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Urban conflict and legal strategy in medieval England: the case of Bishop's Lynn, 1346–1350

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2014

MATTHEW PHILLIPS
MATTHEW PHILLIPS*
Affiliation:
Faculty of Arts, School of Humanities, University of Nottingham, University Park, Nottingham, NG9 2RD, UK
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Abstract:

Urban conflict in medieval England often took one of two forms: public confrontation involving ritualistic acts of transgression on the one hand and legal challenges involving litigation on the other. This article explores an urban dispute in the latter category fought at Bishop's Lynn between 1346 and 1350. The rich series of records surviving from this dispute provides a rare opportunity to reconstruct in detail the legal strategies adopted throughout the conflict. The case is significant for the innovative legal challenge adopted by the burgesses, and for the subsequent campaign of misinformation propagated in parliament by the bishop of Norwich.

Type
Research Article
Information
Urban History , Volume 42 , Issue 3 , August 2015 , pp. 365 - 380
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

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References

1 In the primary documents surveyed by this work, the town was referred to as ‘Bishop's Lynn’ by the bishop of Norwich, whilst the townsmen referred to the town simply as ‘Lynn’.

2 Calendar of Patent Rolls Preserved in the Public Record Office, 1345–1348 (CPR) (London, 1891–1986), 170.

3 Pollock, F. and Maitland, F.W., The History of English Law before the Time of Edward I (Cambridge, 1952), 580–1Google Scholar; King's Lynn Borough Archives (KL), Unreformed Corporation (C) 17/5.

4 A survey of disputes between urban tenants and monastic overlords is provided in the classic study: Trenholme, N.M., The English Monastic Boroughs: A Study in Medieval History (Columbia, MI, 1927)Google Scholar, and more recently in Dodd, G. and McHardy, A.K. (eds.), Petitions to the Crown from English Religious Houses (Woodbridge, 2010), xxxii–xxxviiiGoogle Scholar. In addition to the episodic studies cited in subsequent footnotes, see Fuller, E.A., ‘Cirencester: the manor and the town’, Transactions of the Bristol and Gloucester Archaeological Society, 9 (1884–85), 298–344Google Scholar; Trenholme, N.M., ‘The risings in English monastic towns in 1327’, American Historical Review, 6 (1900–01), 650–68Google Scholar; Röhrkasten, J., ‘Conflict in a monastic borough: Coventry in the reign of Edward II’, Midland History, 18 (1993), 1–18CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Goddard, R., Lordship and Medieval Urbanisation: Coventry, 1043–1355 (Woodbridge, 2004), 276–89Google Scholar. For cordial relations between civic authorities and ecclesiastical landlords that forms an important contrast to the discussion offered below, see Rosser, G., Medieval Westminster, 1200–1540 (Oxford, 1989), 246–7Google Scholar; Bonney, M., Lordship and the Urban Community: Durham and its Overlords, 1200–1540 (Cambridge, 1990), 230–3CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rosser, G., ‘The essence of medieval urban communities: the vill of Westminster 1200–1540’, in Holt, R. and Rosser, G. (eds.), The Medieval Town: A Reader in English Urban History, 1200–1540 (London, 1990), 218Google Scholar.

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7 Towns without a fee farm clearly also experienced confrontation of a public nature, as indeed Lynn itself did; see Owen, D.M., Making of King's Lynn (London, 1984), 34–40Google Scholar.

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17 Owen, King's Lynn, 414-18; The National Archives (unless indicated otherwise all manuscript sources are located in TNA), Special Collection (SC) 6/938/15.

18 Calendar of Inquisitions Miscellaneous Preserved in the Public Record Office (CIM), vol. II, 502, 520. The D’Aubigny earls of Arundel held the leet, and their customs in the town are recognized in the borough charter of 1204, BBC, vol. I, 31, 35. Upon the death of Hugh D’Aubigny on 7 May 1243, Robert de Tateshall inherited the leet, along with other properties, as coheir; see Gibbs, V. (ed.), Complete Peerage of England, Scotland, Great Britain and the United Kingdom: Extant, Extinct and Dormant, vol. I (London, 1910), 239 n. (b)Google Scholar.

19 KL/C 17/4.

20 Adam Clifton, cousin and one of the heirs of Robert Tateshall, petitioned in 1348 in an attempt to regain his claim. CIM, vol. II, 520.

21 Owen, King's Lynn, 379; KL/C 10/5.

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24 CIM, vol. II, 502.

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29 Owen, King's Lynn, 379.

30 CPR, 1345–1348, 388.

31 Ibid., 170.

32 Palmer, English Law, 48–52.

33 Ibid., 49 n. 126.

34 The Parliament Rolls of Medieval England, 1275–1504 (PROME), ed. Given-Wilson, Chriset al. (Leicester, 2005)Google Scholar, CD-ROM version, Jun. 1344, items 23 (c. 6) and 26.

