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

16 Legal History in the Making
even between bills as closely related as these. 11 The composer worked within
an established form, developing a particular style and idiom which he adapted
to the varying circumstances of the case and the petitioner. Within this style,
variation in language on the part of the writer was, if not extreme, then at least
considerable. The level of precision with which a bill was crafted is clear from
the way that the individual aspects of each of these two cases are carefully built
around their common central problem of embezzlement and forgery.
For all the care in the composition of the bill, neither of these examples was
free from error or without need of modification once it was initially drawn.
Both display an erasure and filler in the description of the Recital, in exactly the
same place (1. 46), and it would appear that a name originally inserted as one
of the witnesses to the writing of the true will was removed upon assessment of
the completed bill. Of greater interest are the interlinear modifications, three
of which occur in C 1/9 no. 119 and one in C 1/9 no. 120. All are in the same
hand, which is distinct from that in which the bills were initially written, and
this clearly indicates a close assessment of the documents some time after they
were written. Whether this was undertaken by the petitioners, the composer,
or some other adviser, is not determinable from the evidence of the bills, but
at some stage the documents were altered by the same person.
The changes involve most importantly the insertion in both documents of
the crucial fact that along with Hore, Luffyng embezzled the true testament
(11. 54-55), and also in C 1/9 no. 119 the clarification that the witnesses to this
testament were present when it was rehearsed (1. 48), as well as a statement of
the value of the vessels and household furniture that Isabell claims (11. 39-40).
The presence of the first of these modifications in both documents shows that
the two bills were assessed and altered at the same time, that one was not
written and modified first and the other copied from it; had this been the case
the bill that was drawn second would have incorporated the change. Further,
there is no reason to assume that these alterations might have been made in
the chancery. In addition to the necessity of having to account for the precision
of the substance of the changes - a precision that indicates a close familiarity
with the case, such as would be had by the petitioners or the composer - this
would require the presumption that bills submitted into chancery on different
days could have been altered by the same scribe during process of the cases in
the court. The hands of the scribes who entered the memoranda of surety are
quite different, and neither is that of the interlineations, so these changes
11 The ubiquitous final e appears in both bills in instances where it is absent in the same word in the
same place in the other; the plural inflection ez is present twice in C 1/9 no.119 where the word in C 1/9
no.120 displays es, but there is also an example of the use oiez in this latter bill; the double e ('deeth') and
double d ('bedde') of 119 are not found in 120; in 120 y is substituted for i and i for e, but the substitution
y for e is present in both documents. The non-chancery standard 'seid' appears in place of 'said' in 120,
but so does 'said' in place of 'seid'; 'which' replaces 'wich', 'on' replaces 'oon', and 'beseker' 'besecher' in
119, though 'bisecher' is also present in this bill. For a discussion of the major characteristics of chancery
standard English, see John H. Fisher, 'Chancery and the Emergence of Standard Written English in the
Fifteenth Century', Speculum, lii (1982), 830-99.