Medieval Law and the Foundations of the State

contempt of the legal mandates of kings, and that the purpose of royal power was to correct the guilty where priestly words fail ...

suffered at the hands of Hugh ‘Balverus’, the advocate of Saint-Denis’s manor of Laversine. Hugh had already been excommunicated ...

In the south of France and Catalonia the twelfth century saw the great lords, lay and clerical, making of the peace of God what ...

Before his departure in June 1190, Philip issued for France a docu- ment which was partly the last will and testament of a king ...

queen and archbishop must inform King Philip three times a year ‘of the state of our kingdom and affairs’ (de statu regni nostri ...

growth of royal government is clear in both England and France. In 1200 the burgesses of Lincoln obtained from King John the rig ...

But Philip’s vast acquisitions of territory could not be treated as mere extensions of the royal demesne lands and administered ...

spread of royal administration an irresistible impetus at the expense of feudal lordship. The fiefs held from the king that were ...

regiswho operated within the Capetian demesne had something in common with the justices which Henry II began to send ‘on eyre’ i ...

king’s personal assistance became common form. Just as he had long confirmed grants of land, so at the request of the parties he ...

had been appointed by the king to protect the rights of churches and the poor.^55 The king’s writing (scriptum) communicated in ...

to establish the historic rights of the dukes of Normandy which should have passed in 1204 to the French king. At Évreux a jury ...

see that restitution was made to the men of Calais, whose ships were being held to ransom at Sandwich, Dover, and elsewhere, as ...

father, King Philip, by the common assent and will of the barons of France.^72 When the status of a group of persons has to be s ...

A king whose predecessors had granted the liberties of the clergy would naturally claim to determine their extent and even repre ...

Albigensian heretics, were surrendered to the king to suffer ‘secular justice by fire’.^85 The king’s establishment of an exclus ...

to the commune of Roye in 1196, c. 38 of which stipulated that a burgess should not be made to answer outside the town for an ec ...

his chattels and fine. When burgesses and villeins left their property to sons who were clergy, the latter must not claim immuni ...

notable that the first and second constitutions, asserting the jurisdiction of the king’s court over disputes about advowsons, e ...

and evildoers’ throughout the counties they traversed, reporting on the custody of castles and making sure that unauthorized cas ...