Author Archives: vifgage

About vifgage

Professor Gwen Seabourne teaches and researches Legal History, with a particular focus on the medieval period. She is the author of two books and several articles, mainly on this period of Legal History. Current interests include women in legal history and legal humour. This site does not purport to reflect the views of her employer, nor to constitute legal advice.

Geographical embraces

A snippet: bycatch in my mayhem searching, I have been rather taken by the physical geography metaphors around jurisdiction over offences committed off the shore:

some things going on ‘within the arms of the sea’, others ‘within the body of the county. All has a certain charm, doesn’t it. And maybe I can work it into my consideration of embracing metaphors in relation to coverture (see Looming deadline … | Bracton’s Sister (bristol.ac.uk) ).

(The report, above, is Case of the Admiralty (1609).13 Coke Reports 51; 77 E.R. 1461).

GS

7/11/2022

Photo by Greg Jurgajtis on Unsplash

 

Candles, ‘cocoanuts’ and cold courts: further thrilling adventures of Judge Owen

As I sit next to two non-functioning radiators in a rather chilly office, and as we all face the possibility of interruptions to power supplies, I am drawn to some accounts from the life of Judge Owen on closely connected matters. (For more on this ‘character’ of the Welsh bench, see this post.

First, I note that newspapers in 1908 felt that it was worth reporting – under the deathless headline ‘Judge Owen Complains of a Cold Court’ – that – well – just that: he said, in Monmouth, that the court in which he was sitting was ‘as cold as an ice-house’.

Moving from a lack of heat to a lack of light, we have the even more thrilling, earlier tale, ‘Judge Owen and the Electric Light: candles stuck in cocoanuts’ (1895).[i] Again, you can work out the general idea from the headline. This time, the uncomfortable court was in Newport: Judge Owen was presiding over the County Court, in the Town Hall, on a ‘dull morning’ in December. Things were dim at 10.30 in the court. Owen’s first task was to read a judgment, but when he tried to turn on the light …. It did not work! Owen ‘declared that he must have light of some kind.’ No light was to be found, however, despite the scurrying of various court officials. again, without result. He left the bench [flouncingly?] and then Collins, the town hall keeper produced a solution of a sort – putting four candles [Two Ronnies resonances anyone?] around the bench, and the judge came back. He was not going to accept it all as a bit of an accident, though – no, he complained of the ‘want of courtesy’ on the part of the Corporation officials, who ‘knew it was County Court day’ but ‘did not take any steps to provide light for the court’. They did get as far as providing some oil lamps as well as penny candles in ‘cocoanuts’. The problem stemmed from the change-over from gas-lighting to electric lighting: it was explained that connections to the electricity main had not yet been made, and the transition was incomplete.

So, a pretty banal little story, but interesting that the papers found so much that this judge did eminently worthy of note, even so, and perhaps also some sign of the quality of facilities available to courts sitting in Wales in this period.   I am getting the idea that the judge might have had a bit of a temper on him … sending everyone running around. Perhaps he was unconvinced that electric lighting was an improvement on gas. How quickly, or whether, Judge Owen simmered down is not made clear.

3/11/2022

[i] See also this report.

Photo by PhotographyCourse on Unsplash

Law, love, lies … and poetry

The law is a wordy profession, and, in some ways, it is not surprising that, at various points in history, lawyers have felt that they might turn their mind and hand from the deployment of words in argument to their employment in the drafting of poetry. It does not usually go well. Attempted poetry was one of the offences committed by the Welsh solicitor in this story from the newspapers of 1894.[i] Another involved serious (and bad) lying. The thing which got him, in the end, however, was his breach of a promise to marry a young woman.

In 1892, Mr James Benjamin Price, solicitor, of Neath, found himself on board a steamship, the P & O ship Carthage, which was bound, eventually, for India. He also found himself  in the company of, amongst others, a Miss Grace Rani Mitchell (19 at the time of the trial, so 17 at the time of the voyage), orphaned daughter of Mr James Mitchell, formerly of West Norwood, and, more interestingly, god-daughter of the Rajah Rampal Singh of Oudh (her mother’s sister having married him). They met on the hurricane deck. Before the ship got to Malta, he had proposed marriage. The young lady, quite properly according to the conventions of the time, sought her guardian’s consent. There followed a period of separation – she in India, he in Britain – and much correspondence. This is where the poetry comes in, and some of the lying. His letters were ‘unusually amorous’, and talked up his wealth, his lands, his legal practice. Miss Mitchell said ‘yes’, once she had her guardian’s consent. She returned to Britain, no doubt keen to get married to this amorous, wealthy catch of a man. Price, however, was not to be found. Miss Mitchell’s enquiries were met with a telegram from Price’s uncle, telling her that price had died ‘suddenly, at Bristol, from blood poisoning’. This was completely pants on fire untrue.

