to establish the historic rights of the dukes of Normandy which should
have passed in 1204 to the French king. At Évreux a jury composed of
four knights, three burgesses ‘of the lord king’, four burgesses of the
bishop, and four burgesses of the abbot was called upon to determine
the burden of fortifying the town and remembered what had been done
at the time of the imprisonment of King Richard in Germany, when
Adam the Englishman was mayor.^62
That inquest was called a ‘recognition’, the same term as that for a
verdict in an English plea of land, and the more formal Anglo-Norman
procedures are likely to have influenced French justice in some degree.
At assizes (in the plural) held in 1205 ‘in the court of the lord king of
France’ at Sées by the bailli, Nicholas Bocel, the bishop, and many other
lords, there was a recognitioconcerning land which the demandant said
was his inheritance and only mortgaged to the sitting tenant ‘since
the coronation of the lord Henry, king of England’. In what almost
seems an amalgam of Anglo-Norman and French practice a jury of
twelve men found that on the contrary the land had been conveyed in
due form, the parties made peace by the mediation of friends, judgment
was given for the tenant, and the demandant was declared ‘in mercy
for a false claim’.^63 A cartulary preserves a copy of a letter from a
Norman baillicertifying the result of a jury-trial, which was ordered
(on the English model?) by the king’s writ (per mandatum domini regis)
so that controversy on the matter would cease for ever.^64 After 1204
judgments continued to be given by the barons of Normandy in the
ducal exchequer at Rouen, Falaise, or Caen and recorded on rolls which
had been kept from King Richard’s time (when the plea rolls of the
English curia regisalso began) and now ran in King Philip’s name.^65
At most, however, Anglo-Norman influences added to the momentum
with which the French king’s justice went on growing through the royal
ordering of inquests or judicial duels before baillis, the seneschal of
Anjou, or sometimes even a prelate, and the reporting back of the result-
ing judicia to the king for confirmation.^66 In 1220 even Hubert de
Burgh, the justiciar of England, received a mandate from King Philip to
122 Judicial Systems of France and England
(^62) Les Registres de Philippe Auguste,59–61 (no. 15), 67–8 (no. 22).
(^63) Recueil des historiens, 24, pp. 272–273, preuve no. 10, and cf. nos. 11, 13, 27;
Haskins, Norman Institutions, 163–8, 186–7; Baldwin, Government of Philip Augustus,
220–30, 589.
(^64) Recueil des historiens,24, p. 277, preuve no. 30.
(^65) Les Registres de Philippe Auguste, 56–9 (no. 14), 87–8 (no. 41); Baldwin, Government
of Philip Augustus, 418–20; J. R. Strayer, The Administration of Normandy under Saint Louis
(Cambridge, Mass., 1932), 17–18.
(^66) Recueil des Actes de Philippe Auguste, iii, nos. 1214, 1238, 1286, 1298, 1300, 1370,
1420, 1415, 1465, 1500, 1606, 1635, 1674, 1689; Recueil des historiens, 24, pp.274, 279,
287 (preuves, nos. 15–17, 35, 65, 66); La France de Philippe Auguste, 18; Baldwin, Govern-
ment of Philip Augustus, 258.