This volume provides an edition and translation of the crown pleas, largely consisting of criminal proceedings, from the surviving roll made for the King's justices at their eyre held in Suffolk in AD 1240. Its publication completes the process of making available for the first time the earliest such roll to survive in full for Suffolk, complementing the edition of the civil pleas which the Suffolk Records Society published as its volume 52 in 2009. The latter was edited by Dr Eric Gallagher, who laid the essential foundations for the present volume. Circumstances prevented his bringing it to completion, however, and that work has therefore been undertaken by Dr Henry Summerson, who has supplied the introduction and where necessary revised the text and indexes.

Dr Gallagher writes: Much of the research for the edition was done as part of my doctoral thesis on the 1240 civil pleas, and depended on the staff of The National Archives, whom I thank for their advice and help, as I do members of the Suffolk Records Society for guidance with the county's place-names, particularly the late John Blatchly, the late Peter Northeast, David Dymond, David Butcher and Keith Briggs. I am also grateful for the support of the Institute of Historical Research, London, both for its facilities and for the help freely given by scholars attending seminars there. I am obliged, too, to Christopher Whittick and the late Lesley Boatwright for their assistance in transcribing and translating the text.

Dr Summerson adds: The realisation of this text was accomplished in difficult circumstances during the nationwide lockdown which resulted from the Covid-19 pandemic of 2020. It was possible only because essential source material, unpublished and printed, was accessible through the websites of the Anglo-American Legal Tradition project (AALT) and the Institute of Historical Research respectively. My thanks go to them, and also to the British Library and the library of the Society of Antiquaries of London for access to books in the closing stages of work. I, too, am most grateful to Keith Briggs for help with place-names, as I am to Nick Bingham of The Boydell Press for essential help with the production of this book.

PLEAS OF THE CROWN TAKEN AT IPSWICH BEFORE WILLIAM OF YORK, PROVOST OF BEVERLEY, HENRY OF BATH, AND THEIR FELLOWS, JUSTICES ITINERANT IN THE COUNTY OF SUFFOLK IN THE TWENTY-FOURTH YEAR OF THE REIGN OF KING HENRY THE SON OF KING JOHN IN THREE WEEKS FROM EASTER DAY

• 1 That is Sunday 6 May 1240, a week after the start of the eyre in Suffolk. See 1240 Suffolk Civil Pleas, p. 3, n. 1 for the heading.

THE HUNDRED OF BOSMERE COMES BY 12 [JURORS] – BOSMERE1

• 1 The hundred name is repeated three times. Nothing is said about past or present sheriffs and coroners, as is commonly the case in other crown pleas rolls.

1161. William of Eye killed Henry de Swinedon at the house of John de Helles in Offton vill, and he fled to Offton church and there acknowledged the death and abjured the realm. He was not in a tithing, but he was of the household of William Talebot, who is in mercy (amercement). Because Offton vill did not pursue it is in mercy (amercement). He had no chattels. Richard Stubbard and Richard Cook, who were with William when he killed him, fled and are not suspected, so they may return if they wish, and are to be under sureties. Richard Cook was not in a tithing, but Richard Stubbard was in the tithing of Gerard Stubbing in Offton, so it is in mercy for his flight (amercement). Four near neighbours, attached for that death, come and are not suspected, nor is anyone else. Englishry was presented by two, namely one on the father's side and another on the mother’s.

• 1 in manupastu – literally ‘mainpast’, meaning that he ate the bread of his lord, who was responsible for his good behaviour and was amerced if he committed felony.

1162. Matilda the widow of Nicholas de Westwode appealed Adam of Boulogne of the death of William her son, and Adam was arrested and imprisoned in the gaol at Ipswich, and he died there. Godfrey the son of Sephul of Creeting, Roger Aunsel of the same and Nicholas the son of William de Cape, who were with Adam when he killed him are not suspected, nor were they attached, so the sheriff is in mercy, namely Robert de Brywes (amercement).

The text which follows constitutes the second and concluding portion of the roll of the Suffolk eyre of 1240, and is made up of the pleas of the crown and the record of their financial yield. The first part of the roll, recording the county's civil pleas, consisted almost entirely of litigation over land. The crown pleas, by contrast, were made up of what today would be described as criminal business, together with matters affecting the government of the county and the interests of the King, and in particular his revenues. A modest number of people involved in civil litigation can be identified as having also taken part in the conduct of criminal proceedings, and a very few suits over land gave rise to, or were associated with, acts of violence which were recorded among pleas of the crown. The two sections are numbered continuously, but overall the differences between them, as well as editorial convenience, are such as to justify their being presented separately.

Suffolk in 1240

The value of an eyre roll does not lie only in the light it can shed on the operations of the medieval legal system, or on the functions of local and central government; it can also illuminate many aspects of the life of a county, and do so at social levels which are otherwise hard to penetrate. For Suffolk in 1240, moreover, it can serve this purpose for decades not especially well provided for by other sources – positively murky, indeed, when looked at between the searchlights provided by Domesday Book at the end of the eleventh century, and the growing numbers of court rolls and estate accounts which from the last decades of the thirteenth century onwards have provided so many insights into the workings of East Anglian society. In its physical shape the county has changed little in the last 800 years, except along its North Sea coast, already fighting a largely losing battle against erosion. Prosperous Dunwich had yet to disappear under the waves, but in 1228 a lawsuit between the men of Yarmouth and the keeper of the royal manor of Lothingland, at Suffolk's north-east tip, found that the latter's market, presumably at Southtown (formerly known as Little Yarmouth), had recently had to be moved to a site where it was less likely to be ‘swamped and covered by the sea’.