Price did not manage to evade detection, because plucky Miss Mitchell went and hit the archives, looking for primary sources (find myself liking her …). There was, it turned out, no death certificate. Price was unearthed. He made  a failed attempt to pay Grace off with £20, and tried to persuade her that she would be open to ridicule, if she went ahead with legal action. But Grace was not having it. The matter ended up in court – the London Sheriff’s Court in Red Lion Square –  a breach of promise suit. He could not say much, really – he had been caught red-handed (or burnt-bottomed, as a result of the combusting smalls?). There was substantial evidence that he had promised marriage, and that he had broken his promise. All he could do was try and argue that he was an absolutely huge liar, and that, despite his tales of wealth, assets, success, he was actually rather impoverished. This succeeded to some extent, and the damages award of £300 might have been higher, had he really been as wealthy as he had made out to Miss Mitchell.

A very dim view was taken of Mr Price’s conduct, and, in court, there was, apparently, applause, when an official said ‘happy was the woman who had escaped becoming the wife of such a man as the defendant’. The plaintiff herself received good press – she was ‘a prepossessing young lady, stylishly dressed, wearing a large feather boa.’ That does indeed sound a stylish accessory for a court-room appearance.

And what of the poetry? Well, there is an interesting suggestion that a solicitor writing poetry is rather ridiculous: ‘That a solicitor, of all people in the world, should take to writing love poetry appears to be an inversion of the order of nature, which, if the example were widely followed, would throw our whole legal machinery into inextricable confusion.’ Probably it is both the overall reputation of the law as a prosaic thing, and also the idea of solicitors’ work as not hugely intellectual, in comparison to that of the ‘upper branch’ of the legal profession, that contributed to this idea of incongruity. There is likely to be more than a touch of snobbery there. On the other hand, the poetry (and, mercifully, only a couple of lines are reproduced) really is pretty bad:

“Though now in another country

and many miles apart

I cannot see my darling,

but no other has my heart!”

Mmm – corny. Though I suppose there can be few of us who would relish having our clumsy expressions of love in letters, or indeed bad poetry, picked over in court and newspapers.

I do wonder what became of Mr Price and his legal practice after this. On his evidence, he had been disappointed as to an inheritance, and the practice was not really flourishing – and this was at least part of the reason that he had not gone through with the wedding to Grace. So I am assuming that he did not become a big figure in the legal profession.  Grace does seem to me like a bit of a star – and wouldn’t this all make rather a nice one-off courtroom drama?

In comparison to many of the events in law-courts – certainly the other grisly cases I have been looking at lately, this seems relatively light stuff:  nobody died, and the young woman did get some financial compensation for her disappointment (interesting question as to what she actually lost by not getting married to a lying humbug, one might have thought … but the jury said £300 plus costs). Going beyond seeing it as somewhat light, though, breach of promise cases were frequently treated as a bit of a laugh: certainly, they gave newspapers and their readers a chance to nose a bit into the often-ridiculous personal lives of others, and, though there had long been grumbling about the fairness of breach of promise actions (lying, exaggerating women …. poor, poor men manipulated and fleeced … familiar bleating), the Birmingham Gazette gives a good indication of the general attitude:

‘Can any man with a fit and proper sense of humour really desire to abolish breach of promise cases?’

… which is an interesting thing to ponder: legal cases as comic entertainment for a wider public. In many ways, this was the heyday of such nosy commentary in newspapers, since, at this point, they had both divorce cases and breach of promise cases to cover, in this light, joking, intrusive fashion. Apparently it sold units.

