PAST CRIMESAnyone found selling bad or fraudulent wine would be forced to drink all of
it! They could be fined, or placed in the pillory. The same was true of
dairymen who sold bad milk. Another form of punishment was to force a bad
brewer to wear a barrel, or for a baker to have all his loaves strung around his
neck.
Expensive imported spices were often adulterated with groundup brick,
nutshells, weed seeds and other materials. Spices, especially pepper, were very
expensive but necessary to give flavour to an otherwise bland diet (and
sometimes to disguise the flavour of meat or fish that was beginning to go off,
a constant problem in an age without refrigerators).
Smuggling, particularly of wool, began to become a major crime in the
later medieval period. A duty had been placed on the export of wool in 1300,
which rose rapidly during the Hundred Years War as the crown became short
of money to pay for the troops. For the first time, a Customs service was set
up, initially just in the major ports and only to collect the tax. In Sussex, the
only dutiable port was Chichester. Merchants from Sussex and Kent found it
much more profitable to carry out their trade from the Cinque Ports such as
Rye, where there were few or no officials but sometimes they got caught–
several merchants were tried in Rye in 1357 accused of smuggling goods
through Pevensey.
It was not only people who were sometimes brought to court for crimes–a
variety of animals, birds and insects were recorded as defendants in various
cases. Animals were prosecuted for causing injury or death–some were
pardoned, some were excommunicated by church courts, and others received
the death penalty. Pigs were particularly subject to prosecutions. In Falaise in
Normandy, a pig was convicted of murdering a small child in 1386. She was
hanged from the village gallows, and her six piglets were acquitted of being
accessories to the crime because they were so very young and had been given
a bad example by their mother!
Crimes were not only committed by domestic animals or the lower classes.
In the fourteenth century, members of the gentry were prominent members
and directors of large criminal gangs. The Folville family of Leicestershire,
led by Eustace Folville, was a long established minor gentry clan, that may
have fallen on hard times. In 1326 Eustace and his brothers, along with other
local landowners, ambushed Sir Roger Bellere and murdered him. The
Folvilles escaped justice and were declared outlaws. Between 1327 and 1330
they were roaming the region, committing robberies and murders. They seem
to have made an alliance with another gang, the Coterels, based in the Peak
District and the northern part of Sherwood Forest between the late 1320s and