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Local Government in a Small Town: A Medieval Leet Jury and its Constituents*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 July 2014

Anne Reiber DeWindt
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The search for the origins of modern democratic institutions, institutions grounded in what philosophers call “legitimation by consent,” has led historians far upstream into numerous tributaries. Francis Oakley argues that the institutional, practical, and political world in which Romano-canonist theories of consent were actually put to the test, could be found in ecclesiastical communities, the feudal contract, the conciliar movement, and “a myriad of corporate bodies and of cities enjoying de facto an extensive measure of self-governance.” The medieval English village was certainly one of the most important of these corporate bodies. As early as 1933, following in the path of the great nineteenth-century constitutional historians, A. B. White looked in the direction of the medieval village for indications of nascent institutions of self government. However, White devalued the significance of his own findings by arguing that this “self-government” developed in response to the needs of royal administrators, and was, in the end, overshadowed by the centralized power of a Tudor regime. White thus saw village institutions of self government as responses on the part of a local population to “the King's command.”

Type
Research Article
Information
Albion , Volume 23 , Issue 4 , Winter 1991 , pp. 627 - 654
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference on British Studies 1991

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Footnotes

*

An earlier version of this paper was read at the American Historical Association, December 28, 1989. I would like to thank professors Robert B. Goheen of Carleton University, John Klemanski of Oakland University, and Sarah Gravelle of the University of Detroit for their most helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper.

References

1 Legitimation By Consent: The Question of the Medieval Roots,” Viator 14 (1983): 313Google Scholar.

2 Self Government at the King's Command (Minneapolis, 1933)Google Scholar.

3 Radcliffe, Geoffrey R. Y. and Cross, Geoffrey, The English Legal System (London, 1971), p. 23Google Scholar. Also see DeWindt, E. B., ed. and trans., The Court Rolls of Ramsey, Hepmangrove and Bury, 1268–1600 (Toronto, 1990), p. 10Google Scholar, for discussion of the types of jurisdictions in local courts.

4 Powell, Sumner Chilton, Puritan Village: The Formation of a New England Town (New York, 1965)Google Scholar. Lockridge, Kenneth A., A New England Town: The First Hundred Years, Dedham, Massachusetts, 1636–1736 (New York, 1970)Google Scholar.

5 For example: DeWindt, E. B., Land and People in Holywell-Cum-Needingworth (Toronto, 1972)Google Scholar. Raftis, J. A., “The Concentration of Responsibility in Five Villages,” Mediaeval Studies 28 (1966): 92–118CrossRefGoogle Scholar. McIntosh, Marjorie Keniston, Autonomy and Community: The Royal Manor of Havering, 1200–1500 (Cambridge, 1986), pp. 201ffCrossRefGoogle Scholar. Howell, Cicely, Land, Family and Inheritance in Transition: Kibworth Harcourt 1280–1700 (Cambridge, 1983), pp. 30ff.Google Scholar

6 One recent study of the Hunts, village of Ellington examines the criteria behind jury selection. See Olson, Sherri, “Ellington, A Village at Farm 1280–1600: Local Traditions and Local Leadership in the Medieval and Early Modern Village Community” (Ph.D. diss., University of Toronto, 1988)Google Scholar. There survives no immediate evidence of how jurors in Ramsey were elected; but it is likely they were chosen and sworn at one court session and then served until the next court when a successor group was chosen and sworn. In a few cases when two courts survive per year, there are separate panels for each court, with some overlap in personnel. Term of service seems to be from one court to the next. There is the case of the two courts in March of 1584 with two separate panels that met five days apart. We appear to have some relatively stable super-institution, or body of “elders” from whom the more visible jurors were chosen as the immediate need arose.

7 Two subsidy lists provide clues to the size of Ramsey's population. The 1290 lay subsidy lists 167 names for Ramsey and suburbs, and the 1522 subsidy lists 208 names (P.R.O., E 179 122/11). For the sake of comparison: there were 76 names in the Terling subsidy of 1524, and ca. 351 names in the Southampton subsidy of 1524. Raftis, J. Ambrose and Hogan, Mary Patricia, Early Huntingdonshire Lay Subsidy Rolls (Toronto, 1976), pp. 42ff.Google Scholar; Wrightson, Keith and Levine, David, Poverty and Piety in an English Village: Terling, 1525–1700 (New York, 1979), p. 34Google Scholar, and Platt, Colin, Medieval Southampton (London, 1973), p. 266 n7Google Scholar.

