be found in ibid., vol. 7, p. 245.
On litigation related to dower rights, see Janet Senderowitz Loengard, “‘Of the Gift of Her Husband’: English Dower and Its Consequences in the Year 1200,” in Women of the Medieval World. Essays in Honor of John H. Mundy, ed. Julius Kirshner and Suzanne F. Wemple (Oxford, 1985): 215–55; Joseph Biancalana, “Widows at Common Law: The Development of Common Law Dower,” Irish Jurist, n.s., 23 (1988): 255–329. Also enlightening are the essays by Loengard and Sue Sheridan Walker in Wife and Widow in Medieval England, ed. Sue Sheridan Walker (Ann Arbor, 1993).
Examples include Curia Regis Rolls, ed. Flower and Brand, vol. 2, pp. 265, 278; vol. 13, no. 1081; vol. 15, no. 1352. This became such a common procedure that scribes often used an “etc.” to refer to it in later rolls.
Curia Regis Rolls, ed. Flower and Brand, vol. 6, pp. 242–43.
Ibid., vol. 1, p. 18.
For other examples of inquests settling land disputes, see Curia Regis Rolls, ed. Flower and Brand, vol. 1, pp. 375–76; ibid., vol. 16, no. 2484.
E.g., Curia Regis Rolls, ed. Flower and Brand, vol. 15, no. 1291. Van Caenegem, Royal Writs, p. 77, discusses the antiquity of these forest perambulations and their connection to other forms of jury procedure. Mike Macnair has made the cogent argument that inquest procedure was particularly common in disputes involving ongoing boundaries and customs: Macnair “Vicinage,” pp. 560–71.
Curia Regis Rolls, ed. Flower and Brand, vol. 15, nos. 1888, 1972B, and 1981.
Ibid., vol. 15, no. 1180.
Naomi Hurnard, The King’s Pardon for Homicide before AD 1307 (Oxford, 1969), chap. 3.
Ibid., pp. 78–79.
Calendar of Inquisitions Miscellaneous, vol. 1, no. 2101, p. 563.
Calendar of Patent Rolls, 1258–1266, p. 11.
Hurnard, King’s Pardon for Homicide, pp. 339–74; Roger D. Groot, “Teaching Each Other: Judges, Clerks, Jurors and Malefactors Define the Guilt/Innocence Jury,” in Learning the Law. Teaching and the Transmission of English Law, 1150–1900, ed. Jonathan A. Bush and Alain Wijffels (London, 1999), pp. 17–32; Hyams, Rancor and Reconciliation, pp. 175–84; Susanne Jenks, “Das writ und die exceptio de odio et atia,” Tijdschrift voor Rechtsgeschiedenis 68 (2000): 455–77.
National Archives, Public Record Office, C144/16, no. 46.
National Archives, Public Record Office, C144/17, no. 38.
National Archives, Public Record Office, C144/29, no. 15.
Hurnard, King’s Pardon for Homicide, p. 364.
Ibid., pp. 342–43.
Year Books of the Reign of Edward II, vol. 12, 5 Edward 11, ed. William C. Bolland, Selden Society, vol. 33 (London, 1916), pp. 46–47.
Albert B. White, Self-Government at the King’s Command (Minneapolis, 1933).
Red Book of the Exchequer, ed. Hubert Hall, Rerum Britannicarum Medii Aevi Scriptores no. 99 (London, 1897), pp. cclxvii–cclxxxi; William Stubbs, Select Charters from the Beginning to 1307, 9th ed., ed. H.W.C. Davis (Oxford, 1913), pp. 175–78; W. L. Warren, Henry II (Berkeley, 1973), pp. 287–91.
Red Book of the Exchequer, nos. 55, 56, p. cclxxx.
Rotuli hundredorum, ed. W. Illingworth and J. Caley, 2 vols., Record Commission (London, 1812–18); Helen Cam, The Hundred and the Hundred Rolls (London, 1930); David Roffe, “The Hundred Rolls and their Antecedents: Some Thoughts on the Inquisition in Thirteenth-Century England,” Haskins Society Journal 7 (1995): 179–87. Similar enquiries were undertaken both before and after the 1274–75 inquest but are not as well documented. Professor Roffe heads a team of scholars at the University of Sheffield that aims to bring out a new edition of the Hundred Roll enquires of 1274–75 along with other related inquests.
Most of the surviving returns are printed in vol. 2 of Rotuli hundredorum, ed. Illingworth and Caley. See also The Warwickshire Hundred Rolls of 1279–1280, ed. Trevor John, Records of Social and Economic History, n.s. 19 (Oxford, 1992). A good account of the survey can be found in Sandra Raban, A Second Domesday? The Hundred Rolls of 1279–1280 (Oxford, 2004). Useful comments about the procedure used to compile information can also be found in E. A. Kosminsky, Studies in the Agrarian History of England in the Thirteenth Century, trans. Ruth Kisch (Oxford, 1956).
Domesday-Book seu liber censualis willelmi primi regis angliae, ed. Abraham Farley, Record Commission (London, 1783), fol. 203v; Rotuli hundredorum, ed. Illingworth and Caley, vol. 2, pp. 610–14.
