Even a Compensation Culture has Its Limits: Arbitrating Homicide in Fifteenth-Century England

ABSTRACT Historians have long argued that arbitration was the preferred means of resolution for most disputes in later medieval England; but does this apply also to the settlement of homicides? Despite the strenuous efforts of the English legal system after the Norman Conquest to force homicides through the royal courts, historians have argued that homicide continued to be settled out-of-court throughout the medieval period. This study examines six cases of arbitration centred on homicide from the fifteenth century to demonstrate that arbitration was rarely implemented as a means to resolve homicides. When it was, it was a relatively small, inter-related group of gentry who exploited the provision because they were well placed to manipulate the law and because their behaviour was supervised by the kingdom’s magnates only once problems had arisen. Accordingly, arbitration for homicide was unusual and the practice was anything but inclusive.


I. Introduction
When Henry V ascended the throne, he was determined to put his youthful transgressions behind him, to '[forsake] al wyldnes', to take up 'good gouernaunce, and [keep] streytly his lawys with ryghtwisnes & Iustise'.Within the first year of his reign, so the Brut chronicler tells us, he found his dedication to good and just governance tested by two knights who were constantly 'at gret debate'.Although we are not given their names, we are told their political affiliations: one was a Lancastrian, the other a Yorkist, and they had recently 'scarmysshid togedyr; and men were slayne & hurte on bothe partyes'.When Henry heard of their misbehaviour, he summoned them to his castle at Windsor.They arrived just as he was heading to dinner.Henry asked the two knights: '[whose] men they were' and they boldly replied 'his lege men'.Then he asked, '[whose] men be tho ϸat ye haue areysyd up to fyhte for youre quarel?'They responded, one imagines with a little less bravado in their voices: 'his men'.Henry then asked '& what awtoryte or comaundement had ye, to reyse vp my men or my peeple, to fyght & sle eche othyr for your quarel?Yn this ye ar worthy to dye'.This time, the two knights did not answer his question, they simply begged the king for his grace.
Henry did not offer up a pardon for their warring ill-behaviour.Instead, he told them candidly that if they were not 'agreyd & accordyd' by the time he had finished his oysters, he would have them hanged.The two knights departed from the hall and the king sat down to eat his oysters.They returned just as the king had finished, and he asked, 'Syrys, how stondyth yt with yow?' In response, the two knights knelt down and said 'yf it plese your good grace, we be agreyd & accordyd'.Much contented with the results, the king made clear that this newfound peace was to be a lasting one: if 'evyr they made eny more Insurreccioun or dethe of his lege peple, they, or ony othyr lordys withynne his reawme, withowte his commanundment, whatsomeeuer they were, they shulde dye, according to ϸe lawe'.And after that, the knights made 'no party nor stryf'.The account ends contentedly with the statement: and 'thus [Henry] beganne to kepe his lawis and Iustise, & therefore he was belouyd & bedred'. 1 The purpose behind the Brut chronicler's inclusion of this episode in the chronicle is not hard to imagine.While Prince Hal had a reputation for riot and mischief, the chronicler was eager to show that once the crown had been placed on his head, Henry acknowledged that his youthful ways were unfit for a king.He intended to rule according to the law.
The only problem, of course, is that this story shows him doing just the opposite.These men were guilty of at the very least homicide and possibly also treason, both felonies that were punishable by death in fifteenth-century England.Yet instead of subjecting his knights to a trial where they might be required to suffer the lawful consequences of their actions, or cause them to buy pardons, which would have given them a licit alternative to execution, he opted to have them resolve their differences outside the law altogether, through a concord.Thus, this well-crafted narrative, intended to highlight the new king's promise as the nation's great peacekeeper and lawmaker, instead merely confirms the privilege of the elite.As the fates of these men demonstrate, in medieval England, a wealthy, well-connected man could find ways to sidestep the normal process of the law, even when it comes to felonies.
From the perspective of the modern reader, the notion of using an out-ofcourt settlement to resolve a homicide is antithetical to our modern sense of justice, which prioritizes punishment over the restoration of communal harmony.The opposite was true in the early medieval world.Under Anglo-Saxon rule, homicide was a private matter.While the courts oversaw the settlement process, the resolution consisted chiefly of a compensation payment to the family of the dead, conditional on reconciliation between the two groups. 2It was not until sometime after the Norman Conquest that compensation formally disappeared as homicide went through a process of criminalization. 3The Crown no longer categorized homicide as a private matter between families, it became a breach of the king's peace.While the family of the dead retained its status as the primary victims, the king entered into the act as a secondary victim, his standing as peacekeeper jeopardized by the violent behaviour of the defendant.As such, homicide was to be punished with mutilation or execution, not payment of compensation.Punishment and deterrence, then, took precedence over restoring the peace and assisting families who had lost a valuable member through no fault of their own.
That negotiations for compensation continued informally for some time after the fact leads us to believe that this move was not welcomed by English subjects.During this period of transition, out-of-court settlements were tolerated, providing those involved paid a licence to the king.Yet, over time the Crown made it increasingly difficult to do so, first by fining those who made agreements without licence; then, by the time of King Henry III, parties who settled out of court were punished with fines and then imprisoned. 4 Eager to claim the title as the kingdom's sole peace keeper, and remove rivals for power, the Crown wanted a monopoly on the punishment of all felonies and it could not have that if some homicides bypassed the courts. 5espite the Crown's increasingly narrow vision of homicide as a crime and its determination to see those cases move through royal courts, some legal historians maintain that Englishmen and women continued to use out-of-court settlements as a means to resolve homicide through compensation rather than execution.Ian Rowney writes: 'Except for treason and currency offences, almost every kind of dispute went to arbitration in this period, even murder'. 6According to Derek Roebuck, 'Mediation might end a dispute which had allegedly resulted in the foulest of murders, with no criminal charges being pursued in the courts'. 7Finally, Edward Powell states that arbitrations 'intended primarily to repair the consequences of criminal violence, were commonplace in the fifteenth century'. 8Indeed, Powell claims that '[a]ppeals of rape, mayhem, and homicide were routinely used as a means of exerting pressure on offenders to come to terms with the victim, and [that] the appeal of homicide continued to serve this function even in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries'. 9Citing examples of compensation for criminal activity, Anthony Musson has argued in favour of an English 'compensation culture' sustained across the later Middle Ages. 10 While recognizing that arbitration was a normal means of resolution for suits of all kinds in later medieval England, this study queries whether outof-court settlements for homicides were in fact common, and whether this was true for everyone in England.This paper will focus on fifteenthcentury England, hundreds of years after the criminalization of homicide had already taken place, but during the time in which these particular historians have found evidence of homicide resolved by arbitration.This study will argue that for the vast majority of Englishmen and women, homicide was treated as a felony.Those who were convicted were sent to the gallows and their lands and movables were confiscated by the king for a year and a day, before the lands escheated to the defendant's lord.But among a very select group of members of the gentry, who understood how to manipulate the system to their own benefit, homicide might be addressed through compensation and negotiated through formal arbitrators.