8 DeWindt, The Court Rolls of Ramsey. All future references to entries from the court rolls are from this edition.

9 Entry 39. Henceforth indicated as 1458[39].

10 The second court roll from a given year will be noted as follows, with the entry number in brackets: 1363(2)[102], “Order that the jurors come to the next leet under penalty of a fine of 40d. to show whether a certain hue and cry raised on William Launcelyn by Aleda Lavender was raised justly or not, because they do not yet have a judgement [on the matter].”

11 Lander, J. R., Government and Community: England 1450–1509 (London, 1980), p. 62Google Scholar.

12 1585(2)[11].

13 1491[13], 1458[39].

14 Note the wording of several fourteenth-century statutes from Stephenson, Carl and Marcham, Frederick George, ed. and trans., Sources of English Constitutional History: A Selection of Documents From A.D. 600 to the Present (New York, 1937), pp. 226–27Google Scholar. For example: [1351]“Our lord the king, perceiving the mischief and damage mentioned above,…with the assent of all the lords and commons of his said kingdom,…has ordained….”

15 1473[52].

16 See 1377[53] and 1394[45]. Other examples: 1383(1)[32] “Ordinance with the consent of the lord and the whole community, that henceforth no common cowherd…engage in trade with his neighbors in a secret place.” 1389[70] “Ordinance by the lord and all his tenants that…” 1396[47] “Ordinance by the assent of the lord and the whole community…” 1402[15] “Ordinance at this court, with the consent of the lord and of the whole community…”; 1402(75] “Ordinance by the lord as well as by the whole homage that….”

17 See court rolls from 1567–1600. Genicot, Leopold, in his Rural Communities in the Medieval West (Baltimore, 1990)Google Scholar, points to numerous questions, as yet unanswered, about the role of village assemblies in local government. See pp. 83–84 especially. His work draws upon continental European sources as well as English ones.

18 In several eighteenth-century court records reference is made to a homage jury and a leet jury as two separate bodies. See entries for 15 April 1740 and 13 May 1742 in the Ramsey Court Book, Huntingdonshire Record Office, Huntingdon.

19 B.L., Cotton MS. Julius F.IX f.68.

20 Entry 29. See 1312(2)[68] also. In this entry tasters were fined and several individual jurors from the last view were fined. In 1297(1)[21–22] the current jury was amerced by the court. “Order to Roger Tartarin to [show] his charter before the next court concerning his purchase of one curtilage from Luke le Bonde. Pledge: William le Rydeman. Amercement of the jurors for concealing this. Pledges: the one for the other. Order to distrain Agnes le Coupere, convicted of fornication, to pay the fine for leyrwite. Amercement of the jurors for concealing this. Pledges: the one for the other.” Also 1312(2)[111] “2s. from the 12 jurors for concealing that William Chacedyen struck Walter Ponder in the head with a cudgel and drew blood from him, against the peace and to Walter's damage. Order to distrain William to answer.” It is interesting to note that jurors were not fined in any of the court rolls after the 1335/9 entry cited above.

21 “Custodibus reipublice de Rames'.” Descriptive Catalogue of Ancient Deeds in the Public Record Office, 4 vols. (London, 1890–1902), 3: 140Google Scholar. P.R.O., E/40 A5108.

22 For similar examples elsewhere, see Goring, Jeremy, “The Fellowship of the Twelve in Elizabethan Lewes,” Sussex Archaeological Collections 119 (1981): 157–72Google Scholar. Powell, , Puritan Village (New York, 1965), pp. 124–29Google Scholar.

23 Entry 84.

24 1350[117]: “John Fraunceys and Simon Nithingale are elected by the jurors to the offices of tasters and constables in place of Hugh de London and John Bernard.”

