Finally, it was agreed that Alice should give the rogue a cow as
hush-money, and with the cow Mr. Anneys departed. His triumph was
brief. When the time for holding the next court arrived, others came
round the poor woman, and made it quite evident that the lands she
had succeeded to were not heriotable at all, and that Henry Anneys
was a swindler. So the case was brought before the homage as usual,
the cow was ordered to be returned, and a substantial fine imposed
upon Anneys.
Almost the first thing that strikes a novice who looks into the
village history of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries is the
astounding frequency of bloody quarrels among the rustics. In the
records of the Courts Leet for Norfolk it is very seldom indeed, that
you can find a court held at which one or more persons, male and
female, are not amerced for "drawing blood" from somebody. Whether it
was by punching their opponents on the nose, or whether they used
their knives, I hesitate to decide; but I suspect, from the frequent
mention of knives and daggers, that sticking one's enemy with cold
steel was not so very un-English a practice as popular prejudice is
wont to assume it to be. One thing is very certain, and that is--that
all over East Anglia, five hundred years ago, there was such an
amount of bloodletting in village frays as would hardly have
disgraced the University of Heidelberg.
Pages:
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225