Social control and the hue and cry in two fourteenth-century villages

Journal of Medieval History

Volumn 31, Issue 1, 2005, Pages 29-53

  Muller M ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF BIRMINGHAM   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

Authority; Gender; Hue and cry; Lordship; Peasants; Social control

Indexed keywords

EID: 14044258399     PISSN: 03044181     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1016/j.jmedhist.2004.08.005     Document Type: Article

References (95)

1. I am very grateful to Chris Dyer for his many helpful and encouraging comments and suggestions for this paper. I would also like to thank Chris Wickham, Phillipp Schofield as well as all the participants at the Medieval History Research Seminar at the University of Birmingham, and the participants at the Institute for Historical Research Seminar in London for their many helpful comments and criticisms on various versions of this paper. Finally thanks have to go to the British Academy who helped to fund the research for this paper.
2. Examples can be found in Glastonbury Abbey Documents held at Longleat House (hereafter cited as GADL) MS 10658, fo. 41; GADL MS 10661, fo. 22. Sourced from microfilm prepared by Cedric Chivers Ltd, Portway, Bath, 1981.
3. C. Dyer, 'Power and conflict in the medieval English village', in: C. Dyer, Everyday life in medieval England (London, 1994), 9.
4. P.C. Maddern, Violence and social order: East Anglia 1422-1442 (Oxford, 1992), 12, 76-97.
5. Ibid., 84-97.
6. See for example Maddern, Violence and social order
7. M.K. McIntosh, Controlling misbehaviour in England, 1370-1600 (Cambridge, paperback edition, 2002)
8. B.A. Hanawalt, Crime and conflict in English communities 1300-1348 (London, 1979)
9. A. Musson, Public order and law enforcement: The local administration of criminal justice 1294-1350 (Woodbridge, 1996)
10. J. Bellamy, Crime and public order in England in the later middle ages (London, 1973).
11. For studies of familial conflict and the impact of famine on crime patterns see: Hanawalt B.A. 'The peasant family and crime in fourteenth-century England' Journal of British Studies vol. 13 no. 2 (1974)
12. B.A. Hanawalt, 'Economic influences on the pattern of crime in England, 1300-1348', American Journal of Legal History 18 (1974), 281-97.
13. R.M. Smith, 'Kin and neighbours in a thirteenth-century Suffolk community', Journal of Family History, 4 (1979), 219-56
14. reprinted in: The sociology of rural communities, vol. I, ed. G. Crow (Cheltenham, 1996), 244-81.
15. See for exaSple: Outside the law: studies in crime and order 1650-1850, ed. J. Rule (Exeter, 1982)
16. R.B. Manning, Hunters and poachers: A social and cultural history of unlawful hunting in England 1485-1640 (Oxford, 1993)
17. J.E. Archer, By a flash and a scare. Incendiarism, animal maiming, and poaching in East Anglia 1815-1870 (Oxford, 1990)
18. G. Rudé, Criminal and victim. Crime and society in early nineteenth century England (Oxford, 1985)
19. E.J. Hobsbawm and G. Rudé, Captain Swing (Harmondsworth, 1973).
20. Hobsbawm and Rudé, Captain Swing
21. Rudé, Criminal and victim, 78-88.
22. C. Dyer 'Taxation and communities in late medieval England' in: Progress and problems in medieval england: Essays in honour of Edward Miller ed. R. Britnell and J. Hatcher (Cambridge 1996)
23. W. O. Ault, Open-field farming in medieval England: A study of village by-laws (London, 1972)
24. M. Müller, 'The aims and organisation of a peasant revolt in early fourteenth-century Wiltshire', Rural History, 14, 1, (2003), 1-20
25. C. Dyer, 'The English medieval village community and its decline', Journal of British Studies, 33 (1994)
26. R.H. Hilton, Bond men made free. Medieval peasant movements and the English Rising of 1381 (London and New York, 1973), chapter 1, 'The nature of the medieval peasant economy', 25-62.
27. For these officials see, for example, Dyer, 'Power and conflict in the village', 6-7.
28. F. Pollock and F. W. Maitland, The history of English law before the time of Edward I; vol. II, 2nd edition (Cambridge, 1898) 578-9.
29. The Riverside Chaucer, general editor I.D. Benson, 3rd edition (Oxford, 1988), 256.
30. M. Müller, 'Peasant mentalities and cultures in two contrasting communities in the fourteenth century: Brandon in Suffolk and Badbury in Wiltshire', unpublished PhD thesis, Departments of Medieval and Modern History, University of Birmingham (2001).
31. For an excellent recent analysis and description of the nature of the medieval manor and its courts see M. Bailey, The English manor c. 1200-1500. Manchester medieval sources series (Manchester University Press 2002) For a thorough discussion of leet courts and the nature of the view of frankpledge see especially 178-189.
32. GADL MS 10774, fo. 18 and GADL MS 11224, fo. 18.
33. GADL MS 10773, fo. 18.
34. GADL MS 11223, fo. 12
35. GADL MS 11181, fo. 15.
36. GADL MS 11224, fo. 18.
37. Roll 289, membrane 24, Sir Nicholas Bacon Collection of English Court and Manorial Documents, University of Chicago Library, Chicago (hereafter cited as 'Bacon Collection').
38. GADL MS 10634, fo. 14.
39. See for the courts' treatment of rape cases Hanawalt, Crime and conflicts, 104-110.;
40. and her article 'Whose story was this? Rape narratives in medieval English courts' in her Of good and ill repute. Gender and social control in medieval England (New York, 1998), 124-41.
