swearing of an oath of solidarity by the townsmen as a whole, to the
receipt of a royal charter which gave the magistrates the same sort of
power over the urban proletariat as a feudal landlord enjoyed over the
peasantry.^66 But underlying the urban commune there was another and
more basic form of association (‘l’autre manière de compaignie’, in
Beaumanoir’s words) in which people joined to secure by common
effort the necessities of life: to repair their mills and pathways, maintain
their wells, provide watchmen, and undertake the ‘other things which
are done by common accord, such as paying the costs of pleas to main-
tain their right and guard their customs’.^67
The king often confirmed the judicial rights which lords began to
grant to the men of their castleries, or villages, or clusters of villages,
and promised to enforce them against the lords themselves; and he con-
ceded similar rights to towns of his own.^68 The customs granted by King
Louis VI to his men of Lorris, and confirmed by King Philip in 1187
after the town and its charters had been burnt while the king was stay-
ing the night there, allowed the amicable settlement of disputes between
the burgesses without fines to the king or his provost. The king would
grant more positive judicial rights to towns if he was paid enough.
Beaune and five other villages accepted a doubling of their taille and
other customary dues in order to have ‘an institution of peace’ from
Philip Augustus, and become a commune.^69 Philip’s confirmation of the
customs enjoyed by the men of the whole potestasof Bruyères shows
what pacis institutiogave. The mayor and jurats were to exact repara-
tion from inhabitants who committed injuries within their ‘power’
(potestas); and they could even seek vengeance on malefactors from out-
side Bruyères whose lords refused to do justice, though in these cases
they normally lacked the commune’s special sanction—the pulling-
down of the culprits’ tenements. The jurats would decide both the
penalty for breach of the communal peace and the compensation to be
paid to the injured party (which might include a wounded man’s
medical expenses); the latter was not permitted to seek other vengeance
if he disdained what was offered. Those accused of homicide and maim-
ing were to be tried by ordeal (‘divine justice’; ‘the judgment of cold
water’) and the guilty man ‘lose a head for a head and a limb for a
limb’—or redeem himself according to the judgment of mayor and
jurats as to the victim’s worth.^70
Justice in the towns 57(^66) Beaumanoir, Coutumes de Beauvaisis, paras. 646 (i. 322–30), 1517 (ii. 266).
(^67) Ibid., para. 647.
(^68) Recueil des Actes de Philippe Auguste, i. 225–8 (nos. 188–9), ii. 37–8 (no. 503), iii.
394–5 (no. 1270).
(^69) Ibid.i. 244–5 (no. 202, cc. 12, 14, 160), ii. 71 (no. 529, c. 13), 72–4 (nos. 530–1), 78–80
(no. 536), 284–6 (no. 716).
(^70) Ibid.i. 235–40 (no. 197, cc. 4–15), ii 78–80 (no. 536); for the pulling down of offenders’