II. The Value of Out-of-Court Settlements to the English People
The attachment of the English people to out-of-court settlements for homicide should not come as any surprise.Much has been written on the 'deepseated … preference' for settling disputes of all kinds 'through informal compromise', not just in England but across medieval Europe. 11 central to dispute resolution, and as a multitude of historians have been at pains to make clear, it worked in concert with the courts. 12In the English setting, most arbitrators and umpires were justices (sometimes even Chief Justices), and the law they administered was in the main common law. 13s Richard Keyser has aptly described it, mediation was not so much 'extra-judicial', as it was 'quasi-judicial'. 14Moreover, it was popular at all levels of society.Anthony Musson writes, '[t]he vitality of out-of-court mechanisms and their acceptance by all social classes trumpets not only their popularity and inclusivity, but equally the adaptive nature of the law and the flexibility of the legal system'. 15With such widespread and entrenched acceptance, of course the people in England hoped to continue to rely on mediation in one form or another with cases of homicide.One suspects they were aware also that England stood alone in its transition.Pumping travellers from afar for news was a priority not just for the elite, but as Christopher Fletcher reminds us, also for 'ordinary town dwellers and those living in the neighboring countryside'. 16When heinous crimes happening outside of England were resolved by compensation rather than hanging, surely it raised some English eyebrows.Homicide continued to be regarded as a private matter between families resolved by monetary payments in the rest of northern Europe.In Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, compensation for homicide remained the norm well into the early modern era. 17This was also the case outside of the British Isles, in places such as Gascony, 18 Denmark, 19 Frisia, 20 Norway, and Sweden, 21 where it took the Judicial Revolution of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to convince inhabitants that homicide was a problem that concerned the state.To make matters even more confusing, assault causing bodily injury, providing it was non-fatal, continued to be treated as a private matter settled by compensation payment and adjudicated by the courts in England and the rest of Europe.
Frustration with the Crown's criminalization of homicide within England presumably was one of the factors driving families of the victim to seek resolution outside the law.Seeing homicide as a crime against the king decentred the family as victim.Admittedly, common law gives the impression that the status of the family as primary victim was paramount.For example, until the late fifteenth century, royal officials were required to wait a year and a day before proceeding with the king's suit against a homicide in order to allow the victim's kin sufficient time to appeal. 22And until the nineteenth century, the king could not fully pardon a homicide; he could only pardon the breach of the king's peace; if the victim's kin wished to appeal, a pardon did not stand in their way.Nonetheless, the transition in process and punishment in the criminalization of homicide clarified who had the most to gain.Capital punishment enhanced the king's reputation as a peacekeeper, while felony forfeiture filled his coffers; but what did these forms of punishment do for the families of the dead?Mutilation or execution of the perpetrator was more likely to prolong a feud between two families than to bring it to an end.Private settlements typically included a formal renunciation of further dispute or lawsuit, as well as the abandonment of any existing appeals.The Crown offered no replacement for this process; no mediated reconciliation between the two parties; no attempt to curb future violence between families.Without compensation and deprived of an essential worker, widows and orphans may have become a burden to family members.
The families of the dead surely also worried about the implications of this transition for the victims.Surviving agreements from the early thirteenth century of homicides resolved in licensed settlements remind us that compensation was not the only priority: so, too, was securing provision for the souls of the dead.The 1201 agreement forged between Simon 'clerk' son of John Cusin and Thomas son of William and referenced in the records of the Somersetshire eyre makes this clear.In his appeal, Simon accused Thomas and his seven associates of the murder of his father, John Cusin.On the night in question, the killers entered into the home of John's lord at Babington, where they discovered John sitting down to dinner.They dragged him by the feet into a chamber, placed him on a bed, then set fire to his face and beard, and pulled his tongue from his mouth.Afterwards, they broke into his coffers and stole the charters housed within.Taking one of King Richard's charters and another belonging to an archbishop, they placed them on John's face and burnt them (presumably to send some sort of message about their contents), then one of the men cut off John's head.A summary of the agreement reached between John's son and his aggressors and recorded in the curia regis rolls reports that Thomas was to pay Simon ten marks in compensation, five at the time of the writing of the agreement, the remaining five at Easter next.And for the sake of the soul of Simon's father, Thomas would establish a monk.Simon then quitclaimed Thomas and his associates of the homicide. 23eligious provisions, specifically finding some means of providing extended prayer for the victim's soul, were integral to out-of-court settlements, and probably a good part of their appeal.Often, the provisions were far more elaborate than what we see here.A good example of this is a 1208 concord for murder recorded in detail in the plea rolls between John Chamberlain, on the one hand, and Herbert of Pattesley and Thomas Ingoldsthorpe, on the other, regarding the death of Drogo, John's brother.The agreement requires Herbert to travel to the holy land and remain there in God's service 'for the soul of the slain' for seven years.At the very least, the agreement tells us that the time spent travelling there and back are to be reckoned as part of that seven-year term.If he returns to England before the end of that time, he is to be convicted of the death and punished accordingly.Thomas of Ingoldsthorpe was also to provide for the soul of the slain by paying for one of Drogo's kin to be made a monk or a canon.The concord even dictated to which house he should be attached: if a monk, at Norwich, Castleacre, or Binham (all in Norfolk); if a canon, then at Thetford, Coxford, or Walsingham (also in Norfolk).In addition, Thomas should pay Drogo's family forty marks: ten on the Sunday next after St Mary Magdalene's day, ten at Martinmas, another a week before Christmas, then the final instalment at Lady Day.Lastly, Thomas was required to produce pledges and pay the king also forty marks for license to compromise. 24learly, there were plenty of reasons why Englishmen and women hoped to continue the custom of settling homicide through mediated agreements: not just because of the compensation payments, but also to initiate a formal means of reconciliation between the families with a renunciation of further discord and lawsuit, as well as spiritual provisions for the dead.Despite the people's enthusiasm, the Crown's tolerance for private settlements to resolve homicides only went so far.After the early years of the thirteenth century, written evidence for the settling of felonies by concord dries up entirely.No doubt this is because royal justices adopted what Keyser has described as a distinctly 'anti-settlement' policy. 25Their strategy was multipronged.They realized that appellors often employed appeals as an intimidation tactic to force through an agreement.Faced with the risk of execution, the perpetrator was more willing to cooperate and enter into arbitration, providing the appellor dropped the suit.To discourage this misuse of the law, when an appellor abandoned an appeal, the king's justices not only fined and imprisoned the appellor, they also rescued the abandoned case and pursued it instead at the king's suit, thus eliminating any leverage the appellor had to strongarm an out-of-court settlement.As an additional preventative, fines issued to juries of presentment for failure to report crimes made certain that crown officials were well informed, making it near impossible for cases to bypass the system.Did families continue to resolve homicides outside the normal curial process despite all these changes?Was it 'commonplace' to do so?Was the practice even 'inclusive'?I would like to suggest that private settlement of homicide probably did disappear in the thirteenth century, only to reappear in private disputes between gentry families in the chaotic political atmosphere of the fifteenth century.Yet, even then, the provision was exploited only by a small, often inter-related group of families in the midlands.Confidence in this assertion springs chiefly from the existing evidence.After the documented cases of the early thirteenth century, historians to date have uncovered no evidence of a homicide settled out of court until the fifteenth century.The absence of evidence is typically explained as a byproduct of the simplicity of the process, which 'obviated the need for written records'. 26Certainly, if parties chose informal mediation, that would be true.Nevertheless, arbitration agreements relating to just about every other kind of dispute imaginable have left behind plentiful written evidence.If the resolution of homicide by private settlement was indeed a common occurrence, one would expect some kind of evidence to have survived for the period between the thirteenth and the fifteenth centuries.
When it comes to the fifteenth-century evidence, historians' discussions typically revolve around four specific cases (Bruyn v Gatacre, two cases involving the Pierrepont family, and Gresley v Vernon), to which I add an additional two cases (Blount v Cornwall; Snayth v Darcy) in this study. 27hat historians have not done is investigate the pedigree and careers of individuals participating in these disputes as a collective to observe what they all have in common, that is, that none of these cases involve ordinary people.The individuals involved were elite, members of the landed gentry with well-placed connections, and their disagreements were facilitated by wellknown individuals, usually magnates or prelates.All of these cases are also interrelated, in that they involve the same families or some of the same individuals; and they are restricted geographically to a small, unruly area of fifteenth-century England.Nothing about these cases suggest that they were typical, or that their resolutions were somehow routine.

