The Reputation of Royal Judges Under the Angevin Kings

1979 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 301-316 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ralph V. Turner
Keyword(s):  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
The State ◽  
John Of Salisbury ◽  
Royal Patronage ◽  
Magna Carta ◽  
English Law

In twelfth and thirteenth-century England complaints that justice was being sold were common, culminating with King John's tacit admission in Magna Carta. Coupled with these complaints were charges of corruption against royal judges, or against royal aulici, curiales, or familiares, since until the middle of Richard I's reign no professional judiciary existed. Even in King John's time, familiares regis still served as judges. Yet a core of royal servants specializing in justice, “professionals” in a certain sense, had been created. Historians since Maitland have generally held a high opinion of these judges. According to Maitland, under Henry II and Richard I, “English law was administered by the ablest, the best educated men in the realm.…” F.M. Powicke wrote that the judiciary of Henry III was “probably the most stable and helpful, as it was the most intelligent, element in the State at this time.” How are we to reconcile historians' high opinion of the royal justices with their contemporaries' low opinion? Were the chroniclers simply drawing stock figures in their depictions of corrupt judges, or was their picture drawn from life?Royal officials, including judges, proved popular targets for the pens of twelfth century moralists and satirists, some of whom wrote out of personal bitterness, having failed in the contest for royal patronage and high office.2 Capable of condemning curiales in classical Latin style was John of Salisbury. He knew many of Henry II's courtiers, and he came to despise them, especially those in clerical orders.

Simon of Pattishall, Pioneer Professional Judge

1977 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 115-127 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ralph V. Turner
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Common Law ◽  
Civil Servant ◽  
Law And Order ◽  
Middle Years ◽  
Magna Carta ◽  
English Law

The latter part of the twentieth century may not find many of us wishing to pay tribute to bureaucrats, but as Helen Cam reminded us, the civil servant “deserves more credit than he has yet had for building up and maintaining our precious tradition of law and order.” In the late twelfth century and the thirteenth century the process of “bureaucratization” first got underway in England. An early professional civil servant, one specializing in judicial activity, was Simon of Pattishall. His name surfaces in the records in 1190, and it disappears after 1216. His time of activity, then, coincides with an important period for English common law: the years between “Glanvill” and Magna Carta.Simon was one of that group of royal judges who might be termed the first “professionals,” a group that took shape by the middle years of Richard I's reign. By the time of John, about ninety men acted at various times as royal judges, either at the Bench at Westminster, with the court following the king, or as itinerant justices. Many of these had only temporary appointments, making circuits in the counties; but a core of fifteen, who concentrated on the work of the courts, can be regarded as early members of a professional judiciary. Simon of PattishalPs is perhaps the most respected name among the fifteen. He had the longest career on the bench, from 1190 until 1216. He founded a judicial dynasty, for his clerk, Martin of Pattishall, became a judge, as did his clerk, William Raleigh, who had as his clerk Henry of Bracton, author of the great treatise on English law.

Edward the Confessor

2020 ◽  
pp. 132-172
Author(s):  
George Garnett
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Richard Ii ◽  
Magna Carta ◽  
English Law ◽  
Edward The Confessor ◽  
King John ◽  
Papal Legate

Chapter 4 shows how during John’s reign the baronial opposition appropriated the figure of the recently canonized Edward the Confessor, and used him as a standard against which to judge the current king. A key part was played by the London Collection of the Leges Anglorum, which compiled and in important respects elaborated and extended the compilations of Old English law codes made during the twelfth century. The Collection informed opposition thinking prior to the crisis which produced Magna Carta. The chapter also subjects to minute analysis two very unusual episodes recorded in thirteenth-century annals of provincial churches. First, the St Augustine’s, Canterbury account of Duke William’s having allowed the men of Kent, uniquely, to continue to use Old English Laws and customs. This episode is supposed to have taken place at Swanscombe Down in 1066. The second is the Burton Abbey account of what purports to be a dialogue between King John and a papal legate, allegedly in 1211. The nub of the dialogue is a disagreement about the role of Edward the Confessor. The chapter then shows how Henry III re-appropriated St Edward for the royal cause, but by emphasizing his saintliness rather than his alleged legislation. Henry focussed on the development of the cult, expressed in liturgical, artistic, and architectural terms, and focussed on the rebuilt Westminster Abbey. The chapter concludes with a brief envoi on the later medieval expression of the cult, especially under Richard II.

