count-palatine, the duke of Brunswick, the margrave of Brandenburg,
and a number of lesser nobles then joined what was essentially an
uneasy policing agreement. The original agreement of 1254 envisaged
the election of four faithful men to settle discord within the league by
promoting compromise or giving judgment (per amicabilem composi-
tionem vel per iustitiam), and later it was proposed that eight nobles
and eight citizens should meet, with the king as president, to see to the
strengthening of the general peace.^113
In the Rhineland the king was reduced to holding the balance
between the leagues of towns and the princes who usually proclaimed
peace within their lordships and provided for its enforcement. In June
1264 Wernher, archbishop of Mainz, and Lewis, count-palatine of the
Rhine and duke of Bavaria, ‘for the good state of their men and lands’,
swore that until the end of two years from St. John the Baptist’s day
next following they would maintain a continuous peace ‘commonly
known as a Landfriede’ (que lantfrede vulgariter appellatur). Each
would aid the other in the assertion of his rights and liberties, assist
counts and others with judicial powers to do justice, and punish judges
who failed in their duty out of malice or favouritism. Under a three-year
peace sworn in 1265 by Archbishop Wernher, certain nobles, and the
towns of Frankfurt, Friedberg, Wetzlar, and Gelnhausen, suits by nobles
against citizens were to be heard within the cities according to their
customs, and against lesser persons before the ordinary judges, but cases
brought by burgesses against nobles should come before eight special
executores pacis. The independence of such an arrangement of imperial
government is clear when it is said to be for defence against threats from
whatever quarter (contra quodlibet) and there is a clause prohibiting
the inclusion of anyone else in the confederacy without the unanimous
consent of the original members.^114
In the Rhineland the conflicts of princes and townsmen and the
importance of commerce combined to demand special peace arrange-
ments. But in Hesse too the bishop of Paderborn and the landgrave
swore a three-year peace with the other lords in 1265, and nominated
twelve knights to decide complaints of injury ‘by friendship or by law’
(in amicicia vel in iure).^115 For Silesia the duke issued a more high-
sounding edict in 1277/8, in fulfilment of his obligation ‘to reform the
status terre, deformed by wicked deeds, to the cultivation of justice’: the
duke and the barons swore not to harbour malefactors, and knights
The territorial states of Germany 103(^113) Constitutiones 1198–1272, 409–10, 477–8, 579–96; Arnold, Princes and Territories,
173–4.
(^114) Constitutiones 1198–1272, 608–16; Constitutiones 1273–98, 604–6, 619; Angermeier,
Königtum und Landfriede, 62; Arnold, Princes and Territories, 190 ff.
(^115) Constitutiones 1198–1272, 610–11, 614–15; Angermeier, Königtum und Landfriede,
36, 66–8, 76–7.