Appendix CASE ONE - Collection Point® | The Total Digital Asset ...

38 Legal History in the Making
jurisdiction was not exclusive, and a few cases of cross-border cooperation in
evil-doing were heard at gaol deliveries in the fifteenth century (all of them
in Northumberland), but to an increasing extent the wardens seem to have
established an effective monopoly. Indeed they were as likely to encroach on
the jurisdiction of gaol delivery justices as the other way round. The earliest
surviving records of presentments made to a warden court, from the English
east march in the years on either side of 1500, show it receiving accusations of
felonies indistinguishable from those made at gaol deliveries, as well as charges
of criminal cooperation with Scots. 45 By then the ban on any dealings between
Englishmen and Scots which might give material aid or comfort to the enemy
had proliferated into a whole range of offences, all coming under the general
heading of march treason.
Treason, of course, was a capital offence. In 1401 the earl of Northumberland
was paid £200 for holding two march days and £30 'for the arrest of six
traitors of the marches of Scotland put to death because of their treason'. 46
Military offences, however, could be settled by march law. March days were
used to make arrangements over prisoners and ransoms, 47 and the fact that
combats were fought between English and Scottish knights in the 1380s and
1390s, sometimes at places where march days were held and sometimes to the
death, 48 suggests that at the very least the laws of war and march process were
not incompatible. (It should be said that such combats cannot be regarded as
descended from the duels prescribed in the code of 1249, but were fought
between knights jealous of their status in carefully prepared lists - five of them
were made at Berwick in 1396 for 'five combats touching treason'). 49 March
law and the law of arms could, indeed, be openly linked. In 1386 order was
given that English borderers who had ransomed prisoners without the assent
of their lords, to whom a third of such ransoms was due, should be punished
'according to the courts of arms and the customs of the said marches'. 50 The
curious practice of 'baughling', involving 'the bearing of a glove or picture (by
the offended party) of one who had broken his bond concerning ransom, entry
of prisoners, or any other just cause, and the giving out by blast of a horn, or
cry, to the whole assembly that such a person was untrue', is nothing other than
the procedure of dishonour of the law of arms, and march days, with their large
attendances, were so well suited for it that in 1553 it was banned there, because
of the disorder it commonly provoked. 51
It is possible that the extension of the authority of the warden's court to
enable it to act as a court of arms - which could have cognizance of charges of
« SC6/Elizabeth 1/3368.
46
E 404/16, no.695.
47
E.g. Rotuli Scotie, i, 835; ii, 79.
48
G. Neilson, Trial by Combat (Glasgow, 1890), 219,220-21,223-24.
49
E 28/26, no. 153.
50
Rotuli Scotie, ii,79.
51
Tough, Last Years of a Frontier, 104-5; Keen, Laws of War, 173.