forty days. Once inside, or in some cases merely hanging on to the door
knocker, he could hope that he could make another escape under cover of
darkness, or else he would have to surrender and be hanged, or be made to
‘abjure the realm’. Abjuring the realm meant that the coroner would hear his
confession and seize all his land and belongings, and then nominate a port to
which he had to travel within a set time, before taking the next available boat
out of the country.
Some coroners clearly had little sympathy for the malefactors who claimed
sanctuary–in Yorkshire, they would nominate Dover as the port of departure,
to be reached in an impossibly short time and a coroner near Dover nominated
Portsmouth instead. In theory, so long as the abjurer went on foot, as a
penitent, he could not be touched, but in practice local residents often took
their revenge on known felons or murderers once out of sight of the
authorities. Abjurers might also head for Wales, Scotland or Ireland. Cattle
raiders from Scotland regularly claimed sanctuary, abjured the realm, went
home and crossed back into England for another raid as soon as they could.
Another option for the abjurer was simply to make off into the woods and
become an outlaw. An outlaw could be legally killed by anyone, and there was
a bounty on their heads of five shillings. The same amount was also payable
for the heads of wolves that preyed on stock, and so an outlaw was also
known as a‘wolfshead’. A captured outlaw would be hanged, or could enter
the king’s service as a soldier. Some managed to buy their way out with a
pardon and a fine. Only men over the age of fourteen could be declared
outlaw.^1
England’s most famous outlaw may or may not have really existed, but it is
certain that by the end of the medieval period, any outlaw or highway robber
was known as a‘Robin Hood’. The first reference is from the later fourteenth
century, although some documentary evidence of earlier claimants does exist.
There was a William Robehod whose goods were seized by the prior of
Sandleford; this outlaw might be the same as William le Fevere, a member of
a criminal gang in Berkshire in 1261. Even earlier, in 1225, the justices of
York recorded the seizure of the goods of a fugitive named Robert Hod. At
Cannon Hall Museum in Yorkshire is a large ancient bow, which is said to
have belonged to Little John, Robin’s lieutenant, who was claimed to have
been buried at Hathersage. On opening the tomb in 1780 or thereabouts, the
bones of a very large man were found, the thigh bone being 28½in long. In
1417 there is a record of one Robert Stafford, a renegade Sussex priest, who
roamed the Ashdown Forest under the alias of‘Frere Tuk’.
MEDIEVAL CRIME