 

GS

31/10/2022

 

 

 

Image – feather boa. I am imagining Grace turning up like something out of Drag Race – completely historically accurate … Photo by Alexandra Vázquez on Unsplash

[i] See also these:

SOLICITOR’S BREACH OF PROMISE.|1894-05-05|The Cardigan Observer and General Advertiser for the Counties of Cardigan Carmarthen and Pembroke – Welsh Newspapers (library.wales)

Breach of Promise Case.|1894-04-27|South Wales Echo – Welsh Newspapers (library.wales)

-Neath Breach of Promise Case. ..|1894-05-11|South Wales Echo – Welsh Newspapers (library.wales)

MITCHELL V. PRiCE.|1894-05-02|Evening Express – Welsh Newspapers (library.wales)

Law and low literature

It is a wet morning and I am stuck indoors, an arm stiff from a Covid jab: not up to doing anything terribly energetic, but in need of some distraction. Naturally enough, I have turned to reading about some favourite topics – law, humour and poetry (loosely so-called). All of them come together in this report of goings-on in a county court in Cardiff, in 1907: Lloyd Meyrick, ‘Limericks and Law’. It alludes to the occasion, on 8th May 1907, when a judge, William Stevenson Owen, at Cardiff County Court, brightened up a dullish case by breaking out into a limerick.

This tale contributes to the image of this particular judge as something of a funny fellow. Newspapers of the period could not get enough of his ‘humorous’ remarks and caustic quips. Meyrick noted that, in court, Owen elicited laughter, ‘weak cackles and short hysterical yelps’, that he was known as one for ‘polished periods and sparkling epigrams’, but it was only at that point that he had revealed an ‘unsuspected vein of poetry’.

Mentioned in passing in this report were limericks about ‘A young lady from Chichester’ and another young lady, this time from Exeter, but Meyrick did not give the verses themselves. I had a bit of a search for possibles and found some rather rude ones.[i] (At least there was no hint of people hailing from Nantucket. If you don’t know, use your imagination). But, perhaps not surprisingly, there was no serious rudeness in Judge Owen’s court.

Luckily, the judge’s own limerick was reproduced in other, anonymous, reports, from 8th May 1907. Here it is in all its glory:

There was a young woman of Chichester

who went to see a solicitor.

He asked for his fee,

she said “Fiddle-de-dee:

I simply called as a visitor”.

Have to say the rhymes are a bit dodgy, but, according to the ‘stage directions’ in the newspaper report, the response in court was loud laughter. The newspaper report does not really explain what the nature of the case was, but it does seem likely to have involved an issue of whether somebody was consulting a solicitor professionally or not. Did he make it up there and then (in which case some struggling rhymes would be forgiven), or did he sit up for hours the night before, composing and polishing it (in which case, they would not)? In any case, it all adds to the picture of power-dynamics in court at this point, and, so it seems to me at least, the self-regard of judges.

I have quite a collection of judicial ‘humour in court’ reports now, and also a fair bit of material on Owen, who does seem worth investigating further.

Working from the newspaper archive (the easiest place to start!), the Welsh newspaper obituaries[ii] give us these apparent facts about his life:

1834       Born (1st February). Son of William Owen, of Withybush, Pembrokeshire (deceased), from a ‘well-known and highly-respected family in the county’.

?date    Married to Miss Ray, Kent family, had three daughters and a son.

1856      Called to the Bar 1856. Became a Chancery barrister. Travelled the South Wales Circuit. ‘An accurate  lawyer and a skilled equity draftsman’.[iii]

1883      Appointed County Court Judge in Mid-Wales

1884      Transferred to ‘Circuit No. 58’ (County courts at Cardiff, Newport, Barry, Chepstow, Abergavenny, Tredegar, Pontypool, Monmouth, Ross, Crickhowell and Usk.

1895      Chair of Pembrokeshire Quarter Sessions. Chair of Haverfordwest Quarter Sessions. Retired 1907.

1909      Died (4.30 a.m., 20th October) , at home in Abergavenny, Ty Gwyn, after an operation on ‘an internal complaint’.

1909       23rd October. Funeral, parish church, Llantilio Pertholey, nr Abergavenny. Grave on south side of church.

At the time of his death, he sat on the County Court Bench.

 

His legal views

Obituaries[iv] emphasise some detailed, technical views:

  • opposition to the judgment summons system (on the grounds that it encouraged credit)
  • support for a reduction in the time allowed for the collection of debt under Statute of Limitations, from 6 to 2 years.

