Borough Court Research Articles

“For the Party Acted Wrong”: Noble Reflection of Court Trials in Volhynia in the Second Half of the 16th — First Half of the 17th Century

The article uses documentary material from the act books of Volhynia borough courts to analyze the perception and importance of the court for the Volhynia voivodeship nobility as an institution for protecting its honor and property in the community. The social changes that started in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth after the conclusion of the Union of Lublin (1596) are highlighted. It is shown that those transformations were a pan-European trend determined by changes at the political, economic, social, cultural, and religious levels. The article singles out criteria which caused class discord in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and presents the two-pronged classification of the federal judicial system including the division into political and civil proceedings. It is noted that the concepts of “honor”, “freedom”, “right”, and “privilege” were crucial for the establishment of a noble corporation.The examples of four cases from borough courts show how noblemen could interpret encroachment on their status, which required the opposing party to behave ethically and respectfully despite the conflict situation. It is traced that the nobility demanded similar respect for its property, which was an important determinant of its place in the community. It is established that the main legislative source of appeal for the voivodeship gentry seeking to preserve its rights were Lithuanian Statutes, namely the Second, so-called Volhynian Statute (1566). It could be used both for the benefit of the injured party and the defense; however, the case was not always solved in favor of the injured. A legally savvy defense attorney could achieve the desired result for their party even in the event of its guilt. The article shows the connection between the noble perception of the law as a system of codification clauses, which protected noblemen from external dangers and social reality of the Commonwealth, with non-legal instruments of a stratified society, where the notions of sedentarity, patron-client relations, and clear knowledge of the specific legal system functioning were important.

Coverture and the Marital Partnership in Late Medieval Nottingham: Women's Litigation at the Borough Court, ca. 1300–ca.1500

AbstractWomen engaged in litigation in Nottingham's borough court as both plaintiffs and defendants for a variety of reasons relating to trade, household provisioning, misbehavior and interpersonal disputes. This article examines how women's litigation was determined by the doctrine of coverture and the way that women's marital status shaped and defined their experience of the law. In doing so, it explores how these pleas reveal the workings of the marital partnership within a late medieval English town. In order to contextualize the experiences of women “under coverture,” the article first traces the ways in which all manner of female marital and household identities were documented in the court records, analyzing the descriptors that court scribes attached to individual women's names. The article highlights inconsistency in the way that women's identities were recorded and in the way that the marital partnership was represented through the litigation of spouses in the borough court. The dual focus of this article not only adds new evidence to ongoing discussions of the nature of medieval coverture but also interrogates how we identify coverture and women's marital statuses based on the evidence of court records.

Punishments for Rent Arreas in the Boroughs of Medieval England

The article is devoted to borough customs of medieval England (11th — 16th). Main criteria of medieval boroughs are represented in the article. Importance of medieval custom and customary law is accented. Medieval custom is defined as a special algorithm of behavior based on a traditional character of its applying, which began its existence in «times out of mind» and had been living in the memory and everyday life of generations for a long period. Customs, which regulated land relations, were of great importance, including one, connected with the rules of land’s seizure for rent arreas. Rent arreas were considered to be a special case of debt obligations, while land seizure was a manifestation of a general rule of customary law named distress (arrest and seizure of property for debts); it was often used in the medieval boroughs. Article demonstrates the fact of thorough consideration of rent arreas’ cases in the customary law of medieval English boroughs. Rent arreas were punished rather severely. It might be, e. g., the sale of the debtor’s land, arrest and seizure of all his landed property and movables, debt collection by force on the plot of land (in spite of the enclosure with the purpose to prohibit the entrance of an owner or administrative persons of the borough), possibility for the lender to apply to the borough court as a plaintiff with the purpose of judicial debt compensation, sequestration of the land for different terms, recovery of the land by the lord in the case of two-years’ delay in payment by debtor, high fines, depending on specificity of local customs. Thus, all these data give to the researcher an opportunity of better understanding the specificity of seisin (free possession, defended not only by customary, but by both common and statute law) in medieval England. Moreover, the analysis of the texts gave an opportunity to estimate the specific character of socio-legal space: based on the custom, it minimized behavioral anarchy and regularized various sides of medieval England’s everyday life.