35 CPR, 1345–1348, 170.

36 Calendar of Close Rolls Preserved in the Public Record Office, 1346–1349 (CCR) (London, 1896–1913), 338.

37 Return of the Names of Every Member Returned to Serve in Parliament from the Year 1696 up to 1876 (London, 1879), 139. A legal challenge based on an appeal to the mortmain legislation had been used in Coventry at an earlier date, although in this instance the appeal was a fabrication; see Goddard, Lordship and Medieval Urbanisation, 282; Röhrkasten, ‘Conflict in a monastic borough’, 14.

38 SC 8/246/12274. Bateman's attendance at this assembly is well attested, PROME, Sep. 1346, items 3, 7. A petition presented by the burgesses of Lynn sometime around 22 Nov. 1346 described the bishop's petition as having been submitted in the ‘droyn parlement’ (‘last parliament’), SC 8/243/12125. On the problems surrounding the dating of petitions, see Dodd, Justice and Grace, 8.

39 Ibid. See also the council's decision that the bishop should attend the next parliament for deliberation of the matter, C 49/7/21.

40 SC 8/243/12125.

41 Ibid.

42 CPR, 1348–1350, 551.

43 On the latter date, a second inquest was held investigating the bishop's rights in Lynn, this time in order to determine the inheritance rights of an heir to Robert de Tattershall who had once held the leet; see CIM, vol. II, 520, no. 2072. The leet and view of frankpledge were synonyms, and the fact that the bishop only referred to a leet in his third petition suggests that his second petition was presented before this second inquest had been held. Bateman's second petition may, therefore, have been presented in the parliament that assembled in January 1348. Although there is no trace of his petition on the roll of parliament, Bishop Bateman attended this assembly where he was appointed as a trier of foreign petitions, see PROME, Jan. 1348, item 3. If the bishop's petition was presented at this assembly, it would explain the bishop's renewed efforts to regain his liberties in Lynn, because he was granted a general restoration of his temporalities on 13 Nov. 1347; see CCR, 1346–1349, 338.

44 SC 8/239/11921.

45 CPR, 1348–1350, 551.

46 SC 8/239/11920.

47 For a broader discussion exploring how the layout of petitions could serve a persuasive function, see Dodd, G., Phillips, M. and Killick, H., ‘Multiple-clause petitions to the English parliament in the latter Middle Ages: instruments of pragmatism or persuasion?’, Journal of Medieval History, 40 (2014), 176–94CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

48 SC 8/239/11920.

49 SC 8/239/11921.

50 SC 8/239/11920.

51 SC 8/239/11921.

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53 SC 8/239/11921; SC 8/239/11920.

54 CPR, 1348–1350, 551.

55 This had formed part of the burgesses initial appeal to the king, CPR, 1345–1348, 170; SC 8/246/12272.

56 SC 8/246/12272.

57 C 81/345/20991, cited in J.H. Tillotson, ‘Clerical petitions 1350–1450: a study of some aspects of relations of crown and church in the later Middle Ages’, unpublished Australian National University Ph.D. thesis, 1969, 292.

58 Palliser, D.M., ‘Towns and the English state 1066–1500’, in Maddicott, J.R. and Palliser, D.M. (eds.), The Medieval State: Essays Presented to James Campbell (London, 2000), 129Google Scholar; although cf. Dodd, G., ‘Writing wrongs: the drafting of supplications to the crown in later fourteenth-century England’, Medium Aevum, 80 (2011), 236–7Google Scholar.

59 CPR, 1348–1350, 551.

60 CPR, 1348–1350, 551. The ‘good service’ was a reference to the bishop's employment as a diplomat in the king's service, see Thompson, ‘William Bateman’, 111–12.

61 C 81/345/20991.

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63 Dodd, Justice and Grace, 266–78. See also Unwin, G., ‘The estates of merchants, 1336–1365’, in Unwin, G. (ed.), Finance and Trade under Edward III (Manchester, 1918), 179–225Google Scholar; McKisack, M., The Parliamentary Representation of the English Boroughs during the Middle Ages (Oxford, 1932)Google Scholar; Maddicott, J.R., ‘Parliament and constituencies, 1272–1377’, in Davies, R.G. and Denton, J.H. (eds.), The English Parliament in the Middle Ages (Manchester, 1981), 61–87Google Scholar; Palliser, ‘Towns and the English state, 1066–1500’, 127–45; Liddy, Christian D., War, Politics and Finance in Late Medieval English Towns: Bristol, York and the Crown, 1350–1400 (Woodbridge, 2005), 155–75Google Scholar.

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66 Myers, ‘The failure of conflict resolution’, 81–107; Parker, ‘A little local difficulty’, 115–29.