III. The Blount-Cornwall Agreement (1424, Shropshire)
In his seminal 1970 article, 'Feud and Private Peace-Making', Joel Rosenthal was the first to underscore that the fifteenth-century 'breakdown in public order' was characterized not only by the 'resort to private violence', but also 'the resort to private peace-making'. 28This cautionary note helps to make sense of why an award in a homicide case appears amidst the register of the daily business of Thomas Spofford, the bishop of Hereford.The bishop refereed the 1424 quarrel between Johanna Blount, and Edmund Cornwall and his brother Brian, over the homicide of Johanna's husband, Richard Whitton of Shropshire. 29Quite diplomatically, the award fails to call out the Cornwall brothers for homicide.Instead, it cites 'all materes, dissencions, discords, causes and apeles, and in all materes dependyng or hyngyng betwene the said partyes as for the dethe of Richard Whittone'.The event that triggered the conflict is not mentioned in the award; however, the two families were neighbours and tied together through land.Whitton is a hamlet in the parish of Burford, where the Cornwall family resided and exercised power.Edmund's father, Richard Cornwall (d.1443), was the fifth Baron of Burford.In November 1407, Richard Cornwall named Thomas Whitton (perhaps Richard Whitton's uncle) a feoffee of his estates. 3027 Please note: this list involves cases in which recorded settlements exist and relate specifically to homicides.It does not include, for example, the settlement between William Paston and Walter Aslake, even though it was preceded by the death of John Grys of Wighton (Norfolk), his son, and one of his men.While Aslake insinuated that he was responsible for their deaths, formally those deaths were attributed to unknown malefactors, and the deaths did not form part of the agreement, which instead centered on threats of violence and lawsuits.See the memorandum included in Norman Davis, ed., Paston Letters and Papers of the Fifteenth Century, 3 vols., Oxford, 2004, vol.Then, on 20 October 1415, Thomas Whitton along with other trustees granted half of the manor of Norton (Northants.) to Edmund, son of Richard Cornwall, and his wife Alice, to hold in tail. 31It is entirely possible that a grudge over land or its usage is what led to Richard Whitton's death.The detailed nature of the award helps us to sketch out the process involved in restoring peace after a dispute and reminds us that many of the same factors that drew early thirteenth-century litigants into out-ofcourt settlements remained the same in the fifteenth century.First, in the interests of 'eschewyng of perelles, mischeves, and more harms that myght falle betwene the said partyes in tyme to come' and 'for finall pece and reste and ende to be had in the cause', promises to abide by the judgment of the award were extended not only to those directly concerned, but also to their families and affinities.This includes Edmund's and Brian's father, Richard, and their servants and their men; as well as Johanna's five sons (Roger, John, Persevall, James, and Wa[l]ter) and their servants and their men.Second, Johanna made a general release and acquittance of all personal actions to Richard, Edmund, and Brian Cornwall, as well as their servants, when it comes to the 'counseylyng, consentyng, helpyng, or [being] present at the dethe of the said Richard'.In return, Richard and Edmund also made a general release and acquittance to Johanna, Roger, John, Persevall, James and Wa[l]ter, their servants and men.Next, the award turns to provisions for Richard's soul and settling his accounts.It orders Edmund Cornwall to deliver forty pounds to a man identified only as 'Sir Richard', Whitton's executor, to be distributed for the dead man's soul and to pay off as much of his debts as the sum would permit.In compensation for 'here grete expence' (presumably a reference to court fines for an abandoned appeal and funeral costs), Johanna is to have five marks, also paid into the hands of Sir Richard as an intermediary, in instalments over the course of the next year.If Edmund fails to meet the required deadlines, the award also stipulates a schedule of penalties: ten pounds for missing the first date; another ten pounds for missing the next day, and so on until he pays the amount in full.Finally, the award acknowledges also that at the time of his death, Richard Whitton had been bound by two additional arbitration agreements, one facilitated by Richard Plantagenet, duke of York, without any other details; the other, purportedly arbitrated by Richard Cornwall himself, in conjunction with John Marbury and Richard Delamare, esquires, for 'certain dissencones and debates hangyng betwixt the said Edmunde Cornwayll on the one parte and the said Richard Whittone and his brethren on the odyr parte'.The bishop required Edmund to arrange delivery of those thomas-1411#biography.Thomas's brother and heir was Edward Whitton; it seems possible that Richard was Edward's son. 31 Cecil George Savile, The House of Cornewall, Hereford, 1908, at 48. Available online at: https://archive.org/stream/houseofcornewall00live/houseofcornewall00live_djvu.txt.
obligations to be cancelled or get an acquittance of them from Johanna Blounte, 'to preserve and defende her from all maner of harme that might fall to here eires or here executores be occasion of the said obligacion in tyme to come'.The other arbitration agreements between the two families referred to here have either not survived or remain undiscovered; nonetheless, this remark is a useful reminder that sometimes arbitration agreements fail.The earlier agreement was surely intended to avoid outbreaks of future violence, like the one that resulted in Richard Whitton's death.Bringing the bishop of Hereford in to mediate must have been a last resort intended to bring this dispute finally to an end.
To return to the question at hand: how ordinary were these instances of arbitration for homicide?Nothing about this case seems run of the mill.The parties involved in the dispute belonged to some of the most important families in Shropshire.It is not clear exactly how Johanna was related to the Blount family (either through birth or a previous marriage), but the Blounts were one of two 'resident peerage families' in Derbyshire, with a branch of the family living in Kinlet, Shropshire (a mere thirteen miles from Whitton), and with close connections to the Lancastrians. 32Walter Blount (d.1403for whom Johanna's youngest son was surely named) was probably the most well-known of the family.He was married to Sancha de Ayála, lady in waiting to Constance of Castile, second wife of John of Gaunt, the duke of Lancaster.Described as '[a] mainstay of the new regime', Blount represented Derbyshire in the first Parliament of Henry IV's reign, and purportedly was entrusted with 'the care and tutelage' of Henry's second son, Thomas, duke of Clarence.33Johanna Blount's slain husband, Richard Whitton, belonged to the Whitton family of Whitton Court. 34He was possibly the nephew of Thomas Whitton, member of Parliament for Shropshire twice; coroner for Shropshire beginning in 1392.He was also high sheriff of Shropshire for two terms. 35Finally, as I mentioned earlier, Richard Cornwall (d.1443) was the fifth Baron of Burford.Edmund would have been the next baron if he had outlived his father, but he died in 1437 in Cologne fighting for the English Crown. 36he rank of the arbitrators involved in the agreements also points to the exceptional nature of this case.John Marbury (or Merbury) of Lyonshall and Weobley, who also happened to be Edmund Cornwall's father-in-law, was high sheriff of Herefordshire for seven terms; he was the county's member of Parliament five times, steward of Brecon for a six-year period, the escheator of Herefordshire and the adjacent marches in 1416/17; and he sat on twenty-one royal commissions between the years 1403 and 1423. 37ichard de la Mare was another high sheriff of Herefordshire for a oneyear term. 38uite frankly, the men and women involved in this case were far from ordinary.If they behaved as if they were 'above the law', it was because they belonged to the caste of individuals who made the law and oversaw its administration.What is perhaps most important, though, as I will argue in this study, the pedigrees and careers of the disputants and their arbitrators in this award is typical of those in every other instance of arbitration to resolve homicide extralegally in fifteenth-century England.