Losses of Peaceful Population in Volhynia Caused by Epidemic Diseases in the Years of Khmelnytsky Uprising (Based on the Materials of Volhynia Voivodeship)

The article, based on documentary materials from the record books of Volhynia terrestrial (city) and borough (land) courts and chronicles, investigates the problem of the peaceful population losses from epidemic diseases in Volhynia during the Liberation War of the Ukrainian people under the leadership of B. Khmelnitsky

Medieval business networks: St Mary's guild and the borough court in later medieval Nottingham

ABSTRACT:Historians have suggested that medieval urban guilds played a role in political and commercial networking. Guilds’ commercial protectionism was designed to benefit their membership and close ties have been discovered between merchant guilds and urban oligarchies. This article asks if all guilds should be viewed as commercial networking hubs. It uses evidence from a later fourteenth-century membership roll of St Mary's guild in Nottingham in conjunction with Nottingham's borough court rolls to analyse the commercial connections between members and non-members in that period. It concludes that the guild did not function as a networking hub.

Middle English occupational bynames as lexical evidence: a study of names in the Nottingham borough court rolls 1303-1455. Part 2, etymologies

This paper is the second of a two-part study of occupational bynames in the Nottingham borough court rolls. Part 1, ‘Methodology’, discussed previous literature on the lexicographical value of Middle English bynames, described the contents of the Nottingham rolls and set out the methodological principles and practicalities that inform the etymological analyses in the present paper. The 51 bynames selected for discussion in Part 2 either provide evidence for words that are absent from the Middle English Dictionary (hereafter MED) or antedate MED’s earliest citation or, through their forms and contexts, shed fresh light on the etymology or sense of the source word. The names have been drawn mainly from the original manuscripts of the borough court rolls, hereafter abbreviated as CtR.11 Nottingham Borough Court Rolls, Nottinghamshire Archives (Nottingham). The name forms quoted in this paper are drawn from a selection of the earlier rolls dated 1303–1379, MSS CA 1251a, 1251b, 1252, 1253, 1254, 1255, 1256, 1257, 1258a, 1262, 1263, 1269, 1280a. Additional name forms have been taken from an unpublished calendar of the rolls prepared by Trevor Foulds and Jill Hughes (hereafter abbreviated as CalCtR),22 Trevor Foulds (ed.), Calendar of the Nottingham Borough Court Rolls, 1303–1455. I am greatly indebted to Dr Foulds for permission to quote material from the Calendar, a product of the Nottingham Borough Court Rolls Project (see Foulds, Hughes & Jones 1993). and from extracts of rolls published in the Records of the Borough of Nottingham, hereafter abbreviated as Rec. B. Nottingham (see Stevenson 1882–3). The surviving rolls begin in 1303 and continue with some gaps (notably from 1336 to 1351) until 1455.

Middle English occupational bynames as lexical evidence: a study of names in the Nottingham borough court rolls 1303–1455. Part 1, Methodology

AbstractThe potential value of Middle English bynames for the history of English vocabulary has long been recognised, and occupational names have been given a good deal of scholarly attention. Nevertheless there are many borough and city records whose bynames have yet to be systematically researched. The present paper on methodology and its sequel, Part 2, ‘Etymologies’, are concerned with occupational bynames in the borough court rolls of late medieval Nottingham. ‘Etymologies’ will discuss 51 bynames that either are not recorded as occupational agent nouns in the Middle English Dictionary (hereafter abbreviated as MED), antedate the earliest quotation in MED, or, through their forms and contexts, shed new light on the etymology or sense of the source word. Part 1, ‘Methodology’, places this investigation of Nottingham bynames against the background of previous lexicographical applications of Middle English bynames, describes the contents of the Nottingham borough court rolls, and sets out the methodological principles and practicalities that influence the etymological judgements made in the second paper. Lacking the linguistic contextualisation that is normal for items of vocabulary, bynames present special problems of interpretation for the lexicographer, which need to be identified and, where possible, mitigated.

Disputing legal privilege: civic relations with the Church in late medieval England

This article explores how provincial town governments sought to bolster civic authority in the period from c.1350 to c.1500. It focuses on royal boroughs, such as York, Chester and Norwich, which had a strong sense of lay civic identity and political pride. In these places, the king was the direct overlord, but the power of civic government was nonetheless frequently challenged by the franchises of local abbeys and convents, cathedral chapters, bishops' palaces, areas of sanctuary and the estates of local nobles. The main case study is urban relations with the Church, in particular disputes with local religious houses and rivalry between the Church and borough courts. How town leaders sought to deal with rival authorities provides an insight into the creation and assertion of lay urban identity in the late medieval period, and illuminates broader themes of how power was legitimised and enforced in post-Black Death society.

