Tag Archives: assault

A vicious beating or a vicious lie? A fifteenth century Somerset case

Content warning: infant death

Carrying on the occasional posts relating to medieval ideas about the foetus, and about pregnancy (you can follow back from here to see earlier ones, should you so desire), here is an accusation within an accusation, which might have a couple of things to say to us on this topic.

There is an entry on the King’s Bench plea roll for Michaelmas term 1412 (KB 27/606 m. 20d – here via AALT – which concerns an alleged piece of malicious prosecution, in which a group of people, including Thomas Morle and his wife, Elizabeth, accused John Cokkes and others of having taken the opportunity of Thomas’s absence on business in Bristol to break into his house in Milverton, Somerset, drag Elizabeth, who was pregnant, out by the legs and then beat her up. This beating was said to have injured her ‘so that her life was despaired of’, a detail so common as to be ‘boilerplate’. Far from ‘boilerplate’, however, was the elaboration of the damage said to have been caused: some time after this, she gave birth to her twins, who were severely injured by the beating (the back of one, and the legs of the other being broken), and died shortly after they were born. For good measure, perhaps, it was also alleged that a significant amount of property had been taken from the house, and that there had been threats against Thomas and Elizabeth, so that they dared not go about their business.

Back to the pregnancy/foetus/newborn angle, however … let’s note some interesting aspects of this…

  1. Language

There is a ‘backdating’ of terminology here: before the birth, the twin foetuses are described using a word usually associated with post-birth life: infans. They are infantes in utero suo existentes. This does give a sense of blurring of pre- and post-birth life, I would say.

  1. Ideas about gestation

This may not be terribly surprising, except to those who have seen the sometimes preposterous ideas about the length of human gestation in later cases on adulterine bastardy, but medieval people had an idea of the right length for a pregnancy – and it was said that the twins were born before their time. It would be nice to know if they had any idea about how a multiple pregnancy would affect length of gestation, or likelihood of survival, but, of course, that would be expecting a lot of such records.

  1. Suggestion of post mortem examination

We know from coroners’ records that there could be an examination and description of a deceased baby or foetus, at least in terms of size, but this seems to suggest some touching and feeling to ascertain that bones were broken, which is grimly informative.

  1. ‘Spin’ strategy

We cannot, of course, know what was the truth of this tale. Was it a complete fabrication, entirely true, or something in between? If it was made up, then we must assume that throwing in the details about the damage to the foetuses, and loss of viable foetuses, would have been seen to make John Cokkes and his associates look more culpable. So – not something confirming ‘personhood’ in the foetus, by any means, but certainly suggesting value.

 

GS

8/6/2024

 

 

A Cornish compensation claim

Content warning: miscarriage/abortion

Here is another snippet on that vexed question: how did medieval law regard the foetus (something I have blogged about a bit.[i]

Much of the attention in this regard – including mine – has been on the law of homicide. That’s understandable, since we tend to think of the big question being ‘was it regarded as homicide, to end the life of a foetus?’. But here, in KB 27/590 m. 15d, is a Cornish case in which the aim is not to convict a person who had caused foetal death, but to obtain compensation for a ‘tort’.

It is from the King’s Bench plea roll for Michaelmas 1408. John Archer and his wife, Alice, brought a trespass action against David Renawedyn and seven other men, accusing them of having, (on a date the same year which seems to be May 16th, with a woman, not a defendant here, at ‘Aransawyth’[ii]), assaulted Alice, so that she miscarried (abortum fecit) to the great damage of John and Alice and against the king’s peace. They claimed that they should recover £100.

The defendants pleaded not guilty and the matter rested there, awaiting a jury. No end found just yet.

One is struck by the fact that both husband and wife brought the action. But then a married woman had to bring this sort of action in conjunction with her husband: we cannot really read into this a particular statement about the foetus being the man’s ‘property’, or the loss ‘really’ being his, since this is the way all trespass cases would have to be brought, when damage was done to the person of a woman.  Unhelpful, too, for the historian, is the fact that the damage to Alice from the external force, and that from the consequent loss of the foetus, or the pregnancy, are not disentangled. We certainly can’t say that this is putting a particular financial value on the life or worth of a foetus in itself. However, it is an interesting indication that the loss to the expectant parents when a pregnancy was ended in a violent, wrongful, manner, could be calculated, and a claim for substantial compensation was plausible.

