From England to France by Jordan William Chester;

Author:Jordan, William Chester;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 2015-07-17T16:00:00+00:00

LEGAL REPATRIATION

By now in our story it almost goes without saying that if one returned from exile, it was a good deal better to do so after having obtained license. The proper manner to achieve this, in England as elsewhere, was by obtaining a pardon.40 Men and women convicted of felonies in the regular courts in England and condemned to die could apply for and sometimes obtain royal pardons, because of circumstances or at a price or both, following conviction. Even those who flouted justice by fleeing and were outlawed had access to pardons for their outlawry on condition that they deliver themselves and stand trial on the original charge or charges.41 It would have been inconceivable to permit this to outlaws while denying it to exiles who had succeeded at ordeals or submitted themselves to an established form of legal process in sanctuary, confessed their crimes, and suffered the hardships of displacement. It was still the case, as with a pardoned outlaw, that a pardoned abjurer from sanctuary could be compelled to stand trial for his acknowledged crime,42 particularly if a kinsman of the victim, one with proper standing—a widow, say, or a relative who had witnessed the felony—made a direct accusation or appealed him, in the legal jargon. The pardon did not nullify the abjurer’s victim’s right of appeal. This limitation was identical with provisions on the continent.43 Yet, in reality, such post-pardon judicial accusations were rare, a fact that will be explored more fully later.44

As Karl Shoemaker has remarked, obtaining pardons for condemned men in custody and for outlaws occurred “with a surprising frequency.” It was typically preceded by people in good standing coming forward to pay the crown for its special grace. Even when nothing else is known except that a pardon was obtained by an abjurer, it is usually safe to assume that he or she had contacted sympathetic people of moderate to substantial means or with access to credit. John, son of Siward, a Lincolnshire abjurer for homicide in King John’s time, was obliged to pay an enormous but at the time not unusual sum of five marks for his pardon in 1218.45 How else could he do so but by the intervention of well-off friends or ones willing to borrow money and carry debt on his behalf?

We know that, always excepting a few high-born exiles, the abjurers’ typical social and personal networks in England consisted of destitute, poor, or middling folk. We shall return to the fate of these “ordinary” abjurers in a moment. But first let us turn to one or two examples of people of high status who were obliged to abjure. An early fourteenth-century mayor of Bristol, a certain John le Taverner, was one such person. The records allege that John was party to a conspiracy to keep him in office against the wishes of “good and lawful” citizens of the town who desired him to relinquish the position. The records also allege that the conspirators “ejected many [of John’s opponents] from the liberty of the town and took their goods and chattels.

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