IV.The Bruyn-Gatacre Agreement (1427, Shropshire) Three years later, and roughly twenty miles away, 39 the Bruyns and the Gatacres were settling their own dispute.The 1427 award between John Bruyn of Bridgnorth (d.c.1437) and John Gatacre of Gatacre, two gentlemen of southeastern Shropshire, was first brought to light by Edward Powell in 1984 and has since become a mainstay in the evidence supporting the popularity of arbitration to resolve criminal violence. 40Once again, the agreement offers no hint of what provoked the dispute between these two individuals.Nonetheless, it seems noteworthy that they were neighbours: Bridgnorth and Gatacre Hall are merely seven miles apart.In addition, the Gatacre family owned an acre of farmland, as well as a dwelling house and its lands with an annual rent of ten shillings, both close by to travelling to know Foreign Countries, died at Colone, the 14th year of Henry the Sixth, and willed his servant to bury his body there, and to inclose his heart in lead, and carry it to Burford to be buried'. 37 Bridgnorth. 41Plentiful documentation exists also to clarify that John Bruyn was an unscrupulous bully, or as Powell has described him, 'an abrasive and high-handed official'. 42During his five terms as bailiff of Bridgnorth, he was accused of multiple counts of extortion, bribery, and forcible imprisonment.He was also caught up in the larger conflict between Thomas FitzAlan, earl of Arundel (d.1415) and John Talbot, lord Furnival (later earl of Shrewsbury, d.1453) who hoped to challenge Arundel's position of dominance in the county.Bruyn belonged to Talbot's supporters and used his position as bailiff to terrorize Arundel's enemies, such that in 1413, the burgesses of Bridgnorth took it upon themselves to complain to the king about Bruyn.
Out of fear for their lives, they claimed they could not leave the town to trade.A similar complaint was issued by the royal tenants of Bridgnorth, who criticized Bruyn's 'malice, destructions and oppressions', prompting the king to send in the justices from the Court of King's Bench to exact sureties from the main players involved in the drama. 43Eventually, time and arbitration brought the matter to a close. 44he Bruyn-Gatacre dispute was probably unrelated to this earlier experience of discord.John Gatacre was married to Joyce (or Jocosa) Burley, daughter of John Burley, a key member of the Arundel affinity; thus, Bruyn and Gatacre ran in shared political circles. 45Nonetheless, this history offers valuable insight into the nature of Bruyn's personality and his willingness to abandon morals and reputation when it became politically convenient.Strife between the two parties and their adherents in the autumn of 1426 saw Roger Lockwood, possibly one of Gatacre's supporters, shot and killed by an arrow purportedly fired by Thomas Chamberlain of Astley Abbots, a yeoman and one of Bruyn's men.The victim's widow, Isabella, sued an appeal against Chamberlain at the Court of King's Bench for homicide, supported by Gatacre as one of her pledges.While a jury eventually acquitted Bruyn and his many men, and the court demanded that Isabella be arrested for false appeal, their decision was irrelevant because by that time the two parties had already settled out of court. 46he number of people involved in this dispute is remarkable.The agreement, written in French and preserved among the Pitchford Hall deeds of the Ottley Estate, includes Bruyn and twenty-eight of his supporters, on the one hand, and Gatacre and twenty-five of his, on the other. 47The abbot of Shrewsbury, the prior of Wenlock, George Hawkstone, gentleman, and Hugh Burgh, gentleman, stood as arbitrators in the case.The seriousness of the agreement is denoted by the penalty for its violation: 500 marks, imposed on each of the fifty-five men named in the agreement.The arbitrators articulated their hope that all would become 'good and loyal friends henceforth, without holding any rancour or envy in their hearts'.Responsible for the fatal shot, Chamberlain was obliged to pay forty pounds to Isabella; some of that money surely went to pay the fine incurred at King's Bench for suing 'a false appeal'.Additionally, John Bruyn was required to make multiple payments adding up to a total of eighty shillings to the prior of Wenlock; so, too, was John Gatacre.The prior would then use those funds to engage a chaplain to pray for the soul of the said Roger for an entire year in the church in which he was buried.Any funds remaining at the end of that time would go to Isabella.Both sides had to renounce any existing or future discord or suit.And finally, Bruyn and his associate, Thomas Ashton, had to promise to attempt to secure for Gatacre the good lordship of Lord Ferrers de Groby, an English baron with substantial lands and influence in Shropshire, as well as in Leicestershire, Essex, and Northamptonshire.While this final request may seem out of place, Lord Ferrers held Claverley manor, less than three miles from Gatacre Hall where the Gatacre family was established. 48For Gatacre, securing Ferrers' favour might open doors to greater opportunities, politically, financially, and socially. 49gain, these men could not be described as average.Despite his bad behaviour, John Bruyn of Bridgnorth represented Bridgnorth at Parliament in 1402 and 1425.He was bailiff of Bridgnorth five times; escheator of Shropshire and the adjacent march for four terms; high sheriff of Shropshire twice; he sat on eight of the king's commissions, and he was justice of the peace for Shropshire for eight years (1424 to 1432). 50The Gatacres have been described as 'a family of stupendous antiquity, having acquired the estate of Gatacre … by grant from Edward the Confessor'. 51John Gatacre did his best to uphold the family's reputation: he was groom of the body to King Henry VI, and his son went on to become a member of Parliament for Bridgnorth during King Edward IV's reign. 52Their arbitrators were also men of some significance: John Hampton, the abbot of Shrewsbury and John Stafford, the prior of Wenlock; but also George Hawkstone and Hugh Burgh, both of whom stood as members of Parliament for Shropshire, Hawkstone in 1404 and 1415, Burgh in 1415 alongside Hawkstone, but again also in 1416 and 1421. 53ince Powell first came across the Bruyn-Gatacre dispute in 1984, evidence of their agreement has functioned as the backbone for claims that the medieval world regularly tolerated the settlement of homicide by arbitration. 54Yet, the outstanding pedigrees and careers of the individuals involved make it hard to describe the case as representative.
V. The Pierrepont Family Agreements (1434, 1458, 1462, Derbyshire) Seven years later and eighty miles away, the Pierrepont family was entangled in its first Derbyshire dispute. 55Joel Rosenthal's study of fifteenth-century peacemaking focuses on one agreement involving the Pierrepont family, 'one of the leading "greater gentry" families of Nottinghamshire', although it has since become clear that the Pierreponts had a long history of resolving their murderous entanglements through private agreements. 56The first arbitration agreement mentioned here is not centred on a homicide (despite the loss of two lives, the award does not recognize their deaths), but it establishes the family's violent history and its comfortable resort to arbitration for resolution.
Attempts by Henry Pierrepont I (d.1452) 57 to extend the family holdings beyond Nottinghamshire were seen as a threat by the Foljambe family, who had spent much of the fifteenth century trying to consolidate its estate in the Chesterfield area.Second only to Derby, Chesterfield was an important market centre in the fifteenth century, but, as Susan Wright has argued, it was 'not one dominated by a single lord'. 58  20 The Ricardian (2010), 80, at 80. 57 In the interests of keeping track of the various men all named Henry Pierrepont, I have numbered them I, II, and III. 58Wright, Derbyshire Gentry, 61.
