A spot of plea roll-Year Book matching as I ease myself into 2024. YB Pasch. 25 Edw III f. 85a pl. 22 seems to be this 1351 plea roll case. There are no names or places in the short YB note, while the plea roll tells us that it was a London case, an appeal brought by John de Hardyngesthorne, saddler, against John White, pouch-maker, for maiming the middle finger of his right hand with a baselard. There is a pretty clear match – both are about injuries to fingers, and both show a self-defence plea.

A point of legal interest is that self-defence might work here, as well as in homicide cases. That was not self-evident, since there were some important differences between the two, especially in the sense that a successful appeal of mayhem did not result in capital punishment.

The plea roll tells us that John White claimed that John de Hardyngesthorne had come, mob-handed, and attacked him in his home. The jurors weren’t having any of the self-defence story, however: there was a conviction and a jury award of £10 to the injured saddler. Interestingly, the judges inspected and considered the injury, and then raised the sum to be paid, by 40 s.

There are all sorts of things to think about here, including this last assessment of injury and compensation point. It is also potentially a telling case in terms of one of the questions which has been buzzing around my head, as I work on a larger problem on mayhem: what role was this offence playing in medieval society, and why are so many of the cases about arms, hands and fingers? In this case, our injured saddler was undoubtedly concerned not so much for his fighting prowess (the original domain of mayhem) but for his ability to perform his craft and earn a living. I am no expert but I would imagine that a hand/finger injury would be a big problem in a skilled and fiddly task like saddle-making. Any attempt at reconstructing the facts behind the allegation is necessarily speculative, but it’s hard to resist – possibly a basic brawl, but I find myself wondering about the possibility of a squabble over supplies for the creation of saddles and pouches: was there little love lost amongst the leather-workers?

GS

Epiphany, 2024.

Image – your actual baselard. A later German one, but you get the idea. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.