41. GADL MS 10646, fo. 5.
42. GADL MS 10646, fo. 5.
43. For examples of this see GADL MS 11222, fo. 14v
44. GADL 10636, fo. 24
45. GADL MS 10661, fo. 22.
46. Bacon Collection, Roll 291, membrane 48.
47. Bacon Collection, Roll 291, membrane 41.
48. Bacon Collection, Roll 291, membrane 53v.
49. Bacon Collection, Roll 291, membrane 50.
50. Bacon Collection, Roll 291, membrane 57.
51. Bacon Collection, Roll 290, membrane 4.
52. Bacon Collection, Roll 292, membrane.3.
53. Pollock and Maitland, History of English law, vol II, 512
54. For such examples in the court rolls see: GADL MS 11223 fo. 12
55. GADL MS 11182 fo. 20
56. GADL MS 11222 fo. 14v.
57. For the legal status of women see for example, P.J.P. Goldberg, Women in England c. 1275-1525: Documentary sources, Manchester medieval sources series (Manchester, 1995), 35-43.
58. See on the tithing and its composition: Bailey, The English manor, 179.
59. GADL MS 10774, fo. 18.
60. Goldberg, Women in England c. 1275-1525, 14;
61. and see the church court case of York dating from the late fourteenth century at pages 141-2 concerning a woman seeking a divorce as her husband is violent towards her. See also Hanawalt, Crime and conflict in English communities, 165-6.
62. See for an excellent discussion of gender roles, hierarchy and the participation in just violence: Maddern, Violence and Social Order, 232.
63. See also on gender and crime: Hanawalt, Crime and conflict, 115-16
64. and C. Wiener, 'Sex-roles and crime in late Elizabethan Hertfordshire', Journal of Social History, 8 (1977), 38-60.
65. On men and aggression and male gender roles see, for example, Medieval masculinities. Regarding men in the Middle Ages, ed. C.A. Lees (Medieval cultures, volume 7, Minneapolis and London, 1994).
66. 'How the Goodwife Taught her Daughter', in Goldberg, Women in England c. 1275-1525, 97-103, at 102.
67. Hanawalt, Crime and conflict, 115. It is sometimes suggested that women might simply have been more successful in concealing their crimes, but, as Hanawalt points out (117), this seems to be an unlikely explanation for the low rate of female defendants. In fact suggestions of women's superior skills at concealing crime, or the use of poison in homicides rather than (open and direct) physical violence raises suspicions of yet another form of gender stereotyping, as Carol Wiener comments: Whether these suggestions are based on anything other than the perennial male belief that women are devious is not clear to me: C. Wiener, Sex-roles and crime in late Elizabethan Hertfordshire, footnote 55, page 58.
68. 'How the Goodwife Taught Her Daughter', in: Goldberg, Women in England, 98.
69. M. Müller, 'Peasant mentalities and cultures in two contrasting communities in the fourteenth century; Brandon in Suffolk and Badbury in Wiltshire', 201-2, for women involved in Brandon's landmarket and 269-71 for women's increasing importance as wage-labourers at the manor especially after the Black Death. These issues might be compared with Goldberg's findings in: P.J.P. Goldberg, Women, work and life-cycle in a medieval economy: Women in York and Yorkshire c. 1300-1520 (Oxford, 1992).
70. See for example: Bacon Collection, Roll 291, membrane 41; Bacon Collection, Roll 291, membrane 20.
71. Bacon Collection, Roll 290, membrane 4.
72. B. Hanawalt, 'The host, the law, and the ambiguous space in medieval London taverns', in: Medieval crime and social control, ed. B.A. Hanawalt and D. Wallace (London, 1999), 204-223.
73. GADL MS 10646, fo. 5.
74. Another example of this can be found in GADL MS 10646, fo. 32.
75. GADL MS 10661 fo. 22.
76. Bacon Collection, Roll 291, membrane 20.
77. Bacon Collection, Roll 289, membrane 24.
78. Bacon Collection, Roll 291, membrane 41.
79. J. A. Raftis, 'Changes in an English village after the Black Death', Medieval Studies, 29 (1967), 164-5.
80. R. H. Britnell, 'Feudal reaction after the Black Death in the Palatinate of Durham', Past and Present, 128 (1990), 28-47.
81. For the seigniorial reaction see: Britnell, 'Feudal reaction after the Black Death'
82. R.H. Hilton, 'Social concepts in the English rising of 1381', in: R.H. Hilton, Class conflict and the crisis of feudalism, revised edition (London and New York, 1990), esp. 145-7
83. R.H. Hilton, Bond men made free. Medieval peasant movements and the English Rising of 1381 (reprinted London and New York, 1993), esp. 152-63
84. C. Dyer, 'The social and economic background to the revolt of 1381', in: The English Rising of 1381, ed. R.H. Hilton and T.H. Aston (Cambridge, 1981)
85. P. Hargreaves, 'Seigniorial reaction and peasant responses: Worcester Priory and its peasants after the Black Death', in: Midland History, vol. 24 (1999) 53-78.
86. Apparently action for damages was still quite a recent phenomena, see Pollock and Maitland, The history of English law, vol. II, 522-3.
87. GADL MS 11222 fo. 14v.
88. GADL MS 11223 fo. 12.
89. See for example Dyer, The social and economic background to the revolt of 1381, 17.
90. GADL MS 11179 fo. 31
91. GADL MS 11221 fo. 40
92. M. Müller, 'The aims and organisation of a peasant revolt in early fourteenth-century Wiltshire', Rural History, vol. 14 (2003), 1-20.
93. Bacon Collection, Roll 291, membrane 10v
94. Bacon Collection, Roll 291, membrane 41
95. Bacon Collection, Roll 292, Membrane 2