Pierrepont undermining all their hard work when he entered into a twentyyear lease for the manor of Chesterfield with its weekly market from Joan Holland, countess of Kent, beginning in 1429, and then starting in 1433 also the yearly fair with profits, including a tax on the buyer of every animal sold. 59The Foljambes' hostile response is a measure of their discontent: Thomas Foljambe the younger of Walton rode into town with a great number of men, 'arrayed in manner of war', to disrupt the town fair and prevent the holding of markets. 60The countess of Kent countered by suing Foljambe for assault and riot in the court of Chancery. 61Although the court's judgment has not survived, the chancellor's intervention seems to have quelled the dispute for a time, that is, until 1 January 1434 when Foljambe 'with a number of armed men', barged into the Chesterfield parish church while mass was being performed, 'with the intention of killing Henry Perpount' and his supporters.They settled for cutting off Pierrepont's right thumb and some of his fingers, the right thumb also of Thomas Hasilby, one of Pierrepont's men, and wounding Pierrepont with an arrow in his right arm, which was allegedly shot 'against the High Altar when the priest held the Eucharist in his hands'.They also beat and wounded four of Pierrepont's servants, killing his brother-in-law, Henry Longford of Basford, and his associate, William Bradshaw. 62he incident provoked a general oyer and terminer commission dated to March 1434, headed by John of Lancaster, duke of Bedford; Humphrey Stafford, earl of Stafford; and William de la Pole, earl of Suffolk. 63The handling of this case at court points to the powerful influence gentry families had upon Derbyshire law and order.Two separate grand jury panels were returned upon the matter.Wright has analysed in depth the constitution of these juries and their behaviour.She notes that Henry Pierrepont, the 'maimed man himself', sat upon the first grand jury, which she refers to as 'the anti-Foljambe' jury, alongside numerous other members of the Derbyshire gentry keen to see the Foljambe family punished for its actions. 64he second jury was decidedly anti-Pierrepont.It contained pro-Foljambe adherents, among others, William Plumpton, the son of Alice Foljambe, 59 Ibid., 130 the heiress of the main Foljambe line, and one of the named parties in the Pierrepont-Plumpton dispute (detailed below).The jury also included Richard Vernon (d.1451) of Harlaston and Haddon, whose son William is one of the leading figures in the Gresley-Vernon dispute (also discussed below); 65 Thomas Blount (d.1456) of Barton Blount, probably related to Johanna Blount of the Blount-Cornwall dispute (above), but also father of the Walter Blount involved in the Longford-Blount quarrel (see below), as well as the husband of Margaret Gresley, aunt to John Gresley in the Gresley-Vernon dispute (also discussed below). 66This second jury vented its anti-Pierrepont ire by indicting Henry Pierrepont II, Henry I's son, for retaliation after the 1 January attack.They accused him of assaulting a Chesterfield man and his family who had been present with Foljambe at the earlier attack.The jury also assigned blame for starting the overall feud to the Pierreponts, indicting Henry Pierrepont I along with two other gentlemen for assaulting and maiming one of Thomas Foljambe's servants and Thomas Foljambe the younger in September 1432, long before the attack that propelled them into court in the first place. 67either the oyer and terminer session, nor its subsequent trial in King's Bench were fruitful in resolving this dispute: almost everyone indicted in the Foljambe case was acquitted, while Henry Pierrepont I and the wife of William Bradshaw made a fine.As Wright describes it, '[d]ifferences were not resolved nor disorder contained'. 68By 1435, Pierrepont and Foljambe agreed to enter into arbitration either before Gervase Clifton, knight, 69 William de Honford 70 and John Portington, 71 esquires, Thomas Gresley, knight, John Stathum, 72 esquire, and Richard Bingham, Justice of the King's Bench, or John Kempe, the archbishop of York. 73Indentures to this effect survive from 13 July of 1435, although by October they had decided that the archbishop was the most acceptable choice for an arbitrator. 74In their agreement, they promised a release of all 'appeals, trespasses, actions, debates and plaints', on pain of £1000 each. 75On paper, the indenture centred on Pierrepont's maiming, not homicide, despite the various deaths involved for which no one was held accountable.Nonetheless, this was the Pierrepont family's first experience of using a mediated agreement to end violence.
Homicide was at the centre of two other private agreements involving Pierrepont's grandson, Henry Pierrepont III (d.1499). 76In the death of his brother Robert, Henry III held Thomas Hastings, his brother William, and his nephew Henry Ferrers accountable. 77Apparently, Robert had been murdered in a 'quarrel over a disputed manor' by Hastings and Ferrers, who were then 'forcibly interrogated' by Pierrepont. 78Fearing for his life, Hastings asked his second cousin, Richard, duke of York, to stand as arbitrator between the Pierrepont family and the families of Hastings and Ferrers.The award, dated to 17 October 1458, survives among the Hastings family papers, housed at the Huntingdon Library. 79Much like what we saw with the death of Richard Whitton above, the award fails to label the death a homicide.Rather, it declares that the controversies spring from the 'deth of Robert Perpoynt brother to the same Henry pretended to be slayne by the said Thomas [Hastings] and Henri Ferrers'.In the interests of 'good peas and quiete to be had bytwyn the said parties', the duke made the following award.The Hastings and Ferrers families were to 'schewe frendelyhod' to the Pierreponts, and in return, Henry Pierrepont III would release Hastings, his brother William, and Henry Ferrers from 'alle maner of appeles for the deth of the said Robt Perpoynt and alle maner of trespace'.Wishing that 'alle frendelyhed and kendenesse to be her after had and continued bytwyn the said parties and alle grucchinges and Rancours of hert to be leid of part bytwyn them', the duke ordered Hastings and Ferrers to pay Henry Pierrepont III the sum of forty pounds, spread over a period of several years, part of which was to be reserved specifically for the payment of a 'competent priest to syng dyvyne service for the soul of the said Robt Perpoynt by the space of two yer'.
Henry Pierrepont III's father, Henry Pierrepont II (d.1457), became the next victim.He was drawn into a land dispute with the Plumpton family.It is worthy of note, that William Plumpton's mother, Alice, was also a member of the Foljambe family, and thus this dispute may have been an extension of the ongoing Pierrepont-Foljambe feud to the next generation.Henry Pierrepont II was killed by John Grene, brother-in-law and steward to William Plumpton, in an affray on Papplewick Moor in Sherwood Forest, Nottinghamshire, on 21 July 1457. 80Purportedly in retaliation for Henry's death, later that same day, Grene was murdered by John Pierrepont of Radmanthwaite, Henry Pierrepont III's brother. 81Thomasia, widow of Henry Pierrepont II, then sued an appeal in the Court of King's Bench against John Grene's nephew, Robert Grene, for her husband's death, prompting Robert Grene to appeal John Pierrepont for John Grene's death.Both appeals were eventually abandoned, and the two families submitted themselves to arbitration, with John Viscount Beaumont standing in as umpire, and as arbitrators: John Melton, knight; John Stanhope, esquire; and Richard Illingworth as counsellor chosen by the Pierrepont family; William Vernon, knight; William Babington, esquire; and Richard Neel as counsellor chosen by the Plumptons.Arbitration began in February 1459, but 'civil dissensions probably prevented the final settlement' at that time.In January 1462, Richard Bingham, cousin to Plumpton and Justice of the King's Bench, wrote to William Plumpton proposing a meeting to forge a new 'trety'. 82It was not finally settled until 28 May 1462, at which time both William Plumpton, on behalf of the Grene family, and Henry Pierrepont III stood bound in mutual obligations of £100 to abide by the award and judgment of Richard Bingham. 83 In each of the Pierrepont disputes, the agreement was facilitated by an exceptional person: the archbishop of York, the duke of York, and John Viscount Beaumont.Indeed, in the death of Robert Pierrepont, Desmond Seward has suggested that arbitration was a personal favour by the duke who was keen to extricate his kinsman, Thomas Hastings, from a 'potentially ruinous affair'. 84Most of the arbitrators and counsellors in the final dispute were equally impressive.John Melton, knight, of Aston (d.1474) was Thomasia Pierrepont's brother and also a feoffee of the duke of York. 85John 80 Stapelton, Plumpton Correspondence, 3. 81 Ward, 'Life and Death', 84. 82Stapelton, ed., Plumpton Correspondence, 3-4. 83 Stanhope (d.1493), esquire, rose from 'a moderately affluent family of burgesses from Newcastle-upon-Tyne', to become an esquire of the body to King Henry VI; he also represented Nottinghamshire in Parliament on at least six occasions. 86Richard Illingworth was Chief Baron of the Exchequer. 87William Vernon of Haddon and Tong (d.1467), knight, makes an appearance in our next dispute, thus his pedigree and career will be discussed below.William Babington, esquire, was from 'an ancient Northumberland family', and son and heir of the William Babington who served as Chief Justice of the Common Bench. 88Finally, Richard Neel was a member of Parliament for Leicestershire in 1441. 89oreover, these clashes were all between members of great families.Thomas Hastings was first baron Hastings (d.1483) and Lord Chamberlain to King Edward IV. Henry Ferrers (d.1499) of Peckham, Kent and Hambleton, Rutland, was grandson of William Lord Ferrers of Groby (d.1445).He was also knight of the king's bodyguard, high sheriff of Kent in 1487, and knight of the shire for Kent. 90William Plumpton (d.1480), who played a key role in the negotiation of the final dispute involving the death of his brother-in-law, John Grene, was formerly the ward and a retainer of Henry Percy, second earl of Northumberland.He represented Nottinghamshire in Parliament in 1436; he served as high sheriff of Yorkshire in 1447, and high sheriff of Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire in 1453. 91Two of the Henry Pierreponts (I and III) had at one time or another represented Nottinghamshire at Parliament; so, too, had Thomas Foljambe. 92Henry Pierrepont III was also high sheriff of Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire in the years 1468/9 and 1471. 93hat is interesting here is that we see connections between some of the individuals involved in this case and the Bruyn-Gatacre dispute.Thomas Foljambe's daughter, for example, was married to the son and heir of Thomas Ashton, whose assistance was sought in securing the good lordship of the Lord Ferrers of Groby for John Gatacre. 94And who was that lord?William Ferrers, 5th Baron Ferrers of Groby (d.1445) just happened to be the uncle of the Henry Ferrers accused alongside Thomas Hastings of the murder of Robert Pierrepont.

