The Time Traveler's Guide to Medieval England: A Handbook for Visitors to the Fourteenth Century (38 page)

Roughly a third of all organized criminal gangs in England are composed of family units.
³²
Obviously the majority of these are informal collaborations. Husbands and wives often work together on the wrong side of the law, and so do brothers. Sometimes even sisters get involved. The Waraunt family of Salle, Norfolk, includes three sisters, one brother, and another male relative, John Waraunt. Two of the sisters and the brother are accused of receiving stolen goods in 1321; they escape punishment, as does another sister in the same year. John, however, is found guilty of stealing clothes and household goods worth eight shillings from a fellow townsman. He is hanged. In 1325 the four remaining members of the Waraunt family are back behind bars. A specific instruction is issued to their gaoler that they should be treated harshly. They all survive, and they also survive the appeal of an approver in February 1326 that they have stolen a quantity of cloth. Two of the sisters are again accused of theft in August 1326. They remain at large, thieving where they can.
³³

Families like the Waraunts are obviously a nuisance to their neighbors but, in relation to some gangs, they are relatively harmless. Far more serious are the armed criminals who use force against their victims. You really do not want to run into the likes of the Worcestershire gang leader Malcolm Musard, who in 1304 attacks a rectory with a group of archers, having been paid to terrorize the new incumbent by the aggrieved old one. Nor do you want to come up against John Fitzwalter, an Essex gang leader, who twice besieges Colchester and holds the entire town for ransom.
³⁴

How are these gangs able to remain at large? The answer will probably shock you. And yet it will probably not surprise you. The perpetrators very often have links with the richest and most powerful elements of society. A number of them are knights and members
of the gentry or even the nobility. The earl of Devon threatens to murder a Justice of the Peace as he rides through the county. It is not unknown for a knight to draw his sword in court and hold it against a judge’s throat.
³⁵
Even the most prominent judges are affected by threats and bribes. Sir John Inge, a justice of the Court of Common Pleas, admits taking bribes. Sir Richard Willoughby is accused of “selling the laws like cattle” and fined £1,000. In 1350 no less a figure than Sir William Thorp, Chief Justice of the King’s Bench, is imprisoned for accepting bribes.

A good example of what the judges are up against is the Folville gang. At the time of his death (in 1310), John Folville, lord of the manors of Ashby Folville (Leicestershire) and Teigh (Rutland) has seven sons: John, Eustace, Laurence, Richard, Robert, Thomas, and Walter. The eldest, John, inherits Ashby Folville and remains within the law. The others do not. The most dangerous, Eustace Folville, inherits Teigh and joins with two of his brothers and the Zouche brothers (Ralph, Roger, and Ivo) in forming a gang to waylay their long-standing enemy, Roger Bellers. Bellers is an important man: a baron of the Exchequer, he is protected by none other than the king’s favorite, Hugh, Lord Despenser. Nevertheless, on January 19, 1326, on the road between Melton Mowbray and Leicester, they murder him. They drive a long knife down past his collarbone and into his heart.

The guilty men flee the country. In their absence they are declared outlaws. But they are in luck, because in September 1326, Roger Mortimer and Queen Isabella invade England and put an end to Hugh Despenser. All proceedings against the Folvilles are quashed, and they are pardoned. Free to return to England, and believing they have political protectors of their own, they embark on a series of robberies in Lincolnshire. In 1327 they grow bolder, roaming the highways with a larger gang of confederates, looking for victims to threaten, rape, and incarcerate for ransom. Over the next couple of years Eustace is personally accused of at least four murders, a rape, and three robberies, and these figures are almost certainly an underestimate of his crimes. But the net closes in around them once more, and, in late 1328, they are forced to rehabilitate themselves by joining Mortimer’s army in putting down the rebellion of the earl of Lancaster. They all secure pardons again. But while under Mortimer’s protection they loot the people of Leicester to the tune of £200 worth of goods.

