WILTSHIRE ARCHAEOLOGICAI AND NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY '|Recorbs Jfirancb VOLUME XVI FOR THE YEAR 1960 Impression of 375 coplcs CROWN PLEAS OF THE WILTSHIRE EYRE, 1249 EEEEEE BY C A F MEEKINGS MA DEVILL, 96 © Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Society Records Branch I961 PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY NORTHUMBERLAND PRESS LTD GATESHEAD ON TYNE fi coNTENTs THE PRlvATA AND THE lND|cTMENTs 92 C0uRT ORDERS AND JUDGEMENTS 98 THE FlscAL SEssloNs AND THE IssuEs OF THE EYRE I06 NOTES To INTRoDucT1oN 116 APPENDIXES To INTRoDucT1oN 1 DIVISIONS OF THE COUNTY 124 11 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 126 111 FINES 147 IV FEL0N’s CHATTELS I48 v DEoDANDs I50 EDITORIAL CoNvENT|oNs I51 1249 WILTS EYREI CROWN PLEAs 152 NoTEs TO TEXT 359 INDEXEs: PERSONS AND PLAcEs ( I-1 ) TEXT AND NOTEs TO TEXT 377 ( l\J ) INTR0DucT|0N AND APPEND1XEs 308 SUBJECT INDEX 3T5 LIST OF MEMBERS 339 Pu|3ucAT|0Ns or THE BRANCH 333 CONTENTS CoNTENTS V PREFACE vii TABLE OF REFERENCES viii INTRoDUCT1oN : PRELIMINARY I THE CoMMoN PLEAS EYRE I THE EYRE V1S1TAT1oN OF 1246-9 9 THE I249 WILTS EYRE I6 THE RoLL AND ITS HISTORY 13 THE ARTICLES OF THE EYRE 17 THE VEREDICTA AND THE PRESENTMENTS 33 PRESENTMENTS : RoYAL RIGHTS 37 INPRINCEMENTS OF ROYAL PRERoCAT1vE AND REGULATIONS 40 ATTACHMENT AND BAIL 46 THE TRIAL ]URY 51 CRIMINAL PRESENTMENTS: DETERMINED CASES 53 HDMICIDE AND SUICIDE 58 MURDER AND MURDRUM 61 MISCELLANEDUS 65 M1SADvENTURE 67 APPEALS: GENERAL 69- HoMIC1DE, RAPE AND OTHER FELoN1ES 78 VAR1ouS TREPASSES 81 APPEALS BY WoMEN 88 APPEALS BY APPRovERS 91 v PREFACE A S long ago as I938 the Branch had planned to publish, if possible in I940, the full Latin teXt, with English summaries, of the Wiltshire eyre roll for I249. The first editor Col. G. E. G. Malet, later to become the first Registrar of the National Register of Archives, made some progress with the work, but was forced to abandon it on being recalled to the Army before the outbreak of the Second World War. The editorial task then passed to Mr. E. W. Safford, an Assistant Keeper of the Public Records, who, before his death in I943, had transcribed about a third of the Crown pleas. Col. Malet nominally resumed the editorship when the war ended, but in I947 Mr. Meekings took over from him. The idea of publishing the Latin text of the whole roll was then abandoned and it was decided instead to publish an English version of the Crown pleas only, with introduction and notes. The text of this version, for which Mr. Meekings is wholly responsible. was ready by I948, but various causes, including the need to reshape the editorial apparatus, have prevented the appearance of the complete work until this year. Mr. Meekings wishes to record his thanks to Mr. H. C. Johnson and Mr. L. C. Hector, both of the Public Record Office, for their readiness to help over readings and renderings, and to Mr. R. B. Pugh, who, as the Branch’s former General Editor, persuaded him to undertake the work and thereafter helped in various ways, especially in the identification of places. And he has been kind enough to ask that an acknowledg- ment should also be made to me. Unpublished Crown copyright material in the Public Record Office has been printed by the permission of the Controller, Her Majesty's Stationery Office. N. 1. WILLIAMS. London, April I961. vii TABLE OF REFERENCES TO THE PUBLIC RECORDS Chancery Exchequer, Lord Treasurer's C47 Miscellanea Remembrancer C.6o Fine Rolls E.368 Memoranda Rolls C144 Criminal Inquisitions E.37o Miscellaneous Rolls C.146 Ancient Deeds, Series C E.371 Originalia Rolls E.372 Pipe Rolls Court of Common Pleas justices itinerant C.P.25(1) Feet of Fines, Series I ].l.1 Assize Rolls, Eyre Rolls, etc. Exchequer, Treasury of Receipt ].l.3 Gaol Delivery Rolls E.8o Ancient Deeds, Series A Court of Queen's Bench Exchequer, Queen's Remembrancer K.B.26 Crown Side, Plea Rolls, Curia Regis Rolls E.146 Forest Proceedings K.B.136 Plea Side, WI'its E.I59 Memoranda Rolls Special Collections Exchequer, Augmentation Oflice S.C.1 Ancient Correspondence E326 Ancient Deeds, Series B S.C.11 Rentals and Surveys INTRODUCTION PRELIMINARY The document of which an English version is here given is the crown pleas roll of the Wiltshire Eyre held by Henry of Bath and his fellows, Alan de Wassand, William de Wilton, Reynold de Cobham and William le Breton, between about 18 April and 13 june, 1249, towards the end of the sixth major Eyre visitation of the country under Henry lll. lt is preserved in the Public Record Ofiice in the collection, organized in its present form about 1890-4, which is known as Rolls of the justices ltiriercmt, Eyre Rolls, Assize Rolls etc. (short reference ]. l. 1), where it forms membranes 23 to 4o of roll 996. lt is not the