The Great Red Book of Bristol, Text

205 Pages·2015·56.26 MB·English

BRISTOL RECORD SOCIETY'S
PUBLICATIONS
General Edit01': PROFESSOR DAVID DOUGLAS, M.A., F.B.A.
Assistant General Edit01': Mrss ELIZABETH RALPH, F.S.A.
VoL. XVI
THE GREAT RED BOOK
OF BRISTOL
TEXT p?ART Ill)
THE GREAT RED
BOOK OF BRISTOL
EDITED BY
E. W. W. VEALE, LL.D. (Lond.)
Solicitor, and jormfWly Reade1' in Legal History at Bristol Unive1'sity
TEXT
(PART Ill)
Printed for the
BRISTOL RECORD SOCIETY
FIRST PUBLISHED IN 1951
MADE AND PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY
J. W. ARROWSMITH LTD., QUAY STREET AND SMALL STREET, BRISTOL
PREFACE
HAVING regard to the importance of the subject, an attempt to
elucidate the history of the Bristol borough courts requires no
apology, but the inclusion of such an attempt as 'an introduction
to the present volume certainly calls for an explanation since
the reader will find very little in the text which bears on the
matter.
Both the Little Rea Book and the Great Rea Book contain
scattered evidence of extreme importance dealing with the
various courts, but without the material at the Public Record
Office no coherent history would be possible and some years have
been spent in accumulating this latter.
With one more volume of text the edition of the Great ReiJ
Book will be complete, and if an account of the history of the
Courts is to be given it is, therefore, as far as the present writer
is concerned a case of "now or never". It is to be hoped that
the large area for further research revealed by the documents at
the Public Record Office to which the Introduction refers will
receive from future students the attention that it deserves .
. My thanks are due to Miss Elizabeth Ralph, the City Archivist,
for her usual courtesy and helpfulness in making material available
and for preparing the subjects index. I am also much indebted
to those who helped me with the ungrateful task of proof
correcting.
E. W. W. VEALE
14. Orchard Street,
Bristol.
3ra May, 1951
TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE
THE Great Red Book has been re-backed and in
consequence it sometimes happens that words on
the extreme margin of a page are either readable with
difficulty or not readable. at all. Words in the former
category are enclosed in brackets, in the latter case a
blank is left in the text.
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
G.R.B. Great Red Book, edited by E. W. W.
Veale. and published by the Bristol
Record Society.
L.R.B. Little Red Book, edited by Bickley and
published by the Bristol Corporation.
s.s . .
Selden Society.
Bristol Charlet's The Volumes of Charters published by
the Bristol Record Society.
INTRODUCTION
IN an introduction such as the present it is important to define
the limits of the subject dealt with and it must be emphasised,
therefore, that no attempt will be made to discuss the adminis
tration of criminal justice in the borough, important though this
subject is, nor the courts of those persons who held liberties
there. The scope of the introduction is limited to the history of
the Civil Courts in Bristol during the Middle Ages and of their
jurisdiction, with some reference to the manner in which they
conducted their business.
I
2 THE GREAT RED
PART I
THE BOROUGH COURTS
THE HuNDRED CouRT
It is hardly to be expected that many borough records should
supply evidence which would enable the historian to establish
beyond question the origin of the borough courts and in the matter
of early evidence upon this subject Bristol is particularly poor ;
there seems, however, no reason to doubt the opinion expressed
by Professor Taitl to the following effect:
The evidence of Domesday Book confirmed by the later title
of certain borough courts leads to the conclusion that the
burghal court of the Middle Ages was very generally in origin
a hundred court ; a unit in the complete system which was
gradually worked out for the whole country except in the
far north, in the tenth century. ... The larger boroughs could
be treated as hundreds or half-hundreds in themselves . . .
but the smaller boroughs would have to be fitted into rural
hundreds.
Professor Tait points out2 that in Domesday Book, Bristol
was surveyed with the adjacent royal manor of Barton in Edrede
stane hundred so that very possibly the hundred court of Bristol
was of post-Conquest origin but, however this may be, there is an
express reference to it in John's Charter of II883 which provided
that it should be held once a week only. From the terms of the
Charter it seems clear that it was referring to an institution which
was no new thing.
The functions of the hundred were not, of course, confined to
judicial proceedings but this aspect of its activities is quite clearly
referred to when the Charter provides, for example, that no burgess
should plead without the walls of the town, except in the case of
tenements outside Bristol "que non pertinent ad hundredum,"
and that pleas should be held in the town concerning all debts
1 The Medieval English Borough, p. 6o.
2 Ibid., f.Ii.., p. 46.
8 Bristol Charters, vol. i, pp. 8 sqq.
BOOK OF BRISTOL 3
contracted and pledges made there according to the custom of the
town.
Like other hundred courts the original judges of the Bristol
court were the holders of certain property within the town whose
ownership carried with it the burden of suit of court. The names
of the persons who owed this suit and the property to which the
burden was attached are to be found in the Great Red Book1 and
the Little Red Book.2 The particulars in these two volumes were,
doubtless, prepared at different times. 3 The following lists show
in the first column the suitors referred to in the former volume and
in the second column the suitors referred to in the latter.
Great Red Book Little Red Book
Bishop of Worcester Bishop of Worcester
Abbot of St. Augustines Abbot of St. Augustines
Abbot of Keynsham Abbot of Keynsham
Prior of St. J ames
, John de Kerdif
Master of St. Marks Master of St. Marks
Thomas of Berkeley Maurice of Berkeley
Richard Arthur
John de St. Laud John de St. Laud
Alexander de Alneto
John le Sor
John de Acton John de Acton
Geoffrey Vassal
Adam de Bucton
Richard de Grevyl
Nicholas Fromund
Waiter de Hereham
Fulk Fitzwarin
Reginald Paueli
Abbot de Bella Loca
Abbot of Kingswood
Abbot of Farlegh Abbot of Farlegh
Nicholas de Poyntz Robert Prentys
Abbot of Flexlegh
Edmund de Lyouns
Roger de Whyte
1 G.R.B., text (Part I), pp. 97, sqq. See also Assize Roll (Crown Pleas) 278,
m. 74·
2 L.R.B., vol. i, pp. 13 sqq. , ·
3 The particulars in G.R.B. were given in the year 1285; the date of the
list in the L.R.B. is uncertain.