Page:The statutes of Wales (1908).djvu/58

liv the King's Commissioners or Council of the Marches were empowered to send for the said officers, and the persons whom they had illegally imprisoned. If the illegal imprisonment were proved, then the Commissioners had power to order the said officer to pay to the injured parties the sum of not less than 6s. 8d. for every day of the wrongful detention besides a fine to the King's use. No weapons were to be brought into any court holden in or the Lordships Marchers, or to any place within a distance of two miles from the same courts, nor to any town, fair, church or other assembly (except upon a "hue and outcry" made of any felony or robbery), nor into the highways, except by the command and assent of the Justices or other officers. No persons, without leave of the said Commissioners, were to make collections or exactions of goods or money under colour of marrying their children, saying or singing their first masses or gospels of any priests, or for the redemption of murders or felonies or for any other cause. No games of running, wrestling, or leaping were allowed; the game of shooting with the bow only was permissible. The punishment prescribed was one year's imprisonment and fine. The Courts were to be held in the most peaceable places, and any person casting anything into any Court was punished by imprisonment "any custom before this time to the contrary notwithstanding." (This referred to the ancient custom of casting "arthel" Exiles who to avoid punishment, fled from the jurisdiction where they had committed a crime and placed themselves under the protection of the Lord of the commote, who undertook to defend them, were called gwyr arddelw (men of avowal), arthelmen, or 'advocarii.) Felonies committed within the Marches were made triable in the adjoining English county, and an acquittal in the courts of the Lordships Marchers was to be no bar against indictment in the ordinary courts within two years after the commission of the offence. The Justices in England could issue process into the Marches against