El sistema financiero a finales de la Edad Media: instrumentos y métodos. AAVV

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El sistema financiero a finales de la Edad Media: instrumentos y métodos - AAVV


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since the latter was a stronger proof and defeated a claim based upon the evidence of oath helpers (according to the legal maxim that ‘specialty bars compurgation).13

      Eight. The general development of litigation within manorial courts in the period c. 1250 to c. 1350 suggests that, rather than creating their own localised forms of action and processes, most manorial courts were, to a greater or lesser extent, developing their law in parallel with developments in the king’s court, in other words at common law. The processes by which this relationship between customary seigneurial courts and common law courts was established and legal practice shared between them remains uncertain but it is reasonable to suppose that practice in the manorial court was influenced by a range of factors including those who moved between central courts and local and private courts. Such people included estate officials, such as stewards, as well as their manorial lords, attorneys and legal advisers and, of course, litigants. Some of the latter were, of course, peasants including villeins or unfree peasants, but they also included, as we shall discuss more fully in a later section of this essay, litigants from beyond the manor, such as merchants and townsmen.

      It is elaboration and further investigation of this last point, in particular, and its implications for our understanding of the nature of credit agreements and indebtedness in the medieval village that will be the main element of the second part of this essay. Together the above points also help to illustrate that law in manorial courts was in a condition of considerable development in the decades either side of 1300 and that it was sufficiently flexible as to be open to an array of potential influences.

      EXTERNAL AGENTS AND CREDIT IN THE MANOR COURT

      There seems little doubt that a number of individuals other than peasant litigants themselves were involved in the debt litigation recorded in manorial courts. We can explore this in two respects, firstly in terms of third party involvement in litigation, as regards such roles as attorney and legal advisor, as well as those who organised the processes of the court. Secondly, and no less importantly, of course, there is the issue of involvement of non-peasant litigants in debt litigation recorded in the manor court. We deal with each issue in turn.

       Third-party involvement in debt litigation recorded in the manor court


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