25 Ramsey Court Book, H.R.O., entry for 3 April 1732: “Juratores predicti elegunt in officio constabularii….” Also, in the court of 18 April, 1734, the constables were chosen by the jurors. In the Huntingdonshire town of Godmanchester, local bailiffs were chosen by the jurors. See Raftis, J. Ambrose, A Small Town in Late Medieval England: Godmanchester 1278–1400 (Toronto, 1982), p. 434Google Scholar. Raftis cites the Mary Bateson translation of the Customs of 1465: “Firstly It is statuted that two principal Bailiffs shall be elected in every year by 12 Jurors whoever they may be for that year….”

26 This concern to protect local interests by limiting immigration is further evidenced in other fourteenth-century Ramsey Abbey village court rolls when villagers were fined for receiving strangers, or “extranei” (Raftis, J. A., Tenure and Mobility: Studies in the Social History of the Mediaeval English Village [Toronto, 1964], pp. 135–38Google Scholar).

27 The implication seems to be that unanimous agreement on all judgements was not expected, and therefore not always necessary.

28 1591(1)[8] “And if any contention shall occur between the said Francisca and the said Richard Hill, then the same [is] to be decided and ended by the court of the town and the constable for the time being.”

29 1408[78]

30 “In order to attend to the ‘service of the Queen’ or, ‘business for the town’ members of the Twelve had to be ready at all times upon reasonable warning to assemble in the Town House“ (Goring, Jeremy, “The Fellowship of the Twelve,” p. 158Google Scholar).

31 Entry 24: “Amercement from John Wakere for having a conversation with the jurors when he was not sworn. Pledge: John Cocus of Wistow.”

32 Thomas Wakyr was on the jury in 1395, but not in 1396 and 1397.

33 Kent, Joan, The English Village Constable: 1580–1642 (Oxford, 1986), pp. 222–81Google Scholar.

34 1582(1)[14]

35 In some cases, resentment against a village official qua official may be “hidden” in regular assault cases, although it would be difficult to prove that the motive for each assault was grounded in the fact that the victim was an office holder. A search for evidence of assault against men who were indeed jurors at the time of the assault resulted in twelve scattered instances. These incidents were recorded in 1356[89], 1360[81], 1363(2)[93], 1402[26], 1414[25–6], 1433[31], 1460 [two jurors] entries 19 and 29, and 1579(1)[24]. In 1312 John Chaceden, a juror, was fined 6d. for beating a man (1312(2)[81]).

36 Ramsey was not alone, for studies of local town government in Colchester, Godmanchester, and Battle find similar patterns. Raftis, J. A., Early Tudor Godmanchester: Survivals and New Arrivals (Toronto, 1990), pp. 3–33Google Scholar; and Britnell, R. H., Growth and Decline in Colchester, 1300–1525 (Cambridge, 1986), pp. 115ffCrossRefGoogle Scholar; Searle, Eleanor, Lordship and Community: Battle Abbey and Its Banlieu, 1066–1538 (Toronto, 1974), pp. 418ffGoogle Scholar. Raftis has suggested that the apparent ease with which Godmanchester accepted the services of local leaders may reflect an appreciation for the semi-professionalism of a quasi-civil service. The problem, then, becomes one of probing any given community's tolerance level for such concentrations of power as well as the reasons for such tolerance.

37 Sherri Olson's study of the jury in another Ramsey manor suggests a breakdown of community solidarity reflected in late fourteenth-century increases of trespass and violence cases involvingjurors. She suggests that demographic pressures forced villagers to accept less qualified jurors (“Ellington, A Village At Farm,” pp. 184–95.

38 Sensitivity to this issue is also seen in a 1428 Ellington court roll entry that records a complaint against a bailiff for serving “an exceedingly long time” (Olson, , “Ellington, A Village at Farm,” p. 190Google Scholar).

39 A Godmanchester court roll from 1465 listed local customs and there reflects a sensitivity to the issue of oligarchy and the dangers of concentrating power within the hands of a small group of people. This customal prohibits town jurors from holding other offices concurrently. “Item That no one of the said persons elected to be the Twelve for that year shall occupy any other office” (see Raftis, , A Small Town, p. 440Google Scholar). The inhabitants of Ramsey, just 12–15 miles to the north, were most likely aware of such regulations; however, they developed less easily detected strategies.

