PROCEEDINGS BEFORE THE JUSTICES 6 1 



sponsibilities were incurred by him I can not say/ With 

 the two or more justices who were holding sessions there 

 sat the clerc des iustices, referred to in the statute of 

 labourers, without any account of his duties/ He was 

 paid a regular salary/ presumably in return for the labour 

 of writing the two classes of sessional records, the piacita 

 or accounts of the proceedings, and the ''estreats" or 

 memoranda of the resulting penalties. The former seem 

 usually to be made up according to a definite system, 

 beginning with the enrollment of the letters patent in 

 virtue of which the given justices were acting, followed 

 by the usual writs to the sheriff for the summoning of 



case has been referred to, p. i8, note 4 and p. 31, note 10) makes the 

 following explanation to a writ demanding his estreats as a member of 

 a peace commission: " Et de alio tempore (. . . illegible) non habeo 

 (juia commissiones ante tempus infradictum ad inquirendum de infra 

 contentis non habui nee post predictum tempus intromittere potui prop- 

 ter breve domini Regis michi et Willelmo de Wychingham tunc socio 

 meo de premissis directum de vlterius non intromittendo, cuius breuis 

 transcriptum patet in cedula in ista inclusa. Et sciendum quod post 

 illud tempus alie commissiones de pace custodienda in comitatu predicto 

 directe fuerunt lohanni Bardolf de Wyrmegeye et alia vice lohanni de 

 Norwico, michi et aliis, sed recorda et extracte inde remanent penes 

 ipsos tamquam principaliter in dictis commissionibus nominatos/' Un- 

 doubtedly there was no difference in this matter as between a keeper of 

 the peace and a justice of labourers. Cf. Chaucer in Prologue to the 

 Canterbury Tales: 



" A Frankeleyn was in his companye 



At sessiouns ther was he lord and sire; 

 Full ofte tyme he was knight of the shire/' 

 Verses 331, 355 and 356. 



'For tentative suggestions, cf. p. 35, note 4 and p. 64 of this section. 

 -App., 16. 



^ Cf. p. 46. According to an instance noted in the /Records of the 

 Boroiizh of Leicester, ii, 80, the mayor seems to have loaned to the 

 keepers of the peace the services of his own clerk and then to have 

 claimed from them the amount of the clerk's salary. 



