ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY 



with Ralph, the clerk ; out in the street the vicar upbraided him and drawing 

 his basilard would have struck him. Ralph took to his heels, the vicar 

 following basilard in hand. In his excitement Ralph rushed down a lane 

 which proved blind. He drew his knife, struck at Robert and killed him." 

 This carrying of weapons doubtless accounts for many of the cases of assault 

 which appear so inexpUcable to the modern mind. John, vicar of Stanstead 

 Abbots, attacked one of his parishioners and wounded him grievously.'*'' 

 Nicholas Turvey, parson of Loughton, similarly attacked one William 

 Austynat Berkhampstead in 1371," while in the following year the parson of 

 Caldecote was outlawed for his assault on Richard Clerk.''^ Again and again 

 the clergy are found side by side with their parishioners in the affrays that 

 enlivened the country life of the 14th century. Though most frequently 

 these collisions were the result of poaching expeditions, yet sometimes they 

 seem to have been political in character. It was doubtless resentment at 

 the action of the Crown against the Templars ^^ that induced the parson of 

 Clothall to join a nocturnal expedition of over seventy persons to Baldock in 

 the autumn of i 3 i 2. On a different plane was a crime perpetrated at Sarratt 

 one Sunday in 1462, when James Roche, the vicar, with Roger Witton, an 

 esquire, and others set on Richard Gloucester, a man at arms of the place, 

 murdered him and buried the body in a field.'* The affair was discovered 

 and Roche took to flight." 



Such a story inevitably leads to a questioning as to the punishment of 

 the mediaeval criminous clerk. The clerk in trouble with the civil 

 authorities generally found himself imprisoned in Hertford Castle, and thence 

 he would appeal to his bishop to be claimed as an ecclesiastical person and 

 exempt from the jurisdiction of the lay courts. Thus in 1287 William de 

 Aston, Walter the chaplain of Leighton and Robert the barber of Wycombe 

 were accused of burglary in the church of St. Peter, Berkhampstead, but 

 Walter and Robert were claimed as clerks by the vicegerent of the Bishop of 

 Lincoln and freed as innocent.^* The secular authorities seem to have viewed 

 the process with dislike at a very early period, and in 1248 the sheriff of the 

 county was fined for releasing the chaplain of Hertingfordbury to the Bishop 

 of Lincoln without warrant." The usual proceeding was then for the bishop 

 to issue a commission of inquiry such as that held in 1306 on the conduct of 

 John son of Henry de la Fen of Clavering, clerk, who was imprisoned for 

 trespasses against Ralph the Tanner of Hatfield."' In the ecclesiastical 

 courts the ancient test of purgation still survived and was probably employed 

 in the case of John.*" 



The prison of the Bishops of London was at Stortford, and thither came 

 criminous clerks from all parts of the diocese.'" In September i 344 there 

 were fifty prisoners in this gaol and seven were received during the following 



" Chan. Misc. bdle. 62, file 2, no. 69. Ralph was to receive the king's pardon as the jury declared 

 he killed Robert in self-defence. ^^ Anct. Indictments, K.B. 9, file 38, m. 10. 



«i Chan. Misc. bdle. 62, file 4, no. 153. ^^ Ibid. no. 175. '^ Cal. Pat. 1307-13, p. 539. 



**'Reg. Whethamstede,' Reg. Abbatum Man. S. Albani (Rolls Ser.), ii, 11. No coroners' rolls for 

 Hertfordshire at this date are preserved in the P.R.O. ^^ Ibid. 



^° Assize R. 325, m. 36. For the hanging of a parson of Buckland see ibid. 323, m. 44. 



^^ Ibid. 318, m. 25 d. Richard was accused of confederacy in the murder at Hertingfordbury of 

 Basilia de Rocheford and Ralph her son. 



'* Reg. Radulfhi Baldock (Cant, and York Sec), i, 38. 



^'^ cf. ibid. I. 30 cf. Exch. K.R. Eccl. Doc. bdle. 8, no. I. 



4 297 38 



