El sistema financiero a finales de la Edad Media: instrumentos y métodos. AAVV

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СКАЧАТЬ and no less importantly, of course, there is the issue of involvement of non-peasant litigants in debt litigation recorded in the manor court. We deal with each issue in turn.

       Third-party involvement in debt litigation recorded in the manor court

The extent to which the law in the manorial court was informed by external agency is a moot point. While there is no doubt that peasant litigants were on occasion capable of generating their own legal argument and engaging in pleading in the manorial court through their own agency,¹⁸ it is also clear that pleading was also influenced by third parties, sometimes identified as attorneys, who may conceivably have included professional pleaders. Stewards and other manorial officials also influenced the process of law in the manorial court; while their oversight was not directed wholly or indeed largely at inter-personal litigation but was concentrated upon maintaining their lord’s interest in matters pertaining to, in particular, landholding, land transfer and rent, it is also evident, from occasional entries in the manor court, that stewards helped to direct and, indeed, to encourage inter-personal litigation, points to which we will return below.

In the first instance, it is clear that peasants in the manor court could act as advisers to peasant litigants and help thereby to form the process of law and litigation in the manor court. In such instances, peasant advisers, undoubtedly sometimes referred to as attorneys in manorial court litigation, were often themselves experienced litigants who brought their expertise to the benefit of other villagers, and for financial or other gain.¹⁹ Occasional detail in litigation referencing attorneys or other named supporters of litigants suggests that peasant «attorneys» might help their fellow peasant litigant in organising writs and access to other courts; they might also simply appear in the court or, on occasion at a certain stage of a contract (for instance as payer or recipient of goods or money) on behalf of the litigant, essentially as a proxy and not necessarily as someone bringing specialised knowledge or great insight to the case. There is also a marked, though not absolutely consistent, tendency for female litigants to make use of male attorneys.²⁰

It is far from straightforward, without a thorough prosopographical analysis of the relevant corpus of manorial court rolls, to distinguish between peasant «attorneys» and external attorneys whose presence in the court is solely as a professional legal adviser. Where we gain a sense of legal advisors present in debt cases and, as likely, guiding the litigant or handling their case for them, it still remains difficult to identify with any certainty the extent of their role. Take, for instance, a debt case from Horsham St Faith (Norfolk) in May 1316, in which the plaintiff, through his named attorney (William Lauk’), sought recovery of 52 s. owing from the purchase of pigs and other chattels. The defendant agreed that he owed 32 s., but denied owing the additional 20 s., the latter to be subject to an inquest at a later court. We might assume that the attorney led the pleading in this case on behalf of the plaintiff but the bare details of the case do not permit us a closer view.²¹ At Bottisham in August 1344 a group of thirteenth plaintiffs brought their case against a single defendant through their attorney, Thomas Dykeman. The case suggests a fairly involved legal process; for instance, the sum claimed by the plaintiffs was 39 s. 11 d. ¾, the maximum possible sum and just below the 40 s. limit for the jurisdiction of the manor court.²² Dykeman also appears as a pledge in support of claimants in other, possibly related cases at about the same time; his family name, which can also be found elsewhere in the rolls, suggests that he was local and we should not necessarily think of him as a professional pleader whose presence in the manor court at Bottisham is explicable only in such terms.²³ In other instances, it is perhaps the detail, sophistication and frame of reference of the pleading that at least hints at outside agency and the kind of legal expertise which it may have been less easy for a peasant «attorney» to have acquired through their experience as a litigant. Relatively few debt cases recorded in the manor court include details of the pleadings used by the parties in order to construct a case; from time to time, however, we are offered a sense of the details of pleadings. So, for instance, at Longdon (Staffordshire), the attorneys of plaintiffs generated quite complicated and technical pleas, sometimes moving beyond the immediate in order to use a technicality, such as the requisite number of individuals required to permit an adjournment.²⁴

It is also reasonably evident that rather more involved legal argument was brought into pleading by manorial officials, sometimes from within particular jurisdictions and, on occasion, from neighbouring or competing jurisdictions. At Longdon (Staffs.), for instance, bailiffs from neighbouring manors served as attorneys for individual peasant litigants. This appears to have been so in the case of on William le Messager who appears frequently in the Longdon manor court as an attorney, representing more than one litigant, but was also, seemingly, bailiff on a neighbouring manor.²⁵ Furthermore, and albeit rarely, bailiffs from neighbouring manors sometimes came into the manorial court of lords other than their own in order to recover wayward litigants, especially villein defendants and, arguing relevant seigneurial authority, return them and, conceivably the case, to their own jurisdiction.²⁶

Stewards were also very important in facilitating and developing inter-personal litigation in the manor court. As estate officials charged with helping to oversee the running of the estate and its constituent manors, stewards were well-placed to direct and adjust matters of day-to-day management. They also responded to the dictates of their lord and were tasked with implementing their policy changes; as Razi and Smith suggest, the surge in business activity, including the introduction of inter-personal litigation in manorial courts from the third quarter of the thirteenth century may have a great deal to do with stewards acting upon seigneurial initiatives intended to make their courts effective and remunerative centres for inter-personal litigation.²⁷ On occasion the intervention of stewards could be deeply unwelcome and cause significant and damaging change to the management of fora such as the manor courts.²⁸ In other instances, stewards undoubtedly sought to ensure that manorial courts functioned effectively as courts capable of providing a secure and effective jurisdiction capable of meeting the demands of potential litigants and, no doubt especially, wealthy plaintiffs capable of judging their court against the standard of other courts, including borough, county and central courts. That they were capable of doing so is explained in no small part by their own experience in a variety of legal fora and jurisdictional contexts. Paul Brand has described the career of an early fourteenth-century steward, Henry Tyrell of Mannington (Norfolk), who combined his experience in a variety of offices with his own considerable activity as a litigant in informing his work as an estate steward. Tyrell, a member of the minor local gentry, was immersed in his own litigation but also used that to the advantage of others, including the free and unfree tenants who, along with his employer, his lord, he also advised as part of his role in managing his lord’s estate.²⁹ It is clear that stewards sometimes presided in court and litigants sought legal and, more particularly, processual advice from them on occasion. At Ruyton (Shropshire), for instance, the defendant requested that the steward allow him to withdraw before pleading in order to take legal advice, something to which the steward, contrary to the wishes of the court and in a manner that on this occasion actually proved fatal to the defence, agreed.³⁰ All of the above discussion in this section can be taken to suggest that in the manor court, or at least in those manor courts in which inter-personal СКАЧАТЬ