Attempts in 1330 to arrest the Folville gang are ineffective. Their position in Leicestershire is unassailable. The eldest Folville brother, John, the only one who has taken no part in any crime, has by this stage been appointed a Keeper of the Peace. He may well be supplying his brothers with information. Sir Robert Colville tries to arrest Eustace at Teigh, but is beaten back and later accused of an illegal attack. Roger de Wensley is hired to track down both the Folvilles and the other notorious gang in the region, the Coterel gang (led by James Coterel), but when he finds the Coterels he simply joins them.

In 1331 the Folvilles are hired by a canon of Sempringham Priory and the cellarer of Haverholm Abbey. These clergymen, who have previously sheltered the gang from the law, pay them £20 to destroy a water mill belonging to a rival. Soon the mill is a smoking ruin. The Folvilles’ next crime is on a far more ambitious scale. They join forces with several other criminal gangs, including the Coterel gang; the Bradburn gang; the Savage Company (led by Roger Savage, a friend of James Coterel); Sir Robert Tuchet, former constable of Melbourne Castle; and Sir Robert de Vere, constable of Rockingham Castle. The plan is to kidnap a rich royal judge, Sir Richard Willoughby (the same judge who will later be accused of “selling the laws like cattle”). They seize him on January 14, 1332, while he is carrying out an
oyer et terminer
commission in the region. They rob him of £100 of his goods and ransom him for the colossal sum of 1,300 marks (£866 13s 4d).

Such extraordinary, reckless banditry cannot go unchecked, and it is with the Folville and Coterel gangs in mind that the most stringent of all the trailbaston commissions is issued in 1332. In charge are the three most important judges in the kingdom: Geoffrey le Scrope (Chief Justice of the King’s Bench), William de Herle (Chief Justice of the Common Pleas) and John Stonor (the previous Chief Justice of the Common Pleas). Despite this show of strength from the government, they fail to bring the key criminals to justice. James Coterel and Roger Savage retreat into the wilderness of High Peak forest in Derbyshire. Orders are issued to arrest no fewer than two hundred adherents of the Folville and Coterel gangs. Only a quarter appear before the judges, and virtually all of them are acquitted by local juries, composed of men too scared to convict them.

In the late 1330s the Folvilles and the Coterels find ways to assimilate themselves back into society. A large number of them join
Edward Ill’s military expedition to the Low Countries in 1338. After this, Eustace gives up crime. In an extraordinary turn of fortune he is knighted and dies peacefully in 1347, having served on the Crécy campaign the previous year. Leadership of the gang passes to Richard Folville, rector of Teigh. He and his fellow criminals meet their end in 1340, when their archenemy, Sir Robert Colville, finally catches up with them. Colville pursues them to Teigh, where they seek sanctuary in the church. After ten years of trying to arrest them, Colville has no intention of giving them any hope whatsoever, and he attacks. There is a bitter shootout; the Folvilles send volleys of arrows flying from the church windows but they are unable to resist Colville. They are dragged outside, one by one, and beheaded for resisting arrest.
³⁶

After reading about Richard Folville, you might well ask what right a clergyman has to lecture you on matters of law. Such opinions are shared by a number of people. How come bishops and archdeacons can enforce the law on moral behavior? Some high-ranking clergymen even publicly acknowledge their own illegitimate children.
³⁷
Nevertheless, no discussion of the law would be complete without reference to the church courts. One particular aspect—the benefit of clergy—means that you, as a literate person, should never have to face the death penalty for a felony.

There are various sorts of church courts in England. The most important are the consistory courts, with jurisdiction over the whole diocese, and the archdeaconry courts. Many sorts of cases can be brought. Where one person wishes to take action against another in a moral issue—for example, slander or wife beating—and both individuals live within the same archdeaconry, then it is to the archdeaconry court they will go. It is not a cheap business, however. To raise a suit costs 3d. The libel (the document requiring the defendant to turn up and defend himself or herself) 2s Id. The examination costs a further Is. Securing a sentence could cost 7s 8d in the diocese of Canterbury so you will only find this sort of action being taken in the most extreme circumstances.
³⁸