 

His character or characterisation: ‘dry humour’ and ‘caustic and scathing observations’

In death, he was called a man ‘of strong character and striking individuality’,[v] and, in private life, ‘a charming host and a man of warm-hearted disposition’. [vi]

it was commented that he was ‘noted for the dry humour which he introduced into the prosaic proceedings of the county court’, and that ‘his smart, laconic commentaries frequently provoked laughter’. On the other hand, his ‘caustic and scathing observations … were things to be dreaded, as many a solicitor [would] admit’.[vii] There is a lot to interrogate there – both in terms of the apparent nature of his ‘dry humour’, and also the slightly sniffy suggestion that the proceedings of the county court were ‘prosaic’. My initial reading suggests that he was very keen to play up the importance of this, apparently scorned, jurisdiction. More on that in due course!

Obituaries noted the speed with which he picked up common law, that his judgments were rarely upset on appeal, that he was very fair to prisoners, in Quarter Sessions, and, in the County Court, ‘very much alive to the processes of the court being used to oppress the poor’, with particular attention to claims made by tallymen and moneylenders, and not to ask too much of poor defendants in terms of paying debts. Much, much more to say, I am sure, once I can delve further into his cases and the reports.

I note that the obituaries do not mention his poetical efforts. They do say that he had a ‘distinguished career’.[viii] That was clearly in law rather than literature, though.

GS

24/10/2022

 

 

Image from The Evening Express, 20th October, 1909.

 

 

 

 

 

[i] Chichester:

 

A pious young lady of Chichester

made all of the saints in their niches stir

and each morning at matin

her breast in pink satin

made the bishop of Chichester’s britches stir

(shame about the double use of stir, to my mind, but Chichester/britches stir is rather skilful).

 

Exeter:

There was a young lady from Exeter,
So pretty that men craned their necks at her.
One was even so brave
As to take out and wave
The distinguishing mark of his sex at her.

(grim and creepy, obviously).

No refs to author, nor date,  given.

Just how the Exeter verse mentioned by Meyrick was thought to end, we can’t be sure, but the first two lines were not quite the same as the rude version above – it began ‘There was a young woman from Exeter/ and a happy young man sat next to her’ [needs another syllable, doesn’t it ‘Sat down next to her’?]

[ii] See, e.g., ,. DEATH OF JUDGE OWEN.|1909-10-22|The Cambrian – Welsh Newspapers (library.wales)  JUDGE OWEN DEAD|1909-10-20|Evening Express – Welsh Newspapers (library.wales) DEATH OF JUDGE OWEN.|1909-10-29|The Welshman – Welsh Newspapers (library.wales)

[iii] DEATH OF JUDGE OWEN.|1909-10-29|The Welshman – Welsh Newspapers (library.wales)

[iv] ,. DEATH OF JUDGE OWEN.|1909-10-22|The Cambrian – Welsh Newspapers (library.wales)

[v] DEATH OF JUDGE OWEN.|1909-10-29|The Welshman – Welsh Newspapers (library.wales)

[vi] DEATH OF JUDGE OWEN.|1909-10-29|The Welshman – Welsh Newspapers (library.wales)

[vii] ,. DEATH OF JUDGE OWEN.|1909-10-22|The Cambrian – Welsh Newspapers (library.wales)

[viii] JUDGE OWEN DEAD|1909-10-20|Evening Express – Welsh Newspapers (library.wales)

Salad ballad: on the resignation of this season’s PM

Well, the day could not go unmarked by a work of literary genius, now could it?

 

Hollow LOL[lo Rosso]

 So, Liz Truss, it is kale and farewell.

Lettuce note though, before this gem fell,

she sowed chaos; the pain

won’t wilt; we will romaine

tossed undressed in kosterity hell.

GS

20/10/2022

Image – well I mean it is quite out of date, from all those days ago at the start of her stint as PM … courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

(Do like the ‘Ring of Power’ necklace – waiting for the captioned versions of that: ‘One Ring to Rule Them All* *terms and conditions apply’ is my best effort – a bit weak, I know …]

Lecturing on Law and Laughter

One of the more interesting characters of the legal profession of the late-nineteenth century and early twentieth century was a lawyer from Denbigh, North Wales, T. Artemus Jones. Anyone who has looked into the law of defamation is likely to have come across him as the plaintiff in Hulton v Jones (1909) – the case which made it wise for writers of fiction to start off with a claim that their work is fiction, even if it coincidentally hits upon the name of a real person (and e.g. suggests he might have been up to no good with a woman other than his wife, in Dieppe). He had an interesting pathway to the legal profession, rather admirably pulling himself upwards via journalism and part time study.

