Essex Sessions of The Peace 1351,
1377-1379
Essex Archaeological Society,
Occasional Paper No. 3 (1953)
Edited with an introduction by
Elizabeth Chaplin Furber
This is one
of a short series of extracts taken from this Occasional Paper, no longer available
from our storeroom. Members of the Essex
Society for Archaeology and History may receive a digital copy of the book by
subscribing to the ESAH Digitisation Project.
Chapter 8
The Fitzwalter Affair
The palm for villainy
on the Essex peace rolls must be awarded
not to a Roger le Groom or a Geoffrey Rolfe, however numerous
may have been their crimes, but to Lord John Fitzwalter, a man of noble lineage and of great possessions. Descended in the male line from the Domesday lords of Clare, Lord John numbered
among his distinguished ancestors Robert Fitz Walter (d. 1235), lord of
Dunmow and Baynard's Castle, and one of the baronial leaders against King John. Lord John's father, another
Robert, who died in the second year of Edward III, when John was about thirteen years old, left his son Castle Baynard and the advowson
of St. Andrew's in London, and extensive holdings in Norfolk, Suffolk
and Essex. For thirty-three years, John lived to enjoy, and misuse, this inheritance
from his father. In 1342 he and his followers began spreading terror and destruction throughout the county
of Essex. Their presence at the siege of Calais in 1347 seems to have put no check to their criminal activities. Finally, in 1351/2, Lord John was brought to justice.
The last ten years of his life were spent in paying off the huge fine exacted
by the king. Lord John died, 18 October
1361, at the age of forty-six, leaving, by Eleanor, daughter of Henry Lord
Percy, a son,
Walter, who, if we may judge by the numerous
commissions of the peace and other commissions to which
he was appointed, was a much
more respectable character than his father.
Historians have discussed the increase of disorder and the growth of
the evils of maintenance
attendant on the return of the soldiers from France. Trevelyan has remarked: 'It was not unnatural
that in the later days of the war, when nearly all our fighting
men had been driven back into England, there should be worse breaches
of the peace than any known when plunder and license could be more easily obtained across the channel'. Yet neither
Trevelyan nor any other
historian seems to have noted the depredations of Lord Fitzwalter in Essex during the decade of Derby's
expedition to Guienne and Gascony and of the Britanny and Cricy-Calais campaigns.
The record of Fitzwalter's crimes reads much like the history
of a
modern racketeer. Indeed there appears to be little
that the latter could have taught the former. Roll A gives a few of Lord
John's excesses, but, to appreciate fully the extent of his activities, it is necessary
to turn to the king's bench
roll for Hilary
term 1352, where five long membranes are covered, recto and dorso, with presentments of the crimes of Lord John and his creatures, made coram Rege at Chelmsford
in
Michaelmas term 1351.
Only a few examples may be given here. Lord John, through the agency of William Baltrip, extorted 1OOs. from two men of Southminster attraendo sibi regalem pot estatem in adnullacionem legis domini Regis nunc regalis. He took illegal distraints 'and thus was the same John Fitzwalter
accustomed to do with all his poor neighbours, because no sheriff or bailiff
dared to free any distraint which he had taken, be it never so unjust'.
Lord John had livestock taken from the manor of St. John's
of Colchester and was 'a common
destroyer of men of religion'. He and members of his household
(familia) besieged the town of Colchester in 1343 and lay in ambush for the men of the town, so that no man
dared to go to a market
or fair from Easter until Whitsuntide, until various townsmen
paid Lord John 40l. each for the redemption
of the town . William Baltrip went to Burnham
and arrested four sacks of wool which Trissekynus of Flanders had hosted there
and refused to release them until the Fleming made fine nomine coketti
de duobus saccis de lana predicta. A certain Roger Byndethese confessed to various felonies at Waltham Holy
Cross and abjured the country and a cross was given to the said Roger and his way was assigned from Waltham to Dover,
and afterwards William
Canville and William Ferour, palfreyman, by order of John Fitzwalter … held up the said Roger, under the banner (vexillo) of God and of Holy Church … on the high road from Waltham to London; … and there the said William Canville drew his sword and handed it to the said William
Ferour, who thereupon , fulfilling
the order of Lord John Fitzwalter, feloniously cut off the head of the said Roger.