Chronica magistri rogeri de hovedene, ed. William Stubbs, Rerum Britannicarum Medii Aevi Scriptores no. 51 (London, 1869), vol. 2, pp. 261–63; National Archives, Public Record Office, C47/1/4; British Library Harley Charter 58.E.40, 41; Nonarum inquisitiones in curia scaccarii temp. regis edwardi III, ed. G. Vanderzee (London, 1807).
Calendar of Inquisitions Miscellaneous, vols. l, 5, 6, and 7.
Kosminsky, Studies in Agrarian History, pp. 46–67; Joel Rosenthal, Telling Tales: Sources and Narration in Late Medieval England (University Park, PA, 2003). A concise description of the source is also provided on the Web site of the National Archives using “C 132” as a search term in the catalogue.
Examples can be found in Hubert Hall, A Formula Book of English Official Historical Documents (Cambridge, 1908–09), pt. 2, pp. 68–74.
Ibid., p. 71.
R. C. Fowler, “Legal Proofs of Age,” English Historical Review 22 (1907): 101–3; M. T. Martin, “Legal Proofs of Age,” English Historical Review 22 (1907): 526–27; A. E. Stamp, “Legal Proofs of Age,” English Historical Review 29 (1914): 323–24; Kosminsky, Studies in Agrarian History, pp. 57–63. For a recent discussion of the proofs of age, a form of inquest related to the standard inquisition post mortem but held solely to determine an heir’s age, see Rosenthal, Telling Tales.
Under Christine Carpenter’s guidance, juror names have finally been included in the recent volumes dealing with inquisitions held in the reign of Henry VI.
An example of the tendency to undervalue the jury’s work is the chapter by E. R. Stevenson, dealing with the duties of escheators in The English Government at Work, 1327–1336, vol. 2, Fiscal Administration, ed. William A. Morris and Joseph Strayer (Cambridge, MA, 1947), pp. 109–67. In the article’s 58 pages, which deal extensively with the formal procedures associated with inquisitions post mortem, only a single paragraph is devoted to the role of jurors.
A brief description of these inquisitions is given in List of Inquisitions Ad Quod Damnum Preserved in the Public Record Office, List and Index Society, no. 17 (London, 1904), pp. iii–vii.
A specimen writ can be found in Ibid., pp. iv–v.
National Archives, Public Record Office, C143/5, no. 11.
National Archives, Public Record Office, C143/4, no. 11.
National Archives, Public Record Office, C143/38, nos. 1, 2, 4.
Calendar of Inquisitions Miscellaneous, vol. 1, pp. vii–xiii; vol. 4, pp. vii–viii. The inquisitions de odio et athia were treated as a separate series by the author of the preface to vol. 4.
Calendar of Inquisitions Miscellaneous, vol. 2, p. 513; Calendar of Close Rolls, 1346–1349, p. 272; Calendar of Patent Rolls, 1345–1349, pp. 321–22, 377–78.
Curia Regis Rolls, ed. Flower and Brand, vol. 6, p. 169.
Women’s participation in jury service is discussed in greater depth in chapter 4.
Calendar of Inquisitions Miscellaneous, vol. 6, no. 85, pp. 40–41.
Ibid., vol. 1, no. 1230, pp. 362–63.
Calendar of Patent Rolls, 1272–1281, p. 464.
Calendar of Inquisitions Miscellaneous, vol. 1, no. 1578, pp. 443–45.
Ibid., vol. 6, no. 306, pp. 164–69. The circumstances of the seizure are discussed in Nigel Saul, Richard II (New Haven, 1997), pp. 366–404.
Ibid., no. 282, pp. 138–39.
Calculated from Calendar of Inquisitions Miscellaneous, vol. 2, pp. 232–374; List of Inquisitions Ad Quod Damnum, pp. 265–349; Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem and Other Analogous Documents Preserved in the Public Record Office, vols. 7 (London, 1909) and 9 (London, 1913). I counted 635 miscellaneous inquests, 1,115 inquests ad quod damnum, and 1,606 inquests post mortem in the calendars. The total includes all forms of inquest calendared in these volumes, including inquests de etate probanda. Many of the documents treated as separate inquisitions in the calendars incorporate multiple inquests held in different locations by different juries. This is particularly common in the calendar of inquisitions post mortem because many tenants-in-chief held land in several different counties; in these circumstances, separate juries were struck for each county. Multiple juries were sometimes also employed for separate properties within a single county. My tally treats every inquisition as a separate procedure. Thus, when Henry de Thrippelowe died in 1333, two inquests were held in Cambridgeshire and one was held in Hertfordshire. The calendar, following the practice of the National Archives, treats these as a single inquisition, but my tally treats them as three separate inquisitions. Multiple inquests in response to a single writ also occur in the inquisitions miscellaneous, though on a lesser scale. I treated each of these as a separate inquest as well.