Once he became a barrister, he continued to communicate to wider audiences. A newspaper report in an issue of the Denbighshire Free Press in 1907 reported on his lecture – returning to Denbigh Literary and Social Society’s Hall as a ‘local boy made good’.[i] There was ‘very good attendance … notwithstanding the inclemency of the (March) weather’, to hear Jones speak on the theme ‘The Humorous Side of the Law’. Obviously, this appeals to those of us with a passing interest in legal humour and there is also some legal historical content. So what laughs were there in matters legal, and what was the interest in legal history, as far as Artemus was concerned?

In fact, a fair amount of the lecture seems to have been taken up by discussions of legal history of a sort: a comparison of ‘now’ and ‘centuries ago’, ‘days gone past’, or the past as a bit of an undifferentiated lump. He discussed Ashford v Thornton (albeit situating the initial acquittal in the Common Pleas rather than a criminal court), oddly drew a direct link between ‘the blood feud’ and the petty jury (saying that the feud involved 12 men from each side). There was considerable use of the language of ‘barbarism’ to describe the criminal justice system of the past, as if seeing matters as a story of upward ‘progress’ to his present 9like the good Liberal he was), though, we might take a different view of the perfection of the ideas of his time, when we see that there was reported to have been applause when he remarked that ‘the punishment of whipping still existed, and he thought that, for a certain class of offences, it was an excellent remedy’.

A little baffling today but apparently regarded as amusing was a Lord Eldon anecdote: Lord Eldon ‘had said that a wife was like a tin canister tied to one’s tail’ [which does not sound complimentary!] Both baffling and groan-inducing are the great lines in response to Lord Eldon, from the Society Journal which Jones cited:

‘Lord Eldon presuming to rail

Calls a wife a tin canister tied to one’s tail;

And fair lady Ann while the subject he carried on

Seems hurt by his Lordship’s degrading comparison.

But wherefore degrading? Considered aright

A canister’s polished and useful and bright.

And should dirt its original purity bide,

That’s the fault of the puppy to whom it is tied.’

 

This was funny, right! The newspaper reports laughter.

Partly funny, partly deadly serious was his treatment of a gripe of his own age and country – critical comments by English judges on the veracity of Welsh witness. Here, Jones played to his audience: he could ‘assure them that more lies were told in the courts of London in two days than the whole of Wales in three years’. This, as might have been expected, elicited applause from the good men of Denbigh.

Going back to humour, he gave his listeners a story of a murder trial in which there had been a conviction, but then the man allegedly murdered appeared in court. Although the judge ordered that the jury’s verdict would have to be withdrawn, ‘the foreman of the jury said that the prisoner must be guilty, as he knew him for a rogue, as he had stole his bay mare three years ago’. How they laughed! Likewise, mirth was caused by amusing tales of drunk judges and judges being ‘witty’.

There was a bit of a mixed judgment in the end, by Jones, on the ‘system of justice in England’ [and yes, there is that slipping, characteristic of the period, between portraying England as separate from Wales, and speaking as if Wales was absorbed in England]. On the one hand it was ‘a pattern for the whole world’, on the other ‘there were defects in the system’. Finally, he gave his listeners some homework – to learn about the laws of their country, he recommended:

  • Memoirs of Lord Brougham
  • Memoirs of the Old Bailey
  • Dickens
  • Thackeray

 

Damn – will have to revise my reading lists now.

All in all, an interesting little insight into this ‘character’ of the law, and into the ideas of his time, about Wales, law, and humour. Probably somebody who deserves a bit more attention today, for these reasons amongst others.

GS

19/10/2022

 

[i] Intro: in the chair was the Rev. James Charles, who, reading between the lines, may have been hogging the limelight a little. In a bit of a ‘back to me’ moment, he seems to have described his own appearances as a witness, and in what sounds like some very heavy attempted humour, making comparisons between law and theology. There was said to have been laughter and applause at all of that, though, so no accounting for (early 20th C North Welsh) taste.

Image c/o Wikimedia Commons

For more on the libel case, and background on Jones, see in particular Paul Mitchell, Artemus Jones and the Press Club.” Journal of Legal History, vol. 20, no. 1, April 1999, pp. 64-68.

Legal historians and the Chaucer-Cecily Chaumpaigne Case

CW: rape

(A few short points arising from the recent developments in Chaucer studies: see the special edition of The Chaucer Review.)