Bastard Feudalism and the Framing of Thirteenth-Century England

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Coss
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
The State ◽  
The Other ◽  
Great Work ◽  
Early Middle Ages ◽  
The One ◽  
The Relationship

In the introduction to his great work of 2005, Framing the Early Middle Ages, Chris Wickham urged not only the necessity of carefully framing our studies at the outset but also the importance of closely defining the words and concepts that we employ, the avoidance ‘cultural sollipsism’ wherever possible and the need to pay particular attention to continuities and discontinuities. Chris has, of course, followed these precepts on a vast scale. My aim in this chapter is a modest one. I aim to review the framing of thirteenth-century England in terms of two only of Chris’s themes: the aristocracy and the state—and even then primarily in terms of the relationship between the two. By the thirteenth century I mean a long thirteenth century stretching from the period of the Angevin reforms of the later twelfth century on the one hand to the early to mid-fourteenth on the other; the reasons for taking this span will, I hope, become clearer during the course of the chapter, but few would doubt that it has a validity.

scholarly journals THE PROBLEM OF THE NON-JUSTICIABILITY OF RELIGIOUS DEFAMATIONS

2015 ◽  
Vol 27 ◽  
pp. 241-257 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Smith
Keyword(s):  
Catholic Church ◽  
Common Law ◽  
The State ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
Civil Case ◽  
Magna Carta ◽  
The Common ◽  
English Law

English law has long held the principle that religions should be free from interference by the state in certain matters. The original 1215 edition of the Magna Carta proclaimed, as its first article, ‘THAT WE HAVE GRANTED TO GOD, and by this present charter have confirmed for us and our heirs in perpetuity, that the English Church shall be free, and shall have its rights undiminished, and its liberties unimpaired.’This article was intended to protect the established Catholic Church from the powers of the state, specifically from interference in church elections by the executive in the form of the person of the monarch. The notion that religions were institutions with practices and beliefs that were outside the control of the state in certain respects was adopted by the common law and is found in modern times in the principle of non-justiciability on the matter of religion in certain types of civil case. 

The contents and affiliation of the scientific manuscripts written at, or brought to, Chartres in the time of John of Salisbury

1994 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. 127-160 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles Burnett
Keyword(s):  
Twelfth Century ◽  
The State ◽  
John Of Salisbury ◽  
New Science ◽  
Scientific Learning

In the debate over the state of cathedral schools and their displacement as centres of learning by the rising universities, the case of Chartres has, for nearly a century, excited the most attention. Much has been written on, first, whether the activity of several prominent intellectuals of the twelfth century such as Thierry, William of Conches and Gilbert of Poitiers was primarily at Chartres or at Paris; and, secondly, whether the thought of ‘Chartrian’ masters is old-fashioned or open to the profound changes which effected twelfth-century scientific learning. These changes resulted largely from the introduction of works translated from Greek and Arabic during that century. In this paper I try to clarify the situation at Chartres itself by summing up the evidence from the manuscripts known to have been in the cathedral library in the twelfth century of the degree to which this ‘new science’ was received there, and how it was assimilated.

Non-Alienation Clauses in Thirteenth-Century English Charters

1985 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
Scott L. Waugh
Keyword(s):  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Legal Reforms ◽  
Long Line ◽  
The Family ◽  
Magna Carta ◽  
Royal Courts ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Church

During the thirteenth century, English lords acted to halt the deterioration of their feudal powers brought about by social and legal changes at the end of the twelfth century. Their determination produced a long line of legislation on feudal incidents, mortmain, and subinfeudation that stretched from Magna Carta to the Statute of Quia Emptores in 1290. Yet, until that legislation was finally in place, landlords had to find other methods of maintaining their lordship over free tenures. Professor Donald Sutherland, for example, has shown that lords asserted “a new authority to take into their hands the holdings of their free tenants if the tenants attempted to alienate the holdings in ways that prejudiced the lord's rights.” Lords also used conditional grants to restrict alienation, and beginning in the early thirteenth century, they played an important role in the effort to reassert tenurial lordship. Conditional grants have been studied primarily in the context of the family, which used them to create marriage portions, jointures, and entails. This study of a sampling of cartularies and charters, however, analyzes the different forms of restrictions on alienation in order to demonstrate how lords used the expanding remedies of the royal courts to reinforce their private lordship.The right to consent to a tenant's alienation of his holding had been an essential prop of lordship prior to Henry II's legal reforms. Through his consent, the lord could determine the acceptability of his tenants and ensure the adequate performance of services attached to the holdings. He also protected himself against a serious loss of resources through grants in alms to the Church or through dowries to women marrying out of his lordship. Seizure of the tenement was the sanction that lords used to enforce their rights of consent. If a tenant failed to obtain that consent, he lost his land.