40 There can be no such thing as an absolute zero rate of turnover, for some percentage of any group of twelve men would be expected to die or move away in a ten-year period.

41 See Appendix I.

42 The ratio of individual names to “job openings” on the jury was at its peak at the beginning of the fourteenth century, reaching 0.60 (i.e. number of individuals/number of seats of the jury). Immediately after the Black Death the ratio dropped to a low, not attained again until the 1570s, of 0.26. The ratio during the 1370s and 1380s started at about 0.44 and dropped again to ca. 0.28 before recovering in the mid-fifteenth century (see appendix I).

43 The five decades that vary from this “norm” of 38–44 individuals are the periods 1353–60 and 1392–1402 when the turnover rate was unusually low, with 25 and 35 jurors per decade; and the decades 1304–1312, 1457–68, and 1456–65, when the rate was unusually high, with from 47 to 49 jurors per decade.

44 43 names. Notice that in the Ely village of Downham-in-the-Isle juries were drawn from the same pool of 36 men over the period 1362–77. That figure is close to the Ramsey figure, in spite of the fact that 49 court rolls survive from Downham for that relatively short period of time. See Coleman, M. Clare, Downham-in-the-Isle: A Study of an Ecclesiastical Manor in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries (Suffolk, 1984), pp. 134–36Google Scholar. In sixteenth-century Lewes 23 names survive from lists of “Members of the Twelve,” for the decade of the 1580s (See Goring, , “The Fellowship of the Twelve,” pp. 160–61Google Scholar). The names of 62 men survive as Lewes council members between 1557 and 1603 (ibid., p. 158). The Colchester council of 24 also maintained continuity of membership. “The main body of the council lost only three or four members each year, so that its composition changed only gradually. Both in 1384 and in 1398 three-quarters or more of the council members had been on the council, or serving as bailiffs, four years earlier” (Britnell, , Growth and Decline in Colchester, p. 128Google Scholar). Note similar, though not as precisely quantified, phenomena for Battle in Searle, , Lordship and Community, pp. 418ff.Google Scholar

45 What may be emerging in Ramsey is a pattern similar to that discovered in Godmanchester where a core of “professional” civil servants was assisted by shorter term volunteers (see Raftis, , Tudor Godmanchester, pp. 3–33Google Scholar).

46 Sherri Olson found a similar pattern in Ellington where pre-Black Death jurors served less regularly than did fifteenth–century jurors (“Ellington, A Village at Farm,” p. 166).

47 Abbots died and were replaced in the following years: 1285, 1316, 1349, 1378, 1396, 1419, 1434, 1436, 1468, 1473, 1489, 1506, 1507, and 1539 (Raftis, J. A., The Estates of Ramsey Abbey [Toronto, 1957], p. 1Google Scholar).

48 The steward thus played no obvious role. As one nineteenth-century historian noted in his study of Castle Combe, “The steward of the manor was paid an annual stipend by the lord, and, though presiding over the courts, and probably influencing more or less, as well as recording, their proceedings, does not appear to have been empowered to exercise much direct authority over them; not much more, perhaps, than the clerk to a bench of justices possesses at present” (Scrope, G. Poulett, History of the Manor and Ancient Barony of Castle Combe [printed for private circulation, 1852], p. 348Google Scholar).

49 1304[20]: “6d. From Alan Tannator junior for not coming to be one of the jurors, after having been called often.” Other cases: 1309(l)[3]; 1335[3,4]; 1339[2,4]; 1380(l)[3] — involving three men; 1381[3] — involving 5 men; 1382[3] — involving 4 men; 1383(1)[5] — involving 6 men; 1397[3] — involving 5 men; 1408[60] — involving 10 men; 1410[6]; 1433[104] — involving a plaint juror, and 1443[68]. There appears to have been a particular crisis during the 1380s.

50 For one thing, the job was not without material remuneration. In 1361 the jurors received payment in the form of fish (B. L., Add. MS. 33446, f. 55v; under expenses from the kitchen: “In piscibus emptis pro iuratoribus in die lete Ram' viis.”) Payments were made to the juries at Kibworth also (Howell, Cicely, Land, Family and Inheritance in Transition: Kibworth Harcourt 1280–1700 [Cambridge, 1983], p. 37Google Scholar). Godmanchester jurors were paid 19s. 2d. for the day of the view of frankpledge in 1412 (Raftis, , Tudor Godmanchester, p. 8Google Scholar).