It is striking that by far the greatest contribution – for good or ill – to scholarship and comment on the very legal matter of the Chaucer-Chaumpaigne case has been by those from outside the field of legal history, and particularly legal history of the ‘classical legal history’ tradition of Maitland-Milsom-Baker and the Selden Society. In general, the luminaries of this school have not considered women, and raptus, central to their mission, to their subject. To regret that lack of interest in this specific case is not, however, to assume that legal historians would have been likely to be any less influenced by the prejudices of the men of their age with regard to women and rape than were those working in literary studies. Those who did venture into this territory did not necessarily cover themselves with glory.

One of the quotations which is used in descriptions of the unedifying rape-apologism of many past Chaucer scholars is from a legal historical luminary, and Selden Society man, Theodore Plucknett.[i] Plucknett’s short article, in the 1948 volume of the Law Quarterly Review, starts off jarringly, with its title: ‘Chaucer’s Escapade’.  The overtones of ‘escapade’ surely do not need to be spelled out, and a general air of not taking the whole thing terribly seriously is reinforced by his explanation of why he is tackling the topic – it was prompted by an ‘entertaining article’ in the previous year’s LQR, by one P. R. Watts.

Plucknett reconstructs legal events in what was, overall, a not unreasonable way, given the evidence then available, but there is some falling into patterns and tropes which many of us will recognise, e,g, suggesting that Cecily ‘wanted money’ (34), and that she was ‘indignant (or repentant, or just hard-headed)’ and so refused to have dealings with Chaucer himself over the compensation. There is a bit of reconstruction from what he presumably considered common sense: ‘That he seduced Cecilia we may well believe; that she was angry with him, and still more with herself, is extremely probable. She may have honestly thought that because it all happened against her better judgment, that therefore it was without her consent.’ (35-6). Hmm. Women not able to tell their feelings from the truth? Then there is ‘Her scandalised family would naturally treat that as an irrebuttable presumption.’ Would they really? And what would modern criminal law scholars make of this: ‘Rape is a brutal crime and implies a degree of depravity which should make us cautious in fixing such a charge.’ (35-6).

I also had a look at the article which Plucknett found so ‘entertaining’ and stimulating, P.R. Watts, “The Strange Case of Geoffrey Chaucer and Cecilia Chaumpaigne,” Law Quarterly Review 63, no. 4 (October 1947): 491-515. This, too, has some lines which do not bear scrutiny, e.g. calling rape a ‘crime of passion’ (496). And Hale’s old fear about false accusations of rape lying too heavily on the innocent defendant is trotted out (496, citing 1. Hale P.C. 685, as is the very nasty passage from Don Quixote in which a woman is criticised for failing to defend her body sufficiently vigorously, when, on another occasion, she was vigorous in pursuing her financial interests (504, Don Quixote c. 45). Perhaps the part which would have seemed ‘entertaining’ was Watts’s speculative reconstruction of events which might have given Chaucer a defence to a felony prosecution. This involved a story that Cecily might have become pregnant following the rape, which would have been a defence (probably true that it would have been a defence, had it happened, but this really does get speculative. A flavour from p. 509: ‘So far as Cecilia Chaumpaigne is concerned, we have no evidence of pregnancy, and in the absence of evidence we are not justified in assuming it. Nevertheless … [yes we are going there]. And even more … ‘[If it becomes clear that Chaucer did impregnate Cecily through rape, and she had the child, and it was the Lewis to whom he dedicated a book on astrolabes – what every child wants – …] ‘we may be able to close our record of an unedifying chapter in Chaucer’s life with a scene not without some redeeming aspects of tenderness and grace-the poet devoting himself, in the full maturity of his powers, to the inditing of a scientific treatise for the instruction of Cecilia’s son’. [So, right, yeah, I raped your mother, but here – book about astrolabes – OK, bye!].

And now?

The world of legal history has, of course, moved on. Maybe not as quickly as other areas of scholarship, but there are glacial signs of change, of interest in perspectives other than that of the socially and economically fortunate white male, of openness to the insights of feminism and other critical fields. We should certainly note the questionable content in the past of our own discipline, but then we need to pick up the pace, and engage with other scholars, as we can see different groups coming together in this recent Chaucer project. There really is plenty which could be contributed to wider fields of study by legal historians.

