growth of royal government is clear in both England and France. In
1200 the burgesses of Lincoln obtained from King John the right to
have two of their number appointed the king’s reeves (prepositi) in the
town.^29 In 1201–2 the people of Mantes were granted the preposituraof
the commune, which meant that the mayor acted as the king’s prévôt
and became responsible for collecting royal revenues from the locality,
‘by land and by water’; at the same time the commune was granted ‘all
our justice’ there, except that the king retained cases of murder and
rape, and the right to take customs duties in war and in peace.^30
The towns were central to the king’s fiscal arrangements: it was
through their courts, however, that they were fitted into the scheme of
royal government. When he granted or confirmed a commune, King
Philip spelt out in detail how its judicial privileges should be exercised
in future. By his grant to Amiens in 1190, the king’s prévôtwas to share
authority with the mayor. He was to hold the persons and goods of
thieves while the commune decided their fate, and king and commune
should divide between them the fines imposed (cc. 2, 4, 5). The typical
communal sanction of the pulling-down of the offenders’ houses was
authorized against any who fled before the summons of the mayor,
judges, and officers of the commune, harboured its enemies, or defied its
bye-laws, and again they were to be in the mercy of both provost and
mayor (15, 16, 18). The mayor alone might, or rather must, give justice
to complainants in accordance with the town’s statutes if the provost
would not, but ‘saving the king’s rights’ (31). Abusing the provost, in
court or out, would incur a penalty assessed by the mayor and alder-
men; abusing the mayor or town officers while on municipal business
(calling them serfs or throwing them into the bog) would be punished
as laid down in the commune’s statutes (37–42). It seems to have been
for the provost, as essentially the royal landlord’s estate-manager, to
hear disputes over landholding in the town at a placitum generaleheld
every Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost (47). To the mayor and the
scabiniwas reserved the judging of offences against the peace, but ‘in
the presence of our bailiff if he wishes to be there’: if he did not, they
were still to do justice except in cases of murder and rape, for these,
with the chattels of killers, arsonists, and traitors, belonged to the king
in perpetuity (48–9).^31
116 Judicial Systems of France and England
Auguste, 677–9, 683–5, 687–8; Recueil des Actes de Philippe Auguste, i, nos. 208, 272, ii, nos.
529–32, 642, 716, 718 etc.; ibid.i. 369 (Laon) and ii. 616 (Étampes) for examples of the royal
suppression of communes; Registres de Philippe Auguste, i. 558–64 for Philip’s taking of
hostages from Flemish towns as a guarantee of their fidelity, those from Ghent being placed in
the custody of the communes of Arras, Hesdin, and Saint-Omer.
(^29) A. Harding, England in the Thirteenth Century(Cambridge UP, 1993), 133.
(^30) Recueil des Actes de Philippe Auguste,ii, no. 694.
(^31) Ibid.i, no. 319.