The existence of such a claim might be seen to confirm the impossibility of the homicide route with regard to a foetus, especially where the pregnant woman had not, herself, died. It could, though, simply be a case of choosing one of a number of overlapping modes of legal response to an offence. I still think much remained unclear and ‘up for grabs’ in the law on the foetus in medieval England, but there is certainly more thinking and research to be done on this point.

GS

28/5/2024

 

Image – Perranporth: probably not where any of this took place, but a fine view.

 

 

[i] E.g.: here, here, here …

[ii] Not sure about this name – it looks like some mangled Kernewek to me, but someone else may have a better idea.

Criminal Chaplains in Yorkist Yorkshire?

A very nasty case from the late 15th C here, but one which gives a few half-clues to medieval English attitudes to pregnancy and the status of the foetus, an area which has interested me for a long time,[i] and which has received attention in recent years, as a result of the appeal to medieval law by US Supreme Court justices, in justification of their stance on abortion.

The case is to be found on the King’s Bench roll for Michaelmas term 1484,[ii] so during the reign of Richard II, but concerning events from the reign of his brother, Edward IV. West Yorkshire jurors had presented, in 1483, that one William Turnour, lately of Kirkby Wharfe, Yorks, chaplain, a.k.a. William Neweland of Kirkby Wharfe, chaplain, and John Atkynson of Tadcaster, Yorks, chaplain, on Friday 27th September, 1482, came with force and arms and entered the house, in Kirkby Wharfe, of Katherine Raner, widow of William Raner, and there beat Katherine and William Rayner’s daughter, Cecilia, who was the wife of William Wright of Kirkby. Cecilia was pregnant (prignant, gravida). William Turnour beat and mistreated her, and feloniously killed and murdered her. Cecilia’s body was taken away and buried in the middle of the night in the cemetery at Kirkby Wharfe, without the coroner’s view, a piece of misconduct said to be against the king’s crown and dignity. There is also material on the fate of the foetus, though it is not entirely clear what the order of events was – did Cecilia give birth and then die after a while, or did all of this happen closely together? – in any case, the record mentions the child as Cecilia’s (puerum eiusdem Cecilie) with which she was pregnant at that time (cum quo adtunc gravida erat), and that it was separated from its mother, one way or another, and then taken away by Atkynson to an unknown place. It is not made clear whether or not the child was born alive. We get the neutral ‘after the child was brought into the world from the womb of the said Cecilia’ (postquam ab utero predicte Cecilie in hunc mundum product’ fuit …). It sounds to me as if this means that she gave birth before dying, but the slightly evasive phrasing could mean removal from Cecilia’s womb, as opposed to her pushing the baby out. Given that we are not told whether or not there was a live birth, it is not possible to know whether this report should be taken as one in which (a) both mother and foetus were killed as a direct result of William Turnour’s beating, but the felony and murder words are attached only to the killing of the mother (in some contrast to the case I mentioned here) or, (b) a live child was born, and, whatever became of it – and, frankly, its prospects do not look to have been too good, in the hands of these apparently malicious chaplains – its fate could not have been considered part of the felony being presented here. In either case, we have an indication of the (all male) jurors’ knowledge of, and interest in, the pregnancy and the foetus/baby, but on their perception of its value or status, it is more equivocal. There are unanswerable questions, too, about why such an attack might have taken place – part of wider disturbances, or something more personal? Where was William Wright in all of this – it does not sound as if Cecilia was a widow, but there is none of the half-expected involvement of her husband in pursuit of the offenders.

The usual tantalising uncertainties, then, and also the almost inevitable postscript – the allegedly murderous William Turnour (or whatever his name was) walked,  as a result of a rather general pardon from Richard III, and a promise of future good behaviour. So that was all right then.

 

23/3/2024

GS

 

[i] Another post on this area can be seen here.

[ii] KB 27/893 Rex m.4, which you can see here, courtesy of AALT.

A Good Samaritan in medieval Lincolnshire?

