Crowner's Quest (2 page)

FIRST FINDER

The first person to discover the corpse of a slain victim or to witness a crime, had to rouse the four nearest households and give chase to the culprit (the hue and cry). Failure to do so would result in an amercement (
q.v.
) by the coroner.

HAUBERK

Also called a byrnie, this was a chain-mail tunic with long sleeves, to protect the wearer from neck to calf; the skirt was usually slit front and back to allow him to ride a horse.

HIDE

A medieval measure of land, which varied from place to place, but was usually 120 acres at the time of the Domesday survey, but later quoted at anything between 30 and 80 acres. A hide was supposed to be enough to support a family and was divided into four virgates. Another land measure was the carucate, about 100 acres, the area that one ox-team could plough in a season.

HONOUR

A holding of land from the King, baron or Church. It might be a large estate or a single manor and many honours consisted of numerous separate holdings spread over many counties. A manor might be one village or several, under the same lord. Some villages were split between different lords.

HUE AND CRY

When a crime was witnessed or discovered, the First Finder (
q.v.
) had to knock up the four nearest houses and give chase to any suspects.

JURY

Unlike modern juries, who must be totally impartial, the medieval jury included witnesses, local people who were obliged to gather to tell what they knew of a crime or dispute. The coroner’s jury was supposed to consist of all the men over the age of twelve from the four nearest villages, though this was often a practical impossibility.

JUSTICIAR

One of the King’s chief ministers in Norman times. In the reign of Richard I, the most effective was Hubert Walter, who was Richard’s military second-in-command in Palestine, before he returned home during the Lionheart’s imprisonment in Austria to help raise his ransom. Richard made him Archbishop of Canterbury and Chief Justiciar, and he virtually ruled the country after Richard’s permanent departure from England in May 1194, only two months after returning from captivity.

KIRTLE

A woman’s gown, worn to the ankles, with long sleeves, wide at the wrists, though fashions changed constantly. The kirtle was worn over a chemise, the only undergarment.

MANOR REEVE

A foreman appointed in each village, either by election of the villagers or by the manor lord. He oversaw the daily farm work and though illiterate like the vast majority of the population, he would keep a record of crop rotation, harvest yields, tithes etc., by means of memory and notches on tally sticks.

MARK

A sum of money, though not an actual coin, as only pennies were in use. A mark was two-thirds of a pound or thirteen shillings and fourpence (now equal to sixty-six decimal pence).

MOTTE

The artificial mound on which the wooden donjon (
q.v.
) tower was erected in early Norman castles, surrounded by the bailey (
q.v.
). An excellent example is Totnes Castle.

MURDRUM FINE

An amercement (
q.v.
) levied on a community by the coroner when a person was found dead in suspicious circumstances and no culprit could be produced – unless the villagers could make ‘presentment of Englishry’ (
q.v.
).

ORDEAL

Though sometimes used to extract confessions, the Ordeal was an ancient ritual, abolished by the Vatican in 1215, in which suspects were subjected to painful and often fatal activities, such as walking barefoot over nine red-hot plough-shares, picking a stone from a vat of boiling water, licking white-hot iron, etc. If they suffered no injury, they were judged innocent. Another common ordeal was to be bound and thrown into deep water; if the victims sank they were innocent; if they floated they were guilty, and were hanged or mutilated.

OUTLAW

Literally, anyone outside the law, usually escaped prisoners or fugitives lurking in the forests. They ceased to exist as legal persons, and anyone was entitled to kill them on sight to collect a bounty, as if they were the ‘wolf’s head’.

OUTREMER

The four Christian kingdoms in the Levant at the time of the Crusades, including the kingdom of Jerusalem.

PEINE ET FORTE DURE

‘Hard and severe punishment’, a torture used for the extraction of confessions from suspects.

PHTHISIS

Tuberculosis, rife in medieval times.