Just as important are indictments for moral offenses reported to the
church courts. These include defamation of character, drunkenness, swearing, trading on a Sunday (especially butchers and barbers), not attending church on a Sunday, heresy, perjury, false alms taking, eating meat on a nonmeat day, attacks on clergymen, failure to pay tithes, usury, ill treatment of wives, divorce (on grounds of consanguinity or nonconsummation), and legal cases against clergymen. By far the largest category of cases are those concerned with sexual offenses. Between a third and two-thirds of all moral disputes arise from sexual behavior, mostly fornication, bigamy, and adultery but also including prostitution, bastardy, homosexuality, and incest. These are all dealt with in the consistorial court. In such cases, the bishop’s commissary may order the offending parties to be fined, to be whipped, to carry candles in procession in the church on a Sunday, to make offerings at the altar before everyone else in the church, or to stand in a white sheet at the door of the church on three successive Sundays, confessing his or her crime. Failure to attend court results in suspension (so one cannot enter a church until making good with the court) and, in the worst cases, excommunication.

Just as any nobleman has the right to be tried by his peers in Parliament, so too any clergyman has the right to be judged by the church courts. The right is called “the benefit of clergy,” and it is vigorously upheld in an Act of 1315. The “benefit” element is obvious: even if found guilty of a felony by Convocation (the highest church court, the ecclesiastical equivalent of Parliament), a clergyman will not face the death penalty. Interestingly, the test for whether you are a clergyman is very low: can you read a passage from the Bible? If you are accused of a felony, and find yourself in court, you should claim benefit of clergy and read the text you are given. In theory you will be tried again by the church courts—even if already found guilty by the king’s courts—but normally the clergyman who takes responsibility for you will simply let you go.

For those who are guilty of a serious felony, and in fear of retribution, there exists one last resort. If you can get to a church before you are arrested, you can claim sanctuary. With the slamming of that
consecrated oak door behind you, you are safe—in theory—for up to forty days. Sanctuary is confirmed by your confession, while in the said church, to a witness. Those pursuing you at that point must place a guard over the door to prevent you escaping—and they can be fined if you escape. According to the Act of 1315, anyone claiming sanctuary cannot be forced from the church by hunger—the guards should feed you. Furthermore, you may freely leave the church to urinate and defecate outside. The coroner should turn up within the forty days and confiscate your goods. He will then assign you a sea port from which you will abjure the realm. You will make your way to it along the king’s highway, bareheaded and barefoot, and take the next ship leaving the kingdom.

That is, at least, how sanctuary should operate. In reality, you will be lucky to reach exile, especially if you are a murderer. Sometimes the community is “unable” to persuade the coroner to attend and will stop feeding you after forty days. Sometimes they will not feed you at all. When a thief is set to abjure the realm, a large crowd normally gathers to pursue him on the highway, making his life a misery as far as they wish. Personal circumstances often complicate the exercising of the right. On one occasion a man charged with the murder of a priest escapes from the custody of the priest’s servants and seeks sanctuary in a church. As the man is a fugitive from justice—the priest’s servants were trying to arrest him when he fled—he is denied the right to abjure the realm. After forty days he is given the choice of starving to death in the church or giving himself up. He chooses the latter—and is promptly hanged.
³⁹
In 1320 Isabella de Bury kills the parish clerk of Allhallows on the Wall, London, and takes refuge in the same church. The bishop of London himself sends word that the Church refuses to shelter such a woman, and she is dragged out and hanged.
⁴⁰

Finally, it is worth noting that the right of sanctuary is often ignored. As the case of Richard Folville shows, a priest taking shelter in his own church can hardly claim sanctuary when he is a notorious criminal. When Chief Justice Tresilian is found hiding in sanctuary at Westminster Abbey during the Merciless Parliament, he is not allowed to abjure the realm but is dragged out by the king’s uncle and hanged. Many people during the Peasants’ Revolt take sanctuary in churches: large numbers are forcibly removed and beheaded as if they
are fugitives from justice, regardless of the law. Everything depends on the level of feeling against the culprit. A Breton, taken in by a much-loved old widow in London, murders her in her bed and steals her goods. When caught, he flees to sanctuary. It is a brief respite. As soon as the coroner has assigned him a port, the murderer sets out on the road. But the widow’s grief-stricken friends wait for him and stone him to death.
⁴¹
In medieval England, popular justice is no more forgiving than the royal judges and the hangman’s noose.