A HISTORY OF GLOUCESTERSHIRE 



misadventure,' and the offending instrument of the death was 'deodand.' 1 But 

 cases of obvious murder were not allowed to slip, and the judges firmly 

 suppressed the lurking belief that they could still, like other offences of old, 

 be commuted for a fine. At the eyre which we have quoted so often came 

 up an interesting though complicated case, in which the kinsmen of a 

 murdered man had agreed with his murderer to patch up the affair. Geoffrey 

 of Sutton (under Brailes) had been slain by the powerful family of the 

 Bassets. He had come into court to appeal them of his wounds, but died 

 directly after, and Christina his wife had carried on the appeal at two county 

 courts. Then ' finding it was no good,' she had given up the suit, and her 

 daughter had been married to the murderer's son. The Basset brothers had 

 all fled, except Robert, who had adroitly got himself placed upon the jury. 

 For this concealment of crime the jurors were amerced by the judges, and 

 with the aid of their own and four neighbouring townships promptly con- 

 demned Robert to be hanged. Christina was also fined, still protesting that 

 the alliance was none of her doing, in spite of the recorded fact that she 

 had received a yardland from Robert, as her daughter's dower, and had paid 

 the sheriff half a mark for his sanction of the whole settlement.* Only one 

 worse crime than homicide is mentioned arson when the criminal was 

 punished by his own weapon. 8 



In conclusion it may be noticed how large a proportion of deaths were 

 due to affrays among men returning from ale-feasts.* One fatal quarrel took 

 place over a game of dice. 6 One case of suicide occurs at Campden, when 

 the dead man's chattels are forfeited to the crown. 8 



Such was the general fabric of life and interests in rural Gloucestershire 

 between the eleventh and fifteenth centuries, a period which can, more 

 easily than any other, be treated as a whole, because of the extraordinary 

 fixity and uniformity produced by the manorial system. With all its rigidity, 

 however, the system could not be wholly proof against the economic and 

 political changes which, from within and without, were at work to under- 

 mine it. Of these the economic development that was most sure to come, 

 and most powerful in its effects, was the substitution of money-rents for 

 labour services. The villein, we may be sure, was always ready to demand 

 the removal of this, the most galling as it was the most essential charac- 

 teristic of his position ; and the lord, on his side, when the growth of 

 population had provided a surplus of labourers for hire, profited by an 

 arrangement which enabled him to engage them continuously. Even in 

 the twelfth century, as we have seen, commutation of labour for money 

 had begun at Cirencester ; 7 and the process must have been at least in 

 contemplation in 1266 on the manors of the Gloucester Chartulary, which 

 invariably quotes the customary liabilities of the tenants both in their 

 labour and their money value. By the reign of Edward I, venditiones operum, 

 or sale of labour services, had become a regular item in the receipts of 

 some manors. At Tidenham (1279), where there was a highly elaborate 



1 Gkuc. Pleas of the Crown, No. 113. E.g. Walter of Andebirie has been crushed by his cart, loaded 

 with corn. Judgement : misadventure Worth of horse and cart 6s. 8*/. Let it be given as to God, to 

 Walter's poor sister, who is reported to be ill. 8 Ibid. No. 101. 



3 Ibid. No. 2 1 6. See the case of William the Miller, who burnt the abbot of Malmesbury's barn in 

 Langtree hundred, ' et per preceptum Regis Johannis combustus,' was burnt by King John's order. 



4 Ibid, passim. ' Ibid. No. 189. 6 Ibid. No. 22. ' E. A. Fuller, op. cit. 



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