GS

16/10/2022

 

 

[i] Samantha Katz Seal; Whose Chaucer? On Cecily Chaumpaigne, Cancellation, and the English Literary Canon. The Chaucer Review 1 October 2022; 57 (4): 484–497, at 493-4, noted as ‘One of the most frequently quoted statements on the matter’; Theodore F. T. Plucknett, “Chaucer’s Escapade,” Law Quarterly Review 64 (1948): 33–36

Swords, shields and female servants

I note from the statistics update from this blog that there have been a fair few consultations of my old post on a 14th C employment/harassment case (this one). I presume that this is a result of the recent publicity around new discoveries relating to the Chaucer-Cecily Chaumpaigne case, and the new spin on the case which brings to the fore its labour law context. I thought I would just repeat the key points on ‘my’ case, and make a few additional comments on the whole area of law, labour and sexual misconduct in the medieval period, for anyone who is interested in this area, as a result of the general excitement over the new evidence, set out in the special edition of The Chaucer Review.

So, here is the relevant text from that old post:

Thomas de Queldale v. William de Ramkill and Elena de Hustwayt (1363) CP 40/416 m. 128d is a case brought by the former employer of Elena de Hustwayt against Elena and a chaplain, William de Ramkill. Thomas claimed that Elena was his servant, employed under a contract for one year, but left his employ before that time was up, without permission and without reasonable cause, and was thus guilty of an offence under the Ordinance of Labourers. William de Ramkill was accused of having committed another offence against the same legislation, by hiring Elena while she was under contract to another employer. Rather than the usual denial of having been employed by Thomas on the terms which he had stated, however, Elena argued that she had had reasonable cause to leave.

It was certainly possible to argue ‘reasonable cause’ on the basis of excessive beating or failure to provide for a servant, and Putnam’s book has examples of both. Elena’s objection, however, was different: Thomas, who was, she stated ‘a married man’, had often pestered her for sex. (The Latin of the text is ‘frequenter solicitavit ipsam ad cognoscend’ ipsam carnaliter contra voluntatem suam’ – which is rather intriguing in terms of ideas about gender, will and sexual consent, and I plan to consider it at greater length elsewhere). Thomas denied that she had left for this reason. It appears as if he was more concerned to question causation of her departure, rather than with denying that there was such lecherous behaviour on his part, but this could be a result of common law pleading rules. In any case, he managed to convince a jury that she had left without cause, and that the pestering had not happened. So Elena’s defence failed, and she and William were held both to have damaged Thomas and also to have acted in contempt of the King (because of the breach of royal legislation). It is not very surprising that this was the outcome – juries, made up of local men of some property, were not at all inclined to find in favour of employees in these Labourers cases. It may, however, be rather unexpected – bearing in mind the general difficulty in securing any kind of redress for or recognition of sexual offences – to see pestering which apparently fell short of rape or attempted rape being acknowledged to be a possible ‘reasonable cause’ for a female servant to leave her position, which could absolve her from liability under the Ordinance and Statute of Labourers.  Unfortunately, there does not seem to be a Year Book report of this case, so there is no evidence of the sort of conversations which lawyers might have had about the acceptability of the plea. Nevertheless, it is another piece in the very complex puzzles of (a) the attitudes of medieval men towards medieval women and (b) the ‘position of medieval women’ (e.g. should we choose to play up Elena’s ‘agency’ or her claimed victimisation?).

Here is a free translation of the case:

William de Ramkill, chaplain, and Elena de Hustwayt, recently servant of Thomas de Queldale of York, cutler, are attached to respond both to the King and also to Thomas, in a plea of why, whereas the same King and his council, for the common utility of the King’s realm, ordained that if any servant of whatever status or condition, retained in anyone’s service, should leave the same service before the end of the contracted term, without reasonable cause, or permission, s/he should be punished with imprisonment, and that, under the same penalty, nobody should receive into their service or hire such a person, William retained Elena, who was in the service of Thomas, at York, and who had left the same service before the end of the contracted term, and without reasonable cause or permission, to go into the service of William, despite William having been asked to restore her to Thomas, in contempt of the King and to the great damage of Thomas, and contrary to the form of the Ordinance. And of a plea why Elena left the service of Thomas before the end of the term contracted between them, without reasonable cause and his licence, to the contempt of the lord King and the great damage of Thomas, and contrary to the form of the Ordinance etc. And, in connection with this, Thomas complains that whereas Elena, was retained at York on the eighth October, [1362], to serve Thomas from [11th November 1362] for the whole year following that, taking for her salary 12 shillings, and, before the end of the term, i.e. on [2nd June, 1363], without cause etc, left for the service of William, who took her on and retained her, in contempt of the lord King, and to the great damage of Thomas, and contrary to the form of the Ordinance etc.