main roll of this Eyre, for that is lost. lt supplies a complete record of the crown pleas. lt lacks an amercements roll, without which the record of pleas is in some respects insufficient; also lacking is the kalendar of bailiffs and presenting juries, which would have given us the names of some six hundred leading men in the county. It shows us crown pleas from the least remarkable decade of Henry lll's reign, the pleas being grounded on events which happened between june I241, when the previous Eyre ended, and the early months of 1249. From these pleas we learn something about the admin- istration of criminal justice and crown pleas in the mid-thirteenth century and about the Wiltshire of that time. For the local historian the roll is the second earliest surviving crown pleas roll of a Wiltshire Eyre; the earliest, from I 194, has been twice publishedl and is the earliest roll to survive from any Eyre. For the legal historian the roll is a typical rather than—as is the 1249 Hampshire roll—an exceptionally interesting example of a crown pleas roll of the period. Most of it illustrates well known matters and routine; only some forty or fifty entries illustrate less well-known routine, matters of excep- tional interest or of rare occurrence.’-' An extended Latin text of 38 entries, concerning escheats, serjeanties, royal advowsons, wardships and the like, was printed in 1923 by Sir Henry Maxwell Lyte in his edition of The Book of Fees, in volume ll, pp. 1420-3.“ THE COMMON PLEAS EYRE The Eyre for the common pleas, as it was known generally in the thirteenth century in distinction to the Eyre for forest pleas, was a royal court held by the King's justices in the county at intervals of several years and usually as I 2 WILTSHIRE CROWN PLEAS I241-9 part of a countrywide visitation. The justices were commissioned to hold all pleas of writs, or civil pleas, which had been appointed to come before them and all crown pleas which had arisen since the last Eyre or were then unde- termined. Under their crown pleas jurisdiction the justices obtained and took appropriate action on presentments made by juries representing hundreds and other privileged districts in answer to a set of articles that, in addition to old and new crown pleas, concerned the King's prerogative and proprietary rights, assumptions of franchises and the conduct of local officials. The jus- tices also tried persons indicted on suspicion of felony and heard the criminal actions known as appeals of felony. ln the long history of the administration of law in the provinces through teams of justices sent thither under com- missions by the central government the Eyre occupies an early but compara- tively short space: little more than a century, for it became an integral part of the administration of civil and criminal justice in the provinces during the 1170s and ceased to be such an integral part in june I294. There were visita- tions by itinerant justices in the early twelfth century; some of these, by justices holding the fullest powers, perhaps did within the limits of the sub- stantive law and procedure of the day something of what the justices of the late twelfth and thirteenth centuries did in the common pleas Eyre under a far more elaborate and comprehensive substantive law and procedure. But these sessions of Henry l’s justices were no more common pleas Eyres than were the sessions of the justices of trailbaston, or general oyer and terminer, which succeeded the Eyre in the fourteenth century; though the sessions of Henry I's justices, the common pleas Eyre and the trailbaston sessions, must have impressed the men of the counties in much the same way in their respec- tive days since all were courts held by royal justices with the fullest powers, courts whose importance made their occurrence notable county occasions which (save in the 1 170s and 1180s) did not happen every year. The common pleas Eyre evolved rapidly in the decade after I166, the year when the method of indictment and the first of the possessory assizes were both established as routine processes of royal justice in criminal and civil matters, demanding for their trial regular visitations of the counties by the King's justices. Since our text excludes the civil pleas heard at Wilton in 1249, both from Wiltshire and many other counties, it is not necessary to discuss the civil pleas side except to stress that it was as important as the crown pleas. The Bench, the great central court at Westminster for litigation and conveyancing by royal writ, was, until developments in the latter half of the thirteenth century, too expensive a court for country-keeping knights and most freeholders, who preferred the cheaper course of waiting until the next Eyre in their counties when, in effect, the Bench came to them.