PORTREEVE

One of the senior burgesses in a township, elected by the others as leader. There were usually two, later superseded by a mayor, the first mayor of Exeter being installed in 1208.

PREBENDARY
see
CANON

PRECENTOR

A senior canon in a cathedral, responsible for organising the religious services, singing, etc.

PRESENTMENT OF ENGLISHRY

Following the 1066 Conquest, many Normans were covertly killed by aggrieved Saxons, so the law decreed that anyone found dead from unnatural causes was presumed to be Norman and the village was punished by a murdrum fine (
q.v.
) unless they could prove that the deceased was English or a foreigner. This was usually done before the coroner by a male member of the family. This continued for several centuries as, even though it became meaningless so long after the Conquest, it was a good source of revenue to the Crown.

RULE OF ST CHRODEGANG

A strict regime of a simple communal life, devised by an eighth-century bishop of Metz. It was adopted by Bishop Leofric, who founded Exeter Cathedral in 1050, but did not long survive his death. The canons soon adopted a more comfortable, even luxurious lifestyle.

SHERIFF

The ‘shire reeve’, the King’s representative and principal law officer in a county, responsible for law and order and the collection of taxes.

SURCOAT

Either a light over-tunic or a garment worn over armour, to protect it from the sun’s heat and to display heraldic recognition devices.

TITHE

A tenth part of the harvest and all farm produce, demanded by the Church. Stored in large tithe barns in each village.

TUNIC

The main garment for a man, pulled over the head to reach the knee or calf. A linen shirt might be worn underneath and the lower sides or front and back would be slit for riding a horse.

UNDERCROFT

The lowest floor of a a fortified building. The entrance to the rest of the building was on the floor above, isolated from the undercroft, which might be partly below ground level. Removable wooden steps prevented attackers from reaching the main door.

VERDERER

A judicial officer who supervised the royal forests and applied the harsh laws of the verge.

VICAR

A priest employed by a more senior cleric, such as a canon (
q.v.
), to carry out some of his religious duties, especially attending the numerous daily services in a cathedral. Often called a vicar-choral, from his participation in chanted services.

The morning was ravaged by the sound of axe on tree and the crackle of flames as branches were hacked off and burned. A dozen men were slowly but surely pushing back the forest edge from the strips of cultivated land that lay on the valley slopes around the village of Afton, a few miles from Totnes. Already this month, in spite of interruptions caused by angry disputes with men from Loventor, the next village beyond the trees, they had advanced the new ground won from the woods by a dozen acres.

Alward, the Saxon reeve from Afton, was walking around the ash-strewn ground, counting the trees felled that week. He recorded them by notches cut with his dagger on a tally stick to show to the bailiff of his lord, Henry de la Pomeroy, who would inevitably complain about the amount of work done, whatever new area they had managed to add to his manor. Alward was well aware that they were on disputed land and that, with every tree dropped, they were getting deeper into the property claimed by Sir William Fitzhamon, who included the tiny hamlet of Loventor within his honour.

He disliked having to argue with the men from Loventor. When they had come to shout abuse at his team for trespassing the week before, it had come to blows: he had suffered a cut head and one of his men was knocked out during the scuffle. Following this, the bailiff had sent a couple of men-at-arms to escort the felling team, but after two days of peace, they were sent back to Berry Castle, the Pomeroy stronghold high on a ridge a mile away.

But that had proved to be the quiet before the storm. Today they had been at work for barely two hours when suddenly, from out of the trees opposite, came a yelling horde of men, waving cudgels and staves. Some of the Afton men immediately dropped their tools and ran downhill towards the village, which was visible in the distance. Others held their ground, encouraged by Alward, who tried to halt the attackers by shouting and waving his arms. The next moment a ragged figure felled him with a blow on the shoulder from a staff and another wild-looking peasant began kicking him. Similar scenes took place all over the despoiled area, with hand-to-hand fights going on amid yelling and curses.