VI. Gresley-Vernon Agreement (1455, Derbyshire)
The Pierreponts' Derbyshire disputes centred on Chesterfield, just over thirteen miles from Haddon Hall where the Vernon family resided.The Gresley-Vernon dispute has sometimes been viewed as merely a smaller piece in the much better known Blount-Longford quarrel, which climaxed in the 28 May 1454 sack of Elvaston (Derbys.),described as 'one of the period's most memorable acts of gentry disorder'. 95Nicholas Longford brought a small army (perhaps as many as a thousand men) with him to attack Walter Blount and his manor-house, leaving behind many wounds and plenty of destruction. 96John Gresley II (d.1486) was high sheriff of Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire at the time, and he was Walter Blount's cousin; William Vernon of Haddon and Tong (d.1467), who appeared as an arbitrator in the dispute between the Pierreponts and the Plumptons (above), was a long-time supporter of the Longfords.Both men were drawn into the dispute. 97Nonetheless, it is clear that bad feelings between the Gresley and Vernon families long predate the 1454 'outburst of violence'. 98The two families were neighbours.The Gresleys owned lands at Drakelow, Linton, Lullington and Gresleyall in the region of the town of Swadlincote, and abutting the village of Tonge where the Vernons were prominent landowners. 99A surviving settlement between the two families, housed among the Vernon family papers, suggests that close proximity brought them into a heated dispute over pasturage back in the days when John Gresley I (d.1449) and Richard Vernon (d.1451) had been the family patriarchs, long before 1454.Like many gentry families during 'The Great Slump', the Vernons offset falling rents by investing in large herds of sheep and cattle. 100By 1423/4, the Vernons boasted 1,071 sheep in Derbyshire, and by 1428/9, 222 head of cattle. 101The Gresleys had taken the same approach, and had been involved in violent though encounters with another neighbour, namely Burton Abbey, over pasturage since the 1390s. 102Wright argues that this was not unusual for fifteenth-century Derbyshire.She writes, '[i]n a county such as Derbyshire with a strong emphasis on pastoralism, enclosure and loss of common pasture or other rights were the basis of many disputes'. 103ated to 21 September 1447, the award speaks of 'greete debate and variaunce be twyxte Sir John Gresley knyghte John his son sqwyer hur kynne and frendes servantes and tenantes on the to parte and William Vernon sqwyer his kynne frendes servantes and tenantes on the tother parte'.The dispute was 'sette in peese' by William Lord Ferrers, 'who decided the vexed question about admission of "beestes" to a pasture'. 104Specifically, this was an award concerning rights to common lands in Donisthorpe (now in Leicestershire, but historically in Derbyshire).Here, I should note that this was Sir William Ferrers, sixth Baron of Chartley (Staffs.)(d.1450), not the same William Ferrers whose lordship John Gatacre hoped to secure, but a member of the same family and also related to the Henry Ferrers accused of killing Robert Pierrepont. 105espite the truce in their family feud, in 1450 hostilities erupted once again.The widow of one of Gresley's servants, Anne Herte, went before the Court of King's Bench to appeal William Vernon and his brother-inlaw Hugh Davenport for the death of her husband. 106The precise circumstances surrounding the outbreak of violence this time are unclear, but it took fivepresumably increasingly tense and aggressiveyears before a resolution was hammered out.In the 12 July 1455 letter reproving Gresley and Vernon for the renewed violence between families, King Henry VI chastised the two for having of 'late riottously assembled oure people ayenst our pees wherof we be gretly displesed as we have cause soo to be'.The two men were asked to appear before the king and his council at the palace of Westminster 21 July 1455. 107A separate letter was sent out the same day to Nicholas Gresley, John's brother, speaking of the king's 'grevous indignation', and summoning him to appear the king as well. 108The king did not usually pay attention to the petty disputes between gentry families; that he saw this outbreak of hostility as being serious enough to drag all three before the king and his council speaks to the notoriety of the dispute and its disruptiveness to life in Derbyshire.
Presumably the stern reprimand received by all three men before the king is what propelled them once again into arbitration.An award dating to 12 September 1455, and surviving among the Gresley Family Charters, was facilitated this time by Humphrey Stafford, duke of Buckingham (d.1460).Declaring a desire to see John Gresley and William Vernon become 'full frendes and of frendely delyng and pardone and leye aparte either to other alle maner aggrugginges and rancoure of herte', both the Gresleys (John, his brother Nicholas, and their men, servants, and tenants) and the Vernons (William, his brother Roger, and their men, servants and tenants) were asked not to 'vexe, trouble, or make querelle' for any matters that have passed between the two families.Buckingham then clarified his role, and that of his descendants, in the process: 'And yf any cause of gruggyng happen to falle between them in tyme to come that he of them that shal finde hym greved shal notefie us of the cause of his gruggyng if we ben in cuntrey, or ells oure sonne Stafford in oure absence without any thing procedyng by weie of feite, and we or our seide sonne in oure absence to sette redresse theryn'.This statement is a valuable reminder to the historian that arbitration was an ongoing matter: arbitrators saw it as their duty to keep the peace after the award had been made, for as long as possible.
