Page:VCH Staffordshire 1.djvu/329

 SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC HISTORY rights of protest to the villein or the inhabitants generally, hence much inclosure must have taken place to the injury of these people. An interesting example of the summary method of dealing with 'manifest felons ' occurs in the records of the Staffordshire Assizes in 1273. The jury of the hundred of Seisdon presented that Roger de Reyneyde was arrested upon suspicion of robbery and delivered to William, Peter, etc. to convey him to Bridg- north, and the said Roger escaped from their custody, and the said William and others followed him and cut off his head and brought it to Stafford. His chattels are worth 22d. t and the jurors say he was a robber and a malefactor. 59 The first mention of a jury in criminal matters occurs in 1204 at Lichfield, 80 and numerous entries show the corporate responsibility of the hundreds for crime in their midst. Thus in 1 1 74 we are told that nine murders in Offlow Hundred had been assessed by the itinerant justices at the rate of one mark each, 61 and next year the ' tithing ' of Newbold was fined half a mark for the sins of one Brun of Newbold, an escaped felon whose chattels the sheriff had sold for five shillings. 63 Many examples might be given of the mediaeval custom of valuing the instrument of death, whether accidental or deliberate, and exacting the money from the owner or the locality implicated, as a payment or ' deodand ' to the king. For instance, the vill of Weston upon Trent is chargeable ' for a sword with which John Gardyner had been feloniously killed by Stephen Benet of Creswalle four shillings.' Likewise the vill of Leek has to pay 2s. 6d., the value of a horse which was the cause of death of a certain Adam, killed by accident. 63 The number of private individuals who had the right to hang thieves on a private gallows in the fourteenth century seems to have been considerable, and included the priors of Stone, Trentham, and Lapley, as well as the abbot of Burton, whilst the claims of the bishop of Lichfield and Coventry, and of the dean and chapter of Penkridge, were under consideration at the time when Edward I made his famous inquiry into feudal jurisdictions in the interests of national justice. 64 With regard to wages and prices of provisions in mediaeval Stafford- shire the evidence is rather scanty, but there is enough to enable us to gather some general idea as to the changes in these between the eleventh century and the fifteenth, though not enough to warrant the drawing of any definite conclusions as to the local variations in the county. The rent of land was fairly steady during this time, and may be taken as 6d. per acre, rising to 8</. for specially good land, and falling to 4^. for poor soil. At Tutbury in 1257 a q uarter of wheat could be bought for 4^. 4</. 65 A little later, in 1294, it was sold at 3^. 4^. per quarter at Stafford; 66 at the same time a chicken could be bought for a halfpenny, and two oxen for i5/. at Wolverhampton. 67 In Berkeswich (Baswich) manor wheat varied from 3^. to 4^. per quarter in I3I2. 68 About the same time a The Will. Salt Arch. Sac. Coll. iii, 1 8. M Ibid, iii, 98. 61 Ibid, i, 75 ; Pipe R. 21 Hen. II. " Ibid, i, 76 ; Pipe R. 21 Hen. II. 88 Ibid, xvii, 1 3 ; quoted in extracts from Plea R. Lichfield, East, z Hen. V. " Ibid, vi (i), 243-9. " Mins. Accts. 40-1 Hen. Ill, bdle. 1094, No. 1 1. 66 Bailiff's Acct. ; quoted in The Will. Salt Arch. Soc. Coll. vi (2), 71. " Ibid. 72. 48 MSS. pertaining to the D. and C. of Lichfield, N. i. 285