suffered at the hands of Hugh ‘Balverus’, the advocate of Saint-Denis’s
manor of Laversine. Hugh had already been excommunicated, but it
was necessary for the king to make a peace between the parties, the
terms of which included the sharing of fines from convicted criminals:
each taking half of the one hundred shillings for homicide and of the
fifteen shillings for wounding. If either Suger or Hugh should depart
from the agreement, the king would call the case before him at Béthisy
or Compiègne where Louis and two of his ministers would answer for
the settlement.^14
A royal judgment of 1136 in favour of the bishop of Soissons shows
two of the main factors in the growth of royal jurisdiction: the close
supervision by the king over communes of his own foundation and his
increasing ability to institute inquiries (enquêtes) before reaching a
decision. Soissons townspeople testified before the king’s butler that
powers had been exercised which were not contained in the commune’s
charter, and the mayor and magistrates were made to swear in the
king’s presence that they would no longer take in people from the
bishop’s lordship who married members of the commune, nor impose
fines of more than 60 shillings upon the men of outside lords without
the latters’ consent.^15 As fundamental to royal jurisdiction as the control
of the great communes the roots of which lay in the eleventh-century
peace movement was the fresh granting of liberties to communities on
the king’s demesne lands like those given to the men of his residence at
Compiègne in 1111. The security of all freemen there, clergy and laity,
rich and poor, was assured unless they transgressed, in which case they
should expect to be judged according to the laws; only the king’s
servants might arrest them within five leagues of the town; lords who
had men in Compiègne were instructed to settle complaints against
them by fellow burgesses or by the king’s servants; the redemption of
cattle caught straying in the fields was regulated; the clearances of
woodland ‘popularly known as assarts’ which the king had ordered to
remain uncultivated were now permitted to be used, though no more
were to be made; and those coming to market in Compiègne were told
they could travel without fear. The grant of these communal privileges
was at the petition of the abbot of Compiègne, and their confirmation
and extension by Louis VII and Philip Augustus (1180–1226), was said
to be ‘for the good of peace, the benefit of the church and the security
of the servants of God’.^16
112 Judicial Systems of France and England
(^14) Recueil des Actes de Louis VI, ii,no. 409.
(^15) Ibid.ii, no. 380.
(^16) Ibid.i, no. 54, iii, pp. 71–2; confirmation by Philip II: Recueil des Actes de Philippe
Auguste, 4 vols., ed. H.-Fr. Delaborde, Ch. Petit-Dutaillis, J. Monicat, J. Boussard, M. Nortier
(Paris, 1916—70), i. 203 (no. 169); C. Petit-Dutaillis, Les Communes françaises(Paris, 1947),