The award then moves on to the issue of compensation.To Anne widow of John Herte, who was slain at Burton by the servants of William Vernon, he ordered William to pay twenty marks, both for the soul of the slain and for the 'relief' of Anne and her children.The award also laid out a payment schedule.Of the seventeen marks remaining unpaid (apparently William had already begun the process of compensation), it was to be divided into even portions and paid out at the feasts of Christmas and Lammas next.On his part, John Gresley was asked to pay Thomas Webbe of Shell, one of William Vernon's tenants, who was maimed and hurt by Gresley's servants, compensation for his various wounds.For the 'soore wounde in the heede', thirteen shillings, four pennies; for 'a nother soore wounde in the face', thirteen shillings and four pennies; and for every one of the six other wounds, six shillings and eight pennies; for a maim on the thumb of his left hand, 100 shillings; altogether, twelve marks, six shillings, and eight pennies. 109It is hard to say whether this award finally brought an end to all fighting between the two families.Falconer Madden has argued the intermarriage of their grandchildren, John Vernon (d.1545) and Ellen Montgomery (daughter of John Montgomery and Elizabeth Gresley), in the early years of the sixteenth century 'must have been a final seal of amity'. 110f the king's decision in council to summon these men into court was not enough of a sign of their elite status, or the intervention of the duke of Buckingham as arbitrator, the careers of these men and their families make the point.The Gresleys were a wealthy family.Tax returns for the year 1435 show the Gresley family with lands worth £200 per annum. 111Not only was John Gresley high sheriff of Nottingham and Derbyshire in 1453/4, he also represented Staffordshire in Parliament twice. 112John's father, Thomas Gresley (d.1445), described as '[o]ne of the richest and most powerful landowners in Derbyshire', was a frequent member of Parliament, serving six times in total. 113He was also popular as an arbitrator, a position he continued throughout his life. 114In 1435, 'he made himself available' in the dispute discussed above between Thomas Foljambe and Henry Pierrepont I, although in the end they opted for mediation by the archbishop of York.Just before his death in 1445, Thomas also witnessed a conveyance of the manor of Breadsall for William Lord Ferrers of Chartley, clarifying his relationship with the man who arbitrated the first Gresley-Vernon dispute.

115
The Vernons were equally powerful people.The family owned property across eight counties.By the end of the fifteenth century, their overall worth was an estimated £612. 116Moreover, as Joseph Nigota has observed, in seven of the eleven Parliaments held between the years of 1432 and 1451, 'a Vernon sat for Derbyshire, either Sir Richard or one of his three (of at least six) sons'. 117William Vernon represented Derbyshire at Parliament three times; he was also granted the office of Knight Constable of 110 Falconer Madden, The Gresleys of Drakelowe, Oxford, 1899, 58. 111 115 Rawcliffe, 'Gresley, Sir Thomas (d.1445)'. 116Wright, Derbyshire Gentry, 8. 117 Nigota, 'Vernon Family'.
Walker, described by Roger as his servants, were also beaten and maimed during the incident.The dispute went to mediation before four arbitrators, indifferently elected between the parties: Sir Thomas Watley and Sir Thomas Tempest, both knights; and John Hothom and Richard Cholmeley, esquires.They also had two umpires, Thomas, Earl of Surrey, and Sir Henry Wengleggh, knight.According to Hopton, the arbitrators decreed that Thomas Darcy should pay ten marks with a detailed payment schedule to Hopton and George Snayth, the victim's brother, for the death and the hurts endured by William, John, and William.Also according to Hopton, the problem was that his stepson George had received the money from Darcy, but would not give any of it to Hopton.To make matters worse, the two of them were bound over by 105 marks to keep the peace with Darcy, and yet, as Hopton laments, Snayth was maliciously planning to break that peace so that Hopton would lose 105 marks. 121eorge Snayth's replication to Hopton's bill offers a different story.Most importantly, he points out that he is brother and heir to Robert Snayth, and that the William Walker maimed and wounded was in fact his servant, not Hopton's.As Robert's heir, and Walker's master, he had been the one to appeal the crime; thus, the costs, charges and expenses had been borne by Snayth, not Hopton.Consequently, although the award stipulated that Darcy would pay fifty-five pounds to the two of them, Snayth tells the chancellor that Hopton had faithfully promised that he would not receive any of it.Nonetheless, to date, of the thirty-two pounds, ten shillings paid out in instalments, Snayth had received twelve pounds and ten shillings, while the remaining twenty pounds had found its way into Hopton's purse. 122opton, of course, submitted a reply to Snayth's replication in which he declared that William Snayth (George's cousin) was in fact a servant in Hopton's household, that Walker was in company with William Snayth at the time of the murder, and as a result Hopton had borne all the costs, expenses, and charges related to the king's suit.He agrees with Snayth that the award was a much higher amount than he had originally disclosed, fifty-five pounds not ten marks, but he declares that the arbitrators intended that forty pounds pay for the costs, charges and expenses, with residue to be divided equally between the three servants because of their injuries.And because Hopton claims to have been the one to bear the burden of the costs, the money was owed to him, not Snayth.He hoped to see the chancellor summon Snayth before the court and extract the money that he confessed to having received in his replication.123 While I cannot tell you how the chancellor finally resolved this case, there is good reason to believe that Hopton was not being truthful.If Snayth had violated the terms of the agreement, as Hopton contends, all Hopton needed to do was go to the arbitrators or umpires, and tell them what had happened.As we saw with the duke of Buckingham's award in the Gresley-Vernon dispute, awards typically included a commitment by the arbitrator to resolve future problems or concerns relating to the enforcement or violation of the award.In the duke of Buckingham's case, he even committed his son to take on the problems after his death.Surely the earl of Surrey had the manpower to make sure that his award was respected!If Hopton's story were true, he would not have needed to go to the chancellor to receive what was spelled out in the award: that was already built into the arbitration process.
Once again, we need to recognize that the individuals involved in this case were members of the elite.In the Parliament rolls for 1485, the petitioner, Roger Hopton, was named keeper of the parks of Rothwell Hay and Acworth in the west of the county of York, 124 and in 1492 he was appointed to the office of controller of the works, for which he was to be paid eighteen pennies a day for life (twelve pennies for himself; six pennies for a clerk). 125is wife, Anne Savile, was the daughter of John Savile of Thornhill, high sheriff of Yorkshire in 1485/86, as well as the granddaughter of William Gascoigne, the 'intrepid judge who committed the prince of Wales to prison'. 126oger Hopton was her third husband.Her first husband, John Boteler, was the young son of John Boteler, thirteenth Baron of Warrington (d.1463), who died while he was still a child. 127Her second husband, and the father of Roger's stepchildren, was Ralph Snayth (d.1472), bailiff of Pontefract. 128homas Darcy (d.1537) was a knight for the king's body and a Knight of the Garter; in 1499-1500, he was constable and steward of Sheriff Hutton; and in 1509 he was raised to first Baron Darcy of Darcy. 129ome of their arbitrators and umpires were equally illustrious.Thomas Tempest (d.1507) of Bracewell was steward of Skipton in 1499. 130John Hotham (c.d.1509), knight, of Scorborough, Yorkshire, was appointed sheriff of York and the keeper of York castle in either 1498 or 1499; 131 and he was also one of the justices commissioned to deliver the gaol of Beverley within the liberty of the archbishopric in 1500. 132Richard Cholmeley (d.1521), esquire, was one of the most distinguished of them all.He was bailiff of York in 1492, high sheriff of Northumberland in 1495; he was appointed lieutenant of Berwick upon Tweed and governor of Kingston upon Hull in 1497. 133He is probably best known for his time as lieutenant of the Tower of London (1513-20), where his tomb can be found (spelled Cholmondeley), and which earned him a place as a character in Gilbert and Sullivan's The Yeomen of the Guard.Finally, one of their umpires was Thomas Howard (d.1524), second duke of Norfolk and Earl of Surrey.
There is also at least one connection between cases to recognize.Roger Hopton's wife, Anne Savile, was the aunt of John Savile of Thornhill (d.1505) who married Alice Vernon, daughter of William Vernon of Haddon and Tong (d.1467), engaged in the dispute with John Gresley above. 134

VIII. What Can We Learn from These Cases?
Given the evidence, it seems clear that homicides were not regularly settled by arbitration in the medieval era.The practice was not commonplace, nor was it inclusive.In fact, no evidence exists to demonstrate that homicide was settled out of court at all between the early thirteenth century and the early fifteenth-century.When it did re-emerge as a practice, it happened very rarely (perhaps only on six occasions), among a small group of gentry families tied to a limited geography.Indeed, returning briefly to the example drawn from The Brut chronicle that began this study, one cannot help but wonder whether the two unnamed knights were in any way related to the families in this study.