This one is probably more interesting for its narrative qualities than its legal content, but there is enough of that to justify inclusion here … it’s from the King’s Bench indictment file of Hilary term 1464.[i]

The story which emerges is that – allegedly – Brian Talbot esquire and a group of other men – 20 of them in all, armed to the teeth, beat up John Pynchebek, leaving him for dead, then, when he was found not to be dead, and helped to an inn, threatened him. All of this would have been bad enough, but John was a commissioned justice in Holland, Lincolnshire, and had been on his way to a session of the peace at Boston, at the time of the attack.

The incident had been reported by jurors before the other justices in Holland, including one Richard Pynchebek – a relation of the victim? – at Boston on 1st October, 1463. It was said to have taken place on 20th July 1463, at Algarkirk on the Foss Dyke (Lincs).[ii] Talbot and co. attacked him and pulled him off his horse, threw him to the ground, beat, wounded and mistreated him. I rather like the added colour put in here – they kept going until Brian broke the stave he was using for the bashing, and they thought that he was dead. At this point, they left him for dead in the Wash, (‘where the sea comes in and out’).[iii]   John lay in the Wash in a very bad way (in extremis) until an unnamed stranger (extraneus) who was passing by saw John lying, cruelly beaten and wounded. This man, acting from good motives (ex pietate sua), lifted him up, and with great effort, blew into his mouth and saw, on examination, that he was alive.[iv] The stranger took him to an inn. It was not over, though – Brian’s servants and other malefactors had a go, verbally now, highlight: calling him a ‘horeson’. Then Robert Talbot and other malefactors, on Brian’s orders, pulled John out of the inn, took him to Brian, who threatened his life and/or that his members would be mutilated. To sum up, John’s life was despaired of for a long time, this being to his great damage (obvs) against the peace of the lord king (standard) and also, in a less usual phrase, it amounted to treating the king’s law with disrespect, All of this was greatly frightening both to  John and to the king’s well-disposed people in those parts, and would continue to be, unless such malefactors were punished for their offences (delicts), as an educational example.

So what?

Well, it’s not alone as an affront to royal justice in the mid-15th C, though it is quite interesting to see somebody who was a current justice allegedly treated in this brutal way – so, one for the ‘problems with the enforcement of the law’ file. I am much more interested in a couple of other aspects, though…

Questions of life and death

I have a particular interest in how these difficult issues – determining the start and end of (legally counting) life – were dealt with and described. The allegation that somebody’s ‘life was despaired of’ sometimes seems as if it’s just put in to intensify the allegation of physical damage, and ‘leaving somebody for dead’ may be doing some work in terms of making the accused seem morally bad and culpable, but in this case, the story really is that John was thought to be dead, or perhaps dying, and abandoned in water, presumably with the intention that his body would be taken by the sea. It isn’t, I suppose, a particularly medieval thing to make a mistake about this – we will all have seen sensational ‘person wakes up in body bag’ type stories – but interesting nonetheless.

That stranger

What a fascinating inclusion! I am used to strangers being seen as dodgy, one way or another, in medieval documents, but here we have a proper Good Samaritan, and a skilled one at that. If I am right that this suggests application of ‘mouth to mouth resuscitation’, if not full-on CPR, to the prone body of John, then that is definitely an important intervention. At the very least, it shows somebody taking a lot of trouble to find out whether someone apparently unknown to him was alive (and not in the unpleasant way seen in the last post), How maddening not to have his name, or a clue as to his origins!

It’s not clear how ‘strange’ this man was (just not from that part of Lincs, or your actual foreigner?) but, as the UK government distinguishes itself for cruel hostility to those who come here from other places, it was striking to see this little reminder that … gosh … they might be thoroughly decent, ‘neighbourly’ and positive presences amongst us.

 

GS

15/6/2022

[i] KB 9/305 m. 28, via AALT of course!

[ii] Not entirely sure about the geography of some of this – not somewhere I have ever been, nor studied its medieval topography/water features.

[iii] They also beat and imprisoned John’s servants – clearly of less interest to the jurors!

[iv] Do correct me if I have this wrong, anyone who knows about such things, but I think that’s he best interpretation!

Photo by Max van den Oetelaar on Unsplash