Anthony Musson

The reign of Edward II : new perspectives

Edward II presided over a turbulent and politically charged period of English history, but to date he has been relatively neglected in comparison to other fourteenth and fifteenth-century kings. This book offers a significant re-appraisal of a much maligned monarch and his historical importance, making use of the latest empirical research and revisionist theories, and concentrating on people and personalities, perceptions and expectations, rather than dry constitutional analysis. Papers consider both the institutional and the personal facets of Edward IIs life and rule: his sexual reputation, the royal court, the role of the kings household knights, the nature of law and parliament in the reign, and Englands relations with Ireland and Europe. Contributors: J. S. HAMILTON, W. M. ORMROD, IAN MORTIMER, MICHAEL PRESTWICH, ALISTAIR TEBBIT, W. R. CHILDS, PAUL DRYBURGH, ANTHONY MUSSON, GWILYM DODD, ALISON MARSHALL, MARTYN LAWRENCE, SEYMOUR PHILLIPS.

Royal Justice at the Centre

This chapter aims to do two things: to outline the structures of the central courts in the fourteenth century; and to examine the personnel of those courts in order to understand something of the social and political context in which they operated. It must be appreciated that up to 1300, and for some way beyond, the ‘centre’ denoted not so much a fixed geographical point as the place within the realm where the king’s government happened to be functioning. Not least of the interesting features of royal justice in the fourteenth century, however, is the contribution made by the senior courts to the development of Westminster and London as the administrative capital of England.1

Conclusion: Attitudes to Justice

This book argues that English royal justice evolved in the course of the fourteenth century to meet the changing needs of government and society. The resulting developments were shaped partly by the exogenous shocks of war, natural disaster and constitutional crisis, but also grew endogenously, from within, as the judicial system adapted to reflect longer-term changes in the society that it served. In Chapter 1, we repudiated the notion that evolution implies a process of advancement, and in subsequent chapters we have demonstrated how the primarily reactive nature of medieval law makes it unnecessary, as well as improbable, to say that the judicial system was any ‘better’ in 1390 than it had been in 1290. What we have not so far addressed is the question of why so many contemporaries seem to have thought that it had become ‘worse’ by the end of the fourteenth century. By way of conclusion to this study, the present chapter seeks to explore that issue by focusing on attitudes to justice. It begins with an analysis of the ways in which people spoke of, and complained about, the law in fourteenth-century England, and ends with a broader discussion of the nature, meaning and implications of these traditions of criticism.

Introduction: The Evolution of English Justice

The century between the 1290s and the 1390s witnessed some of the most far-reaching changes ever effected in English justice. Three particular developments form the subject matter of this book. First, the fourteenth century saw a major expansion in the scope of the common law, that body of legal processes and remedies that had developed since the twelfth century to make available and apply the judicial customs of the king’s court in a standard (or ‘common’) form throughout the realm. Secondly, the same period marked a fundamental reform of the structure of the courts which enforced that law, as an earlier system heavily dependent on the use of centralised agencies and itinerant commissions gave way to a more elaborate hierarchy radiating out from the Westminster courts of king’s bench and common pleas through the circuit commissions of assize and goal delivery to the regular quarter sessions held by the justices of the peace in the shires. Thirdly, the period witnessed the emergence of a distinctive English judiciary comprising two groups: the formally qualified, full-time lawyers employed in the higher courts; and the part-time commissioners (many of them also having legal training and experience), drawn from provincial political society, who performed so many essential judicial (and, later, administrative) tasks on the county benches.

Royal Justice in the Provinces

Chapter 2 discussed the organisation and staffing of the central courts of justice, institutions lying at the heart of royal government. This chapter complements the previous one by examining the administration of justice as it affected the provinces. A necessary feature of government, both for judicial and for administrative reasons, was the capacity to reach out into the shires and thus enable the king’s will to penetrate the consciousness of the individual subject. As early as the twelfth century it was realised that this task could be accomplished through teams of justices travelling around the counties. Establishing such a link with the regions had the added advantage of creating reciprocity: people could bring their complaints and disputes to the king’s attention via his itinerant judges. The essential change that occurred during the fourteenth century was the gradual replacement of these periodic provincial visitations with permanent judicial tribunals in the shires, and the resulting creation of a body of king’s justices who lived and worked in the localities they served.