bailliages(c. 26). The costs payable to the court by the defeated parties
in civil suits were to be limited to a tenth of the value of the property in
dispute (c. 29).
Part of the original record of a royal inquest into the conduct of
Matthew of Beaune, bailliof Vermandois from 1256 to 1260, survives
to show with what effectiveness these regulations were applied. In 1261
special commissioners put a series of questions clearly related to the
ordinance of 1254 to 508 persons who had had business with Matthew.
The mayor of Chauny, who claimed to have been a jurat of that town
for twelve years, said on oath that Matthew had always behaved well
towards the townsmen; the people’s law-suits had been expedited, and
the mayor had heard no one complaining of the bailli. Nor did he know
anything of gifts, services, or other favours that Matthew or his family
might have received, apart from two or three jars of wine when he came
to Chauny; the town had pressed a gift of forty pounds upon him, but
he had repeatedly refused it. Questioned closely, however, the mayor
told how the bailli’s household had complained of poor housing and
been given four woollen blankets worth fifty shillings or more (for two
clerks and two esquires), and at another time sixty shillings to divide
between them. He swore that to his knowledge Matthew had not
imprisoned anyone to extort money from them, but some of his
colleagues on the town council told of a prisoner whom Matthew had
said he would see hanged for homicide, but then released when he
acknowledged a debt of fifty pounds: under questioning witnesses gave
conflicting testimony as to whether the money was a bribe or for the
expenses of an advocate and maintenance in prison.^12
Before the commissioners at Soissons there appeared Simon de Rivier
to charge Matthew with imprisoning him without reasonable cause and
extorting ninety pounds for his release. The former bailli was in
Soissons and came to tell the inquiry that the money had been a fine
imposed for going about armed in contravention of a royal edict, and
Simon was forced to admit that he had led a force of men, armed for
their own defence, to mow a disputed meadow. The complaint was now
that the fine had not been properly assessed by a court (cf. clause 23 of
the Grande Ordonnance), a prior testifying that he and the other peers
of the castellany of Pierrefonds had been unwilling to assess it because
they had never seen such a fine before, and they did not know what the
king and his council wanted. There was more testimony that Matthew’s
wife had refused gifts lest ‘her husband should be cross with her’. An
advocate ‘who had been often at assizes’ claimed that after he had
repeatedly offered the bailligifts and services on behalf of the lords
Complaints against officials 151(^12) Langlois, ‘Doléances... de Saint Louis’, 32–40; Recueil des historiens, 24, pp. 318–
329 (preuves de la préface, no. 152), parts 1 and 7–17 for the evidence from Chauny.