Elizabethan Study of Old English Law and Its Post-Conquest Endorsement

2020 ◽  
pp. 332-359
Author(s):  
George Garnett
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Legal History ◽  
Medieval Manuscripts ◽  
Great Achievement ◽  
Magna Carta ◽  
English Law ◽  
Selection Of

Chapter 9 focuses on the second great achievement of 1568: the publication of William Lambarde’s edition of many Old English law codes, and two of the post-Conquest apocryphal confirmations of them, viz a code attributed to William I (Willelmi Articuli) and the Leges Edwardi Confessoris. The edition is shown to have been as much the achievement of Lambarde’s sometime tutor, Laurence Nowell, as of Lambarde. Their study of different medieval manuscripts is reconstructed, and their selection of materials for inclusion (and exclusion) is explained. The edition was heavily influenced by both a twelfth-century amplified version of Quadripartitus which had come into the hands of Archbishop Matthew Parker (and later passed into those of Sir Edward Coke), and by the London Collection of the Leges Anglorum. Both have been continuous threads running through this book since Chapter 3. This chapter makes extensive use of Nowell’s manuscript transcriptions and studies, which have hitherto been largely ignored. It also examines the manuscript collection of William Fleetwood, an MP with interest in English legal history, and of other members of the newly founded Society of Antiquaries, in particular Francis Tate and Robert Cotton. Lambarde’s other publication, notably his Archeion, are also briefly examined for their treatment of the Conquest, as are the two editions of Holinshed’s Chronicles. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the renewed interest late in Elizabeth’s reign in Magna Carta and Modus tenendi parliamentum, both of which had implications for understanding of the Conquest.

The Nobility and the State in Angevin and Post-Angevin England

2019 ◽  
pp. 401-441
Author(s):  
Peter Coss
Keyword(s):  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
Common Law ◽  
The State ◽  
Half Century ◽  
Magna Carta ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Impact

This chapter examines the fortunes of the aristocracy in England between the mid-twelfth and the mid-thirteenth century, beginning with the impact of Angevin kingship upon the aristocratic world and the great aristocratic revolt which led to Magna Carta. We will look at the impact of the Common Law upon both the high aristocracy and minor aristocracy/knights. We turn then to examining the changes that were taking place within the aristocracy itself within this period, that is to say the impact of chivalric knighthood and the delineation of nobility. The emphasis throughout is upon power relations rather than the development of the ‘constitution’. The chapter also looks at aristocratic values through the near-contemporary History of William the Marshal. The last part of the chapter looks at the half-century following Magna Carta, not in teleological terms. but in its own right. Finally, the chapter re-examines the origins of bastard feudalism.

A Short Survey of Yemeni Sufism from Its Inception up to the Thirteenth Century

2009 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-19
Author(s):  
Muhammad Aziz
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Ninth Century ◽  
Mountainous Area ◽  
Economic Activities ◽  
Short Survey ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Intellectual Activities

This paper analyzes the historical conditions of Yemen’s Sufi movement from the beginning of Islam up to the rise of the Rasulid dynasty in the thirteenth century. This is a very difficult task, given the lack of adequate sources and sufficient academic attention in both the East and theWest. Certainly, a few sentences about the subject can be found scattered in Sufi literature at large, but a respectable study of the period’s mysticism can hardly be found.1 Thus, I will focus on the major authorities who first contributed to the ascetic movement’s development, discuss why a major decline of intellectual activities occurred in many metropolises, and if the existing ascetic conditions were transformed into mystical tendencies during the ninth century due to the alleged impact ofDhu’n-Nun al-Misri (d. 860). This is followed by a brief discussion ofwhat contributed to the revival of the country’s intellectual and economic activities. After that, I will attempt to portray the status of the major ascetics and prominent mystics credited with spreading and diffusing the so-called Islamic saintly miracles (karamat). The trademark of both ascetics and mystics across the centuries, this feature became more prevalent fromthe beginning of the twelfth century onward. I will conclude with a brief note on the most three celebrated figures of Yemen’s religious and cultural history: Abu al-Ghayth ibn Jamil (d. 1253) and his rival Ahmad ibn `Alwan (d. 1266) from the mountainous area, andMuhammad ibn `Ali al-`Alawi, known as al-Faqih al-Muqaddam (d. 1256), from Hadramawt.

scholarly journals Introduction

1865 ◽  
Vol 91 ◽  
pp. i-xxxiv
Keyword(s):  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Public Nature ◽  
Magna Carta ◽  
The Church

The volume now presented to the reader, and entitled “Registrum Prioratus Beatæ Wigorniensis,” contains documents of many kinds. Some few are of a public nature, such as the Magna Carta, de Libertatibus Angliæ, 9 Henrici III. 1224, the Carta de Libertatibus Forestæ of the same year, the Novæ Provisiones Angliæ, 44 H. III. 1259, and the Provisiones de Merton, 20 H. III. 1235. Others are Precedents of forms to be observed upon the vacancy of a Bishopric, for announcing the vacancy, and for obtaining from the Crown licence to elect. There are also Royal, Episcopal, and Private charters relating to the possessions and privileges of the Church at Worcester, together with records of proceedings in law suits before the Justices in Eyre. The larger portion, however, of the volume consists of a Descriptive Rental, as it may be termed, of the Possessions of the Benedictine Monastery of Worcester in the middle of the thirteenth century, including as well the Spiritual Revenues derived from Churches and Tithes, as the Temporal Revenues derived from Manors and Lands.

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