SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC HISTORY 



the county, who all failed to appear before the justices and were consequently 

 fined/' 



At the same time there were certain limitations which hampered even 

 the king's justice. The first of these was the benefit of clergy. Curtailed 

 to a large extent by the Constitutions of Clarendon, it yet played an important 

 part in the administration of the law. In Dorset it was used as a refuge by 

 a variety of criminals such as poachers, murderers, and counterfeiters of the 

 king's seal *' — in the last case apparently without avail, as no one claimed the 

 so-called clerk for the church, and he was consequently committed to gaol, 

 whence he escaped, only to be outlawed by command of the justices in eyre. 

 The second and more serious limitation was created by the existence of 

 numerous private franchises, such as the broad liberty of Cranborne to which 

 the sheriff had no entry,'" and where the right to hang thieves taken in the 

 act was occasionally construed to cover thieves taken on suspicion only, and 

 without formal indictment." Yet the very presentment of these facts before 

 the justices is, from one point of view, additional evidence of the strength of 

 the central government, and of the alliance between it and the ' commonalty 

 of the realm.' Vills might be subtracted from the hundred court by some 

 powerful overlord, courts might be unjustly multiplied in Eggerton Hundred, 

 the sherifFs tourn might be neglected in the hundred of Hasilor,'^ pleas of 

 vert and venison might be wrongfully held by the earl of Gloucester in the 

 hundred of Pimperne beyond the borders of the forest, poor men might be 

 distrained for debt by their wainage,'^ foresters, bailiffs, and seneschals might 

 make false exactions and purveyances,'* but when the justices arrived in the 

 county upon their eyre, the jurors of the hundreds set forth all their 

 grievances and all encroachments on the royal justice, which were thereupon 

 examined, and, where necessary, fines were imposed upon the culprits'* or re- 

 dress was ordered. '° Upon one occasion the jurors were fined for not having 

 mentioned a wrongful exaction which had been made by the constable of 

 Corfe Castle." 



What event or series of events really marks the transition from the early 

 to the later Middle Ages in Dorset it seems impossible to determine. There 

 is but little evidence of the extent of the ravages of the plague in the middle 

 of the fourteenth century,'' and although there can be no doubt that Dorset 

 and its neighbour counties were involved in the disturbances of 1381," there 

 appears to be no evidence to show that the rising had any economic effect, 

 though socially no doubt the presence in the county of ' homicides, robbers, 

 and insurgents ' in unusual numbers was a real evil. Nevertheless, here as 

 elsewhere, the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries certainly saw the transi- 

 tion from a feudal to a commercial basis of society. The process was, how- 

 ever, in some respects a slow one ; for instance, in the matter of commuta- 

 tion, while the virgate-holding customary tenants of Tarrant Gunville paid 



" Assize R. 201, m. (> d. "' Ibid. 206, m. 6, 9 ; R. 212, m. 7, 13. 



"" Ibid. 206, m. 4. " Ibid. m. 3. 



" Ibid. 201, m. 3</. ; R. 206, m. 16 a'., 20. '' Ibid. 206, m. 4, 5. 



" Ibid. 201, in. 5 d.; R. 206, m. 4, 6, 8, 18, 20 ; R. 212, m. 3, 4, 1 1. 



" e.g. Ibid. 206, m. 4, 5, 6, 8. '' Ibid. m. iS d., 20. " Ibid. m. 20. 



" See, however, Hist. MSS. Com. Refi. vi, App. 475 ; Rot. Purl. (Rec. Com.), iii, 129(7. A complaint 

 of the abbess and convent of Shaftesbury dated 1 38 1-2 stating that nearly all their tenants were dead of the 

 plague. 



" Cal. of Pat. 1381-S, pp. 73, 136. 



