that they should go to chancery and purchase commissions for special
justices to ‘hear and determine’ their plaints: Adeat Cancellarie, et
habeat ibi Justiciarios ad audiendum et terminandum per Finem, or ‘Eit
Brief de trespas a la commune Ley, ou de oier et terminer par fyn faire
s’il voet’.^129 A new form of commission was needed to deal with oral
plaints and written bills of trespass: a writ had only to be seen and
recognized to know how the case should be tried, but a plaint had to be
listened to before it was clear what the action was. A whole range of
commissions of oyer and terminer were sought: to deal with trespasses
committed against particular complainants, or the trespasses committed
by particular royal ministers, or trespasses of a particular type in parti-
cular counties. For instance, in 1254 three justices were ordered to hear
the complaints of all who wished to complain of trespasses committed
by a past sheriff of Yorkshire; and in 1258 another royal justice was
commissioned to hear the complaints of one Walter,^130 a tenant on the
king’s manor of Bromsgrove, of trespasses done to him in lands and
chattels, the commission being granted out of compassion for the
simplicity and poverty of the said Walter. A justice and four northern
knights who were experienced royal administrators received instruc-
tions in 1275 to hear and determine all the disputes arising between the
mayor and citizens of York and the abbot of St. Mary’s, York, doing so
‘in accordance with what was shown to us in our parliament at
Westminster after the Close of Easter last’ and ‘with the arguments and
allegations propounded and advanced before’ two auditors appointed
in parliament and recorded in a roll that would be sent to the com-
missioners.^131
By the early years of the fourteenth century lords were going to the
chancery in numbers to get commissions of oyer and terminer to use as
weapons against their enemies, expecting to say who the justices should
be. As the community of the realm protested to Edward II, a grant
Seigneur, ou homme de poerwho wished to ruin someone had only to
allege a trespass and purchase commissions of oyer and terminer to
people favourable to himself, and he would get damages of £200, £400,
or even 1000 marks, when 20s. would have been enough for the sup-
posed injury.^132 The manipulation of plaints and judicial commissions
by the powerful was a major factor in a growing disorder in late
medieval England. Edward II himself used it in his personal vendetta
with his father’s treasurer, Walter Langton, bishop of Coventry and
Petitioning parliament for justice 183(^129) RPi. 376 (nos. 43–5), ii. 396 (no. 105).
(^130) Harding, ‘Plaints and Bills’, 78–81; Sayles, Functions of the Medieval Parliament, 47,
155–6, 164, 319.
(^131) Ibid.140–1.
(^132) RPi. 290; cf. an earlier attempt to restrict the use of commissions of oyer and terminer,
see the Statute of Westminster II, c. 29 in EHD iii. 445.