SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC HISTORY 



were acting on plans which were not Grindecobbe's. He was sent back to 

 Hertford on Saturday, 6 July, and the villeins went to make their offer to 

 the abbot on the same day.^^ They would give back the charters and an 

 old book of pleas between the townsmen and the abbot, and would pay 

 j^2oo damages.^" The villeins even employed a lawyer. Sir William 

 Croyser, to plead with the abbot that they should be allowed to replace the 

 parlour pavement and rebuild the destroyed houses.^' Many of the greater 

 villeins bound themselves under seal to pay. They tried to excuse them- 

 selves for not restoring the charters by their fear of the men of the country- 

 side. The abbot promised to make no complaint of them to the king, and 

 the charters were given up to him and the parlour repaved. 



On Friday, 12 July, the king came into St. Albans with Sir Robert 

 Tresilian and his other judges. The sessions began in the Moothall on 

 the i3th.°^ John Ball was executed in the town on the 15th.''' Tresilian 

 called upon the jury of the townsmen to indict, but at first they would not 

 do so. Their resistance must have held over the Monday, but at last they 

 gave way. A second and a third jury were afterwards called up. The 

 leaders were apparently indicted at once. During this space the king issued 

 his commission to John Ludwiche, Richard Perers, the abbot's squire, and 

 others to make proclamation in Hertfordshire to all tenants of the abbey, 

 bond and free, that they should do their old service as before the disturbance 

 and to arrest those who did not. Then he took fealty of all men.^^ On 

 Tuesday, 16 July, presentment was made that Grindecobbe and others 

 seized to themselves the royal power and broke and threw down the house 

 of the abbot called the Thwarthoverhouse, and also the houses of three 

 others, and broke the abbot's prison. Grindecobbe pleaded he was not 

 guilty, but the jury found him guilty, and he was condemned to be drawn 

 and hanged.^* There were condemned also William Cadington, J. Barber 

 and fifteen others.^' 



Many of the greater townsmen were imprisoned, including Richard 

 de Wallingford, W. Berewick, T. Payntour and others. A certain number 

 from the countryside, given as eighty by the chronicler, were also im- 

 prisoned. The trials of the townsmen were concluded at Westminster 

 during the autumn. Wallingford, Berewick and Payntour were pardoned 

 on 28 October.'" A carpenter accused of pulling down the houses was 

 acquitted, and others received their pardons one by one through the winter 

 and spring.'^ 



But the juries were not quite tamed by Tresilian. They indicted the 

 abbot of a charge of having ordered them to join the rebels at London.^^ 

 The judge ruled that, though the fact was true, the motive saved it from 

 being indictable. The villeins had no vent but in complaints to the men of 

 the royal household who were quartered upon them that the abbot had 



22 Walsingham, Hist. Angl. ii, 28. 



2' Ibid. 28-9. 24 jbij jQ_ 25 Ybi^_ 31. On the first day of the Dog-days. 



26 Diet. Nat. Biog. 2^ Walsingham, Hist. Angl. ii, 38. 



2* Chan. Misc. bdle. 62, file 3, no. 95. The chronology of the chronicles appears to be wrong when 

 compared with the dates given in the judicial records. But in the presentments of the juries, sometimes 

 made months later, the events of the different days are often confused. 



25 Walsingham, Hist. Angl. ii, 36. so Coram Rege R. 482, m. 26-26 d. 



21 Ibid. 482, ,m. 27-8 ; 484, m. 18 ; 485, m. 23 d. '2 Walsingham, Hist. Angl. ii, 37-8 



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