51 In 1382 there were 16 jurors; in 1388, 13; in 1394, 16; in 1423, 14.

52 Goring, , “The Fellowship of the Twelve,” p. 158Google Scholar.

53 Constitutional reform in Colchester resulted in the enlarging of their council in 1519. “In addition to the 26 as established in 1372 there were to be 16 additional councillors, 4 from each ward, to be chosen by the bailiffs and aldermen.” Britnell suggests that the enlargement of the council served to bring a larger number of burgesses into office, but he points out that the newcomers were, like the former officials, from among the wealthiest 16% of the population. So, “The new councillors were not chosen in such away as to provide a more representative cross section of Colchester society” (Growth and Decline in Colchester, p. 232).

54 See courts from 1402, 1430, 1459, 1461, 1464, 1540. In 1402 this section bears the heading “court concerning plaints.”

55 In 1459[6] a plea of detinue was put to arbitration to be decided by the next leet by two men representing the defendant and two others representing the plaintiff. In this case, two of the arbiters were members of the current town jury, but the other two were not.

56 1430[8].

57 In 1297 (1) [23] a debt plea was determined by “verdict of the inquest.” In 1433[97] John Berford “acknowledged a debt of 2s., and concerning the remaining 23s. [under dispute], he puts himself on the inquest….” That same year (Entry 99) there was a complaint by Richard Elyngton against William Shirwode of a debt “of which William acknowledges that he owes 2s., the remainder to be determined by an Inquest.”

58 “Complaint of trespass by John Heryet against Thomas Tyler, in that the said Thomas and his wife…at Ramsey assaulted John's wife and, then and there, beat, wounded and mistreated her, to John's damage of one mark, against the peace. The said Thomas and his wife, having come in person, denied force and injury and sought judgement by a jury, as did John. Postponed, with the consent of both parties, to the next court.”

59 Note a similar example from 1399[91].

60 There is no court roll surviving from 1413.

61 From a case Of novel disseisin in 1287(1)[1] — “verdict of the jurors, elected by the consent of the parties.” Also note an arbitration case from 1461[3] when two men were chosen by each party to serve as arbiters in a trespass case involving the digging of peat.

62 The court entry no. 6 reads as follows: “Complaint by John Heryet against Thomas Tyler of detinue of one pen for putting on decorations, one spinning wheel, one water pot,…and one brass bowl valued at 4s., to his damages of 4s. Denial of force by the defendant, present, and request that the matter be decided by a jury. Subsequently put to arbitration by William Faunt and Richard Geyte for the defendant and John Baker and Richard Baker for the complainant. Matter to be decided by the next leet.” Two other arbitration cases are both trespasses; see 1461, entries 3 and 4. Only one of the four arbiters mentioned was also on the current leet jury.

63 The concept “representation” is not out of place here. A seventeenth-century pamphlet argues that (referring to Parliament), “the whole community in its underived majesty shall convene to doe justice…and that the vastness of its owne bulke may not breed confusion, by virtue of election and representation: a few shall act for the many” (cited by Pitkin, Hanna Fenichel, The Concept of Representation [Berkeley, 1972], p. 248Google Scholar). See also, Brown, Louise Fargo, “Ideas of Representation from Elizabeth to Charles II,” The Journal of Modern History 11 (1939): 23–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

64 The top two ranks were the wealthiest 36% of the Ramsey subsidy payers.

65 See Levine, Wrightson, Poverty and Piety in an English Village, p. 34Google Scholar. Category I = £10–54 land or goods [12% of taxpayers]. Category II = £2–8 land or goods [37% of taxpayers]. Category III = £2 goods [24% of taxpayers]. Category IV = Under £2 land or earnings [28% of taxpayers]. Ramsey data compare as follows: Category I = £10–120 [10% of tax payers]. Category II = £2–9 [26% of taxpayers]. Category III = £2 [23% of taxpayers]. Category IV = under £2 [41% of tax-payers]. Ramsey therefore has a higher percentage of its taxpayers in the fourth category than does Terling. Data comes from the Ramsey Lay Subsidy of 1522/3; P.R.O., E/1 79/122/111.

