Arbitration and the Growth of Urban Liberties in Late Medieval England

1992 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 205-235 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lorraine Attreed
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Dispute Settlement ◽  
Common Law ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Financial Investments ◽  
The Common ◽  
Late Medieval England ◽  
The City ◽  
Shed Light

In December 1448, the city of Exeter agreed with the bishop and dean and chapter of the cathedral church to abide by the arbitration of two local magnates who settled a complex dispute over urban jurisdiction. That the arbitrators decided against the city, which suffered a slight constitutional setback as a result, is only one of several important conclusions to be drawn from a study of the dispute and its resolution. The nature of the argument and the procedures by which both parties sought to resolve it shed light on the character of urban constitutional growth in the later Middle Ages, on legal procedures and what medieval people thought about the law, and on the lengths they were willing to go to assure a decision that was as favorable as possible without poisoning relations between two institutions that coexisted within city walls. The case also illustrates the important role arbitration played in dispute settlement and reveals this method to be as viable an alternative as recourse to the common-law and equity courts of the royal government.Exeter's case is unique in that so much written evidence survives to testify to the financial investments and political aims of both parties involved. Comparisons will be drawn to other boroughs that endured similar jurisdictional disputes in the fifteenth century, but their evidence is far less revealing of decision and motivation than that remaining for Exeter. Although many of the major documents associated with the case have been in print for over a century, and examined in some detail in a brief monograph published over fifty years ago, the nature of the records has focused more attention on the city's participation than on that of the cathedral.

scholarly journals A Piece of the Puzzle: Women and the Law as Viewed from the Late Medieval Court of Chancery

2019 ◽  
Vol 58 (4) ◽  
pp. 751-767 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cordelia Beattie
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Common Law ◽  
Medieval England ◽  
Lower Court ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
The Common ◽  
Late Medieval England ◽  
Court Of Chancery ◽  
Women And The Law ◽  
Shed Light

AbstractThis article uses fifteenth-century Chancery court bills to demonstrate how women negotiated solutions to social and legal disputes not just in Chancery but through a variety of legal jurisdictions. This approach sheds light on women's actions in courts where the records have not survived, and it also adds nuance to the long-running debate about whether equity was a more favorable jurisdiction for women than the common law. By bringing into view other jurisdictions—such as manorial, borough, and ecclesiastical ones—it demonstrates how litigants might pursue justice in a number of arenas, consecutively or concurrently. Some women approached Chancery because they did not think they would get justice in a lower court, while others were keen that their cases be sent back down so that they could be fully recompensed for the offences against them. A fuller understanding of the disputes to which Chancery bills refer complicates our understanding of why women “chose” Chancery. Chancery is only one piece of the puzzle of how women negotiated justice in late medieval England, but its records can also shed light on some of the missing pieces.

Legal English and the Vernacularization of Law

Law in Common ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 213-240
Author(s):  
Tom Johnson
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Legal Discourse ◽  
Legal Language ◽  
Common People ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
The Third ◽  
Local Contexts ◽  
The Common ◽  
Late Medieval England

This chapter explores the growing use of English as a written ‘legal vernacular’ over the course of the fifteenth century. It argues that one can only understand the emergence of vernacular writing in legal discourse by looking to the local contexts of legal production. The emergence of English as a legal vernacular did not take hold uniformly across late-medieval society, and so we need to think more carefully about the specific kinds of discursive value that it held; the chapter argues that, as a legal language, English worked as a signifier of authenticity, a mode of signalling fidelity to real speech, and as a way of gesturing towards wider audiences or publics. This leads to the third argument that the growing significance granted to English as a legal language affected common people in late-medieval England in ambivalent ways. While in some ways the processes of vernacularization in the fifteenth century seem to follow a trajectory towards a more inclusive public discourse, as the ‘common tongue’ spoken by the majority of the populace became a language appropriate for expressing ideas about legitimacy, it was ultimately constrained by the relatively limited modes in which English was allowed to be legal.

‘For the Increase of Divine Service’: Chantries in the Parish in Late Medieval Bristol

1985 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 46-65 ◽  
Author(s):  
Clive Burgess
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Medieval England ◽  
Common People ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Catholic Faith ◽  
Profound Influence ◽  
The Common ◽  
Late Medieval England

While it is incontrovertible that the Catholic faith exercised a profound influence on the lives of the common people of fifteenth-century England, it is equally apparent that many aspects of contemporary belief and practice will never be wholly clear. This is not simply for want of evidence but more the result of the limitations of the sources. It may, for instance, be assumed that contemporaries' religious priorities would be illuminated by close examination of their wills since these documents almost invariably deal with pious provisions intended to benefit testators' souls. But tolerably represented by surviving wills as the wealthy and town-dwelling classes of late medieval England are, analysis of these documents is treacherous. Just as the scribes who registered them certainly standardised the presentation of different testators' wishes, so probate procedures militated against even faintly unorthodox expression. Moreover, the proportion of a testator's movable or immovable estate represented in any given will is impossible to gauge, as a result of which no measure may be taken of any testator's devotion by comparison of his religious bequests with those made for other purposes. It must also be remembered that wills reveal nothing of the pious provision that testators undoubtedly made during their lifetimes for their own benefit. Neither do they convey any impression of what family or friends may have agreed to discharge for the benefit of a testator's soul. Late medieval wills are undeniably disappointing and frequently misleading.