Before long the rout was over – half the Afton men had fled and the rest were on the ground, nursing sore heads and bruised ribs, though no one was seriously hurt. Alward sat up painfully and saw that the raiders were now ignoring his men and collecting up all their tools. Within minutes, every axe and cleaver had vanished along with the marauders, who melted back into the forest as suddenly as they had appeared.

The reeve climbed to his feet, realising that, without their tools, there could be no more work that day – and that the bailiff and Lord Henry must be informed without delay. The message he must take to them was plain: this nibbling away at Fitzhamon’s land was no longer going to be easy.

For once, Matilda was happy. Flushed with pleasure and self-importance, she sat at one end of the long table in the high, gloomy hall of their house and urged her guests to take more drink, capons’ legs and sweetmeats from the jugs and platters set in front of them.

At the other end sat the brooding figure of her husband, Sir John de Wolfe, the King’s coroner for the County of Devon. Tall and slightly hunched, his black hair matched the thick eyebrows that sat above deep-set eyes. Unlike most Normans, he had no beard or moustache beneath his great hooked nose, but his dark stubble had helped earn him the nickname ‘Black John’ in the armies of the Crusades and the Irish wars.

This evening, though, even his usually grim face was more relaxed, partly due to the amount of French wine he had drunk but also because he had a good friend on each side of him. To his left was Hugh de Relaga, one of the town’s two Portreeves, a fat and cheerful dandy. On the other side was John de Alencon, Archdeacon of Exeter, a thin, ascetic man, with a quiet wit and a twinkling eye.

Around the rest of the table were a dozen other Exeter worthies and their wives, from the castle, the Church and the Guilds. It was about the eleventh hour on the eve of Christ Mass and they had not long returned from the special service in the great cathedral of St Mary and St Peter, only a few hundred paces away from the coroner’s home in Martin’s Lane.

Their timber house was high and narrow, being only one room from floor to beamed roof, with a small solar built on the back, reached by an outside staircase. The walls were hung with sombre tapestries to relieve the bare planks and the floor was flagged with stone, as Matilda considered the usual rush-strewn earth too common for people of their quality.

The guests sat on benches along each side of the heavy table, the only two chairs being at either end. Light came from candles and tallow dips on the table and from the large fire in the hearth. The guests were sufficiently filled with ale, cider and wine to be in prattling mood, especially at Yuletide, when a strangely contagious mood of bonhomie infected the community.

‘Matilda, I thought you usually patronised that little church of St Olave in Fore Street, not the cathedral?’

The high-pitched voice was that of her sister-in-law, Eleanor, wife to Sheriff Richard de Revelle. De Wolfe was not sure whom he detested more, his brother-in-law or the wife. Eleanor was a thin, sour-faced woman of fifty, an even greater snob than Matilda. Spurning the usual white linen cover-chief over the head, Eleanor wore her hair coiled in gold-net crespines over each ear. Her husband was also elegantly dressed, a man of medium height with wavy brown hair, a thin moustache and a small pointed beard – a complete contrast to his brother-in-law, who dressed in nothing but black or grey.

‘Why, in God’s name, is it called St Olave’s?’ drawled de Revelle, leaning back on the bench, the better to display his new green tunic, the neckband and sleeves worked elaborately in yellow embroidery.

‘It’s certainly in God’s name, sheriff,’ replied the Archdeacon, with a wry smile. ‘Olave was the first Christian king of Norway, though I admit it quite escapes me why one of our seventeen churches in Exeter is dedicated to him.’

The conversation chattered on, the noise level rising as the contents of the wine keg lowered. Matilda, her square pug face radiant with pleasure at the success of her party, looked around the hall and calculated her resulting elevation on the social scale, to be gauged when she next met her cronies at the market or in church. For once she had persuaded her taciturn husband, who had been made county coroner only three months earlier, to open up a little socially and invite some people to the house after the Mass on the eve of Christ’s birthday.