It is easy to understand why historians like Rosenthal, Rowney, and Powell argued in favour of arbitration for homicide on a larger scale than the evidence supports.The medieval world preferred arbitration to litigation; and when they resorted to litigation, often they did so strategically, as an intimidation tactic to force their opponent into arbitration.Knowing that outof-court settlements often did not leave paperwork that was easy to find, it makes sense to assume that where there was one arbitration of homicide surely there were more.Had they examined all six of these cases together, it would have been easier for these historians to recognize that the individuals involved were simply not representative of the larger English population.
The fact that settlements for homicide vanished in the thirteenth century only to reappear in the tumultuous years leading up to and during the Wars of the Roses would seem to raise a red flag.Suspicions that the Lancastrian-Yorkist divide may have had something to do with these disputes is bolstered by the related sack of Elvaston.When the Longfords rallied their men to attack the Blount manor-house in 1454, they raised Lancastrian standards and later explained their attack was motivated by Walter Blount's most recent treachery: he had abandoned his Lancastrian affiliation and gone off to serve the Yorkist faction.In her examination of the Longford-Blount quarrel, Helen Castor sees this as a convenient explanation intended to vindicate their inexcusable behaviour.She has already dismissed the idea of the dispute as a Wars of the Roses in miniature.Rather, she blames the violence of fifteenth-century Derbyshire gentry on a 'political vacuum'.When Henry Bolingbroke, duke of Lancaster, assumed the crown as Henry IV in 1399, the Duchy of Lancaster (which dominated both Derbyshire and the West Riding of Yorkshire, as well as the earldoms of Hereford and Northampton), transferred into royal possession.The gentry in the midlands were left to their own devices without an individual magnate resident and superintendent in the region.This absence of guidance was exacerbated by Henry VI's minority, then by the duke of Buckingham's 'deficient management' once the region was given into his care. 135This explanation accords well with Wright's study of fifteenth-century Derbyshire, in which she observed the gentry enjoyed an unusual degree of independence: 'the local gentry, unhindered by nobility, ran the shire'. 136his explanation seems apt for most of the disputes here examined.These feuds all belong to Shropshire, Derbyshire, and the West Riding of York, mostly between 1424 and 1462.Hopton v Snayth is the lone outlier, dating to the early years of Henry Tudor's reign, when his grip on the north was still somewhat tenuous.It is not easy to detect the political affiliations of all the individuals involved; but even when it is possible, they do not fall neatly on either side of the political spectrum.Henry Pierrepont I and Thomas Foljambe, for example, both seem to have been devoted Lancastrians.And during the 1455 skirmish between John Gresley and William Vernon, both belonged to the retinue of Humphrey Stafford, duke of Buckingham. 137Regardless of simmering Yorkist-Lancastrian tensions, gentry families were propelled into disputes by '[p]articular and personal motives' 135 Castor, '"Walter Blount"', 31-32. 136Wright, Derbyshire Gentry, 94. 137 Ibid., 74.
rather than 'any strongly held political feelings'. 138Alison James has drawn a similar conclusion when examining the gentry of fifteenth-century Yorkshire.She writes, 'gentry concerns were predominantly local rather than county-wide'. 139For these families, disputes seemed to revolve around sheep, land, and money, rather than political affiliation.
While the increased violence of the gentry class can be explained by a political vacuum, the sudden resort to arbitration as a means to avoid the consequences of homicide are best explained by two factors.First, we need to look once more to the individuals involved.If anyone was going to know how to manipulate the law to their own best interests, it was these men.They participated in the creation of the law as members of Parliament; they administered its implementation and enforcement as sheriffs, bailiffs, escheators, and justices assigned to the king's commissions.They knew the value of arbitration, not only because they frequently resorted to it to resolve other kinds of run-ins they had with the law, but because they were also the same men who frequently stood as arbitrators in others' disputes.They saw the common law as the law of the common man and woman, not as a law that applied to distinguished members of gentry families.And yet, even here, they shrewdly covered their bases.Arbitration awards studiously avoid the word 'homicide'; they speak of deaths, or individuals who 'pretended to be slain'.And whenever possible, it was a gentleman's servant who took the blame, rather than the gentleman himself.
Second, we need to think about the geography involved.In the absence of direct supervision to stave off the violence that then needed to be resolved diplomatically through the leadership of men like Buckingham and Lord Ferrers, multiple historians have argued that these disputants were employing an older legal tradition.Speaking of the award in the Gresley-Vernon dispute, Robin Storey concluded that it 'belongs more in spirit to the Anglo-Saxon tradition of the weregild than to a country which had known four centuries of law administered by a central judiciary'. 140Similarly, Wright suggests that '[t]he infrastructure of family, kinsmen, neighbours and social equals provided an alternative (and almost certainly older) system of justice to that imposed by central government'. 141What seems even more probable, however, is that these individuals were inspired by the law as it was taking place around them.Shropshire shares a border with the Welsh march where compensation for homicide was still the norm.This was true also in Scotland in the fifteenth century, where compensation was instead called assythment and 138 Ibid., 73. 139 Alison James, '"To Knowe a Gentilman": Men and Gentry Culture in Fifteenth Century Yorkshire', thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, University of York, York, 2012, 34. 140Storey, End of the House of Lancaster, 155. 141Wright, Derbyshire Gentry, 119.
Arbitration was 7 Derek Roebuck, Mediation and Arbitration in the Middle Ages: England 1154-1558, Oxford, 2013, 98. 8 Powell, Kingship, Law, and Society, 103. 9 Ibid., 72.Krista Kesselring's recent work on homicide in early modern England demonstrates that this was true, in particular, that 'A recognition of the needs of widows … left some space for compensation'.K.J. Kesselring, Making Murder Public: Homicide in Early Modern England, 1480-1680, Oxford, 2019, 70.It is important to recognize, however, that the existence of compensation in the sixteenth century does not rely on a pre-existing tradition.It may also have sprung up out of necessity given changing cultures of charitable giving.
Thus, the Foljambes saw 52 Beatrix Gatacre, General Gatacre: The Story of the Life and Service of Sir William Forbes Gatacre, K.C.
63Wright, Derbyshire Gentry, 128.64Ibid., 129 and 131.As odd as it is to see the victim on the jury, Wright argues that this kind of thing was quite common in fifteenth-century Derbyshire.She notes, for example, 'It was a regular occurrence for a Derbyshire JP to hear indictments where he himself was the damaged party, or his own servants had been attacked'.Wright, Derbyshire Gentry, 121.
Wright, Derbyshire Gentry, 7. 112 Lists of Sheriffs, 103; member of Parliament in 1450 and 1453, Madden, Gresleys of Drakelowe, 57. 113Member of Parliament: 1401, 1413, 1414, 1417, 1419, and 1421; Rawcliffe, 'Gresley, Sir Thomas (d.1445)'. 114For a Parliament held at Leicester on 30 April 1414, the rolls record several private petitions of note.The first by Edmund le Ferrers, complaining that Hugh Erdeswick and his men and servants from the counties of Chester and Stafford had assaulted the town of Chartley, killing one of Edmund's servants, a man named Ralph Page, and demolishing the stakes that marked out the boundaries of his park.He demanded redress.Second, Hugh Erdeswick submitted a counter petition, in which he spoke of a riotous attack by Edmund Ferrers and his men and servants following a loveday arranged between the two.He claims that Ferrers's men were armed and arrayed as if for war, and that they intended to murder him.He also details other crimes by Ferrers.The final mediation between the two was arbitrated by Thomas Gresley.See John Strachey, et al., eds., Rotuli Parliamentorum ut et Petitiones, et Placita in Parliamento Tempore Henrici R.V., 6 vols, London, 1767-77, vol.4, 32.What is interesting is that both Gresley and Ferrers (of Chartley) are related to individuals already mentioned within the cases appearing here.