In 1249, for example, a writ enrolled on the Close Rolls refers to an inquest held by the sheriff of Worcestershire as the basis of a royal grant, but the inquisition itself is no longer extant. Calendar of Close Rolls, 1247–1251, p. 136. Similarly, an earlier inquisition referred to in a later inquest held in 1376 no longer exists: Calendar of Inquisitions Miscellaneous, vol. 3, no. 1019, p. 395. Losses to the series of miscellaneous inquisitions are noted in Calendar of Inquisitions Miscellaneous, vol. 4, p. vii–viii.
Inquests commissioned by the Exchequer, for example, can be found scattered among the file of sheriffs’ accounts in the National Archives (E199), as well as the file of extents of alien priories (E106), the file of extents of forfeited properties (E142), the file of seizures from Crown debtors (E143), and the file of forest proceedings (E146).
R. F. Hunnisett, The Medieval Coroner, Cambridge Studies in English Legal History (Cambridge, 1961), pp. 9–36.
Counting the three Yorkshire ridings as separate counties and not including Cheshire and Durham.
London itself was a common locus for inquests; in one instance, the king even ordered an inquest to be held to determine who was obliged to clean Fetter Lane. Calendar of Inquisitions Miscellaneous, vol. 3, no. 521, pp. 191–92.
Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem and Other Analogous Documents Preserved in the Public Record Office, vol. l, Henry III (London, 1904), pp. vii-ix. Inquests were sometimes used to keep track of escheated property in eyres held in the later twelfth century. The office of escheator was formally instituted in 1232. See Stevenson, “The Escheator,” pp. 113–16; Scott L. Waugh, “The Origins and Development of the Articles of the Escheator,” Thirteenth Century England, ed. P. R. Coss and S. D. Lloyd (Woodbridge, Suffolk, 1995), vol. 5, pp. 89–113.
List of Inquisitions Ad Quod Damnum, pp. 1–96. The primary explanation for this dramatic growth was Edward’s decision to extend the procedure to cases involving grants in mortmain.
Calendar of Inquisitions Miscellaneous, vol. 1, pp. 1–99.
Ibid., pp. 186–288.
White, Self-Government, pp. 76–125.
Chronica magistri rogeri de hovedene, p. 262.
Rotuli de dominabus et pueris et puellis de XII comitatibus [1185], ed. John H. Round, The Publications of the Pipe Roll Society, vol. 35 ( London, 1913); Records of the Templars in England in the Twelfth Century, ed. Beatrice Lees, Records of the Social and Economic History of England and Wales, vol. 9 (London, 1935). The evidence for the use of inquest juries in the latter source is ambiguous. References to oaths and jurors do occur in the text, but not consistently.
Chronica magistri rogeri de hovedene, pp. 335–36.
Stubbs, Select Charters, pp. 254–55 (article 23).
Liber Feodorum. The Book of Fees Commonly Called Testa de Nevill, Part One, AD 1198–1242, n. a. (London, 1920), pp. 4–10.
White, Self-Government, pp. 98–125.
Van Caenegem, Royal Writs, pp. 61–68.
Regesta regum anglo-normannorum 1066–1154, ed. H.W.C. Davis, Charles Johnson, and R. J. Whitwell, 4 vols. (Oxford, 1913–68), vol. 2, no. 1511 pp. 210–11.
Ibid., no. 1561, p. 220.
Ibid., nos. 957 (p. 95); 1166 (p. 139); 1192 (p. 144); 1341 (pp. 175–76); 1487 (p. 206); 1505 (p. 209).
This subject will be addressed more fully in chapter 2. My argument here runs contrary to Van Caenegem’s proposal that administrative verdicts be treated as distinct from judicial verdicts. Even in later periods when the role of the judicial system was much more clearly defined, inquest verdicts were often a species of jury verdict rather than a distinct genus.
White, Self-Government, p. 99.
Regesta regum anglo-normannorum, vol. 2, no. 1438a, p. 196.
Ibid., no. 1606, p. 231. The writ also empowered the archbishop to compel those who were not his tenants to perform their customary service in the castle.
Ibid., no. 1660, pp. 241–42.
Ibid., no. 1116, p. 130.
Michael Clanchy, From Memory to Written Record. England 1066–1307, 2nd ed. (Oxford, 1993), pp. 32–35.
Judith Green, The Government of England under Henry I (Cambridge, 1986), pp. 108–10.
These requests for exemption gave rise to inquests ad guod damnum.
On the relationship between petitions and legal procedure, see Alan Harding, “Plaints and Bills in the History of English Law, Mainly in the Period 1250–1350,” in Legal History Studies 1972 (Cardiff, 1975); idem, Medieval Law and the Foundations of the State (Oxford, 2002), chap. 6.
Paul Brand, The Making of the Common Law (London, 1992), especially chaps. 4 and 7; idem, “The Formation of the English Legal Systern,” pp. 103–22.
Copyright information
© 2008 James Masschaele
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Masschaele, J. (2008). Sworn Inquests. In: Jury, State, and Society in Medieval England. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230616165_2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230616165_2
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-37454-0
Online ISBN: 978-0-230-61616-5
eBook Packages: Palgrave History CollectionHistory (R0)