The economy of obligation: the culture of credit and social relations in early modern England

Craig Muldrew, The Economy of Obligation: The Culture of Credit and Social Relations in Early Modern England, London, Macmillan Press, 1998, pp. xxvii + 453, hb. £47.50, ISBN: 0333625714This is a wonderful book. Craig Muldrew's re-examination of credit should provoke a redefinition of the way we should think about early modern history. His is a large book in four parts. In the first the author identifies a major expansion in the ownership of goods between the 1550s and 1580. As one would expect, such new standards of material comfort were concentrated in the homes of successful farmers and tradesmen, rather than those of the labouring poor. Most goods were bought on credit, and involved long-drawn-out bargains, initiated in the urban market-place, but also, increasingly, in shops. The huge increase in buying and selling that accompanied economic expansion produced a dense network of middlemen operating within a new 'market culture'. Bargains were made orally, witnesses were the most important form of security. Tradesmen used account books only infrequently (65), many households continually overspent and most conflated domestic and trading accounts. An ingenious attempt to estimate the number of purchases in King's Lynn demonstrates that this relatively modest town of some two thousand households made about 642,000 separate purchases per year, which translates to a relatively low level of economic activity. There was plenty of time for negotiation and socialising as part of early modern business, which was just as well, since conversation to establish the credit and reputation of all parties to a transaction was the very stuff of this 'economy of obligation'. Since the supply of money failed to keep pace with the demand for it, cash formed less than one in ten of all exchanges (100) and was used in relatively unusual circumstances. All households were thus bound up in a complex mesh of credit relationships, usually informal agreements based on trust. Even though lending money (at interest) was done, increasingly, on bonds, such informal credit arrangements remained the dominant mode of exchange throughout our period.The second part of the book explores this 'culture of credit'. Essentially the growth of credit placed the question of trust, and the enforcement of bargains and contracts centre stage. The Protestant religion's 'emphasis on faith was mirrored by an increasing emphasis on trust within everyday social relations' (132) that were perceived to be increasingly necessary when credit networks were growing ever more complex. For the middling sort, trust in God and neighbours, 'credit' rather than capital accumulation, was at the foundation of their economic activities. Every member of a community should live soberly, lend modestly and preserve their reputation and order in their household. Moral lapses and defamation were therefore serious matters and prosecuted ever more vigorously in the courts.Despite such emphasis on trust and the cultivation of appropriate and trustworthy behaviour, and as is already well known from the work of Chris Brooks, economic expansion not only multiplied credit transactions but produced a mounting tide of debt-related litigation. Whereas central courts saw an expansion in business generated by the use of formal credit instruments, Muldrew shows that there was, in fact, a parallel rise in litigation in local borough courts seeking to enforce oral agreements. Such litigation increased sharply after 1560 and was, predictably, most common in the 1580s. In the third part of the book, Muldrew estimates that over one million actions were being initiated locally in the 1580s, thereafter real rates of litigation declined as individuals became more adept at managing new levels of credit. Not surprisingly, then, going to law was experienced by virtually everybody. Although, as one would expect, the wealthy had more litigation pending and were more likely to take cases further, in a community like King's Lynn, even aged paupers sued their neighbours for outstanding debts. …

Lawyers and the law in later seventeenth-century Ireland

In seventeenth-century Ireland the law increasingly defined and regulated relationships: between government and governed; between landlord and tenant; between master and servant; among the propertied; and even, by the end of the century, between Catholics and Protestants. This situation, similar to that throughout western Europe, signalled — at least superficially — England’s success in assimilating Ireland. The system of courts, centred on Dublin, and, through regular assizes and quarter sessions, borough, sheriffs’, church and manorial courts, reaching deep into the localities, was celebrated as a prime benefit, as well as the principal means, of anglicisation. The English policies which had progressively dismantled indigenous institutions, including the brehon law of Gaelic and gaelicised society, and replaced older Catholic with new Protestant élites, rested on statute, proclamation and judicial decree or process. Sincethe law was essential to England’s rule in Ireland, its opponents countered through the courts and legal argument: as a result, the functioning of the law, especially the quasi-judicial commissions which redistributed land, was politicised. Not only did the law accomplish, it also reflected these changes; for, bit by bit, Catholics were edged from the judicial bench and then disqualified from practising as barristers and attorneys. By the early eighteenth century the courts — publicly at least — were manned by and run for the burgeoning Protestant interest in Ireland.