When Lord John was assessed for the subsidy
of his villages of Woodham, Burnham,
Harlow, Roydon, Ashdon,
Lexden, Sheering and Tey, the
assessors, through fear, put him down for the lowest possible sum, and when
he refused to pay, the men of the villages paid for him to their great impoverishment. Lord John got his clutches on a certain Walter of Mucking qui minus sapiens est quam stultus naturalis and inveigled him into
giving up his lands, worth 40l. a year, for a life rent of 22l., a robe, a tunic and a supertunic each year; later Lord John kept back
the rent and the clothing
and Walter did not dare to sue him. When John de Sutton
and his fellows, justices
of the peace, ordered
the bailiffs of Colchester to attach a certain Wymarcus Hierde, staying with Alice Shrebbestrate of Colchester, so that he might answer to the said justices, Simon Spryng' and others
came to the Berest ake in Colchester and rescued the said Wymarcus by order of Lord John. When Thomas de Batisford
sold to John atte Hyde of Colchester a water-mill situated
next the manor of Lexden, Fitzwalter said that he did not wish any man of Colchester near his manor and kept atte Hyde out of the mill for more than half a year;
later Fitzwalter offered
to buy the mill, but 'Lord John has not paid for it and still keeps it'. William Aylmar and other natiui
of Fitzwalter unjustly pastured
a great number of sheep and other
animals for two years on the common pasture
of the burgesses of Colchester lying in the suburbs near Lexden.
William Baltrip and other men of Lord John went to the common market (foro)
at Colchester and to fish, meat and other things non mercatorie sicut
inter emptorem et venditorem conuenire potuit, but at their will, to the oppression of the whole market. No one dared to attach
or distrain Fitzwalter
to pay the subsidy in Lexden, for he threatened to break the tibia et bracchia of any serf (natiuus) who dared to take an attachment, and to let him die. Such are a few of the crimes committed by Fitzwalter and his
retainers from 1342 to 1351, but justice, of a sort, finally caught
up with them.
On 31 January 1352 Fitzwalter appeared
in the king's bench at Westminster on a writ of capias
and was committed to the Marshalsea . Thence he came again into court and asked for a licence colloquendi. Thereupon he was again sent back to prison,
this time to the Tower, where he was allowed 10s. per day from the revenues
of his estates, confiscated
by the king, 18 November
1351. The following May, the king 'sold' the estates
to Fitzwalter. In June, the king pardoned him for all and all kinds of homicides, robberies, felonies,
thefts, arsons, rapes of women, receiving
of felons, rescues of prisoners, breaches
of prisons, imprisoning of men, conspiracies, confederations, leagues, conventions, trespasses, maintenance or inciting
of malefactors or of quarrels, of whatever kind, extortions, oppressions, falsifications , threats, misdeeds, usuries, champerties, concealed
or sold indictments, parchments of false indictments or of false acquittances, discovery
of our counsel or of that of jurors put on inquisitions, making of false muniments
of whatever kind, thefbote,
forestalling, hamsokenes or
entry of closes against the will of anyone,
rapes or detentions or abductions
of under-age marriageable heirs in our ward, carrying of non-coketted or non-customed wool and of all other merchandise outside the realm,
buying or selling by false measures or weights, trespasses against
men of our courts, either jurors or other persons in our
courts before our justices or
anywhere else, disturbances of our officials performing their offices or carrying out their commissions, hunting in or breaches
of our forests, parks, chases or warrens,
or those of anyone else, pursuing,
capturing or carrying
off of beasts of chase, hares, rabbits, pheasants
and partridges from the
said forests or warrens, fishing
in fishponds and free fisheries
belonging to us or to anyone else, and trespasses of vert and venison in the same parks, warrens
and chases, and
all kinds of other felonies, trespasses and excesses
whatsoever done by the said John in our realm
of England and elsewhere, by land
or sea, in wood or in the open.
Allied with such a pardon, Fitzwalter was free, but he spent the last ten years of his life buying back his estates. The Pipe Rolls tell the story.
From 1352 to 1361 the king received from his 'dear and faithful' John Fitzwalter 847l. 2s. 4d. One farthing was still owing in 1361, when he died.
Such was the manner in which the king dealt with the chief offender, but what of the other eleven
men who appear on Roll A as his confederates? Of two, Thomas Garderober (A5)
and Walter Althewelde
(A17), there is no trace. Roger, parson of Osemondiston in Norfolk, resigned
his living in 1352. William Baltrip, after having been outlawed, finally turned up in 1358 in
the king's bench, with a pardon of 1353, and was sine die. Roger Scheep was pardoned, 18 March 1353, for his service in Brittany. John
Clerke was acquitted of felony,
but kept in prison for trespass. John Burlee (A9)
came before the king's bench in Hilary term 1352, not on the indictment for trespass
made before the justices of
the peace, but on a coram Rege indictment
for felony; he was acquitted, but, because he came on writ of exigend, he forfeited chattels
worth 40d. John
Brekespere (A14), William Saykin
(A14, A16) and John Stacy (A17), were put in exigend. William de Wybome appeared in the
king's bench in Michaelmas term 1351 on the indictments
for felony made before John de Sutton and
his fellows; Wybome was convicted and hanged, and his chattels, to the value of
40d. were confiscated.
Thus the great man, with most
of his
confederates, got off with fines; one 'little' man was hanged.
'As it is seide in olde proverbe " Pore be hangid bi the necke;
a riche man bi the purs".'
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