66 Raftis, J. A. and Hogan, Mary Patricia, Early Huntingdonshire Lay Subsidy Rolls (Toronto, 1976), pp. 47–56Google Scholar. There is not enough information surviving to determine whether or not that one juror was a representative of a wealthy family temporarily suffering hard times.

67 In the 1530s the court rolls listed Hepmangrove jurors separately.

68 Assuming a minimum age of 30 for jurors.

69 Demos, John, Entertaining Satan: Witchcraft and the Culture of Early New England (Oxford, 1982), pp. 311–12Google Scholar.

70 This phenomenon calls to mind the great proliferation of such offices appearing in New England towns in the seventeenth century when English immigrants brought with them this tendency to distribute official duties among a large number of local inhabitants. A similar increase in number of offices in fifteenth century was noted for Castle Combe, Wiltshire (see Scrope, , History…of Castle Combe, p. 232Google Scholar). Brilnell noted similar increases for Colchester (Growth and Decline in Colchester, pp. 221–22).

71 See Appendix II. For a similar finding in Ellington (Olson, , “Ellington, A Village at Farm,” p. 168Google Scholar). Also, fifteenth-century Ellington jurors held office more frequently and for longer time than earlier. “Juror domination of all official activity in the village was thus virtually complete in the fifteenth century….” (ibid., p. 179).

72 Raftis, , A Small Town, p. 440Google Scholar. “Item That no one of the said persons elected to be the Twelve for that year shall occupy any other office.”

73 Note a similar pattern in the Fellowship of the Twelve at Lewes (Goring, , “Fellowship of the Twelve,” p. 158Google Scholar).

74 For stretches of time in the fifteenth century, the ale tasters were men from the jury. This was the case from 1408–12, in 1436, from 1443–64, and again in 1567. Such flexibility provided opportunities to bypass the power of a local jury or other officials, if a given set of personalities required such action. One change in the offices of constable and ale taster may reflect just such a desire to dilute influence. Generally the two constables of Ramsey and the two ale tasters were the same two men until 1440 when the jobs began to be held by different men. After the 1460s however, men never served simultaneously as constable and ale taster.

75 If Huntingdonshire was similar to Sussex, these were many of the same men serving on Quarter Session juries as well. See Herrup, Cynthia, The Common Peace: Participation and the Criminal Law in Seventeenth-Century England (Cambridge, 1987), p. 140CrossRefGoogle Scholar: “Very few petty jurors [in Sussex] held positions with hundredal authority [such as assessor of the subsidies] but many came to the Sessions having served as local churchwardens or as manorial or leet jurors.”

76 Some of the questions raised here have already been applied to other medieval English rural communities and communities in New England and Germany. For example, a paper read at the 1987 American Historical Association meeting in Washington, D.C. by John Thiebault, “The village in Seventeenth Century Hesse-Kassel: Community or Herrschaft?” that discussed the theme of “le-gitimacy through complicity of the ruled.”

77 Wrightson, and Levine, , Poverty and Piety in an English Village p. 116Google Scholar.

78 Ibid., p. 115.

79 Underdown, David, Revel, Riot and Rebellion (Oxford, 1987), p. 26Google Scholar.

80 Notice the “Company of Four and Twenty” from seventeenth-century Braintree, Essex. There, the local “town council” perpetuated themselves by appointing new members in place of those who died.” This “little oligarchy” disappeared by 1716 “when the minute books record meetings of the normal type of open vestry” Emmison, F. G., Early Essex Town Meetings [Chichester, 1970], pp. v., viGoogle Scholar. Notice also the continued leadership of “The Twelve” in Battle into the seventeenth century (Searle, , Lordship and Community, p. 437 n. 59Google Scholar).

81 Wrightson, Keith, “Two Concepts of Order: Justices, Constables and Jurymen in Seventeenth-century England,” in An Ungovernable People: The English and their Law in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, ed. Brewer, John and Styles, John (London, 1983), p. 45Google Scholar.