Veneration and renovation at a small Norfolk priory: St. Leonard's, Norwich in the later middle ages*

2003 ◽  
Vol 76 (194) ◽  
pp. 431-449
Author(s):  
M. R. V. Heale
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Popular Religion ◽  
Religious Life ◽  
Medieval England ◽  
Large Collection ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Late Medieval England ◽  
The Many

Abstract Much remains obscure about the many small monasteries of late medieval England, and it is generally thought that they made little contribution to the religious life of the country. The large collection of accounts surviving from St. Leonard's priory, Norwich (a daughter house of the cathedral priory), however, presents an interesting picture of a priory sustained almost entirely by offerings to its image of St. Leonard. This cult continued to attract broad support throughout the later middle ages, with its income reaching a peak at over forty pounds per year in the mid fifteenth century. Almost the entirety of this windfall was set aside for a systematic renovation of the monastery, which can be chronicled in some detail. Although the cult was on the wane by 1500, the importance of the priory for the popular religion of the region emerges clearly.

Settlement of Disputes by Arbitration in Fifteenth-Century England

1984 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edward Powell
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Dispute Resolution ◽  
Dispute Settlement ◽  
Common Law ◽  
Legal Institutions ◽  
Central Task ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Common ◽  
Settlement Of Disputes ◽  
Precocious Development

The history of arbitration procedures and extra-judicial forms of dispute settlement in medieval England remains largely unwritten. This neglect is no doubt attributable to the precocious development of the common law, which has monopolized the attention of English legal historians and left them little time to consider alternative forms of dispute resolution. Their main preoccupation, epitomized in the work of great scholars such as Maitland, Holdsworth and Plucknett, has been to trace the evolution of legal institutions, procedures and doctrine. Consideration of arbitration has at best been regarded as peripheral to this central task.

scholarly journals Sanctuary and the Legal Topography of Pre-Reformation London

2009 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 483-514 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shannon McSheffrey
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Civil Wars ◽  
English Reformation ◽  
Political Autonomy ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
Political Refugees ◽  
Late Medieval England ◽  
The City ◽  
Religious Landscape

In early sixteenth-century England, the presence of ecclesiastical sanctuaries in the legal, social, and religious landscape was a matter of great controversy. Any English church could offer temporary sanctuary to an accused felon, a privilege that expired after about forty days, following which the felon had to abjure the realm. More contentiously, by the late Middle Ages a number of English religious houses used their status as royally-chartered liberties to offer sanctuary permanently, not only to accused criminals, but also to debtors, alien craftsmen, and, especially during the civil wars of the fifteenth century, political refugees. These ecclesiastical liberties, small territories that exercised varying extents of juridical and political autonomy, considerably complicated the jurisdictional map of late medieval England. London in particular, with its host of liberties and peculiars, constituted a patchwork quilt of legal jurisdictions. Although the mayor and aldermen of London were wont to say that the “chyeff and most commodyous place of the Cytie of London” constituted “one hoole Countie and one hoole Jurisdiccion and libertie” over which its citizens ruled, saving only the authority of the king himself, this confident as-sertion of the City's jurisdiction over the metropolitan square mile was constantly belied by the presence of these liberties. The most notable—and for the City, the most troubling—was the sanctuary at St. Martin Le Grand, a sizeable area within the bounds of the City, before 1503 governed by the dean and canons of the College of St. Martin, after 1503 absorbed into the lands attached to Westminster Abbey and ruled by the abbot. For about two centuries before St. Martin Le Grand was dissolved in 1542, its precinct was home to a thriving population of debtors, accused felons, and perhaps most numerously alien craftsmen, all seeking for various reasons to avoid civic or royal jurisdiction.5 The dissolution of religious houses which accompanied the English Reformation greatly lessened, although did not altogether eradicate, the privileges of St. Martin's.

Monastic Apostasy in late Medieval England

1981 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-18 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Harper-Bill
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Medieval England ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Monastic Life ◽  
Late Medieval England

References to apostates from the monastic life appear frequently in ecclesiastical and governmental records of the later Middle Ages, yet little attempt has been made to examine motives for flight or the measures which were adopted to recapture the fugitives. The problem of apostasy regularly attracted the attention of the legislators of the Orders, bishops were anxious both to restrain the culprits and to mitigate the severity of vengeful superiors, and the crown lent the weight of the secular arm to attempts at coercion, although an appeal to Rome might often avert the worst consequences of flight. The ecclesiastical authorities were, of course, concerned that no religious should prejudice his hopes of salvation by the rejection of his profession. Those who without the licence of their superior emigrated to another Order, accepted a secular benefice, or wandered off in search of carnal pleasure or spiritual benefits must be restrained, and those sinners and criminals who sought to evade the jurisdiction of their superiors must be punished. Most serious, however, were those cases in which apostasy was a symptom of dissension within the community and polarisation into factions, and where the fugitive sought from outside the walls to disrupt the life of the cloister until he might return to dominate his monastery.

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