And William and Elena come in person, and deny all force and wrong etc. And William says that he did not take in and retain Elena contrary to the form of the Ordinance etc., as is supposed above, and puts himself on the country as to this. Thomas does the same. And  Elena says that she accepts that she was retained to serve Thomas for the aforesaid term, but she says that Thomas is a married man and often tried to persuade her to let him have sex with her against her will (frequenter solicitavit ipsam ad cognoscend’ ipsam carnaliter contra voluntatem suam) so, for this [good] reason, Elena left the service of Thomas. And she asks for judgment as to whether Thomas can maintain this action against her, in this case etc. And Thomas says that Elena left his service before the end of the contracted term, going into the service of William as counted above etc., and that she did not leave his service for the reason she alleges above. And he asks that it be enquired of by the country. And Elena does the same. So the sheriff is ordered to cause 12 [men] … [On we go through the process – pledges for Wiliiam and Elena’s appearance, the case goes off to York, to be heard at Easter time,  … we get to the jury] And the jury found that William had taken in and retained Elena contrary to the form of the Ordinance, as supposed above, and that Elena left her service before the end of the contracted term, entering William’s service, without reasonable cause, and without the cause alleged by her, as Thomas complained above. And they assess Thomas’s damages caused by William’s admission and retention of Elena at 60s. Elena is amerced a mark for her [illegal] departure. Therefore it is decided that Thomas shall recover the aforesaid 60s damages against William, and 1 mark from Elena. [More process – we learn that William and Elena are to be arrested, and that William does pay Thomas the 60 s – in autumn 1369, via Thomas’s attorney, Robert de Acaster – and is acquitted. No word on Elena though.]

 

How does it relate to the new work on Chaucer and Chaumpaigne?

Only in rather general terms. It is evidence that:

  1. It was plausible that an medieval male employer might pester a woman for sex (not exactly a massive revelation …)
  2. Such pestering would not be seen as entirely acceptable, and might be raised at law.

It highlights the range of potential routes to bringing up sexual misconduct in common law. The literature surrounding Chaucer-Chaumpaigne does, of course, have to engage with the vexed issue of what raptus means, and generally it is grasped that this is a broad concept, with meanings which can be tilted towards rape (modern sense) or abduction, towards an idea of harm/offence to the person said to have sustained the raptus or towards a focus on the damage/offence perceived to have been done to others (husband, wider family, guardian, employer) by the alleged act. One thing which is added by this case is the idea that an allegation of sexual misconduct may have been accommodated within the common law as a shield rather than a sword – i.e. as a ‘defence’ as opposed to a cause of action in itself: medieval women, including servants with abusive masters, had a number of possible routes to bring the matter up in a court. Not all of them used the word raptus. So it is worth saying that raptus includes more than sexual offences, but allegations of sexual offences are not only to be seen in raptus allegations.

GS

16/10/2022

[Image, some clouds, because … well … what do you use here? And, general overtones of uncertainty … Photo by Barry Simon on Unsplash )

[On the Chaucer-Chaumpaigne issue, I am just thinking through its connection to a trend in legal history scholarship – a return to the use of biography – which, by chance, was the topic of my recent round of seminars with the Bristol undergraduate LH students. So I may be back to that shortly, if the current mental swirling resolves itself into anything useful … No doubt the world is waiting for my thoughts on this. (Disappears into own delusion)].

A poem by a judge … about slate …

A short post, this one, just inviting the world to marvel at the forgotten literary greatness of the nineteenth century legal profession. Here we have a creation in rhyming couplets, from a report in 1850, in which a deceased judge of the North Wales circuit, shared with the world, and with posterity, his amusing thoughts on slate. Yes, slate. Now, I suppose that is not quite as random as it might seem, given that the slate quarrying industry was very big and important in North Wales at this point. (It is still a very big deal in North Wales, got a UNESCO heritage site and everything). Still, a whole poem about slate? And not only that, but about the supposed humour of the fact that slates are classified on a system using female social ranks (Queen, Duchess, Countess, Lady …).

We are told that this is a ‘witty turn’, just in case it would not otherwise have been obvious … And we could certainly ask questions about some of the imagery about peasants getting their grubby paws on various degrees of noble ladies, but still, here it is, enjoy it and ponder on the mirth and literary skills of judges.

 

 

GS

13/10/2022

Suitably slatey image: Blaenau Ffestiniog, Photo by Jack B on Unsplash