A Leeds Elite: The Principal Burgesses of the First Leeds Corporation

THE TRADITION OF LEADERSHIP in local affairs in Leeds did not spring fully fledged out of the last quarter of the sixteenth century. It is to be sought, as in many similar communities, in the homage jury of the Court Baron, that 'organ ... of the occupying owners of agricultural land' , where the voices of the leading customary tenants of fourteenthand fifteenthcentury Leeds would be those most often heard and heeded, and in the body of free burgesses in their portmoot. The merging of the manorial and borough courts of Leeds towards the end of the fifteenth century was a result of the spread of urban interests into the countryside, as townsmen began to invest in customary land. It facilitated that 'transition from rural to urban habits' which F. W. Maitland regarded as the essential preliminary to the evolution of a 'corporate personality' amongst townsmen. 1But as the manor and borough of Leeds remained firmly under the authority of the Duchy of Lancaster, and the inhabitants possessed neither guild merchant nor common stock, the need for a 'corporate personality' did not arise. It was the administration of trust property devised and bequeathed in the mid-sixteenth century to charitable uses that first provided those 'best fitted' with opportunities for corporate action. The sixteenth century saw a great 'falling away of ancient props'. By the fifteen-fifties the borough of Leeds if no longer 'an island of freedom in a sea of manorialism' nevertheless remained a small industrial settlement surrounded by its vastly greater agricultural hinterland (the Main riding). There is clear evidence, however, of the decay of the medieval field system and the spread of those industrial features fulling mills, tenters, and wool hedges which so impressed the C~ityof London's surveyors in 1628.2 The gradual break-up of the great fields of

The First Half-Century of the Borough of Stratford-upon-Avon

O_ ur knowledge of the medieval English borough, like that of the medieval manor, has been much influenced by the legal preoccupations of its first historians. Today we possess many learned studies of burgess status and burgage tenure, of borough 'customs', borough courts, and the law merchant, and many published collections of borough charters and custumals. But although some boroughs have published large and varied selections from their records rangeing far beyond charters and custumals, we still know little of the social and economic realities behind the legal formulas of the origin of the burgesses, for instance, of how they made their living, and of the economic functions of urban communities in the life of the community as a whole. The prevailing approach to borough history, as shown even in some of the best recent histories of English towns, and in the general plan adopted by the Victoria County History, is that of fragmentation, with separate sections on topographical, constitutional, and ecclesiastical developments, and in conclusion perhaps, quite unrelated to the rest, an isolated 'social and economic' section, often anecdotal and much less scholarly in character. But the inhabitants of the boroughs were not themselves thus fragmented. They were at one and the same time occupiers and sometimes builders of houses and shops, suitors at the borough courts and perhaps members of its governing body, and parishioners attending, regularly or irregularly, one of its churches; and for the greater part of each week most of them were concerned with the humdrum job of earning a living. In old age and retirement they were, perhaps, founders of a chantry or inmates of a local hospital. If we would understand any part of their history we must look at it as a whole and be prepared to consider their ordinary avocations, commonplace as the subject may seem. Nowhere, probably, is our ignorance greater than in the case of those smaller English boroughs, founded after the Norman Conquest, which are often regarded as being distinguished from villages merely by the different legal status of their inhabitants a difference which seems sometimes to have neither purpose nor meaning. It may therefore be of interest to look briefly at the formative period of one of them one which today is better known and more sought after by visitors from all parts of the world than any other, since it was Shakespeare's birthplace. The Domesday Survey of Io86 found no burgesses at Stratford-on-Avon, but only a small rural settlement, as in early Saxon days, close to the 'streetford' where the Roman road crossed the Avon.1 This settlement, however, would 1 0. E. 'Straetford', i.e. ford by which a Roman road crossed a river. All the Stratfords are on Roman roads, and in this case the reference is to an important cross-road linking Fosse Way, via Stratford-onAvon, with Ryknield Street at Alcester.

Borough courts: "Jur de la Vile."

Borough courts: "Jur de la Vile." Get access J. S. F. J. S. F. Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Notes and Queries, Volume s12-V, Issue 89, February 1919, Page 39, https://doi.org/10.1093/nq/s12-V.89.39c Published: 01 February 1919